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While I have always dealt with issues of having an exit strategy with my clients, the way it was presented a few days ago by one of my colleagues, Daniel Hassler makes it an excellent Golden Nugget for serious businessowners 

Generally, as Daniel argues, most business owners do not have exit strategies for their practice. If one doesn’t have an exit strategy, that person simply doesn’t own a business but owns a job. While that may sound brutal the point is, what is the ultimate end of your business? 

It all boils down to beginning with the end in mind. An exit strategy is giving your practice or business a purpose--a destination. Without it, the business is like a ship lost at sea. What would happen to your business when you are no longer there? If you are to hand it over to someone today what exactly is that someone buying? Is there a system of some sort? That is why some businesses simply collapse with the exiting of the founder because there wasn’t any exit strategy in place. All that is holding the business is the founder’s contacts, skills, passion etc but nothing outside that founder’s own contacts, skills and passion that will keep the business going. Even his/her own children cannot pick up the pieces and run with it. 

You need to build a business that has a model of some sort- be it a system, a licence/ a franchise, a model or whatever that someone can acquire and be certain to succeed without your presence? A dental practice need not depend on the founding dentist, nor a legal firm on the founding partner etc. Use your dentist or legal training as the seed of establishing a business that will run for generations to come whether in your name or some other form. 

Most businesspeople are working in their businesses and not on their business. There is a difference there. Most cannot even go away for a few days and the business continues running. Some cannot even afford to go for a game of golf or some coffee with the ‘girls’ without checking if everything is okay at the office. 

Get yourself some mentor/coach who can get your business built for such an eventuality. Let your business be the one to pay for your retirement simply because you would have built the systems, metrics and team to run it without you. If it is a business it should run without you otherwise it is simply a job that you are holding. 

In my soon to be realised book, I talk of about an example in Robert Kiyosaki’s book, The CASHFLOW Quadrant. For those who have read it, will probably recall the story he tells of the two businessmen who won the tender to supply the village with water.  The story relates to a time there was this little village which had water supply challenges. To solve this problem, the village elders decided to put out to tender the contract to have water delivered to the village daily.

Source : Kiyosaki (The Cashflow Quadrant)

Two people responded to the tender and the elders awarded the contract to both because a little competition would keep prices low and ensure a back-up supply of water.

The first one, who had the mentality of most people, Ed, immediately ran out, and bought two galvanised steel buckets and began running back and forth along the trail to the lake which was a mile away. He immediately began making money laboring morning to dusk hauling water from the lake with his two buckets. It was hard work, but he was very happy to be making money and the fact that the second businessman called Bill had disappeared and was not providing any competition. 

However, unbeknown to Ed was that Bill had Business Owner Thinking, "Instead of buying two buckets to compete with Ed, Bill had written a business plan, created a corporation, employed a president to do the work and returned six months later with a construction crew.

Within a year his team had built a large volume stainless steel pipeline which connected the village to the lake. At the grand opening celebration, Bill announced that his water was cleaner than Ed’s water. He also announced that he could supply the village with water 24/7. Bill also announced that he would charge 75% less than Ed did for this higher quality and more reliable source of water. 

To compete, Ed immediately lowered his rates by 75%, bought two more buckets, added covers to his buckets and began hauling four buckets each trip. In order to provide better service, he hired his two sons to give him a hand for the night shift and on weekends.

Eventually Ed had employees and union problems demanding higher wages, better benefits and wanted its members to only haul one bucket at a time.

Bill, on the other hand, realised that if this village needed water then other villages must need water too. He rewrote his business plan and went off to sell his high speed, high volume, and low cost and clean water delivery system to villages throughout the world.

He only makes a penny per bucket of water delivered, but he delivers billions of buckets of water, and all that money pours into his bank account. Bill had developed a pipeline to deliver money to himself as well as water to the villages.

Bill lived happily ever after and Ed worked hard for the rest of his life and had financial problems forever after. 

So, ask yourself, "Are you building a pipeline or hauling buckets?" "Are you working hard or are you working smart?" Are you leveraging the resources you have for better results or you are hauling buckets day in and day out? 

In my coaching practice, I have found this to be a common challenge with a number of business owners and I work with them assisting in creating systems that go beyond the individual business owner’s personal direct input.