Huge first day at the Proactive Accountants Network (“PAN”) Annual Conference!
Things kicked off with John Warrillow, founder of The Sellability Score.
John is hugely intelligent and has used all he has learnt having sold four businesses to-date. He has designed a fantastic tool for advisers to use to assist their Clients run better businesses and ultimately prepare them for sale at a significant premium relative to their competitors.
Some key takeaways from John –
– Sellers of businesses focus on selling the past, they feel that because they have good history, the business is worth something,
– But you need to remember, Buyers are only looking to buy one thing, a future stream of profits, so all they want to know is that the business is structured in such a way that profits will occur in the future.
– The Price is determined by two things only, the expected future profits, and how reliable those expectations are.
– The historical records can only be used to help improve the reliability of those expectations in the Buyers mind.
If you want to sell your business and achieve a great price, you actually need to start preparing for sale at least 4 but more likely 6 to 8 years ahead of your planned sale date. The reasons being include –
1. When selling your business, a buyer will most intensely scrutinise the previous three years when determining whether to rely on the future expectations of profits. So if you want to achieve a premium price those three years must support the story you are trying to tell,
2. It will take at least a year, but realistically more likely 3 to 5 years, to genuinely mold your business into the form required to achieve a great sale price.
While John’s focus is on helping people sell their businesses, the reality is that all the things you need to do to prepare for a great sale, are actually the things you need to be doing to have a truly great business in any event. One that makes the profits you seek, in the way you want, without using up all your valuable time and energy.
We were then presented with something very different …
Rob Nixon, the Founder of The Proactive Accountants Network, discovered ex-monk Dandapani while attending an Entrepreneur’s Organisation conference in Turkey.
Dandapani is of Sri Lankan descent, but he actually grew up in Perth where he graduated from Engineering at the University of Western Australia. Then he made a significant and unexpected change to his life, and went and livedas a monk for 10 years. You can find out more about Dandapani on his website here.
Dandapani now runs a successful, for profit, business teaching how to apply some of the more simple and basic things he learnt during his time as a monk, to help people run better businesses and generally live better lives.
Dandapani presented to us for the second half of the day on the topic of “The Art of Balancing Life – Practical spiritual tools to help you lead and sustain a successful personal and business life”.
Now I know what many of you are thinking, and I will be the first to admit when I heard a good portion of this Conference would de dedicated to teachings by an ex-monk, I very nearly cancelled our registration, working on the basis I am not a spiritual person and even if I was interested in the topic, I am too busy and it is a too expensive trip to spend on something like this.
I was not the only one thinking like this.
Last years conference had well over 400 attendees, and of course Rob and the team at PAN were hoping this year would only be bigger and better. Well in the end it is believed over 100 previous conference attendees decided not to attend this year, largely on the assumption the speakers, specifically Dandapani, would not be of interest, of value, or a good investment of time and money.
Well I have to say, they, and I, could not have been more wrong. And I am very glad I decided to trust Rob’s instincts that Dandapani had something to offer the members of the Proactive Accountants Network.
The tools he taught, provided some effort is made to put at least some of them into practice, I believe will significantly impact on our teams ability to complete work more efficiently, complete work more accurately, to truly hear and understand our clients needs and wants, and to make the most of their abilities and skills.
Dandapani continues his session tomorrow, so both Tom and I look forward to the next chapter.
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