Do you ever have days where it feels like you struggle to finish anything? You have a mountain of work to get through, but you cannot find the motivation to get started?

As a business owner do you feel like you’re on an island? You’ve built your business with blood, sweat, tears, and long hours … Now perhaps it’s time to start thinking about what’s next as you know you’ll have to step away from your business sooner or later.

If you don’t know where to start, we have the perfect event for you! Come meet with a community that understands your concerns. People who have been in your shoes and the advisers who serve them.

Your employees have been with you through thick and thin. Building your company alongside you. But as you prepare to exit, your attention turns to one question again and again: What’s going to happen to my employees now that I’m selling? Here are 4 Ways You Can Look Out for Your Key Employees During the Sale of Your Company.

Exiting your business is a process. It’s not an event. It might come as a surprise to you, but exiting well can take a lot longer than you might think. Why? Private company investors today are investing in great teams more than anything.

In this post we’ll help you understand some of your options to allow you to exit well, on your terms.

Where you sit today, exiting your business may be a far off thought, but it’s important to see that one day it will be a reality. Even if your exit is 20 or 30 years away, there are things you can do today that will radically increase the value of your business in the here and now, and when it’s time to exit.

It’s not time to ride off into the sunset and sell your company yet, but it’s coming and you find yourself wondering what you can do now to prepare for the inevitable future–the sale of your company.

Here at Doescher Group we work with business owners to ensure you make the most of your once in a lifetime opportunity to sell your business, by helping you position yourself and your business for exit in order to send you confidently into life’s next adventure.

Here are three tips for successfully selling your business to get you started.

The guiding principals you have used to run your business successfully are not always the most helpful when it comes to selling your business. Let us help you offset your company’s earnings volatility by moving from cash to accrual accounting, and learning to really understand your financial statements.

The biggest, most impactful decision most founders and business owners will make is also the decision they seem to avoid the longest. How will you exit your business? Here at Doescher Group, we help you face that question on your terms.

2020 hit you like a freight train. The slow leak of the last decade became a gusher, and the labor pool completely dried up. Nobody wanted to work. You’ve raised wages, you’ve made jobs more flexible, you’ve offered more benefits, signing bonuses … You name it, you’ve tried it. Two years later, you feel like you’ve made no progress at all.

Your labor challenges have burned you out and you’re ready to be done with all of this. What do you do?

It’s true, the inflation nightmare of the 80’s is back. The official US government reported Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) is increasing at a shocking rate of 7.0%. After decades of being lulled to sleep by stable prices, you are being bombarded with price increases across the board. In many cases, these price increases are being paired with longer lead times than you’ve ever experienced.

If this inflation storm is the final stressor pushing you to exit your business, you’re not alone. It truly is a tumultuous time across several industries. But it doesn’t mean you can’t get the most for your business.

You’re human and that means this will not go on forever.

As an entrepreneur, you successfully ignored this thought for decades. You’ve spent your career engrossed in the present. You’ve spent your time solving today’s problems. Even now, you cannot take a 30-minute meeting without receiving at least a few calls from needy customers and befuddled employees.

Reality cannot be denied any longer. There’s a thrill that comes from being so indispensable and in the flow of the day-to-day, but it’s time to start thinking about your next act before it’s too late.

Over the past few months you’ve finally started to selectively voice what you’ve been thinking about for over a year. It’s time to sell your business. First, you mentioned it to your buddies at the golf club. Next, you called a friend or two from the past who you seem to recall know something about selling businesses. And then…

You are a business owner. But when you arrive at the office in the morning, I’m guessing you arrive as an employee. You might be the highest ranking employee, but you’re an employee nonetheless. You have job duties and responsibilities that need to get done in order for the business to function properly. You draw a salary like everyone else. And the fact that you happen to own the company’s stock does not factor into the reality of your daily work life.

We work with many busy executives who continuously have to decide where to spend their time. As we observe those who are the most successful, our conclusion is that they know what is vitally important and they have the discipline to stick to it. We have also realized that there is no magic time management system, no matter what the consultants promise. Successful executives all have different systems — some are sophisticated, others are quite simple.

If you feel uneducated and unconfident about your business’s valuation, join the club. You are a business owner, not a business transactions specialist.

While anecdotes can serve as legitimate inputs to establishing the value of your firm, let’s learn about how buyer’s approach value in today’s marketplace.

Lately though, you’ve been turning your attention to some bigger questions. The status quo isn’t working for you anymore and you’d like to shake things up. You keep posing a question to yourself, “Should I grow this thing? Or should I sell the company and move on?” You’re just not sure, but you know it requires some exploration. Putting your head in the sand will only hold off the inevitable for so long.

When it comes to these questions, you need a different skill set from your current internal capabilities. Navigating through these waters is much different from your day-to-day accounting and finance processes. It might be time to think about a Transactional CTO.

You may be like most business owners. Your business is your passion and hobby. Sure, you enjoy R&R. You like golf and travel, but you feel most alive at the helm of your business, not on a yacht in the islands.

But if you want to find your next act, you’re going to need to do some self examination to figure this out. If golf and travel do not sound like an enticing retirement, you will want to find something that is.

For the first time in months, you open up your desk and pull out your notebook with your priorities listed. Amidst a list with some items crossed off as done and others awaiting your time and effort, one stares you right in the face: “succession plan”.

Every time you consult your list you see that one and then pick something else to work on. Planning your exit is something that just never seems to reach the top of your priority list. It’s never the right time to deal with this one, so you’ve ignored it.

EBITDA is an acronym for Earnings Before Interest, (Income) Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization. You won’t find it listed on standard company financial statements, but you can calculate it from them. EBITDA is a very rough calculation of the cash flow generated by your business operations.

When it comes to selling debt or equity in your business it’s important to note that EBITDA comes in many flavors and will be a critical metric in any discussion.

After reviewing your exit options, you also decided to sell to the highest bidder. You feel the release of this decision to sell. Now what do you do?

Do you put up a for sale sign on the front lawn? Do you put an ad in the newspaper? Do you create a website? Of course not. In order to get the best offer, you’re going to need to engage an investment banker who specializes in the sale of businesses like yours.

Chances are you’ve never engaged an investment banker before now. Most people haven’t. Here’s what you need to know.