I was listening to my iPod when I read the news of Steve Jobs passing earlier today due to pancreatic cancer.  It rocked me, at the sad loss to his family and the company he’d built over 30 years of his 56 years of life.

But Did Steve Really Die?

I’m not trying to be glib about such a sad event in history, but I am serious with my belief that Steve lives on because of the incredible legacy he has left to the world with his creations.  Steve not only placed his very own special mark on the Apple company that is now a world-wide household name, his legend will continue for generations ahead.

At age 21, he started Apple with two colleagues from his parents garage with minimal start up capital.  They dreamed big, then made those dreams a reality. A business rollercoaster unfolded, with mistakes made and disputes unravelling a power struggle that forced Steve out of the company in 1985.  Never being one to be held back, Steve forged forward developing the animation studio Pixar that he acquired, and in 1997 returned to Apple, completely turning around the then struggling company, boosting its value off the charts.

The resurgence of Apple under Steve Job’s vision and management saw it become the USA’s most successful company with more cash than the US government, but it is the innovation that has completely revolutionised the computer world that resonates most.

Steve understood very well the impact of succession, continuity and legacy.  He has exited from Apple twice.  The first time proved to almost be the company’s demise, but the second time around, he’d learned the lessons and this time he built it for continuity. He knew how to boost his business by reaching for the stars, but also how to inspire a team to follow on and implement to make it all a reality.  I say that Steve lives on through his legacy, as he will go down in history as having been an inspiration to all entrepreneurs with a dream and as having had a lasting profound impact on society for decades to come.

My team “The Exit Experts” send our most sincere and heart-felt condolences to Steve’s wife and 4 children whose loss must seem indescribable right now.  Steve’s body may rest in peace, but his legacy continues on.

The Ultimate Succession Plan

For me Steve has become the guidepost for what I would term the ultimate ideal business ’continuity strategy’, because there aren’t too many phenomenal leaders that can leave their post without so much as a hint of financial hitch in sight like Steve has.

What are you doing today that will build your business legacy so it can continue on well after you exit?

Here’s to your successful business exit!

Leigh Riley

Business is a Competition

I’ve not revealed this before, but earlier this year I was invited to be on the panel of judges for the “ActionCoach My Business Magazine Awards”.  I felt it was a great honour to be asked so could not refuse the request.  The task was not easy for many reasons.  The number of entrants was significant and thousands of pages of data had to be considered carefully to form an assessment of each candidate.  With most being of such an incredibly high standard, this truly made the task for judges very difficult.  Amazingly though, most of us formed a fairly similar opinion of those candidates that really stood out from the crowd.

It got me thinking about how important it is to stand out from the crowd when you’re in business, and not just to win competitions.  It demonstrated to me yet again, that it’s no accident when a business is successful.  It does become obvious to everyone when you stand out from others in business, and there is a lesson in it for each of us in business.

As a follower and regular reader of this blog, you already know that I bang the drum (rather loudly) about business succession, and I do so because you are operating a business that I know you will one day hope to sell.  You’re working hard building an asset, and often you’re so hard working ‘in’ it, that you can overlook working ‘on’ it.

I want to see my followers succeed and stand out from the crowd, especially the crowd that is gathering around the ‘for sale’ post.  I’m referring to the tsunami I mention in my book “Your Business Succession”, because the average demographic age group of small to medium sized business owners are so near to retirement and are looking for ways to extract their equity to move on to another phase in their life.  With so many about to do this (80% in the next 5 to 10 years) there will be quite a crowd of businesses selling.  It will become a buyer’s market and only those that ’stand out’ from the crowd will gain the most when they exit.

You Business Succession
Leigh Riley

Too Young To Exit?  Think Again

Now before you zone out because you think you’re too young for formal exit strategies and succession plans to matter, think about these two very important points:

• 50% of business owners leave well before retirement because of factors they could not have imagined, such as dispute, divorce, disability and death.  You don’t want to get caught out in a weakened position trying to liquidate your business equity in a crowded market, so take steps to ensure you have an action plan that will keep you in control to capitalise when you exit despite your circumstances.
• Raising Capital to grow your business or release your equity when exiting your business takes time to organise.  In fact it’s damn hard for an SME like yours to get finance for anything related to business if you don’t have a clearly demonstrated and formal exit strategy in place. That means your business growth could be stifled or you could get stuck without any funding when you do leave.  Either scenario is one you definitely want to overcome well beforehand, so get ready now.

Time For Your Business To Stand Out In The Crowd!

The  reason I’ve commenced a series of FREE educational webinars, is so you can see what you can do to ’stand out’ and make the difference for maximised cash flow and profits, with an enhanced  business valuation and a strategy to ensure you get paid what you deserve for your lifetime of effort in business, through most circumstances.

I’m pleased to reveal the finalists have been chosen for the ‘ActionCoach My Business Awards’ .  You may see those that ’stood out’ for yourself by clicking here.

Here’s to your business success and profitable exit!

Leigh Riley

Australian Websites Sales Are Booming, Is Your Business Cashing In?

Australian Internet sales rose to $51 billion (3.6% of GDP) during 2010 and this is rising.  If you’re trying to BOOST the value of your business, that’s a business statistic you simply cannot ignore.  If you haven’t already made an attempt to learn how to ride the web wave, it’s likely your customers or clients could soon be choosing competitors over you, leaving you with that ‘dumped by a wave’ feeling or worse, with a dramatic fall in sales adversely impacting your business valuation.

Ride the Web Wave to Wealth for Your Business

The web wave has been building for a while, but many businesses have been caught out by failing to understand how the internet has enabled a broader trading field with global wide competitors rather than those only in the immediate community.  Some of you may have thought too narrowly and failed to realise your customer base has potentially widened significantly.  Without a strong internet presence you are failing to capitalise on that potential and not boosting your business valuation the way you could be.

If you’ve established a website, you’ve started paddling toward the web wave to wealth and success for your business, but this alone is not enough if your business is to stand out and be found online amongst the trillions of sites already in cyberspace.  You might be surprised to learn that having website prominance in your niche is not just about expensive advertising.  There is a lot you can do to organically lift your search engine ranking and get found.  It just takes a little knowledge with some training to make the difference.

FREE Webinar to Learn How to BOOST Your Website Traffic for Increased Online Sales

I want to help you take every opportunity to BOOST your business valuation and profits however I can.  That’s why I’ve decided to have a FREE Webinar on the topic: How To BOOST Your Business Valuation With Your Website! The FREE webinar will be held this Thursday at two different timeslots, 11:30am and 7:30pm.  I’ll be interviewing special guest and website expert, Karyn Clarke from HubsiteBuilder.com.  During the sessions, Karyn has promised to reveal 6 of her best secrets about how to BOOST your website ranking organically, so you can get your business found and start to make more sales online.

If you’re looking to ride the web wave to wealth and success for your business to BOOST its valuation, you really can’t afford to miss this session with me and Karyn.

Register by clicking here now. Who knows, it could turn out to be the most profitable 45 minutes you spend learning about your business website presence.  Don’t delay because places are limited to just 14 attendees.

Here’s to your BOOSTING Your Business Valuation With Profits From Your Website!

Leigh Riley

Small to Medium sized business (SME’s) often struggle to raise capital for expansion plans, especially since the Global Financial Crisis.  It’s even harder for SME’s to liquidate part of their business when they need cash to fund other activities, which is one of the reasons having an SME is considered risky.

Financiers are more reluctant to loan on SMEs because of the illiquid nature of them.  If Financiers find themselves having to foreclose on the business they’ve loaned funds to that is struggling financially, the last thing they want to do is run the business.  They prefer to liquidate quickly to regain the capital loaned.  This is typically harder to do for SME’s, and that is why more and more Financiers are demanding SME’s have a clear path of succession and a formal exit strategy to enable them to recoup the funds loaned more quickly if the business folds.

But what if my team could show you a way for SME’s to fund capital raising easily and provide a facility to liquidate the business quickly if needed?

That’s exactly what I intend to do in my next Webinar:  “How Smart Entrepreneurs Raise Capital to Grow or Go From Their Business”.

When you register for the Webinar, you’re going to discover some of the most innovative techniques you’ve ever heard about raising capital for your business, and you’re going to see a live case in action to demonstrate how easy it is to raise capital.

You’re going to uncover things like:

• 8 Funding Solutions for Growing or Going
• 2 Proven Legal Methods to Raise Capital in Australia
• How the valuation process is crucial for raising capital for your company, and how being able to raise capital easily can help BOOST your business valuation
• 5 Essentials for Good Capital Raising
• 7 Risk factors you’ll want to overcome to ensure you attract the capital you require
• There’ll be a live case demonstrated to show you how easy it is
• We’re going to make you an offer to get started raising your business capital right away.

The best bit is that it’s totally FREE to attend!  You can join our 45 minute Webinar/Teleseminar by registering here now.

The Capital Raising Webinar/Teleseminar will be held on:

Wednesday 5th October 2011  at 7.30pm

Or

Thursday 6th October 2011 at 11.30am.

If you’re looking to Grow or Go from your business soon, you can’t afford to miss “How Smart Entrepreneurs Raise Capital to Grow or Go From Their Business”

Here’s to your profitable exit strategy with easy capital raising!

Leigh Riley

How can You Boost Your Business Valuation?

Increase Your Business Acquisition Attractiveness by:

• Developing a market presence that is desired by potential buyers
• Obtain critical mass with demonstrated consistent growth across niches
• Maintain higher margins than your competitors
• Add value with a management team and systems
• Create effective planning that aligns your business motives with your employee’s actions

If you haven’t already done so, make sure you register yourself to attend the FREE Webinar I’m running so you can learn all you need to know about how to BOOST your Business Valuation.  I’ll be interviewing Business Valuation Guru, Sean Hutchinson live from San Francisco. Sean excels in explaining the levers you can control to increase your business valuation and I’m very certain you will learn a lot from listening to him. Register for

Date: Thursday 8th September, 2011
Time: 11.30am
Register Now for the FREE webinar at http://yourbusinesssuccession.com/bizval-webinar1.php

You can’t afford to miss this opportunity to learn all you can about how to BOOST your business profits and valuation.

Here’s to Your Profitable Business Exit!

Leigh Riley

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How can You Boost Your Business Valuation?

During the last post, we discussed how building a robust financial history for your business can help to BOOST your business valuation.  Many business owners mistakenly believe that BOOSTING their business financial position is the only to change the way their business is valued and viewed in the market place.   You may be surprised to learn that risk mitigation strategies can play a much larger part in BOOSTING your business valuation.

Lever Two: Reduce Risk to BOOST your business valuation.

You will learn a lot more about this at the FREE Webinar I’m running on

Date: Thursday 8th September, 2011
Time: 11.30am

where I’ll be interviewing Sean Hutchinson, Business Valuation Guru live from San Francisco.  Click here to register your place now.  Here’s a brief look at the second lever you can control to BOOST your business valuation.

Reduce Risk and BOOST your business valuation by:

• Understanding the sweet spots that contribute most to your business profitability so that you may rule out lesser profitable activities thereby increasing the economic value of activities engaged in your business
• Decrease your business capital base to remove underperforming activities
• Strategise to mitigate specific risks identifiable to your business industry and insure key persons of your company to implement a clearly defined and formal succession strategy, thereby making your business more attractive to financiers and capital raising sources.  Buyers will always value higher a business that has the ability to raise capital due to it’s robust risk managment strategies.
• Operate more efficiently than your competitors and lower the cost of capital by continually testing the market to compare costs of debt and capital raising
• Reduce customer concentration with diversification, so that your business has no more than 10 to 25% of revenue from one source.  Signing customers to long term contracts will secure your business revenue into the future, adding a significant valuation boost.
• Form a management structure so you as the owner, are not central to the business

In the next post, I intend to discuss how to increase the economic value of activities your business engages in to BOOST its valuation.

Until then, make sure you register for your FREE place at the Webinar to be held on Thursday 8th Septemeber 2011 at 11.30am.
You can’t afford to miss this opportunity to learn all you can about how to BOOST your business profits and valuation.

Here’s to Your Profitable Business Exit!

Leigh Riley

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How can You Boost Your Business Valuation?

Here is a taste-test of some of the items to be covered in the FREE Webinar I’m running on:
Date: Thursday 8th September, 2011
Time: 11.30am

You will discover how to BOOST your Business Valuation when I interview Business Guru, Sean Hutchinson, live from San Francisco. Sean is sensational at explaining the levers you can control to increase your business valuation. You can Register Now for your place at the FREE webinar at http://yourbusinesssuccession.com/bizval-webinar.php

In this post, we will discuss How can you Increase Earnings in a way that increases your business market valuation?  Here’s how:

Lever One:

Build a Robust Financial History for your business by:

1. Increasing sales, but not just any sales.  Increase the sales of your products and services that add the most economic value to your business.  It’s worth spending the time to understand which of your products and services are the most profitable to your business.  Making more sales of products and services that are not overly profitable doesn’t make good sense.  If you want to BOOST your business valuation, concentrate on increasing sales where it counts most.
2. Lowering cost of goods sold means taking control of the input costs of production of your products and services, to increase profitability.  You may want to renegotiate with suppliers to lock in lower in-put costs. If your business sells services, consider how you may reduce costs by making more efficient use of lower cost labour and materials. Segmenting the costs of your service offerings will allow you to understand which of your goods and or services provides the least and most economic benefit to your business.
3. Controlling operating expenses Segmenting the costs of your service offerings will allow you to understand which of your services provides the least and most economic benefit to your business.  Once you can clearly define the most profitable products or services sold by your business, you will be in the position to make decisions about how your business will continue forward.

Timely Factors: don’t leave it ’til the 11th hour

Understanding fully the levers that you can control and manoevering them to boost your business valuation, can take time.  For some strange reason, business people too often think they don’t need to worry about it until the moment before they exit. Here are the important reasons why that’s faulty thinking:

More than half of business owners will be forced from their business due to factors they could not have imagined (statistics show 51% leave due to sudden and unplanned events).

• The sudden event means there is no time to prepare; and
• When you’re vulnerable due to unplanned events, it leaves you without power to negotiate

This means you are forced to be a ‘price taker’ and to accept whatever is offered without question.

The time it takes to build a business of value means it is not something you can leave to the last minute or just prior to exiting.

Business Boosters

In the next post of this series, stay tuned for: “How Can You Increase Earnings in a way that increases your business market valuation”, I’m going to reveal the 6 risks you must overcome in your business if you are to increase your business market valuation.  You’re going to be surprised at how large a part mitigating risk in your business will BOOST and contribute to your business valuation.

Until then, make sure you register for your FREE place at the Webinar to be held on Thursday 8th Septemeber 2011 at 11.30am. You can’t afford to miss this opportunity to learn all you can about how to BOOST your business profits and valuation.

Here’s to Your Profitable Business Exit!

Leigh Riley

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How can You Boost Your Business Valuation?

This would have to be the most commonly asked question by business owners preparing to exit.  Buyers are scrutinising more carefully than ever before, so you would want to pay attention to this blog series. The factors impacting your business valuation can seem extensive, which is why I’m running a FREE 45 minute Webinar to explain in simple terms on Thursday, 8th September 2011 at 11.30 am.  You can register your place FREE by clicking here.

FREE Webinar to find out How To BOOST Your Business Valuation!

At the FREE Webinar, I’ll be interviewing Business Valuation Guru, Sean Hutchinson live from San Francisco, USA.  I’ve chosen Sean because he is the best I’ve ever met in my 23 years experience.  Sean breaks down the individual factors without the jargon so you can clearly understand what you can do with your business to BOOST its valuation.

When you attend the FREE Webinar, you’ll discover things like:

• the levers you can easily control to maximise your business valuation
• the 6 risk factors that you’ll want to overcome
• the 3 proven methods to increase your business earnings
• the 5 ways to increase your business acquisition attractiveness
• You’ll have the opportunity to learn exactly how much your business is currently worth; plus learn
• One incredibly simple thing you’ll want to do immediately to dramatically boost your business valuation
  Places are seriously limited to this Webinar and this topic is popular, so don’t delay in registering for your place.

We can’t wait to help you BOOST your business valuation!

Here’s to Your Profitable Exit!

Leigh Riley

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Business Succession Strategy Weaknesses

In a previous series on why too many business owners fail to exit their business with maximum cash flow and profits, I identified 8 business exit strategy weaknesses that may contribute to a disappointing business succession outcome for you.

My last post pointed out the pitfalls of failing to value your business properly, and this post explains why you want to move your business from the Unilateral Zone of Value™ to the Three Dimensional Zone of Value™ so that your business will have the highest possible valuation at the time of succession.

Why You Want To Move From The Unilateral Zone To The ‘Three Dimensional Zone Of Value’™ In Your Business – Case Study

Fritz was the successful owner of a car dealership that he had operated for more than 20 years. He proudly conveyed that the primary value in his business was his own personality and ability to develop relationships. He was resolved that he was the sole reason for the business success and he knew when the time arrived for him to leave, he would have nothing to sell other than stock, the premises, office equipment, and other goods and chattels.

Fritz admitted to having no formal arrangements with customers and suppliers, who continued their association simply because they liked to deal with him. He considered his staff to be mere instruments for backing him up in the operation, because they added no value to his business turnover or efficiencies without his specific instructions.

Fritz’s biggest complaint about having a business was that he could not get enough time away from it to relax and enjoy some of his success. This is a classic example of a business operating in the ‘Unilateral Zone of Value™’.

This example demonstrates a business strategy problem, but it also is representative of a case with leadership, management, contingency and continuity problems.

Obviously Fritz needs to develop his car dealership from the ‘Unilateral Zone of Value™’ into the ‘Three Dimensional Zone of Value™’ if he wants to increase the business value, and therefore the selling price at the time of exit, which could occur either at a time of his choice, or by circumstances beyond his control.

How to build your business value to the Three Dimensional Zone of Value™ is discussed in more detail throughout my book, Your Business Succession: How To Exit Your Business For Maximum Cash Flow And Profit with specific solutions to Fritz’s predicament in Part 5.

How well prepared are you to exit your business with maximum cash flow and profits?

Take the FREE Business Exit Quiz (5 minutes of your time) and find out where your business succession strategy may be letting you down, and how to improve your chances of building a business for maximum profits and cash flow

To Your Profitable Business Exit,
Leigh Riley

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Strategy weaknesses impact your business succession profitability

Business succession problems are the result of one or more of the  five weaknesses I identified in my previous post 5 Reasons Business Owners Fail To Exit Their Business With Maximum Cash Flow And Profit

The first reason is strategy weaknesses.

8 key strategy weaknesses have the potential to impact the success of your business succession, and therefore your business exit cash flow and profit.

8 Strategy Weaknesses

1. When you fail to understand and respond to the laws of supply and demand in your market place, you put your business exit strategy at risk
2. If you are not thinking like a buyer when planning to sell your business, you probably haven’t prepared your business well enough to be attractive to a purchaser and therefore will fail to achieve the best selling price
3. Failing to understand that you must have evidence of  maximized business profits in order to boost your business valuation and influence the potential selling price
4. Failing to inoculate your business against Leaky Bucket Syndrome™. This is a key element to building a valuable business that will generate the business succession result that you want – maximum cash flow and profits
5. Failing to value your business properly. A proper valuation is the only way to validate the price on which you base your business exit strategy.
6. Failure to adjust your business tactics to the current economic climate. You want to take an active interest in economic matters that could impact the performance of your business, and which would enhance or detract from your business valuation.
7. Failing to be transparent about your business to a potential purchaser can undo the sale in a way that could harm your business value and your reputation. Understanding the importance of communicating the value of your business to the market place is just as vital as operating the business to capacity
8. Failing to understand that Shareholder Agreements are usually an unsuitable mechanism for handling all the issues involved with your business succession planning.

Business succession planning case studies

In a future blog series I’ll share some case studies that will help you to understand the influence of each of these weaknesses in detail, so you can plan how to overcome these problems before they can have any impact on your profitable business succession.

The right business exit strategy can put the caviar on your crackers

If you want to make sure that you have the right business strategies in place so that you can have a little (or a lot) of caviar on your crackers, then you want to take advantage of these resources to make a start on your profitable business exit strategy now:

1. Take the Business Exit Quiz (5 minutes of your time) and find out where your exit strategy may be letting you down, and how to improve your chances of building a business for maximum profits and cash flow
2. Read my book “Your Business Succession” to discover what you want to do to ensure you will not become one of the poor statistics outlined earlier in this article
3. Contact our Business Succession Strategy office to plan your business succession strategy, so you can ensure that your business does not have any strategy weaknesses that will reduce your business succession profitability.

To Your Profitable Business Exit,
Leigh Riley

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