PREPARE YOUR BUSINESS FOR SALE - The Broken Record

PREPARE YOUR BUSINESS FOR SALE

The Broken Record – by Mark Corke

Mark is a Business Broker, who writes articles on, and runs seminars on “Preparing you Business for Sale”. Should you wish to register for some of Mark’s free articles and tips, Here is the link.

Both Mark and I are of the opinion that ensuring that your Business is Prepared for Sale at all times will ensure that your business always commands the highest value. It actually increases the value of your Business quite considerably.


A few weeks back Mike Pfaff told me that his old 100m record still stands at our old school. Given that he set the record in 1980, that’s impressive. He quickly added that his youngest son is running faster times at the same age than Mike ever did. And he starts at the same school in a few years. The die is cast, so to speak; and we wait. Nothing will give Mike more pleasure than to watch his boy take his record to pieces.

" The sports page records people's accomplishments, the front page usually records nothing, but man's failures. " Barbara Walters

Not that there aren’t enough records being broken right now. Every hour seems to bring new ones. Bourses around the world are recording record losses one day and record gains the next as we all start to suffer a major hangover following the gluttony of the few who thought they understood what they were doing.

You can be quite sure that unprecedented volatility is making a lot of money for derivative traders going long and short at once while covering themselves with generous stop losses. Fin 24 has had the following headlines in the last week:

The Times Square
USA Debt Clock ran out of digits as it clicked into 10 trillion notes a week back. And you think we have it bad? While that happened, Joe the plumber received a record breaking amount of free marketing around the world as the presidential circus went into top gear. Enough in fact to cast poor Joe into another tax bracket all together. How ironic was that? Try his web site. I wonder if it was someone else who happened to get lucky after last night's presidential debate, or if the real Joe grabbed the www.joetheplumber.com domain very quickly.

More banks were nationalized in the last week than in any other week in history. True to form South Africa lags the rest of the world in this regard, still with 100% of its banks privately owned despite the threats of 1994. A record slow response to the "Rooi Gevaar"? More irony.

The Pakistan Rupee hit a record low against the US Dollar earlier today alongside most emerging country currencies. The biggest over night drop on record for the good old ZAR, and the lowest since August 2002 as overseas investors suck all their money back home to prop up their own economies.

Last time this happened the value of exporters went through the roof, importers went down for a while until they learned how to make a profit out of passing their extra costs onto their customers while lagging the pull back, and retailers went out of business in an ugly mess.

Hope fades on Wall Street
Wall Street roars back
High anxiety still rules
Massive rally on Wall Street
Worst week ever on Wall Street

And you; what are you doing in your business to set new records? Are your records positive or negative? What plans are you making to take shelter or take advantage? Or are you running scared, hoping it will all go away?

My guess is that for exporters, there is a window of opportunity to sell their businesses at good prices in the next two months. Likewise for manufacturers of industrial products who’s customers are forced to import their products. Of course if you are not prepared for sale, that opportunity may pass you by. Perhaps you should consider joining our accelerated preparation program. The buyers with the “export mandate” are about to make an appearance from the holes they crawled into when the Rand strengthened in the early years of the decade. It will be nice to see them again.

And if you're near Monte Casino on Friday and have nothing else to do, why pop in and help set another record?

My friend Cathy Franconi and a large number of young nubile (and other) optometric practitioners will be attempting to set a record - let's see how many eyes they can screen in one day.

There is a corporate team challenge judged on which company brings the most employees for screening, the sunniest hat will win a pair of Oakley sunglasses, kids can have sports heroes sign autographs, more Oakleys will be won, celebrities will be in attendance, and yet more Oakleys together with a Montecasino prize worth R15,000 will be given away.

In sunny South Africa our eyes are exposed to so much UV radiation that we really should grab this opportunity to have our eyes screened, and enjoy the razzmatazz of setting a new record. I'll see you there? I sure hope so.

Cheers
Mark Corke