“If I had known this before I sold my business, I could have saved myself two years of anxiety.”
This is truly what a business owner said to everyone at an in-person workshop I was giving.
Doris, not her real name, was present at one of these workshop events held for her networking group. She had ‘retired’ from her business, but still came to the networking, to be support for friends. She did all the exercises in the workshop, then, at the end, announced, “I wish I had done this work before I sold my business. I was so lost, sad, and anxious after I left, because I had no plan.”
What’s the point in leaving if it only means your life is worse than before you exited? It’s supposed to be better, less stress, less challenges. The point of exiting your business is to do more of what you love, whether that is more travel, more time with family, with less control and less responsibilities, or maybe even more work, but for someone else. I have clients preparing to exit their business because they have another business they want to focus on.
What Doris had experienced was the emotions of grief, that came from a great loss. A loss of purpose. A loss of worth. Even a loss of self.
Preparing a business to Run Without You is not only to have all your financials in place, your business evaluation complete, and your EXIT strategy implemented, it is to prepare yourself. You need to prepare yourself to be in the business with less control and less operational responsibilities before you leave, as well as to be prepared to step into a new life, once you leave.
The transition of your business, from you, the controller, to a business that someone else can easily take over, takes time and takes a shift in what you think of as your responsibilities. Don’t wait to get started with this. If your business is running well right now, this is the time to evaluate what it should look like when it is ready for you to step away, not when you come to the end, but long before you are ready to leave. The bonus value is in having a business that can Run Without You now.
If you want to potentially save yourself several years of grief, come to our next EXIT Readiness Accelerator Event.
This article is 100% original content – The articles you read in this blog are 100% created by Barb Stuhlemmer, not by AI.
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