Tag: business challenges

How to Identify and Solve the Problems Holding Your Business Back

by YOUR BUSINESS WORTH, posted in Business Growth and Transition, Company Wealth, Income from your business, Inside Sale, Key People_Or Group, Passive Ownership, retirement, Selling Your Business, Strategies of growing business, Tax Efficient, Team

A Simple Business Planning Process for Growth, Value, and Future Freedom

By Thomas J. Perrone, CLU, CIC

Most business owners are excellent at solving immediate problems — customer concerns, cash flow, staffing, vendor issues. What often gets neglected are the larger problems quietly limiting growth, value, and future options.

The greatest danger isn’t having problems. It’s failing to identify the ones that could affect your business’s future — and your own financial security.

That’s the purpose of the One Page Solution: a simple process for evaluating your company, identifying the most important issue, and taking manageable steps toward a solution — one problem at a time.

Growth and Transition Are Connected

Business owners tend to treat growth and transition as separate issues. They aren’t.

Growth is about the systems, people, and performance that build a stronger company. Transition is about your eventual exit — retirement, sale, family succession, or an unexpected disability or death.

The two are linked: greater profitability creates options for personal wealth and retirement security, while your personal goals (retiring in five years? reducing involvement? no clear successor?) shape the decisions you make in the business today.

The One Page Solution Framework

Start with one question: What is the most important problem that could prevent you from reaching your business and personal goals?

Then map it out:

  1. The problem — what needs addressing
  2. The consequences — what happens if it’s ignored
  3. The desired outcome — what success looks like
  4. The roadblocks — what could get in the way
  5. The action steps, owners, and timeline — who does what, by when
  6. The review process — how you’ll track progress

You don’t need to fix everything at once. One important problem. One practical solution. One step at a time.

A Job vs. a Business

Ask yourself: Could you leave your business for three months without checking in, and still expect it to run well?

If not, the company may depend too heavily on you — which means you’ve built a job, not a transferable business. A buyer doesn’t want to purchase your personal effort; they want a company with systems, culture, and a management team that can operate without you.

Identify Roadblocks Early

Every strategy has roadblocks — a management gap, an under-financed buyer, too much personal wealth tied up in the company. Naming these early gives you time to solve them before they become forced decisions driven by illness, a downturn, or an unplanned sale opportunity.

Small Steps, Coordinated Advisors

Building value and preparing for transition takes time, but the first step can be small: review your company’s value, document one key system, or schedule a meeting with your advisor team (accountant, attorney, financial advisor, valuation professional). Coordinating their efforts — not just having them — is what drives results.

Start With the Right Question

If you had to leave your business tomorrow, would it continue to succeed — and would you be financially prepared?

Your answer points to the one issue worth solving first. Identify it. Understand the consequences. Define the outcome you want. Then take the first step.

Ready to identify what’s limiting your company’s growth, value, or future options? Schedule a conversation to start building a practical strategy for building and protecting your business worth.

Thomas J. Perrone, CLU, CIC is a business planning professional, author, and host of the podcast Building and Protecting Your Business Worth.

About the Author

Thomas J. Perrone, CLU, CIC is a business planning professional, author, and host of the podcast Building and Protecting Your Business Worth. He works with business owners to help them build business value, protect the company from unexpected events, develop strategies for business transition, and convert business success into long-term personal financial security.

Ready to identify the problems that may be limiting your company’s growth, value, or future options?

Schedule a conversation to discuss your business goals and begin developing a practical strategy for building and protecting your business worth.

 

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The Easy Process To Identify and To Solve The Problems!

Featured by YOUR BUSINESS WORTH, posted in Business Growth and Transition, Buy and Sell Agreements, Company Wealth, Estate Planning, evaluations, Income from your business, Inside Sale, Key People_Or Group, Passive Ownership, Selling Your Business, Strategies of growing business, Tax Efficient, Team, Valuation, Working On Your Business

The Easy Process To Identify and To Solve The Problems!

Excerpts from My book, “Unlocking Your Business DNA”

The One Page Solution!

As we start the process of fixing the problems, they need to be identified. In chapter 1, I discussed how the business owner needs to find their “Business DNA”. Again, this is about focus and asking the right questions, and giving the business owners the amount of time, they need to think it through.

I break down the issues into two categories, BUSINESS GROWTH AND TRANSITION.

Business Growth: Focuses on the business itself such as the strategies needed to grow the business, the systems, the culture, and its employees. It is all about the business future.

Transition: Focuses on the categories that relate to the owners, and the changes they need to make in their personal life because the business is growing.

I keep these categories separate because the issues concerning the business growth are different than the owners transition issues. However, as the business growth changes, it affects the transition of the owners, and vice versa.

It is very important that the business owner is committed to fixing their problems.  If they are not, the first time they have a business roadblock, they will tend to put planning on the back burner.  This is a mistake, because most of the time it does not resurface until there is a crisis.

However, in our planning we do create action plans in small steps. Having a team of advisors working together creates the ability to complete the small steps needed to accomplish our goals.

An Example:

A perfect example was when a company we were working with had plateaued in growth and wanted to create more business growth. When we went through some of the planning questions, I realized the owner had spent no time systemizing their business.

The owner had no documentation of operational systems of his business, but instead it was all in his head. He would delegate the tasks to his employees like a drill sergeant.  He never even thought of the fact that there was no continuity in his business, consequently, if something happened to him, the business would have ended.

I asked him, “could you go on vacation for three months and not check in during that time”?

He looked at me and laughed, replying, “are you kidding this place would fold in seven days.”

I replied, at least you are real, the sad part however is you do not have a business, you have a job. You have a position, a paycheck, and a place to go, but you do not have a business.

He looked at me dazed! But he knew I was right.

The Process Using “One Page Solutions”, will keep everyone on track.

To uncover the issues and problems with the business owner we go over the main subjects called “ONE PAGE SOLUTIONS.”  On any subject there are always a few directions in which the business owner can go. We discuss them and analyze what are the most important subjects the business owner needs to deal with currently. “THE ONE PAGE SOLUTIONS” ARE LISTED BELOW.

Each Subject has a few sub-topics we review with the owners. As we DISCUSS the One Page Solutions, we find the strategies which will solve the issues. Once we are done with the subject, we move on to the next One Page Solution, if any.

THE FOCUS AREAS of the “One Page Solution” ARE:

1-Sale of Business (outside)/ Evaluation Methods/Timing

2- Inside Transition (Family, Co-Owners, or Key Employee/s)

3-Passive Ownership- Owner wants to still run the business, but take long trips

4-Retirement; defining and preparing

5-Wealth Accumulation & Asset Protection (both in and out of the business)

6-Premature Death- Consequences

7- Estate Distribution- updating

8- Life Insurance Contracts and Benefits

9-Legacy Planning / Management of Legacy

10-Disability and Illness, Medicare, and Medicaid

11-Key Employee Retention- and Creating A Culture

12-Key Employee Owner’s Manual- systematically creating company manual, business coaching, marketing proceedures

13-Corporate Benefits and Retirement- cost and efficiency

14-Qualified Plans and Personal Liabilities- Executive Compensation

15-Family Relationships/Employee Relationships/Human Resource

We helped a business owner recently with the problem of not having business growth over a prolonged period of time.  The solution was to put in place strategies that would create transferable values for the future.

They included things like creating key group, documentation, standard procedure, diversification, and growth strategies.

In this case we realized this will take some time to implement. The owner was under no delusion that this will be done in one year. Most importantly the owner started the process. A few years from now he will see the outcomes in all its glory. Because we have experts in our toolbox, we shared our professional advisors with our client for coaching purposes, and education.

Besides implementing a few systems, they will also do a business appraisal every two years. Over a period, this will help them evaluate the growth of their company by implementing the systems suggested.

By doing this the company could allow for better planning in the future, and adjust the path towards financial security, and business growth.

One of the key elements to helping Business owners solve problems is to also identify the roadblocks. This eliminates the surprise factor should our implementation strategy not go as planned. In one of our planning agendas, we discuss these roadblocks and try to define the subsequent issues and challenges in the future.

What is extremely important in this process is that it makes the owner aware of any potential issues they must have to deal with in the future and stay ahead of the problem curve.

Over the years what has been extremely helpful has been the communication with the team. Again, these are the client’s advisors that may or may not have been in place before we started planning. Since we update the team regularly, we are often given new advice that has been helpful in forecasting future events in the business.

We normally would not have this knowledge if we did not have the team of advisors in communication. This is one of the biggest advantages of working with the team and having periodic reviews.

We have been successful helping business owners work on their business to get issues resolved and to focus on details. We use a One-Hour a month system for the business owner to do this.  This allows the business owner the brevity they want, but also, gives them quality time to organize the details of their business. Through our step-by-step system, we help business owner cover all the key issues that are needed to cover to run your business smoothly, take more time off, earn more money and just enjoy working and life much better.  

If you would like a FREE WHITE PAPER called “Your Business Essential” which will help you organize your business, CLICK THE LINK BELOW, download the white paper. This is a 128-page guide in business planning Your Free. When you click submit on the form, your file will immediately download.  Enjoy. 

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You can purchase of “Unlocking Your Business DNA”, AT Amazon. All profits to to Wounded Warrior Foundation and other Veteran groups.