In a recent article, we discussed how working with an Advisor Team can help you find answers to challenging business questions. In addition to your Advisor Team, you may find it valuable to build a group of business owners with whom you can uncover strategies and ideas for pursuing a successful future.
Let’s look at a few ways that creating your “Mastermind” group of business owners can benefit everybody involved.
1. Cross-Pollination of Strategies
Successful business owners achieve their success in many different ways. In some cases, the way that a different business owner achieved their success may provide valuable insights for your business.
For instance, a business owner in an entirely different industry from yours may have unique insights on business logistics that you can apply to your business to create more streamlined operations. In this example, the benefits to your business could be tangible and immediate.
Similarly, a business owner who is closer to retirement than you may be able to share their experiences with planning their retirement and help you avoid the pitfalls that they experienced.
A common example of this is the fact that many business owners think that (a) their businesses are more valuable than they truly are and (b) they will need less money in retirement than they really do. Interacting with business owners who have faced this common challenge can help you prepare for similar roadblocks on your path to eventual retirement.
In short, because every business owner will eventually leave their business, there is value in learning about the strategies that other business owners are taking on their path to exiting their businesses. And while the uniqueness of every business may not create a perfect template for your planning, you may find unique insights and ideas that you would have never found anywhere else by building your Mastermind group of business owners.
2. Building Business Relationships
Another potential benefit of creating a Mastermind group of business owners is building business relationships. By networking with other business owners regularly, you may find that the precise employee, advisor, or vendor that you need is only a few degrees of separation away within your Mastermind group.
These potential business relationships can have both short-term and long-term benefits. For example, someone in your Mastermind group might know someone who has a relationship with a vendor that could solve inventory issues that your company may be experiencing. In this case, you may open yourself up to the opportunity of solving a short-term problem right away.
Likewise, a business owner in your Mastermind group might have relationships with trusted advisors who helped them create a long-term exit strategy from their business. If experience is any indication, that business owner will likely tell you that they wished they had started the planning process earlier and then invite you to contact those trusted advisors to start yours.
3. Becoming a Mentor
By finding a mentor or becoming a mentor, you can glean and share important, real-life experiences that you can apply to support your goals both inside and outside of your business more effectively.
As a business owner, you’ve probably said to yourself, “Boy, I wish I had known that earlier.” Building a Mastermind group can give you and other business owners the opportunity to expedite your knowledge about the intricacies of running a successful business and planning for a successful business exit.
Seasoned business owners have likely been through challenging downturns, outside forces that had negative impacts on their business, and other bumps in the road on their path to business success. In our experience, one of the most common bumps in the road for business owners is waiting until they’re ready to exit their business to begin planning for the business exit.
The challenge with this strategy is that if a business owner is ready to exit but their business is not ready for their exit—for example, if all major decisions still run through that business owner—it can prolong the time the owner must stay in the business to achieve financial security, or even worse, position the business owner to exit the business without financial security.
We strive to help business owners identify and prioritize their objectives with respect to their businesses, their employees, and their families. If you have questions on this topic, we can help with more information or a referral to another experienced professional.
About Altus Exit Strategies
David Jean is the Director of Altus Exit Strategies and a Principal at Albin, Randall & Bennett, where he is also the Practice Leader of the Succession Planning, Business Advisory, and Construction & Real Estate Services Teams. David works with business owners who want to improve their business’s value before they sell through the Seven-Step Exit Planning Preparation™ process. He has worked with companies from $5 million to $50 million in revenue across a range of industries.
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