Author Michael Podolny at Google+

Valuing a Small Business-

Transferring Ownership to Financial Independence

Common Sense Strategies for Valuing a Small Business Higher

Understanding What’s Needed (Part 1 of 4)

Why does anyone make an investment? Presumably because they want to make money.  When one becomes a business owner, that person is making an investment.  Most business owners expect their investment to increase in value.  They tend to focus on the potential value increase as a primary benefit that should come from the investment.  They don’t always think about the income an investment could be spinning off – but they should.  The income producing capability of an investment is a major component to evaluating an investment.  Let’s call these concepts of increasing value and income produced from the investment Return on Investment.

Further, most business owners come a point in there life where they hope to not have to work, to be able to live on and enjoy the fruits of the investment into their business.  This means having a means to produce income that does not require working.  Let’s call this concept Financial Independence.

Return on Investment and Financial Independence are not the same things.  I can have a very nice return on my investment but if I don’t do certain things I won’t be able to achieve financial independence.  But the opposite is not the case.  It is highly unlikely as a business owner that I can achieve financial independence without getting a good return on my investment.   So an adequate return on investment is necessary for achieving financial independence but does not guarantee financial independence

In this series of blogs, I’m going to be discussing specific strategies you can use to ensure that you focus on return on investment and convert it into financial independence.  We’ll start by reviewing the heart and soul of value creation, profitability and cash flow.  Then we will look at the specific means one can use to convert that value to financial independence.

Author Michael Podolny at Google+

Creating Your Formula for Selling a Small Business

Creating Your Formula for Selling a Small Business

A Deeper Dive Into Improving the Drivers that Affect Business Value

Consistent Application of Accountability and Feedback Metrics (Part 4 of 4)

This month I’m covering specific things you can do in your business to increase its value, make it more salable and make it easier to do succession.  In this post I’ll be discussing the last of our four topics, the application of accountability and feedback metrics.

Oh accountability!  It is probably one of the attributes for improving performance owners least like dealing with.  I suspect this because it means they actually have to take action with their people and as I noted in the last post most don’t like doing that.  And accountability means that an owner might actually have to hold him or herself to that same standard too!

It’s one of those cruel little inconsistencies that advisers see in their clients all the time.  The owner wants everyone else to do the best job they can do but he or she is unwilling to do the unpleasant task of actually holding those same people or themselves accountable to the standards they claim they want seen done. (By the way don’t ask we advisers if apply these principles to our practices because we act just like our clients with our businesses!).  Like so many things in life – losing weight, getting into shape, trying to break a habit – it is a matter of personal commitment and will.  It’s also a matter of having the data/metrics you need to measure performance.

Let’s deal with the latter first.  Without objective data, it is extremely hard to make the accountability process work. Without data we are subject to opinions, feelings and impressions.  These are notoriously unreliable.  When there are measurements, it is much less emotional and subjective as to whether a goal is hit or not.  Not everything can be put into empirical measurement but a lot can and those are frequently important to the business’ overall performance.  Once one has measurements and metrics, one needs to look at them on a regular basis, and study their significance in the context of the overall business.

A simple form of accountability is tying behavior to measurements.  Sports offer an example.  If I’m a runner, I have time targets for the distances I’m competing in.  When I work out, I will have certain workouts I need to do…distance, speed, endurance, etc.  If I want to achieve my time performance goals, I have to hold myself accountable for both doing the workouts I have organized and for the performance targets I’ve set within those workouts. The same principle applies in business.  We set overall goals that can be measured, sales and profits for example.  We establish activities that need to be done – make sales calls, get out a certain number of proposals, produce a certain amount of product with a certain amount of labor, etc. – and targets that can be measured that show our progress in accomplishing those activities.  We review consistently, help those who are not hitting their targets, acknowledge those who do, and revise goals and measurements as experience shows you.

As with the preceding three topics, you can find whole books written on the subject of accountability and the use of metrics to drive performance in business and I doubt you have the time to become an expert.  So my advice is to start small and simple.  Find a few things that 1) are key to your business’ performance, 2) you have the data available for measurement, and 3) you can implement with only a few of your people including yourself.  Commit yourself to a regular time for analyzing what’s going on.  If you find that you are not hitting your targets, dig into why.  Set actions that can be taken get improvement.  Accountability should not just be holding people responsible but providing the analysis necessary to change actions and get the results desired.

Contact me at michael@podolny.com if you fell that accountability of the lack of it is something that is holding you back from building the business value you need.

Author Michael Podolny at Google+

Creating Your Formula for Selling a Small Business

Creating Your Formula for Selling a Small Business

A Deeper Dive Into Improving the Drivers that Affect Business Value

Repeatable Human Capital Development and Management (Part 3 of 4)

This month I’m covering specific things you can do in your business to increase its value, make it more salable and make it easier to do succession.  In this post I’ll be discussing the third of our four topics, repeatable human capital development and management. This subject is a subset of the sustainable business system we discussed in part one but in my opinion is so important it calls for individual attention.

Over my long career I couldn’t even count the number of times I’ve heard an owner say something like “I would love running this business if I just didn’t have to deal with all these employees.”  Do you feel that way?

Let me ask another question.  How well will your business perform and how much money will you make if all your people up and left?  It’s an exaggeration for effect.  Unless you are a one-person business, you can’t possibly operate your business without its people.  And if we’re honest with ourselves, our ability to achieve our goals is very near completely dependent upon how well our people do their jobs.  Yet when I assess businesses, it is rare that I find any type of systems for defining jobs and roles, for developing collaboration, for integrating the work of different departments, or for recruiting and training new talent.

This is on one hand is a bit of a mystery to me because there is a huge industry of advice givers, organizational development, human capital management, business coaches working at all organizational levels, etc., who specialize in helping businesses develop healthy, productive people processes.  On the other hand it is not mystery at all because most owners look at these disciplines and advisers as soft, fuzzy, and not ‘real’ business.

I’d suggest that if you’re in that camp, it would be in your own best interest to rethink your position.  When a buyer comes and values your business, he or she is going to look at how much your business is dependent on you.  Then they’re going to look how dependent it is on a small number of key people.  Then they’re going to see if the business can continuously develop the people necessary to produce the business results they want to buy.  If he or she finds you are the one driving all the performance, you will find you may not be salable at all.  If your business is driven by key people with no way to replace them, you may be a bit more marketable.  Only if you have the ability to continuously add, train, manage, and improve people, will you maximize your value and salability.

Are you ready to challenge yourself on this?  Contact me (michael@podolny.com) and let’s talk about what it might take.

Author Michael Podolny at Google+

Is My Business Salable?

Is My Business Salable?

Most business owners don’t ask the question, ‘Is My Business Salable?’ until they’re ready to sell – and may find the answer was not what they expected. Watch this video to find out what to do next:

Author Michael Podolny at Google+

Creating Your Formula for Selling a Small Business

Creating Your Formula for Selling a Small Business

A Deeper Dive Into Improving the Drivers that Affect Business Value

Scientific Marketing and Sales (Part 2 of 4)

This month I’m covering specific things you can do in your business to increase its value, make it more salable and make it easier to do succession.  In this post I’ll be discussing the second of our four topics, scientific marketing and sales.

Where do your sales come from?  Who are your best customers or clients?  How well can you define them?  Can you define them in terms of size, industry, geography, and behavioral terms? If you are using a proposal based sales process, what are your conversion rates from of leads to prospects, of prospects to proposals, of proposals to sales?  If you are using a form of direct marketing, do you know how much it costs to acquire a sale?  Do you know how many initial sales convert into longer-term customers and the value of each?  If you are using advertising to you have a way of measuring the effects of any given ad, ad campaign, or promotion?

This is just a sample of the kinds of information that has the ability to drive increasingly improving marketing and sales results.  A business that can explain exactly where its business is coming from and how it comes sets it apart from the vast majority that ‘kind of have an idea’.  The term ‘scientific’ is used because of two aspects to this type of marketing and sales management.  First it is data driven.  This means consistently collecting information, measuring, and analyzing it.  Second, when we have this type of data systems we can use the scientific method to test new marketing and selling ideas.  We can create a hypothesis, test it, measure the results, and then adjust what we are doing.

Businesses who have never done this and start implementing these processes see significant sales and profit improvements which of course drives sale, marketability, and ability to do succession.

Want to learn more?  Contact me at michael@podolny.com

Author Michael Podolny at Google+

Creating Your Formula for Selling a Small Business

Creating Your Formula for Selling a Small Business

A Deeper Dive Into Improving the Drivers that Affect Business Value

Sustainable Business Systems (Part 1 of 4)

For the last couple of months, I’ve been focusing various emotional and psychological factors that inhibit owners from achieving the ultimate goals they seek when they decide to sell or do succession.  This month I’m going to go back into what drives the value you can get from your business and things you can be investing into that will make your business more salable, more capable of doing succession and will increase the value you will receive from either.  I will be discussing four of these and will be devoting one post to each.  They are:

• Sustainable business systems
• Scientific marketing and sales
• Repeatable human capital development and management
• Consistent application of accountability and feedback metrics

This post is about sustainable business systems.

Think about everything you do to produce and sell your product or service.  Even if one is a very small business there are many different things that must be done.  Some are direct such as actually producing the product or delivering the service.  Many buttress that activity.  Selling brings in the clients.  Purchasing makes sure we have everything we need to do what we do.  IT provides us with the platforms essential to doing business today.  Accounting makes sure we know how we are doing.  Each activity is a system unto itself and is part of the larger, integrated system that is the business.

Presumably there is a person or there are people who are working each of the systems you have.  Now ask yourself this.  Are you dependent upon the specific people who are doing those functions or do you have processes and procedures that allow you to bring new people effectively into these functions?

If your answer is the former, you do not have sustainable business systems in place.  You are dependent on the individuals.  If your answer is the latter, you do have them and you have put yourself in a position where you have more value, more marketability and a much easier, safer path to succession.

Implementing sustainable business systems is much easier said than done but can be well worth the effort.  If you’d like to find out more, contact me at michael@podolny.com.

How to Improve Small Business Evaluations

How to Change the Valuation of Your Business

Developing an Outcome Driven Strategy

Driving the Strategy to Achieve the Desired Results (Part 4 of 4)

Let’s review.

1. If we want a satisfactory outcome to our business life, we need to define specifically the outcomes desired.  I call these your ‘Ends’.
2. ‘Ends’ are not always tangible outcomes like money in the bank.  They can be intangible such as wanting a legacy or taking care of those who have contributed to your success.
3. ‘Ends’ can conflict with one another.  To have attainable success, one must reconcile these potential conflicts and get clear on the ultimate ‘Ends’ to work towards
4. Having well defined ‘Ends’, a strategy can now be built to get to where we want to go.
5. To build an effective strategy we have to accurately assess where we are now and determine what will need to be done/changed to achieve the ‘Ends’.  I have called this a gap analysis.
6. The result of your assessment and gap analysis should be a list of projects.  Building out the detail of these projects gives you an action plan

In this post I am going to talk to you about how we go from the action plan to actually implementing the actions necessary to get the change desired.  This is far from an easy process.  In fact the business landscape is littered with plans whose owners had every intention of implementing but didn’t.   A plan that is not implemented is a total waste of the time and money spent creating it.

The primary reason why plans end up not being acted on is that the total of actions called for are overwhelming in the context of all the normal business and life activities an owner is dealing with.  The result is kicking the can down the road; putting off even starting on the necessary projects because it all seems so overwhelming and complex.

My answer to this problem is to thinks small…really small.  Break the actions necessary into steps that one can readily understand and actually execute in the context of one’s daily reality.  Here’s an example.

Let’s say that our plan calls for us to do some personal financial planning to figure out how much we are going to need from our business to fund our lifestyle.  But you never have done any personal planning before.  So you keep putting it off because you don’t know where to begin.  How could we break this down into small steps that we would actually do?

We might start by creating a sub-project – Selecting a personal financial planner.  We could then break that sub-project into even smaller actions.  The first might be to create a list of our current business advisers and contacts who might know about personal financial planners.  That wouldn’t be so hard to do would it?  Might take an hour or even less.  Then we could have another action for calling and making appointments with those people.  You could probably fit that into your schedule.  Once you had the appointments made.  You could have another action for making a list of questions for your meetings.  That list should probably include getting referrals to specific personal financial planners.  Once you’ve had your meetings with your advisers, you could have an action for consolidating the information and creating your list of questions for the financial planners themselves.  Then there would be an action to call and make appointments with the referred financial planners and one for consolidating the information you learned from them.  Another action might be getting references from those you really liked and yet another for checking those references.  Your final action would be making a decision.  If you could do one action a week, it wouldn’t be long before you had knocked off that sub-project.

And this is the key to driving your strategy.  Break your projects down into very doable actions, only assign yourself as much as you will really get done, and then DO IT.  A lot of very small, logically planned actions, DONE, will get you the results you want.