E X I T P L A N
For Entrepreneurs
Henry Jordan
Copyright © Henry Jordan 2011 - All rights reserved.
Smashwords Edition
Preface
This book is written for you if you are an ambitious, hard working achiever who makes America what it is – the land of opportunity. You make things happen and you make a profit doing it. You work at what you love to do in order to create a better life for you and your family.
You are an entrepreneur who had the urge to be in business for yourself, and the nerve to go ahead and do it.
You have enjoyed running your business for some time – but you are beginning to wonder if you really “Own a Business” or if the “Business Owns You.” You are beginning to think seriously about stepping aside sometime in the future.
By now you realize that if you were to have a heart attack, an auto accident, a stroke, or some other serious debilitating ailment, or if some unforeseen event were to take place to keep you from working a few weeks, your business would in fact be out of business. A hard pill to swallow, but true.
Even if you have employees in place who could keep the business going for awhile, there would be no procedure in place to manage and finance the business without you, the boss. There would be no way to pass the business on to someone else or to another company. There would be no stock of real value without you that your heirs could sell or keep.
You might also admit that you are working way too hard. If you are like most workaholic entrepreneurs, your actual income per hour, including time devoted to thinking about the business and actually working, is meager -- possibly less than the minimum wage.
You want things done right, so you do them yourself. You just don’t seem to have been able to find the right person to partner with – someone who sees things exactly as you do. Besides, you don’t really want a partner.
You may even feel the beginnings of burn-out creeping up on you.
So should you close up shop and go to work somewhere? Absolutely not! Do you have enough money salted away to abruptly quit and close the business? Probably not.
You enrolled yourself in the famous College of Hard Knocks, and now it is time to prepare yourself for the finals and develop specific plans for graduation.
This book is your guideline to graduation. Questions you may not even have considered until now must be answered. You will find the answers here – real life answers – practical answers proven by successful people in all sizes of business.
Follow the advice given here, and you will wind up with a business to be proud of, with an exit plan that takes care of you and your family financially when the time comes to step aside.
During the process, you will still have control, and you can continue to steer the ship as long as you want to.
You will build a business that operates with or without you. You will build a business enterprise that brings in the revenue you want, to buy the things you want for yourself and your family, and a business that gives you the time to do the things you yearn to do.
Why did you go it on your own in the first place? Wasn’t it to have the freedom to do the things you really want to do, when you want to, and to build the peace of mind of financial security? Of course, that’s what we all want.
Read the book, enjoy, learn and prepare to set up a better, secure lifestyle.
Chapter 1
The Basics
To graduate from where you are into a business that you can grow and eventually step away from, you must take into account the following steps. You must set your mind to change, and take action.
Let’s start with two assignments you must do all by yourself:
STEP ONE: Put Your Basic Business Plan On One Page
It’s necessary for you to step back and think about what your business is really all about. It’s helpful to discuss it with close friends or family, of course, but it’s not until you actually create a written document yourself that you can begin to put together a viable plan for graduating.
You can “write” it on the computer screen, but you must print it out onto paper and put it aside overnight, then review it and edit it in detail. The written document must not exceed one page.
You may want to visit and revise this written document several times before proceeding to the next step in graduating.
Why must you put it into writing? Not because someone is going to grade you on it. Not because you want to show it to someone. You may never show it to anyone. It’s because by going through the exercise of putting your thoughts into an organized, concise fashion, and transferring those thoughts onto paper, you force your brain to stop chasing fires for a brief period, to quit dancing around, occupied with day-to-day crises and chores, and instead to clear itself and focus on what is of paramount importance. It’s just the way the human brain works.
We all think and dream, while we drive down the road, lie in bed, stand in the shower or sit in the tub, play games on the computer, sit through a boring TV show, or take a walk. We let our mind wander and piece together various thoughts. We allow our subconscious mind to express itself. We often come to a conclusion about what we are going to do about a particular issue and store it on our internal mental hard drive. Then our brain darts off to something else, but the decision stays there, ready to leap into action the instant you call for it.
Your challenge is to state everything about your business as concisely as possible, in writing. Create a clear statement of the vital elements which define precisely what your business now provides to the public (whatever your niche public happens to be) and where you expect it to be in the future.
Omit what-ifs and vague generalities. Just write specific facts about what you think your business is and will be. Admit to yourself your weak spots, but do not dwell on these. Do not write them down. Think about the positives. Concentrate on the positives. Write about the positives. Some of the positives when put into action will overcome those weak spots – hopefully all of them.
STEP TWO: Describe The Market Place You Are Trying To Reach
Where do you compete, who is the existing competition, how do you focus, and why is your company succeeding in your chosen environment?
What is your niche?
Why is it important to state it at this time? After all, you are doing okay.
Everyone is serving some sort of niche market. No business provides goods and/or services for the entire often-quoted broad general public. Your niche may be a very big portion of the public, or it may be a small slice. You must honestly identify what your niche is, and you must state concisely how you market your products/services now.
Why is it important to do this? In order to leave, you must know what happens after you leave. How will the business survive? Will there be a need to change what you are doing now?
You must envision how the company will continue to grow. You are the one who started it, you are the driving force behind it, and you know how to keep it going. You have proven that. If you ignore what will happen after you leave, you will most likely get less money at exit time than you will if you equip your successors with a solid plan for continued success -- a plan that takes the present and future marketplace into account.
You successor or successors must know precisely how to cope with changing market conditions. Market conditions will change. Just because you plan to step aside you cannot ignore change that is going on all around. The next crew needs to know what the company's market is -- not just what the company makes or offers as a service. You will see why this is a vital step as we continue.
In order to exit, you will probably do some restructuring and inject some new talent and resources into your company. Your mission statement and detail description of what your market is will be important in accomplishing this restructuring and/or new talent import.
The company will probably need additional money for operating capital when you depart. In order to obtain that additional money, you must have financial information to present to investors -- not just a history of what has happened, but also a projection of what will happen to the company after you leave. The spreadsheet for continuation must be created around numbers that will be in effect after injecting new capital and implementing new growth.
Now for the next steps, where you set your course and enlist the aid of professionals and others, read on.
Chapter 2
Changing Your Mindset
There is a thin line between being an entrepreneur and a self-employed solopreneur. To convert from being an overworked “solopreneur” into an entrepreneur with a viable exit plan, you must first decide to change your basic mindset. You must make up your mind to cross that line. You must firmly decide whether you want to continue to be an entrepreneur boss and a self-employed slave to your own proprietorship, or whether you really want to exit with financial security and the satisfaction of knowing you have been successful, including your exit.
You must make a firm resolution to delegate every task and responsibility that you have been carrying on your shoulders so far – by using new resources and a new budget. This delegation need not take place immediately. It can be developed over a period of time and phased in. Be careful, though, that you do not procrastinate in order to satisfy your own ego.
Your plan is to graduate, and not hang around forever as a self-employed worker, so you must execute your plan in an organized, positive fashion. As you read on, you will be shown how to attain those new resources and how to structure the new budget.
Importantly, you must swallow some of your egotistical pride and actively enlist the advice of others, including an objective Board of Directors and paid business professionals.
This is not an easy pledge to fulfill. You have spent a lot of time developing work habits and attitudes that have brought you this far, and you are making a decent living. You are in the habit of doing things your way, and you enjoy that.
It is hard to break a habit. It is, however, the single most important thing you must do in order to graduate from self employment to control of a successful entrepreneurship that you can leave with financial comfort.
It is within your inherent power to direct the path you take in your day-to-day work activities. You can do and be anything, within your talents and passions, to which you set your mind. You have already proved this by setting up and running your business. You are a member of a very special club – a tiny percentage of the general population. You have shown the world that you are master of your fate. You have demonstrated to the world that you are the captain of your ship.