Think About The Decisions You Make In Business

19/01/2010 by info.

Here’s a danger to avoid!

Retirement beckons. You’re off for ever to your idyllic alpine chalet in its idyllic alpine village in Europe’s idyllic number one avalanche zone… just as soon as the house is sold.

Ah, the house. The modest seaside semi you’ve lived in all these years while your retirement nest-egg grew: the place on which you’ve stamped your personality, and which has YOU written over every feature.

The lighthouse on the roof, the one the coastguards tried to ban.

Your model railway, 4,000 feet of track riveted to the floorboards and punching tunnels through the skirting boards.

The pagoda, modelled on the one at Kew but with your signature touch, a regiment of plastic terracotta soldiers.

Those busts of Karl Marx scattered among the osier-beds!

And the pièce de résistance in the front garden, the mausoleum: 28 tons of white Carrara marble housing the embalmed remains of great-grandpa Jabez.

The market value of this Shangri-La? Three words come to mind: not a lot! It’s so much YOU that NO ONE ELSE WANTS IT!

Ok so that it an extreme example however exactly this problem occurs with business owners and people who want to become business owners.

Many of them think only of moulding a business in their own image, inside their own comfort zone, with never a thought for an exit strategy. So when it’s time to sell, potential buyers just vanish into thin air.

Such people are very often fabulously talented individuals who run fabulously complex businesses. They do people’s accounts, cut their hair, give them marriage guidance, all in a day’s work as they run their leather goods and perfume factories, sell insurance and rent out rowing-boats. But most people want something a lot less complicated.

So it might suit you down to the ground to work 24/7: perhaps you don’t like going home. But it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and if it takes that level of commitment to make your business function, most people will want to run a mile.

And it cuts no ice to say you work 24/7 because the landlord keeps on raising the rent. That is precisely the point! That’s your choice and your comfort zone: you can’t expect a buyer to pay a rent you’ve never dared question.

So before you rush in, think. Don’t tie yourself up!

Arrangements that suit you now could in the long run cost you thousands by a reduction in the value of your business.

Posted in Selling Your Business, General | No Comments »