Business growth tips for SMB from author Eric Gilboord

Article by Eric Gilboord from the Costco Connection Nov/Dec 2011 issue.

The New Retirement
We now have a generation of entrepreneurs who, if they had been told a few years ago they would still be working in their 50’s, 60’s or even 70’s would have responded with ridicule and their visions of a glorious stress-free retirement. For the baby boomers with businesses, thinking about selling when they were ready to retire was too far in the future to worry about.

The past few years has been a rude awakening for many of them. Somehow life hasn't worked out the way they thought it would. The cost of living keeps rising, retirement funds have been decimated, children have gone their own way and businesses are not easy to sell for what the owners know they are really worth.

It’s a new world, and significant change is required to survive. The last thing you want to do is sell the business you have nurtured for decades and get a fraction of its real worth. Good luck in proving its value, though, without sufficient sales.

To boost sales and growth, you may be thinking about the direction of your business and considering a change. Part of that change could involve getting back to your passion.

Here are seven questions to help:

1. What are you passionate about?
   
2. When you wake up what do you wish you could be doing?
3. How do you want to spend your time?
   
4. What REALLY turns you on?
   
5. What’s fun for you and not work?
6. What activities do you like to do?
7. What gives you a sense of fulfillment?
   
   

Fun is great but don’t forget to ask question #7. Everyone desires a sense of accomplishment and success. What makes you feel great deep down inside your soul?

If you have an established business, consider returning to your original passion. Get in touch with what drove you and get back to doing the things that you can’t wait to do each day. Who knows - maybe you won’t want to sell after all.

A2E

This article is from my friend John Warrillow author of BUILT TO SELL one of the Inc. 2010 best books for business owners.

How do you imagine life after selling your business? Are you travelling? Europe maybe? Patagonia, or somewhere nice and warm?

If you’re like most of the business owners I know, you imagine selling your business, having a going-away party, and riding off into the sunset.

Increasingly, it’s not working out that way.

In a shaky economy, with banks shy to lend, the proportion of cash that business owners get when they sell is sinking with the proportion of the sale price put “at risk” in some sort of “earn-out” or “vendor take back” loan is going up.