High Growth Insights

How to massively improve the value of your business….?

If you own a business, you’ll know what a tough but rewarding experience it is. It affords you the opportunity to achieve 2 things in life:

1. Change the world in your own unique way, set and deliver on your own Purpose, and create a culture based around your held beliefs and values.
2. Be financially well-rewarded, for you, your team, and your community.

Over the years I have worked with many companies, and much of the work I do with them focussed on setting Purpose, Values, and ambitious goals for the business, then putting in place the plans to achieve them. This work always leads to a more valuable business – a well-aligned and motivated team drives increased revenues and profits, and a strong management operating system adds significantly to the value of a business.

However, the primary focus of such initiatives is typically not explicitly focused on improving business value.?However, as a business owner, focusing on growing your value is important, because:

• It will allow you ultimately to sell the business, and leave a legacy that outlives you.
• It allows you to realise value (i.e. make money) from your years of risk and investment.
• When shared, it can do the same for your team (and get them motivated towards the same outcome).

So why don’t more owners have a stronger focus on building business Value? Having worked with hundreds of companies over the years, I’ve identified the key reasons for this are as follows:

The voice of shareholder value is a minority

This may sound odd, but there is often just one, or a few shareholders, and though they are the most influential and powerful people in the company, their voice often gets drowned out by demands of the market, customers and staff.

Lack of understanding of what drives business value

Most business owners only sell their business once in their lives, so by default aren’t good at it. They don’t have the knowledge and experience to understand what investors look at and value in a company.

Lack of bandwidth to work on it

Projects to drive business value often fall into the ‘Important but not Urgent’ category. For business owners it is hard to get out of the habit of working in the business and not on it, and thereby apply leadership bandwidth to the problem of growing the business’s value.

The actions to really grow business value are hard

It’s common to see companies where incentive schemes for key leaders are based solely on profit. Having a growing and profitable company is already difficult, but it’s far from the only key component of business value.

Misplaced idealism

Some business owners are uncomfortable with prioritising shareholder value, feeling it may be too selfish or materialistic, that leadership is about just focusing on purpose and vision. In fact, the opportunity and the challenge is to build a business that promotes both, a successful business can achieve both.

How to fix it?

Obviously, it takes years to really grow a business’s value. Even if you have the wish to sell the company ‘in a few years’ time’, the process of preparation must start now. Check out my?business exit assessment?to gain insights on the specific actions you must take to start increasing your business value today.

Think Time

One activity I advocate to my clients is to build think time into your weekly diary. This is time for you to work 'on' the business by thinking through the answer to questions you typically would not ask on a day to day basis.

What assumptions are you making, that you are not aware you are making, that gives you what you see? What if your thinking is wrong... then what might be true? Remember to ask yourself, "What DON'T you see?"

Quote of the week

"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." African Proverb