Business owners – what is your end game?
Posted on November 13th, 2017 by Paul Lyons
Why do you own a business?
It’s interesting to consider this because we are surprised at how many business owners haven’t taken the time to consider this fundamental question. From a big picture perspective, having a business provides you with a lifestyle. That’s it!
It gives you cash now to fund your family spending, and hopefully a lot of cash in the future when you sell your business.
And it’s very similar to having, an investment property, share investments or even a Self Managed Super Fund (SMSF). They give you cash either now or in the future, or a combination of now and future.
Having a business, investment property or SMSF is not the important thing – the important this is what is the cash you receive from owning these allow you and your family to do. Your plans for what you do will do with your business, SMSF or investment property in the future are what we call your ‘end game’.
A wise WLF Partner has a saying that “the point of having a business is to sell it – even if you don’t want to right now.”
This one pearl of wisdom could mean hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars more for you in the future if you let it guide you now. Here’s how… as you run your business, start to make decisions now to plan for selling it – even if you don’t plan to sell it for many years.
The biggest thing you can do is to make changes so that your business does not depend on you. If your business needs you to operate – can you really sell it? Absolutely not.
Setting up systems for your business is the key. You can then train your team to follow your systems, and then you can gradually delegate what you do to the right team members, and then you’ll find that you’ve got a business that can partially run without you.
Would you like us to be your sounding board?
As your accountants, we can help you work out your end game, and plan to have a business that you can sell for a much larger amount in the future because it doesn’t depend on you.
Contact us today for a meeting about creating your end game.
–Paul Lyons, Partner
