Making Improvements that Will Benefit the Seller and the Buyer As you start thinking about selling your business you should also think about how you might make some improvements to the business to maximize business value to a buyer. Identify the company’s shortfalls and consider fixing them. Look at your business through a prospective buyer’s […]
Identifying and Managing Risks to Your Business Make It Stronger Most business owners are so busy running their business that they don’t have time to think about unlikely events. How can you think about possible “black swan” events when you are struggling with today’s problems? To protect shareholders, boards and management need to make time to think about […]
Family Businesses Need Strategies to Govern Both the Family and the Business Family businesses are unique and the way they are run differs from family to family. Each business has varying degrees of corporate governance. Formal governance structures grow as the business grows and becomes more complex. Governance processes trail business needs in most situations. When […]
Conflicts between business partners are nearly inevitable. Thankfully, there are a number of ways for parties to negotiate up-front. Precautionary agreements give you space to resolve issues more easily or, at least, provide a picture of what the result will be when resolution is not possible.
A Family’s Most Valuable Business Asset is Itself The component to family businesses that make them unique from other businesses is the family. Solving family business problems without understanding the family dynamic is akin to a placing a bandage on a broken leg – it simply is not sufficient. Family businesses possess a complexity that […]
How Accelerators Can Help Your Business Grow Startups need money to, well, startup. In order to get money, fundraising is a likely path that most startups will travel. There are many different funding sources available, and the usefulness of each one varies depending on the stage of the business. Some common fundraising sources include: Founder […]
Succession Planning Means Looking Beyond the Second Generation Most family businesses don’t make it beyond the second generation. Even fewer reach the third generation of ownership. Why is that? As much as one generation would like to hand the business off to a next-generation family member, the following critical questions are often not adequately considered: […]
Change is Constant, the Pace of Change Increases Our world is constantly changing but the pace of change has increased exponentially. The way we adopt and adapt to new technology far outpaces 10, 20 or 50 years ago. People expect things to change rapidly. In order to succeed in business your organizational pace of change […]
How Do I Love Thee Advantages of a Buy-Sell Agreement? Let Me Count the Ways… Businesses with more than one owner face unique challenges in planning for the future. A buy-sell agreement is an arrangement between business partners to govern potential ownership transitions, including the “four Ds”: death, disability, divorce and disagreement. One of the […]
Reasonable Cybersecurity Measures for Protection After collecting personal information, businesses must take “reasonable measures” to safeguard it. Some states, such as Florida and Alabama, have this standard (or a similar one) in their cybersecurity statutes. On the federal level, the Federal Trade Commission has brought numerous enforcement actions against companies for engaging in “unfair” cybersecurity […]
