By: Patrick Ungashick

In one of the Star Wars movie’s pivotal scenes, Darth Vader attempted to lure his son Luke Skywalker to the dark side of the Force, warning “You don’t know the power of the dark side.” Luke’s skill and talent with the Force made vulnerable to the dark side, and thus the target of his nefarious father’s attention.

There is a powerful lesson here for business owners like you. Your skills and talents may come back to haunt you when you ultimately try to exit from your businesses. Within many companies, the owner is the most valuable and vital employee. Your knowledge, relationships, and vision are what drives the business. Undoubtedly you have help—no CEO/owner build a sustainable business by himself or herself. However, for years or even decades, much of your company growth has mostly been due to your personal presence and efforts. Then, one day, you wish to exit. If at that time you remain an essential employee, you may be unable to achieve commonly held exit goals: financial freedom, a sustained business legacy, and an exit on your own terms. You may find yourself in the dark side, trapped inside the company.

To overcome this, owners must build businesses that are not dependent on them. You must create a business that has the leadership, resources, and plan not merely to survive a transition, but to thrive after you have exited. Reducing owner dependency is, like resisting the dark side’s temptations, easier said than done. Most owners enjoy what they do, and understandably do not wish to become irrelevant within their own companies. Additionally, the company is accustomed to tapping the owner’s talents and skills to the fullest. Yet, as you move closer to exit, owner dependency, if left unaddressed, becomes a serious obstacle to exit success.

Listed below are eight tactics to reduce dependency between now and your future exit.

1.Build a leadership (and/or management) team that can handle day to day operations without you. Ideally, the team can run the company for at least thirty days’ normal operations without your involvement.

2.Collaborate with your leadership to devise and follow a written business growth plan for the next two to three years. Meet periodically during the year to measure performance against the plan’s waypoints and address any lagging results.

3.Conduct leadership team meetings according to a set published schedule. Make sure meetings are run effectively and occur even when you are absent. Meetings should lead to clearly defined and documented decisions.

4.Ensure that the leadership team members have current, written job descriptions and that their job performance is measured against clearly defined and tracked benchmarks.

5.Create a business development team and systems that perform effectively, all the way from lead generation to closing the sale, without your involvement.

6.Verify that your normal daily/weekly duties are either not essential to the business or could be readily filled by other employees cross-trained in those areas.

7.Brief the company’s top employee leaders on your exit goals. These employees must be sufficiently trustworthy for you to share your exit goals in confidence with them. In return, you must create the win-win for them. This can be accomplished using specialized compensation plans to incentivize top leaders to build company value and stay with the organization up to and beyond your exit.

8.Avoid meeting alone with important external relationships, such as customers, prospects, vendors, and lenders. It sends a message that you are the company. If you must participate in these meetings, delegate as much of the conversation as possible to others from your team.

Maximizing Business Value

Creating a company that can survive and thrives without you typically takes several years of focused effort; another reason why preparing for exit must begin no later than five years prior to your intended exit age. The good news is that a company that can operate independently of you is usually a more valuable business if you intend to sell, and a more stable business if you want to exit by way of turning it over to family or employees.

To help, download our popular free ebook: Your Last Five Years: How the Final 60 Months Will Make or Break Your Exit Success. Then, contacts us to schedule a free phone conversation to learn how we have helped hundreds of business owners plan for and achieve a happy exit.

If you have a quick question coming out of this article or, if you want to discuss your situation in more detail, we can set up a confidential and complimentary phone consultation at your convenience contact Tim 772-221-4499,

By: Patrick Ungashick

Webster’s Dictionary defines a “partnerectomy” as “the procedure to remove a diseased or failing business co-owner.” Well, OK, that’s not true — it is a word that we made up. But sometimes partnerships need to come to an end. Here are the symptoms to watch for to determine if you have a business partner who needs to go.

Business Partnerships

According to our proprietary research, about seven out of 10 U.S. companies have more than one owner. These partnerships feature two or more leaders coming together with the shared goal of growing the company. Their combined effort and often complementary skills fuel the company’s growth and success. That’s the positive version of the story — and it is often true, especially in the beginning. However, sometimes business partners realize they may not be exactly on the same page on multiple issues. Sometimes it’s possible to reconcile their differences and resume a productive relationship. Other times, the necessary and perhaps the only course of action is to remove the partner in question. In other words, the company needs a partnerectomy.

Some partnerectomies are more difficult than others. Some are painful, angry, risky, expensive, and cause lasting scar tissue. Others are more controlled, safer, less emotional, and leave the organization much stronger than it was before the procedure. Either way, before resorting to this invasive and irrevocable course of action, business co-owners should exhaust every effort and resource to find another resolution to their core differences.

Reasons to Buy Out Your Business Partner

Here are the symptoms that indicate your organization may need a partnerectomy, any of which suggests that it’s time to take action. You may need a partnerectomy if:

1.You and your partner(s) disagree about where to take the company and how to get there.

2.One or more partner(s) want to take all of the company profits home while one or more partner(s) want to reinvest all of the profits back into the company for growth.

3.You believe that there are important topics that you cannot discuss with your partner(s) for fear of damaging the relationship.

4.Deep down, you are not sure that you can trust your business partner(s).

5.Deep down, if you could turn back the clock you would not enter into a partnership with that person(s) again.

6.Deep down, you believe that if that partner(s) were to leave the company, then employees, customers, suppliers, or other third parties would be relieved.

7.You and your partner(s) have very different timelines for when each wants to exit from the company.

8.You and your partner(s) have very different opinions about your company’s value.

9.You and your partner(s) have not signed a buy-sell agreement.

10.Your employees clearly prefer or are aligned with one partner or another, such that divisive factions exist in your organization.

11.Members of your leadership team are unclear what a particular partner actually does inside the company.

12.You believe that if that partner(s) departed from the company tomorrow, the company would not experience any setback or difficulties.

13.You find yourself frequently having to do any of the following for another partner(s): “cover for” him or her, do “damage control,” or “take precautionary steps” to ensure that the other partner does not cause the company problems, intentionally or not.

14.Your partner(s) has ongoing personal habits or issues that create a serious risk for the business.

15.You and your partner(s) do not have current, written, mutually agreed-upon job descriptions.

16.You and your partner(s) are working at different commitment and energy levels but take home the same pay.

17.You and your partner(s) are doing different jobs inside the company but take home the same pay.

It is worth noting that some of these symptoms set off obvious and immediate alarm bells, whereas others seem trivial or harmless. Yet, as the word symptom implies, each of these items may be a surface manifestation of a deeper root issue that, if left unaddressed, can lead to real catastrophe. If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, just like any true medical issue it is advisable to discuss your situation with a knowledgeable advisor, and if necessary, do “more tests.”  Contact us to confidentially discuss your situation.

If you have a quick question coming out of this article or, if you want to discuss your situation in more detail, we can set up a confidential and complimentary phone consultation at your convenience contact Tim 772-221-4499