What would happen to your company if you had to take an unplanned medical leave of absence?

Jobs holding a white iPhone 4 at Worldwide Developers Conference 2010

Steve Jobs announces he’s taking an indefinite medical leave of absence from Apple and the value of the company only drops by 2%.

So what can small business owners take from all of this?

First, even a company with a market valuation of $313 billion is dependent on its leader. The good news for Apple is that it is big enough, has a great management team, plenty of cash; great products and soaring profits to overcome the loss of its founder and leader.

Second, as a business owner you’ve got to ask yourself the question, what would happen to your business if you were hit by the proverbial bus?

• Does your company have a great management team that could run the company if you’re not there any more?
• Is there enough cash reserves to help manage through your loss?
• Have you built a company with consistent profitability to help your family and your business successfully cope with your loss?

We have been coaching and providing business advice in CT, now, for almost 10 years. And we’ve always defined a real business as:

A commercial, profitable enterprise that works without the owner.

That’s because if your business can’t run without you, all you’ve built for yourself is a job. And when you’re gone, it’s gone – and so is all of the value, goodwill, and employees that have helped you along the way. After all of your blood, sweat and tears is this the way you want your business to end?

So, what do you want to happen to your business:

• Do you want to sell it someday?
• Do you want to transition ownership to your employees?
• Do you want to will it to your sons/daughters?
• Do you want it to provide security for your family if something were to happen to you?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you’d better start spending a little less time working “in” your business and a little more time working “on” your business so that it begins to run without you. Because, here’s the deal, if your business can’t run without you, when you’re no longer around it’s not going to be worth very much. In which case, all of your plans won’t help anyone.

So here are 6 specific steps that you can take, right away, to make sure that your business performs just like Apple did today in the wake of its founder’s announcement.

1. 1.) Decide exactly how you want to exit from your business and when
2. 2.) Decide how much you need it to be worth to provide for yourself and your family in the future
3. 3.) Conduct a detailed GAP analysis to determine the most important changes that need to take place to realize that value goal
4. 4.) Build an organization chart without you in it that shows what your company must look like when it is worth what you want it to be; and compare it to where you are today

5.) Build a specific action plan (succession plan) with milestones to measure progress along the way to achieve your organization and valuation goals

6.) Work on your business by executing a portion of this action plan everyday

Contact our Business Coaching Firm and I’ll show you how to set the vision, conduct the GAP analysis, build the action plan; and most importantly …….. execute it. There are a lot of people depending on you.

James J. Malski
President
Next Level Strategies, Inc
ActionCOACH
203-210-7003