Want to sell your business? | Issue #132
How To Optimise Your Exit Plan For The Best Results
Need to ready your business for sale? Or show equity growth to your investors? Maybe you’ve been running your business for ten, even twenty years, and you’re itching to do something new. Certainly, the seismic shifts of the pandemic have made business leaders re-evaluate where they’re at and what they want.
Even if you’re not looking at selling in the immediate future, there’s value in having a ‘sale-ready business’. So, whatever your business faces, you have the flexibility to pivot or weather the storm. By setting out your stall and knowing the things that are true for your business, you can plan for the future, making the decision to push yourself harder to maximise your rewards.
Exit planning is one of the big reasons our clients hire us. Our Scaling Up methodology fits so well with the need to optimise businesses for sale. In the past, I’ve worked alongside Arrowpoint Advisory, the UK’s leading M&A advisors to mid-market companies. I’ve also tackled the subject of ‘Getting the most when you sell your life’s work’ in my podcast interview with Daniel Havercroft, partner at Oakley Advisory – one of Europe’s leading independent corporate finance firms.
It’s an area of real personal interest. I’ve been there. In January 2013, I was Managing Director of Peer 1, which sold for C$635 million. At the time, it realised the highest multiple for a hosting company ever achieved. My experience scaling this business showed me the levers that drive valuation in tech businesses. And now I share these with the businesses we coach.
Badass Your Brand & Show Your Business Who’s Boss with Pia Silva
- If you’re tired of being overworked and underpaid,
- If you lack the ideal clients, or you don’t know how to find, attract and close clients,
- If you keep experiencing project creep,
- If you’re an expert in what you do, but you’re constantly overlooked and having to explain the value of what you do,
…then you need to listen to Pia Silva on this week’s episode of The Melting Pot.
Pia is a partner and brand strategist at Worstofall Design where they build entire brands in 1-3 day intensives. But these days she is just as focused on helping other small branding and marketing companies build profitable, lifestyle businesses using her No-BS model.
She’s a TEDx speaker, a Forbes contributor, author of Badass Your Brand and host of the podcast Show Your Business Who’s Boss.
And on today’s episode, she talks about how she went from being $40,000 in debt, working 100 hours a week for clients she didn’t want to work for, delivering work she wasn’t happy with, to 12 months later, making $500k, being profitable and working with a client she wants to work with.
Pia does the work she wants, her way, and she charges proper money for it. This is a fascinating story about the benefits of niching, adopting a no-BS approach and creating authority to drive business in.
We hope you enjoy this conversation with Pia as much as we did.
Recommended Podcasts
Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose, two of the most well-known experts in the content marketing space, talk about the latest content marketing trends and discuss how businesses can use content to attract and retain customers. Each podcast show features a discussion of content marketing headlines, rants from Joe and Robert on what’s going on in the industry, and a “This Old Marketing” example from the past (that we can learn from). Always useful, entertaining and never more than 60 minutes. This Old Marketing is part of the Content Marketing Institute(CMI) Podcast Network.
Recommended Articles
The Executive’s Guide To Better Listening
A senior executive of a large consumer goods company had spotted a bold partnership opportunity in an important developing market and wanted to pull the trigger quickly to stay ahead of competitors. In meetings on the topic with the leadership team, the CEO noted that this trusted colleague was animated, adamant, and very persuasive about the move’s game-changing potential for the company. The facts behind the deal were solid.
The Secret of Adaptable Organizations Is Trust
In the last year, many companies have been pushed to the limits of their capabilities, and in many cases, to the edge of insolvency. With severe pressure on operations, supply chains, and demand, their processes have collapsed, and any idea of teamwork within their ranks has been thrown to the wind.
Recommended Reads
Right Away And All At Once by Greg Brenneman
Like Covey before him, Brenneman believes that true business success and personal fulfilment are two sides of the same coin. The techniques that will grow your business will also help you achieve a rich, purposeful, and integrated life. In Right Away and All At Once, Brenneman takes what he’s learned from turning around or tuning up many businesses – including Continental Airlines and Burger King – and distils it into a simple, clear, 5-step roadmap that anyone can follow. His 5 steps teach you how to prepare a succinct Go Forward plan, build a fortress balance sheet, grow your sales and profits, choose all-star servant leaders, and empower your team. For more than thirty years, Brenneman has seen these steps foster dramatic results in a variety of business environments. But ten years ago he realised that he could apply these same business principles to improve his life and build a lasting moral legacy. He found he could make better decisions by carefully taking the most important facets of his life – faith, family, friendship, fitness, and finance – into consideration. Brenneman’s inspiring examples, from both his business and life, demonstrate the astounding effects these 5 steps can have when you apply them right away and all at once.
In this paradigm-shifting book from acclaimed Harvard Medical School doctor and one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people on earth, Dr. David Sinclair reveals that everything we think we know about ageing is wrong, and shares the surprising, scientifically-proven methods that can help readers live younger, longer. For decades, the medical community has looked to a variety of reasons for why we age, and the consensus is that no one dies of old age; they die of age-related diseases. That’s because ageing is not a disease – it is inevitable. But what if everything you think you know about ageing is wrong? What if ageing is a disease? And that disease is curable.
News From The Farm
Scaling Up Business Growth Workshop – 8th April
**Only 2 seats left!**Lockdown rules are relaxing. Children are back at school, and thoughts are now shifting to how to turn 2021 into the best year you’ve ever had in business.
Everyone has a business plan. Everyone has an Excel spreadsheet.
But how are you going to boost growth over the next quarter?
Don’t let COVID-19 beat you into the ground and take your business. Treat this pandemic as an accelerator. The “one thing” you’ve been looking for to pivot, re-evaluate or simply get shit done. Join us on our farm in Wiltshire to walk through our Scaling Up growth programme.
Hurry – only 2 seats left!
MEANINGFUL ACTION FOR MONDAY
Form a middle management team
If your focus is on execution, you need to look at the middle management layer of your business. It’s something we’ve been working on as a first quarter theme with our clients. Rockefeller Habit 3 is all about communication through the organisation and this relies on monthly meetings between the Executive and Middle Management Teams and quarterly off sites. We’ve sat down with middle managers and asked them whether they’re a team. Do they have an identity and purpose? How do they know they’re effective? This is important as middle managers are the execution engine of your business.
Upcoming Events
Scaling Up Virtual Summit – 22nd April
“Working Together” for the greater good is needed more than ever around our world as we all really know. Join top Scaling Up partners from around the globe for our second Scaling Up+ Summit of the year. These leading CEOs and Authors will share actionable insight focused on your people and culture to ensure a prosperous 2021. Outthink competition with 3 keynotes in 90 minutes.
Prescription For Growth Workshop – 26th May
A special workshop presented by Justin Roff-Marsh (author of The Machine) and hosted by Dominic Monkhouse at Foundry Farm near Salisbury. Join 21 of your peers (owners and senior executives from mid-sized businesses) and design a simple (but detailed) plan to expedite the growth of your organization.
Quote of the week
“As much as you might love running your business, you must have an end goal in the plan. At the very least, an exit strategy keeps you from turning your business into a glorified job – working from home but with longer hours”
Kevin J Donaldson
Dominic Monkhouse
Dominic offers business coaching and management development, strategy planning and organisational change, using tried and tested methods to launch your organisation onto an unparalleled growth trajectory. His programme is a function of his broad experience, his deep expertise and a proven process used by over 2,700 firms worldwide.