Spring is here, which means, depending on where you live, you might be swapping out your heavy winter coat for a jacket that hasn’t seen the outside of your closet since fall.
Reach into those pockets and there is no telling what you will find. A hard candy? A $20 meant for a valet? That receipt your tax accountant’s been badgering you about for 6 months?
A jacket-pocket windfall is nice—and lucky. But it is not the sort of thing you would plan on in your budget.
That is because your budget is too important to leave up to luck.
In this season of luck—St. Patrick’s Day—celebrating the daily lucky breaks you encounter can be tempting. However, there is a whole genre of quotes from famous people that call luck what it really is: the result of planning and hard work. “Luck is the residue of design”: that’s Dodgers great Branch Rickey. Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s: “Luck is a dividend of sweat.” And Emerson: “Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”
So why do business owners so often leave an exit up to luck?
Maybe it is a little bit of self-sabotage—planning an exit means you might have to envision a life without your business. While owners are good at the one thing that made their business successful, they may not be good at what might make their business significant.
No matter why an owner is reluctant to prepare for an exit, leaving 80-90% of your wealth up to chance is enough to make even the calmest person a little green around the gills.
Consider another shade of green instead. In Celtic lore, four-leaf clovers protect you from evil spirits and keep bad luck at bay. As business advisors, we know that planning is the only thing that repels bad luck.
Here are four key things to keep in mind to accelerate value:
As you work with clients to prepare them for a post-exit life, remember the only luck of the draw they can count on is a highly equipped team ready to implement Value Acceleration Methodology™ practices into play.