Category Archives: Exit Strategies

Where Will All the Small Businesses Go?

What would the small business landscape look like if over one million small businesses disappeared? Get ready, it’s about to happen. I write and speak frequently about the passing of the entrepreneurial generation. Driven by competitive pressures to succeed, the … Continue Reading

Posted in Business Perspectives, Economic Trends, Entrepreneurship, Exit Planning, Exit Strategies, Selling a business, Strategy and Planning, Top Blog Posts | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

What is Your Company Worth? II

Last week we discussed how business owners frequently use hearsay or incomplete information to estimate the value of their companies. They give the number to their financial planner, or include it on a personal financial statement for their banker, neither of … Continue Reading

Posted in Building Value, Entrepreneurship, Exit Options, Exit Planning, Exit Strategies, Selling a business, Strategy and Planning, Top Blog Posts | 1 Comment

Ready…Set…Exit! Part II

Last week we discussed the tsunami of Baby Boomer retirement, and how we will reach a peak of nearly 500 unsold businesses a day within the next 5 years. The statistics are immutable. The birthrates of the last century are … Continue Reading

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Ready…Set…Exit! Part I

For the last six years I’ve been writing and speaking around the country to business owners about the coming tsunami of retiring Baby Boomer business owners. My e-book “Beating the Boomer Bust” details the  statistics (For a free download, go here … Continue Reading

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Exit Planning, Exit Strategies, Managing Employees, Marketing, Selling a business, Strategy and Planning | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Can Franchising Survive The Baby Boomers?

As a consultant to business owners, this is a column I’ve hesitated to write for a long time. There are over 800,000 franchised businesses in the United States, and I’m not going out of my way to make that many owners mad … Continue Reading

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Boomer Business Owners’ Retirement Accelerates

Pepperdine University, in cooperation with the International Business Brokers Association and the M&A Source, publishes a quarterly Market Pulse Survey on the sale of small businesses in the United States. The most recent report, covering the fourth quarter of 2012, … Continue Reading

Posted in Economic Trends, Exit Planning, Exit Strategies, Life After, Selling a business, Strategy and Planning | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Road Less Traveled

Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Perhaps Robert Frost’s famous poem isn’t a perfect expression of what I am … Continue Reading

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Beating the Boomer Bust

We’ve looked at the coming generation of business buyers, and many things about that picture aren’t pretty. When I present to business owners about the Boomer Bust, this is around the time that someone in the audience says “So, are we just … Continue Reading

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The X Factor

There are two sides to every business transaction, a buyer and a seller. For most of the last 50 years in America, the Baby Boomers have been the biggest buyers in history. They bought homes and cars to spur the … Continue Reading

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Outsourcing America

The Baby Boomers created seismic shifts in American culture and economics throughout their lives. Their mere numbers caused much of the shift, but their competitiveness and commonality enhanced the impact at every stage of their lives. In the mid 1960’s, … Continue Reading

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Work-Life Balance

The term “Work-Life Balance” is widely cited as first occurring in the United State in 1986 in a research paper. I can’t identify the specific source of this much-referred usage, but it is telling that it would pop up when the last … Continue Reading

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The Brass Ring

A long, long time ago (I’ve actually ridden only one such in my lifetime) Carousels had a spring-loaded sleeve of brass rings protruding near the innermost (and least popular) track of horses. A bigger kid could lean out and yank … Continue Reading

Posted in Business Perspectives, Entrepreneurship, Exit Planning, Exit Strategies, Life After, Strategy and Planning | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments