What the hell is a “business dial”?

This was a question I overheard recently posed in a conversation between a business coach and his client. You know the one, when you’re sat in the hotel lounge having a quiet coffee before a meeting and you just can’t help yourself ear wigging on someone else’s conversation.  Naughty but we all do every now and then right?

What I found interesting was that the consultant had quite a good idea but just wasn’t explaining it in plain English. He was using “consultant speak” (probably to make himself seem more important and clever and justify his fee) as part of his attempt to try to understand where his client sat in the spectrum of owning and running a business.

Some business owners are at the start of their experience; they are young, hungry and enthusiastic or just plain driven by the ideas that convinced them to take the step of starting their own business.

Other business owners are at the other end of that experience. They’ve been owning and managing their business for many years.   They have successfully built up a loyal customer base, supportive staff and a good supply chain. They have business processes and systems that work well. In most cases their business has paid off their mortgage, possibly for their home in Spain and put their kids through university.

So here’s the problem:

At either end of the spectrum – or as the hapless consultant tried to put it – they are at either ends of the “dial”.

The first type of owner has a massive challenge of beating the odds that 50% – yes half! – of all start-up companies going bust in the first five years and 84% of all UK businesses never turn over more than £500,000.

The second type of owner wakes up one day and thinks “OMG! How do I get out of my business with some value for my long overdue retirement?”

As I continued to ear wig I listened to my new best mate the consultant start to describe for his client the traditional, time trodden route of setting up business systems and processes all geared around traditional organic growth. I was sorely tempted, but resisted the urge to lean over and say “Why don’t you just acquire one that’s already where you want to be?  Just leap frog the 50% and 84% statistics!!”  After all, it wasn’t my meeting

So ask yourself….

“If I could learn the skills to understand how to acquire businesses, in most cases without needing any of your own capital, how might that transform my life?”

And…

“Is what I’m doing now going to get me where I want to be in a year or two or three even”?

If not, then just email me and tell me what’s holding you back from realising your dreams and ambitions much, much faster by buying your next business rather than building it from scratch, the hard way.

Go on…you know you want to!