Finish Big by Bo Burlingham

Author:Bo Burlingham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2014-10-28T16:00:00+00:00

Who Leads the Leader?

There are, of course, limits to the help that any peer group can provide its members. That’s especially true of the exit process, because exiting is one of the few parts of the business experience that many owners do just once and relatively few do repeatedly. Almost everything else in business involves a lot of repetition, which is fortunate, because it allows you to get better as you go along. Your mistakes become learning mechanisms. Not that you can’t also learn from the mistakes you make during an exit, but if there’s no next time, they will become sources of regret rather than means of improvement. Hence the importance of having the right kind of help for whatever stage of the exit process you are in. The closer you get to the actual transaction, the more specialized the help needs to be.

A group like Evolve, for example, can play an invaluable role at any stage, and especially during stage one, the exploratory phase. But you need another type, and a higher level, of expertise in stage two, the strategic phase. That’s when the focus turns to developing the key value drivers that will have a major impact not only on the price the company will eventually be able to command in the marketplace but on its ability to overcome the various threats every business encounters from time to time and build a record of steady growth.

To be sure, business owners should always be paying attention to those value drivers whether or not they’re actively preparing for an exit. The situation changes, however, once you have a reasonably clear idea of when you want to leave and how much money you want to sell the company for. At that point, you need expert advice from a specialist in whatever type of sale you have in mind. If your plan is to sell to an outside party, for example, you need the assistance of someone who knows the market for companies like yours and can give you specific advice on the factors that will allow you to get the best possible deal. Ideally, that individual will serve as your lead adviser and principal guide at least as far as the transaction, and maybe beyond. The right person will do more to ensure a happy outcome than anyone other than you. The wrong person will put everything you’ve worked for in jeopardy.

Some owners, of course, choose to manage the whole process themselves. That’s generally a terrible idea—for at least two reasons. To begin with, unless you’ve done it before, you probably aren’t qualified to handle it and won’t do a good job. Ashton Harrison, for one, would undoubtedly have had a miserable exit experience had she not retained the services of Steve Kimball. An even greater danger is that you’ll wind up neglecting the business as the sale process unfolds. Managing the sale of a company is a big job that calls for knowledge and skills most business owners have never had reason to acquire.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.