Ken Lane, partner of PivotPoint, has more than thirty years of experience in providing strategic guidance for companies in the Lawn, Gardening and Horticulture space. He has helped companies of various sizes, stages and ownerships to grow their value with his expertise in sales, marketing, forecasting and P/L planning.

A football defensive coordinator needs to protect against an “end run,” a tactical play where your opponent sends the running back wide around the offensive line to try to evade the oncoming tackle.

If your goal is to grow your business fast, you need a positive cash flow cycle or the ability to raise money at a feverish pace. Anything less and you will quickly grow yourself out of business.

Business owners have been known to refer to due diligence as "the entrepreneur's proctology exam." It's a crude analogy but a good representation of what it feels like when a stranger pokes, prods, and looks inside every inch of your business.

If you aspire to build a valuable company, one crucial factor is to ensure your business can operate independently without your constant involvement, but embarking on this journey can feel daunting. In this article, we'll explore three cost-effective, simple strategies to set your business on a path to autonomy and allowing it to thrive without your constant presence.

In 2012, Jaclyn Johnson founded Create & Cultivate, a media company that educates and inspires women to succeed in business.

By 2018, Johnson had grown Create & Cultivate to eight employees when an acquirer offered her a staggering $40 million. Unfortunately, the deal was too good to be true. When the acquirer discovered how dependent the business was on Johnson to succeed, they pulled out.

When it comes to financing the growth of your business, you may find yourself facing a difficult choice between the lesser of two evils. Selling shares in your business can provide an immediate cash injection, but it means giving up some of your valuable equity stake. Borrowing money from a bank, on the other hand, can be costly to repay, can limit your growth, and often requires that you provide a personal guarantee.

The initial impression customers have of your business often influences how much they decide to spend with your company. This is well known, but have you ever considered how first impressions affect the way potential investors value your business?

French economist Jean-Baptiste Say characterized an entrepreneur as one who “shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.” This expands the term’s literal translation from the French for “one who undertakes” to include the concept of value creation.

Do your customers ever ask that you personally get involved in their account? If so, one of the best things you can do to improve the value of your business (and your life) is to get your employees to treat your customers as well as you do. That’s easy to say but hard to do, which is why the story of Ian Fraser is so instructive. 

Transforming a distributor or reseller into a valuable company may seem like a daunting task. However, the key to this transformation lies in setting yourself apart through innovation and the development of intellectual property (IP).

You know gross margin impacts your profit, but have you considered the impact it has on the value of your company? When assessing your company’s value, acquirers and investors will often scrutinize your gross profit margin.

Many people consider recurring revenue to be exclusive to software companies, but traditional businesses can also reap the benefits of creating recurring income streams.

Sometimes the most sensitive question in family succession planning is “who gets the office?” When a parent/CEO is handing off operating responsibility, there is often a lag, sometimes measured in years, between stepping back from the daily decisions and completely separating from the premises.

All business owners are goal oriented. From the day you founded or assumed control of your company, you set targets and achieved them. That is why you are successful. You know how to define a goal and make it happen.

Summer is here, and although it may seem strange, now may be the perfect time to increase the value of your company. The most valuable businesses are the ones that can survive without their owner. Take a break, then identify the problem areas that appeared while you were gone.

A survey by The Value Builder Score found companies that would perform well without their owner for three months are 50% more likely to get a purchase offer when compared to more owner-dependent businesses. There is no better justification for taking a blissful, work-free vacation than to see how your company performs in your absence.

When running your own business, one of the most confusing aspects of the job, especially if you are new to the experience, is understanding how to separate yourself from the business. This issue can show up in many ways, from achieving a work/life balance and managing your time to how you get paid and the taxes you owe.

Many factors drive your company’s value, but perhaps the most important is how your business would perform without you. To get your company to flourish when you’re not around, you need owner-like effort from your team. Here are ways to get your employees to care about the company as much as you do.