Before the sale of your business

Finding time to focus on what matters most to you can be difficult today. But it is impossible to plan and invest appropriately without first identifying the outcomes you want. A good place to start is by undertaking a deliberate process to understand them.

Five simple questions can get the ball rolling: 

1. What do you want to accomplish in your life? 
2. Who are the people that matter most to you? 
3. What do you want your legacy to be? 
4. What are your main concerns?
   
   Ultimately, those four questions lead to a fifth: 
   
   
5. How do you plan to achieve your life's vision? 

We don't expect everyone necessarily to be able to answer all (or indeed any) of these questions at first glance, which deserve and require careful thought. Business owners, in particular, tend to focus on running and growing their businesses, so some have not considered these issues.

The answers to them, of course, will change over time as priorities shift.

Lacking inspiration? 

Here are 8 things business owners do after selling their business. 

Respondents allowed to answer with more than one choice.
Source: © 2017 Business Enterprise Institute, Inc. Survey of business owners between 40 and 69 years of age with annual revenues between USD 500k – 500mn.

Regardless of your plans after the sale, the information that emerges from this process is invaluable for effectively managing your assets pre-sale, structuring the sale optimally and developing a strategy for the proceeds from it