Exitology: Unlock Your Profits, Unlock Your Potential

Wealth gap = 80% or more of your personal wealth is trapped in your business What gets measured gets managed. Selection criteria for business value - impact, alignment and degree of difficulty (DOD). Zero in on what is going to leverage more profits into your business or cash. Most important number is your transferable value but you must understand there are probably several numbers or factors tha...

“You can absolutely grow yourself out of cash with rapid growth.” Be careful of losing sight because a business owner is so busy building sales, hiring people and assuming everything else will take care of itself. You can’t let your receivables get away from you. Use your cash to fuel your growth. Explore ways to go through the decision making process of taking on new debt in order to fund growth....

“In fact, they grew when we started working with them from 2 million in year one to 12 million next year, and 25 million in revenue that next year.” Listen to a story of a client determined to grow and be profitable but their main issue was cash (commissions, inventory and customer deposits). Explore how to build an easy, lucrative, fun business while also avoiding failure. Most businesses fail be...

Patty Lawrence “I’m not your typical accountant. I have a personality. I am somewhat creative and entrepreneurial as well.” Leaders need to manage by numbers and make data driven objective decisions. A business owner will have a very good growth opportunity in front of them and feel overburdened. Explore the reasons to look at the concept of a fractional CFO #growtoexit #growthstrategy #growthacce...

How do you negotiate your exit from your business? Exit your business and create transferable value and think about what is really important to you. Be intentional - don’t just wait for a prospective buyer to call you. Discover the obstacles of achieving clarity Partners (life or business) need to be on the same page before talking to anyone about selling your business. Avoid a negotiator coming i...

70% to 80% of the negotiation is all in the preparation. David and Goliath negotiation is when somebody perceives the party they are negotiation with has more power or leverage than they do. Have clarity and know your values both as a company and as an individual during negotiations. Negotiation is 100% emotional. The decision to do a deal or not is entirely how we feel about the deal and the peop...

How can negotiation be applied to different business growth cycles? Clarity is needed on your most important relationship elements. Search for those in your sales process. Establish a mechanism in your negotiations that allows you to renegotiate relationships. Sometimes the best negotiation outcome is that you walk away. Explore the risks with negotiation and measurements. Really effective negotia...

What is negotiation? Negotiation is a conversation about a relationship. You cannot win a relationship but you can get more value out of it.   Understand our counterparts, find common ground and build stronger relationships. When you go into a negotiation, form and test a hypothesis. Clarity - absolutely critical in negotiation Understand what winning looks like to you.  Christine McKay is an expe...

What is the role of women in M&A today?  Jen Thompson, President, Women of Mergers & Acquisitions Network ( WoMAN ) since January 2023.   Members in WoMAN are from corporate development, business owners, service providers, intermediaries, private equity, venture capital industries. WoMAN exists to cultivate relationships with other women and support each other to be successful in M&A. ...

ViTL Solutions - Making M&A Work!  80% of project/program management is art, 20% is execution. Technology is involved in every aspect of an organization. Assess the current technology redundancies, security risks, and cost optimization. Design a future state technology architecture. Design a future state architecture early on (even prior to close so that you can initiate the effort immediately...

Plan ahead, make sure your human capital is respected and understood. People integration and change adoption should be a critical success factor for any integration. Integrations are primarily focused on the financials and the transactional, but including culture and people integration should be a #1 driver to success. Without clarity around roles and responsibilities and future-state organization...

In a post merger environment, up to 75% of employees leave within 2 years after the merger.  If you don’t plan ahead and sell your company, risks encountered may include attrition, loss of intellectual property, cultural issues, inefficient processes prior to integration. Identify change management opportunities to reduce attrition. Discuss on the importance of the right governance structure and c...

“Without industry and frugality nothing will do, and with them everything.” - Benjamin Franklin -  Exit Planning Institute - 75% owners have profound regret after leaving their business. 72% of people who took the EPI State of Business Owner Ready Survey wake up without a sense of purpose in their lives. Obesity, drug use, alcoholism and depression skyrocket within the 6-12 months after they leave...

14% of companies have a written succession plan - Really? Explore the Donnelly Method    Strategic Planning is the owners choice - 1 year, 3-5 years up to 10 years. Young successors who do not feel challenged or excited often fail. If a successor is not coachable, it is hard to develop them to grow. Fear, lack of confidence, sense of entitlement = successor challenges. Trending today, an owner is...

Life has a way of being very different from what it looks like on paper. Owners need to pick the best successor which isn’t necessarily the most obvious successor. 14% of companies have a written succession plan.   Sometimes a family member doesn’t want to be a successor.  Even if you know your business, there is always a blind spot.  Stay rooted in the idea of finding your exit but be flexible to...

Abby Donnelly, founder of The Leadership & Legacy Group Statistics offer a way to see what is really going on and understand trends and outcomes  Every process can always be improved. Processes exist today for growing the value of your business and then exiting your business one day.  Owners have a hard time letting go and need to feel confident that the business is going to be in good hands. ...

The best way to learn the Value Acceleration Methodology is to use it. It can be applied in any size business micro market to large corporations. Value Acceleration Methodology processes include a roadmap, gating processes, Create a 3 to 10 year vision of your exit but implement 90 day sprints for your relentless execution phase. Value Acceleration Methodology makes you fast and flexible. Explore...

“Real earnings” x market multiple = value Most business owners are not intentionally managing intangible assets. Focus on improving the 4C’s and you’ll not only drive your multiple but also drive earnings and sales up. Challenges and mitigations strategies of customer concentration risk Learn about the 5 stages of value maturity - identify your potential, protect your value, lay the foundation and...

“When I got into the industry, I was shocked to learn that only 20% to 30% of business owners are able to successfully harvest or unlock wealth that’s trapped in their business.” Value acceleration methodology is a process that owners can follow to reverse their probability of being successful at harvesting their wealth. “You work your entire life to find out that 80% of your wealth is still trapp...

Chris Snider, CEO of the Exit Planning Institute and author of Walking to Destiny .   “We took the company from 90 million to 250 million dollars in three years and sold it to a large multinational at a significant premium.” Perfect Exit - the quest on how could the process be repeated. Discover The 4 C’s - intangible capitals that drive a business to a Perfect Exit. Start with intention and goals...

Look through the MIND Methodology lens, the most important job for a CEO is to continually increase the value of the organization. Value creation macro buckets - creating material value, emotional energy value and creating spirit. The most caring thing we can do for our team members is tell them exactly where they stand regarding their performance and what’s expected 100% of the time. It’s not per...

A great strategy = “congratulations - you are 3% of the way there, 97% is going to be actually executing on it.” Take ideas that come from strategy and turn them into execution and consistency. In the MIND Methodology , a strategic initiative is something you are going to do today. What is the ROI of doing this strategic initiative?  Do less better. You can’t scale complexity but you can scale sim...

What is the role of a leader?  Be a leader in your organization to get results, foster an environment where every team member is motivated and empowered to create more value over time. Every team member can act like the CEO in their own role. Goals should be thoughtful and designed to create value. Discover the surgical approach to leadership. “Never confuse enthusiasm for capability.” Discussion...

Lee Benson, creator of the MIND Methodology , author of a book called Your Most Important Number and owner of etw.com . “I’ve had exits from a few million dollars into nine figures.” How do I get everybody fully aligned to create the most value, make the best decisions to do the right work at the right time and order? Traditional goal setting doesn’t stand the test of time. 90% of goals are not th...

CSG Partners - David Blauzvern, VP and Jordan Burg, CMO. Since 2000, CSG Partners has helped hundreds of closely-held companies nationwide realize the unique benefits of employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). Intersection of ESOPs and Office of Economic Development and International Trade and forward thinking of Jared Polis and Colorado legislature. Colorado employee ownership tax credit passed t...