To help owners fund a growing business while diversifying wealth outside the business, we often suggest they adopt a M.O.O.S.E. Not the big animal with antlers, but a Monthly Out Of Sight Earning. Ask yourself the following: Would your business miss $10 per month? If it wouldn’t miss $100 per month, how about $1,000 per month? How about $10,000? There is an amount per month that your business would not likely miss. Identify that amount and set up an automatic transfer each month into a personal account. It’s essential that the withdrawal be automatic such as via a checking account sweep. If you rely on memory and self-discipline, your M.O.O.S.E. may go hungry and die a painful death. Often the withdrawal will be taxable income to you. The point is not tax savings but rather systematically creating personal wealth without undermining business needs.

Over time, your M.O.O.S.E. may grow into a significant asset, which diversifies your wealth, reduces dependency on your business and facilitates successful exits — all accomplished without reducing your business’s financial health or slowing its growth.

Technorati Tags: Exit Planning, Monthly Out of Sight Earning, Retirement Planning, White Horse Advisors

Keynote speakers
When substance matters, BrainTrust works to secure the best speaker for your audience. We have an impressive and growing list of speakers available directly through our speakers bureau. Or we can tap our vast network of business and community leaders, subject-matter experts, educators, and inspirational personalities.

Lunch-and-learns, seminars and CEU programs
Many of our speakers offer educational sessions designed to meet the rigorous educational requirements of accrediting and licensing organizations. BrainTrust works with speakers on your behalf to ensure delivery of sessions that meet your learning objectives — whether it’s a member association workshop, employee lunch-and-learn, or a professional seminar for continuing education credit.

Speaker procurement
For special invitation speakers, tap into the BrainTrust / Weaver Stephens Group network of business and community leaders, subject-matter experts, and inspirational personalities. We have decades of experience and connections in the Atlanta business community.

Custom-designed roundtables and panel discussions
BrainTrust founder and principal Erica Stephens designed and moderated successful editorial roundtables and event panel discussions during her tenure as an editor with the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Great public conversations begin with bright, articulate thought leaders who bring diverse perspectives to the table — and a talented moderator to keep the conversation lively and engaging.

Live and on-demand webinars
Weaver Stephens Group offers full-service webinar consulting: content development, direct marketing, technical training, and production.

Custom presentation graphics and content development
When you want style and substance, BrainTrust editorial writers and graphic designers work together to create beautiful presentation materials that tell a compelling story. We specialize in technical and editorial graphics that reinforce — rather than overpower — your message.

Claire is a personal assistant and organization consultant to busy professionals. As a Certified Personal Assistant from the prestigious Starkey International Institute for Household Management, Claire’s advice has been featured in daily newspapers, magazines, TV news programs and blogs around the nation from The Chicago Tribune to Organization.com and 11Alive in Atlanta.

Visit www.thewellorganizedwoman.com for more on Claire Kurtz.

Become a fan of The Well-Organized Woman on Facebook.

Check out Claire’s blogs:

Technorati Tags: Atlanta speakers, Organization Speaker, Well-Organized Woman

Inman has served as a CPA, investment banker, and trusted advisor to hundreds of public and private companies throughout the U.S. for more than 35 years. His clients have included some of America’s most prominent family businesses in food and beverage, healthcare and medical device, information systems, retail, wholesale, distribution, manufacturing, construction, food service, logistics, and personal service industries. He has served as a speaker for numerous trade, academic and executive groups on the subjects of mergers, acquisitions, strategic and family business planning and growing shareholder value.

Inman’s previous investment banking experience includes serving as managing partner of a boutique merger and acquisition firm serving the beverage industry and managing partner of the Food and Beverage Group of an international investment banking firm. He founded The Inman Company in 1995.

Inman has been featured in the Atlanta Business Chronicle, the Florida Times Union, and the Jacksonville Business Journal. And his articles have been published in Florida CEO. He is a 30-year member of Rotary International and an 18-year member of Vistage, an international organization for CEOs. He has served on the Board of Directors of several companies and is a founder of Springboard Capital, an early-stage private equity fund.

Inman attended the Georgia Institute of Technology and received a BBA in Accounting from Georgia State University.

Presentations:

A Current Snapshot of Mergers and Acquisitions:

• M&A activity today
• Insights for buyers
• Insights for sellers or those in need of capital
• Critical Resources
• Case studies in success

Making Your Business Sale Ready – Everyday:

• Importance of planning
• Key business ratios and definitions
• Basic business valuation model
• Maximizing EBITDA
• Non-qualified incentive compensation plans
• Additional strategies for growing value
• Case studies in success

“The group enjoyed your presentation so much. I believe all our members would benefit from your discussion, and I would like to invite you to speak at the 2010 Summit. The Board Members are very excited about your speaking to our members in Las Vegas at the annual Summit.”   Claudia Betzner, executive director, Service Industry Association. (Making Your Business Sale Ready – Everyday)

The Inman Company has recently served as transactional advisors in the following areas:

• Acquisition of target companies for acquirers
• Sale of stock or assets for sellers
• Merger of private companies with public entities
• Reverse mergers with public companies
• Management buy-outs and buy-ins
• Private placement of debt and equity
• Recapitalizations and restructuring of debt

The Inman Company has served the following industries:

• Soft drink and water bottling and distribution
• Food retailing, manufacturing and distribution
• Truck, auto, and boat retailing
• Software developers
• Medical device manufacturers
• Telecommunications
• Logistics and transportation
• Employee staffing
• Biometrics
• Biotechnology
• Professional and service firms
• Entertainment companies
• Manufacturing and distribution
• Publishing
• Specialty medical practices
• Environmental

We discussed his business and its many attractive attributes. But when the conversation turned to his key people, James said, “Well, that may be a problem.” I was surprised. Clearly his employees were running his business without James.

“They do run the business,” he confirmed. “But without me they might kill each other. They don’t get along. When I get back from trips I spend the first few days doing nothing but resolving conflicts. If I were totally gone, several of them might quit. It’s not that I’m greatest guy in the world, but I am the glue that holds them together.”

Many Outies (business owners who intend to exit by selling their company) dream that one day someone will walk in, drop a large check on the desk and tell them to hit the beach or break out the golf clubs. Unfortunately, it doesn’t usually work that way.

Selling a closely-held business, even a good business, is a challenge. Too many owners reach their ideal exit age only to realize they have made a massive mistake – they allowed their business to become more valuable to them than to anyone else. In other words, the business’s value is not easily or fully transferable to another party. If a potential buyer perceives that your business’s value cannot be safely and cost-effectively transferred, then that party is not likely to write a significant check.

Let’s consider some examples. If you are the business’s most key employee, transferable value is undermined. If your business’s highly efficient operations are not documented, it will be difficult for a buyer to cost-effectively leverage those operations. If your long-term customers have always done business on just a handshake without formal contracts or agreements, it’s harder for a buyer to transfer these relationships. If your strong financial results are not reflected in financial statements that a buyer can readily understand, we’ve undermined transferable value. Building transferable value may require growing your business in a different manner.

There are certain conditions that enhance a business’s transferable value. We call these Enhancers. Most Enhancers do not immediately increase revenues or profits, although over time they often will. Enhancers increase transferable value by reducing potential risk for the buyer. Buyers want to know not only what your business has accomplished, but also how the business accomplished those results. The more confidence a potential buyer has in how your business works, the less a buyer will fear the business will falter after your exit.

Technorati Tags: Building Transferrable Value, Exit Planning, Retirement Planning, White Horse Advisors

I saw her a few weeks after making the change and asked how she was doing. “Well,” she replied with a smile, “you’d be so proud of me. I took a vacation with my family. I do not go to the office every day. As a matter of fact, I have not been to the office for three straight days.”

“That’s great,” I said, genuinely happy for her.

“No,” she said, “it’s not. I haven’t slept a wink since.”

Engineers, architects and contractors don’t erect a building without a site plan. Surgeons don’t cut into a patient until exhausting every relevant medical test and scan to understand what they face. Transferring your business to top employees requires just as much assessment and due diligence – commonly referred to as a feasibility study.

The feasibility study should review the current situation and assess what it will take to hand off your roles and responsibilities without adversely impacting the business – or you. Consider the following:

• What are your roles and responsibilities today? Which ones do you like and not like? (Most owners hold on to responsibilities they like.)
• What are each of the top employee’s strengths and weaknesses?
• Among your top employees, who aspires to be the next CEO?
• Are there any holes or weaknesses in your management team today? If yes, how will the holes be filled?
• How will other employees, customers, suppliers and lenders react to a transition? What can you start doing now to assure a smooth transition?
• Under what circumstances will you comfortably transfer strategic control of the business?

Innies (owners who intend to pass their business on to an internal group of employees) must address these issues very early in the game. Your team may not be ready, willing and able to buy your business today. Perhaps one or two key positions need to be filled, or you don’t have a successor CEO within the group. One or more major obstacles usually surface when the transition begins. Start planning now, and you can sleep like a baby later.

Technorati Tags: Exit Planning, Retirement Planning, White Horse Advisors

By Claire Kurtz, The Well-Organized Woman

Do you remember your 2009 New Year’s resolutions? Did you stick to them? If you answered yes, you are in the minority. If you answered no, don’t be discouraged. Most resolutions fall by the wayside because we are not adequately prepared to fulfill them. We set ourselves up for failure by thinking that simply resolving to achieve some life-changing goal is enough.

The successful pursuit of any goal or resolution depends on organization. While organization cannot itself fulfill a goal, it provides the necessary framework that you can fall back on again and again when willpower and desire wane. So many of us burst out of the gate in January only to fall short of our goals by March, perhaps it is time for everyone to collectively try some “baby-stepping” to pursue our goals.

Read more: http://www.atlantaintownpaper.com/2010/01/online-exclusive-make-your-new-years-resolutions-stick/

Jon Ford, CFP^®, is owner of CF Financial Planning Solutions Inc. in Mesa, Arizona. He writes a regular “Financial Fundamentals” column for the Cedar Falls Times in Iowa.

Read this book! Dance in the End Zone should be on the bookshelf of every financial planner. It’s about how to stop doing business; and unfortunately many financial planners are considering getting out of the business as a result of the economic crisis. In addition to being a profession occupied by older practitioners, recent sampling discovered that asset managers expect it will take four to seven years to recover from the financial meltdown. Many have neither the time nor the patience in such an economic and political landscape and are looking for an escape route.

Read more…

“I’m tired,” he shared during the meeting, and he looked it.

Jeremy had sold his business three years earlier to his long-time minority owner Dale. Dale had tried his best to carry on the business, but Dale either was not prepared or not capable. Dale fell so far behind in the payments that he was forced to return the business to Jeremy. Now Jeremy was rebuilding just to get the business back in the black, and he had no idea how long it would be before he could try to exit again.

Employees usually have little cash and little ability to raise cash on their own. Innies (business owners who plan to exit by selling to employees) usually need to help their employees buy the business, either by taking paper at sale (commonly called owner financing), pledging the business as collateral against a loan, or both. The risks are clear. If the business falters after exit, the employees (who have become the owners) may be unable fulfill their obligations. If the business fails, financial freedom and the business legacy may be lost.

A low or zero Exit Magic Number (the value one must extract from the business in order to achieve financial freedom) reduces financial dependency on the business, which increases the flexibility to balance an owner’s wishes against the business’s capacity. For example, if an owner wants to sell to employees, but that owner has relatively little wealth outside of the business, he probably needs to get paid a large amount up front. This strains the company’s cash flow, potentially to the breaking point. With some wealth outside the business prior to exit, one is free to consider options that accommodate the business’ financial resources. Reducing taxes can reduce default risk because fewer dollars are sent to the government. An orderly transfer of control potentially smoothes transitions and increases everyone’s confidence of success.

Technorati Tags: Default Risk, Exit Planning, Retirement Planning, White Horse Advisors

The New Four P’s of Marketing – Pharmaceutical Executive

Until relatively recently, pharmaceutical marketers “owned” the relationship with the Four P’s: product, placement, price, and promotion. It was straightforward: Develop a product, place it through a direct-to-physician distribution channel, set the price, and promote it via high-dollar physician events.

But these P’s have shifted their nexus. While product development may still be in the pharmaceutical company’s hands, the other P’s are not. Regulatory constraints have taken placement out of the pharmaceutical marketer’s control. Price is under pressure from managed care and comparison shoppers. And promotion is no longer “directly” anywhere … it’s directly everywhere. Pharmaceutical marketers have lost control.

Read more…

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