By Patrick Ungashick, CEO
Recent Posts
For many business owners, taking a multi-week vacation sounds like torture. Even if you manage to take time away from the company for an extended period, most owners are unable to fully unplug while away. You have to bring the company with you: frequent phone calls, regular emails, and a few hours’ work here or there while the rest of the family enjoys themselves.
The number one goal most business owners wish to achieve at exit is to reach personal financial freedom. (We define financial freedom as reaching a point where working is a personal choice, not an economic necessity.)
Few business tools are as overlooked and underappreciated as the organizational (“org”) chart. Likely, you have diagramed one for your company.
We tend to pull them out at specific moments such as when we need to meet with a third party like a vendor, customer, lender, or new hire. If out of date, which they often are, we quickly update them. Then, after the meeting, the chart gets put away, forgotten until the need arises to pull it out again.
A recent study of 65,390 Swedish business startups conducted over nearly 20 years offers one important insight for business owners as they prepare for exit — you might not be successful in your next venture.
Puzzlingly, the entrepreneurial experience these Swedish leaders gained from starting up their companies often did not translate into positive results if they later tried their hand at another company. Here’s why that is relevant when you are thinking about your exit.
