Love It or Sell It: The Right Business Plan

Credit: 123rf

“Love It or Sell It!” That’s my recommendation to all business owners. Yes, build your business to SELL! As a result, you’ll LOVE your business, even if you decide NOT to sell it.

I have to give credit for this blog title to interior designer Hilary Farr and real estate agent David Visentin who co-host the HGTV program, “Love It or List It.”

Whereby, Hilary’s and David’s intentions are to give couples the house they envision for their family’s lifestyle.

With that in mind, Hilary redesigns a couple’s existing house, and David searches for a ready-to-move-in house elsewhere. All for the purpose of giving the couple their dream home.

Once Hilary has done her magic on redesigning the couple’s existing home, and David has found what he believes is the perfect “ready-to-move-in” house for them — the couple has a DECISION to make. Will they choose to LOVE their repurposed house and continue to live in it, or LIST it and move into the ready-to-move-in home?

With either choice the couple wins!

Love It or Sell It – A Can’t Lose Business Plan

Whether starting or acquiring a business, if you BUILD IT TO SELL — I guarantee, you will also LOVE IT!

How do I know?

In a book by Michael Gerber, on the benefits of systemizing a business, the author suggests, “The day someone starts a business, they should begin systemizing it, as if they plan to sell it.”

Agreeing with Gerber and, more importantly, taking his recommendations seriously , we did just that with our business, years ago. Therefore, with the concept of SELLING it in the future, we went to work implementing Total Quality Management in every phase of our company.

We left no stone un-turned. Consequently, going through the process of systematizing our business, we immediately witnessed awesome results that we LOVED!

In fact, it was now a pleasure to walk through our front door and see visual signs everywhere of a well-organized company. Since “seeing is believing,” we even made a video tour of our lean machine.

Loving Business Process Management

When starting the process of organizing our business as if we were selling it, we were conducting what is known as, “business process management.”  As a result, each time we designed a new system to solve a certain business frustration, we were building on our Operations Manual. Not to mention, one with ever-increasing value.

In fact, after eight years of proper business process management, our printing company’s Operations Manual became so valuable, it led to an entirely NEW business.

Not surprisingly, even more benefits resulted from our investment of building a business as if to SELL. Now, we realized, we had a turnkey business — a franchise-ready business.

With that kind of success, you begin to appreciate the power of systematization via business process management. In addition, the increased value of the business along with countless other benefits.

Decision Time — Love It or Sell It?

After building our business to SELL, our decision was to LOVE IT! In other words, for 20-plus years we enjoyed the culture of peace and order that came from a well-organized business, built to sell.

However, the day did arrive when we turned over our printing business to others. We made the clear decision to make the business of “business process management” our new full-time profession. More importantly, LOVING IT, too!

Did I mention? Great Systems Work! Try it—you’ll LOVE it!