Peckin’ Away
What if, on the way to work today, you got hit by a train or had a stroke or just died?
What would happen to your business, your family, your employees, your community?
Would your business die at the same time you did?
Unfortunately, that’s too often the case for most Main Street business owners because they don’t have a business survival plan to leave behind for anyone to follow in the event of an untimely death or disability.
One of the things any good business survival plan must have is a designated driver, a key employee who can run the business in the event of the unexpected demise of the owner.
If you don’t have that key employee on your staff now, then you’d best hire one and begin to invest in training and equipping them to take over.
And that’s a good idea, not just in the event of a tragedy, but if you decide to sell your business. Most buyers, particularly for larger businesses, want to invest money in the enterprise but they don’t necessarily have the experience to run the business and since the owner typically isn’t selling it to remain on staff under new ownership, then the buyer needs someone to run the business and that key employee is necessary.
We recently had a very good business for sale and had a lot of interest in it, but the seller had no one trained to take his place so he’s going to have to take the business off the market, hire and train the employee and then go back into the market, at least a year long process.
There are some things to remember to protect your business when you hire the key employee, and we’ll cover those in next month’s column.
And that’s all I have to say about that…….for now.
