You’ve built an incredible and vastly complex business from your humble beginnings. You worked hard and allowed yourself to learn from every mistake. You’re a lot smarter about a lot of things. But deep down you know your limits. You know you cannot be the expert in everything. You know you need some professional assistance, but you cannot forget how you got burned back in the day.

What do you do now?

Net Working Capital (“NWC”) is the metaphorical grease that keeps the machinery of your enterprise churning out sales and profits. Yet it is often misunderstood and/or underestimated, especially in growing businesses.

People often joke about how “you have to spend money to make money”. This phrase is often used in the context of capital investments in land, property, plant, and equipment necessary to bring a project from concept to reality. While it’s true that every business requires capital expenditures, the attention afforded to big ticket items like machinery and equipment can result in losing sight of NWC which is necessary to assure the machinery can be run.

When it comes to the sale of your business, the most prized assets are the ones that have the highest potential to generate recurring future cash flow for the new owners. So the key to a successful business sale is not historical or present cash flow, but transferable future cash flow.