The Business Owners’ Special Series (B.O.S.S.) No. 33

By Rich Gunn, CEPA

In less than two weeks, two NFL Championship football teams will enter SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, to compete in Super Bowl LVI. Question: When do you think these coaching staffs actually engage in planning to win the Super Bowl Is it when they enter the field, or is it days, weeks, months — even years — before that

The answer is that NFL Teams are always engaged in planning to win the Super Bowl:

• They are engaged in planning for Super Bowl success during the NFL Draft as they fill in talent gaps.
• They are engaged in developing a Super Bowl-winning team during training camp.
• They are practicing and refining their Super Bowl-winning strategy in every game, from pre-season to post-season.

And when they arrive at the stadium on Super Bowl Sunday, they are no longer planning their Super Bowl-winning strategy: They are executing it.

Business owners can take more than a few lessons from Super Bowl-winning teams. As a business owner, you should always be working on your Super Bowl-winning strategy of planning for the successful exit from your business. The act of developing your exit plan and executing this strategy every day is what we call a business’s value acceleration strategy. This means formulating your exit strategy now and acting on that plan every single day. The result is having your business always achieve its highest potential now. It means developing the business so that it is sale-ready at all times. And it means that you, the owner, are financially and emotionally ready to exit at all times, because you are planning for that and working on that every day.

Of course, there are a few differences between winning the Super Bowl and exiting your business:

For one, an NFL team gets a new chance at winning a Super Bowl every year. That’s not the case with your business.

Similarly, while exiting your business is your personal Super Bowl, you only get to play in the Big Game and exit your business once.

The point is you have one season only to prepare and just one shot at your Superbowl, so you should be working on your game-winning exit strategy every single day.

Too many business owners wait until they are about to exit to begin planning their exit. That would be the equivalent of an NFL team beginning to think about their Super Bowl strategy for the first time the morning of Super Bowl Sunday. That would never happen with Super Bowl-winning teams, and you similarly should never let that happen with your business exit planning.

To summarize:

• Procrastination is the seed of regret.
• Develop a plan to maximize business value every day, and work on your exit strategy daily, as if you had to exit tomorrow.
• Your exit plan is to be game-ready at all times.

When exit planning is done right, it becomes more than having a strong plan. It becomes a mindset for winning, for operating at peak performance at all times. Certified Exit Planners call this exit strategy value acceleration. And as CEPAs, we can help you prepare your business for your personal Super Bowl best when we know you’re playing to win.

Discover More Exit Planning and Value Acceleration Insights.

This article is No. 33in the Business Ownership Special Series (B.O.S.S.), an ongoing cycle of informational guides from BPM designed for business owners who are proactively seeking guidance from experts on how to implement value acceleration in their business, delivered each month straight to your inbox. For more insights, download our e-book, “Value-Focused Business Planning,” and check out the rest of our B.O.S.S. articles.