This blog is about an important business topic. It’s just going to take me a moment to get to it, so stay with me. Digression 1 Most of my blogs are the result of two or three clients or colleagues mentioning a topic. I figure if two or three are interested, probably more are. In […]
Archive | Planning
Enjoying the Good Times, Preparing for the Bad, Redux
For several years I predicted that 2017 would be the year a recession would start. I began saying this about 2013 and for several years I thought my prediction looked good. But now it looks like I’m going to be wrong. The economic expansion continues with no end in sight. How long can this continue? […]
Emergency Succession Plans—The Need
My clients are mostly owner/operators of businesses. Working with these entrepreneurs, it is natural to ask, “How does this end?” That leads to working on succession and exit plans. It makes sense and it is a big part of my practice. But what about emergency succession? I’m talking about when the owner operator has a […]
Emergency Succession Planning for Closely Held Businesses
Purpose The purpose is to create a plan to ensure the viability of a closely-held business that has an owner/operator and lacks an independent board of directors. Common characteristics of this type of business are often a few key employees but few or no executives within the employees. Certainly there is no executive team. The […]
Taking Advantage of Good Times; Preparing for Bad
I’ve written about this topic before. We all want to take advantage of good times, such as those we’ve been experiencing for the last several years, while preparing for the next downturn, which will inevitably come. Most of my clients have had increased revenues in every year from 2012 through 2015. In fact, many were […]
SRO Budgeting and SMART Goals
It is the time of year when most companies are doing their budgeting for the next year. This can be a frustrating and time consuming exercise. It is also important. Does every company need a budget? I don’t think so. Smaller companies, where the owner is very close to the transactions, may not need a […]
New Entity Choices: LLLPs and SPCs
Most of us are familiar with the various choices for the type of business entity. Traditionally there have been proprietorships, general partnerships, limited partnerships and corporations. About 25 years ago limited liability companies (LLCs) were added and they have been a very popular choice. In 2012, the Washington State legislature provided us with two new […]
Even Harder than Writing the Plan: Executing on that Plan
I have written of the difficulty of writing a Business Plan. This was based on experience with clients who have struggled to write their own plans. As a result, we are now collaborating and making good progress. The hard thought that goes into crafting a good Business Plan is real work. Usually, a good […]
Writing a Business Plan–Why is it so Hard?
My topics are often the result of recent experiences with clients. This is no exception. I am currently in the midst of writing Business Plans for three of my clients. And I’ve got two more that I will probably be starting soon. In all cases, we started with the business owner desiring to write the […]
The Power of Planning
I’m a big proponent of planning. I believe that planning is a key—not “the” key—to being successful. You still need a value proposition and a business model that makes sense. You can plan all you want but if the business doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But if you plan, you’ll probably figure out it doesn’t work […]