Sell Your Business & Retire Happy

By Jamie Donald

I have written this book to help business owners achieve a happy and secure retirement. By the end of this book, I hope you will have a practical framework about the process for selling your business, some of the common mistakes to avoid, and where to get help.

Most business owners are usually pretty great at building and running their companies, but they're not really very good at running a company sale. This is not surprising when you think about it because they will likely be undertaking this important task for the first time in their lives.

My book will provide you with a greater understanding of the wealth management process and the importance of establishing your goals so you can understand how the sale of your business can help achieve your objectives.

I also provide an outline of entrepreneurs’ relief and the opportunities available to business owners at the time of writing.

I have highlighted some potential flaws with business owners thinking and how to protect yourself from some of these personality traits when you are considering the sale of your business.

The process of grooming your business for a successful sale is discussed and the benefits explained in a clear and easy to understand fashion. By undertaking the steps highlighted you can improve your business performance and put it in great shape for a future sale.

To achieve your sale you will need a great team of advisers around you. I provide guidance on which professionals you will need in your team, how they all interact in the sale process and how you can select them.

I provide insight into what your life could look like after the sale and why the process is worth undertaking.

Finally I provide guidance on our second opinion service and how it can help you achieve your goals.

It is my genuine hope and belief that this book will lead you and your family to financial security and peace of mind, allowing you to achieve all that is important to you and your family along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483545356

Book preview

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Introduction

I wrote this book because I discovered a distinct gap in the market for content to help business owners through the process of selling their businesses from the perspective of the wealth management industry.

I have spent the last 17 years working predominantly with self-made business owners. This includes countless family business owners, many of whom I would call true entrepreneurs. I have helped them throughout their hectic business lives, and through the process of successfully selling their business. I have also been privileged to help them achieve highly enjoyable retirements. I learned a lot along the way. As human beings, we are all different but I have noticed that business owners do share a number of common characteristics and I’m sure you’ll recognize some of these traits in yourself as they are discussed in the book.

I complemented my extensive experience working with these business owners with a survey I created for those business owners who had sold their company. I also held many discussions and debates with members of our Professional Network who I regard as leading experts in this area. I have also successfully completed two share purchases myself in our family-owned wealth management company, with the successful purchase of my mother’s shares in 2011 and then finally, my father’s shares in 2014 leaving me as the only shareholder in Donald Wealth Management.

By the end of this book, I hope you will have a practical framework about the process for selling your business, some of the common mistakes to avoid, and where to get help. It is also my genuine hope and belief that this book will lead you and your family to financial security and peace of mind, allowing you to achieve all that is important to you and your family along the way.

In this way, I look forward to giving something back after my many great years within the wealth management industry. It has provided me and my family great financial security and I’m proud we have also delivered financial security for our clients.

But life wasn’t always so financially secure for my family and my passion for wealth management was formed at an early age. As a child, I had a pretty privileged upbringing, living in Four Oaks just on the outskirts of Birmingham, which is a lovely part of the world. But when I was 15, there was quite a dramatic change in my family circumstances. Suddenly, my father was out working all hours. The usual annual family holiday abroad had been cancelled. Things had changed pretty fast, almost overnight, as I would describe it. Then, when we all sat around the kitchen table mum said to me, We’ve got to be more careful now and we have to pull in the purse strings. It really brought home how fragile financial security can be. My feeling all along until that point was that we were very financially secure, then suddenly something had changed and our financial security was no longer assured. Eventually, I found out what had happened. Unfortunately, my father’s largest corporate client at that time had gone into administration very unexpectedly. I had actually met and knew the client. He was a real high flyer. He enjoyed fantastic cars and had an amazing lifestyle. That was another part of the major shock that I felt at the time — not only that it happened to my family, but also what had happened to the client and the speed at which it had occurred.

When I was 18, I was faced with a very important decision. Should I join the family financial planning business or do I go off to university for three years. With the experience I had at 15 still fresh in my mind, I had great determination to roll up my sleeves and get started straight away in the family business – I wanted to make sure such events couldn’t happen