3 steps to turning your business into a valuable asset

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Laura Humphreys

The Liber8 team held a powerful workshop a few weeks ago. Twelve people in a room had the courage to look at their mindset around money, wealth and business. On their feedback sheet after the workshop, 80% of them mentioned the realisation that a business should be an asset not a job, and the keys to getting there were key out-takes for them. This is what we teach at Liber8. We are passionate about it and we strongly believe that if every business owner in New Zealand set out to create an asset rather than a job, we would see a very different economy and a very different Country.

In a moment I’ll share three of the keys to building a valuable business… but first let me explain this flip chart from the workshop.

If you business requires you to go to work every day in order for it to continue to exist… and you don’t have a plan to change this in the future – you don’t have a business, you have a job. And it may even be a job that pays you less than someone else would pay you to do the same job, makes you work twice the hours, puts too much stress on you and doesn’t let you take enough holidays. Sound familiar? A job is something that pays you some income, but doesn’t allow you to build wealth on the way.

If your business is able to generate income without you having to be there – it has become an asset. If your business has value to someone else, who would like to pay you a significant sum of money to buy it – it has become asset. An asset will feed you long after you stop working.

Which is your business? A job or an asset?

If it’s still a job, don’t panic. Every business starts out that way. But its the business owners who make a conscious decision to transform it into an asset over time that really win. This is what we teach at Liber8. Financial freedom by turning your business into an asset.

Here are just three of the steps we encourage our members and clients to take:

1. Decide that you want to create a valuable business not just a job for yourself. Think about your own mindset and paradigm, what are you telling yourself on a regular basis that would prevent you from striving for this. Question your own belief systems around growth, wealth and what is possible for you and your business.

2. Address your business model. What is holding back the growth right now? Have you created something that is very dependent on you? If so, what changes could you implement that would reduce this dependence? Do you need to find a way to duplicate what you do and train others to deliver? Do you need systems and products that can deliver without you?

3. Create recurring revenue streams. The most valuable businesses are those where cash flow can be predicted into the future. Clients who are locked in to regular income – income not dependent on the owner – this is where value is created. There are many examples of business models with this value well and truly in place. I will share some of these in my next blog.

In the meantime, think about the three steps above. And feel free to email me with your questions at laura@liber8u.com

Yours in freedom

The all new Acceler8or Programme

We are looking for business owners ready to get serious about transforming their business into a valuable asset. Our next Acceler8or Programme kicks of end of July. Do you think you have the right mindset to join us? Email me laura@liber8u.com for more information.

The 2 critical factors to business growth that no one else talks about…

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Laura Humphreys

In recent months my business partner, Mike Brunel*, and I have been helping a number of small business owners overcome their blocks to business growth. And as we dig deeper into what it really takes to grow a business, we have had an epiphany that we’d like to share with you…

There are 2 critical factors to business success that NO ONE talks about.

And in our view, it’s time this changed… because if you understand these 2 factors and embrace them in your business …. You WILL SUCCEED and you can grow an EXTRAORDINARY business.

So what are they then, these 2 secret factors? Let us share them with you…

Mindset. The first factor involves your appetite for growth in the first place. How big are you really willing to grow? What limitations are you putting on your business before it even gets started? Have you even thought about the true potential for your business? What are your attitudes to wealth? What is your relationship with money? Are you sitting inside a comfort zone that is restricting the potential of your business? As the Liber8 team investigates these questions with our clients, we are witnessing huge mindset shifts that enabling growth that simply didn’t exist before.
Model. Once you adopt what we call the ‘growth mindset’, the next critical success factor is your business model. Do you have a model that is capable of growth? Where is your current model restricting growth? How can you re-engineer it to be less dependent on you and more scalable? Is your offering positioned to take advantage of the largest market open to you? Have you thought about the model underpinning your business? Have you explored the potential you are sitting on?

Until you address these two critical factors, it doesn’t matter how many courses you attend, or what tricks you learn… you remain in danger of standing in the way of your business’ true potential. You won’t see the shift from ordinary to EXTRAORDINARY until you step outside of your comfort zone and explore what’s truly possible.

The Liber8 team are building Mindset & Model into all our materials – programmes and products – from now on. We’ll keep you informed on how you can take on the challenge to allow your business to be EXTRAORDINARY.

Be prepared for significant break throughs!

* Meet Liber8 Mentor, Mike Brunel. Like me, Mike has successfully built and sold a business. Unlike me, Mike’s business was global – with offices all over the world. Like me (and every other successful entrepreneur I’ve ever interviewed), Mike had humble beginnings. He began as a sheep shearer and then door-to door salesman. I began as secretary. We both built successful business. But we are neither one of us trained business people. The Liber8 motto is “if we can do it, anyone can do it!”. We hope you’ll be joining us on Liber8 programmes soon.

“Starting a business is easy. Creating something of value is harder”

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Laura Humphreys

TVNZ Interview

If you have a few minutes, take a look at this interview with me on TVNZ Good Morning show earlier this week. To be honest I was quite thrown by the questions asked. I had expected it to be a jolly chat about my book, with a view to inspiring some talented mums at home to consider the opportunities, just like I had. I wasn’t expecting the first question:

“Why do you think anyone can start a business?”

Wow, that made me think. Watch as I look up into my brain for the answer.

And then it came to me, starting isn’t the hard part. Anyone can start a business. But not everyone has the vision and the fortitude to make it work.

In the interview, I end up back on my own soapbox, showing how passionate I really am about the need to approach business with a long-term view in mind.

The good news is that I got to explain my mantra – ‘start at the end and work backwards’. Think about where you are taking the business and what you want out of it financially, as well as what you want to do right here and now. Plan your business properly – start with a good idea and a clear market for it – and be clear what the end game is.

I’m not sure I inspired those stay at homes to launch into business tomorrow, but I did get to say my piece. The reason I do what I do – helping small business owners become big business owners by planning their way to financial freedom.

I hope things are going well for you in your business right now. I’d love to help you plan your end game and plot the course to get there.

Acceler8me 2014 kicks off July 3^rd – for business owners serious about growth. You can find out more about it here – just use the enquiry form supplied to have a chat about it.

Hope to see you soon!

Have you created a business or a job? 5 tips for turning your small business into a big asset

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Laura Humphreys

My mantra for small business owners is simple: Don’t create a job, build yourself an asset. When you own a business you have the opportunity right there in your hands to build something that can create financial security for you in the future. You are going to work hard anyway, why waste this valuable time just paying yourself to do a job when you could be setting yourself up forever?

If you are serious (as I believe you should be) about building a saleable business, here are 5 success factors you can be thinking about right now:

1. Set your end goal. Decide how much you want to sell it for and by when, and work backwards. In my book Liber8 your Business, I show a simple formula for working out your potential end value, with a link to the online calculator.

2. Name your buyer. It’s important to have a good idea who might want to buy your business in your early planning. Imagine spending ten years building a business you intend to sell only to realize you have created something nobody wants to buy. If you build a business with a buyer in mind, you have a much better chance of building something they really want.

A potential buyer could be a larger player in your industry looking to grow through acquisition. This growth might be regional – they want a presence in your city or town and it’s easier to buy you than start from scratch. It might be strategic – you have a smart product or service they could add to their existing infrastructure to create additional revenue streams. An example of this might be a large accounting firm buying a small book-keeping firm to add value to their client base. Your service or product could become a ‘nuisance’ to a competitor (read more on a strategy called ‘kicking sand in the gorilla’s face’ in my book, Liber8 your Business) and they buy your company to prevent it competing or to regain lost revenues. It could be a management buy-out, when senior employees raise the funds to buy you out. It could be a competitor of a similar size wanting to grow and willing to invest to gain rapid growth through acquisition. I’ve sold businesses to two types of buyer. A multinational bought my advertising agency and a local competitor bought my pet care company. My father’s photocopier business sold to his senior management team. A good friend has built three recruitment agencies. The first sold to one of the original partners, who bought out the other partners. The second sold to a multinational looking for regional representation in her city. The third is in its early days of growth and I’ll watch with interest who buys it (I have no doubt it will sell because I know the founders expect this and will build with this in mind). Another type of buyer could be a private equity group or even an individual who sees great potential in what you’ve built.

So who might want to buy your business? What are you building that could add huge value to someone’s offering? Now is the time to start thinking about these things.

3. Remove the dependence on you. To make your business attractive to your future buyer, it cannot be dependent on you. That’s a key message I want you to learn from this article:

No one will outright buy a business that’s dependent on its owner.

If the buyer takes you out of the picture and no business remains, they will either insist you stay in the business or they will walk away. So whatever your strategy is, whatever your end goal, whatever your vision for the future … it needs to not have you in it. I did that at my agency by making sure the clients loved the business but weren’t dependent on me. In the last few years, I hired two senior guys and put them in charge of our biggest clients, so my buyer could see the clients were not reliant on me.

4. Start building a team as soon as you can. I couldn’t afford to bring in those big guns until later in my business growth. I started by hiring people I could afford, with a couple of youngsters straight from college. I trained them to do things exactly the way I wanted. I call it ‘training your clones’ – teaching people to follow your example and do things your way. I kept building my team that way until we could afford to hire more senior people. And then we had to make sure we had a really strong culture to manage senior people.

5. Secure future earnings. Getting all our key clients on fixed-term contracts was another critical strategy that worked. They all had two or three year contracts so when the buyer looked at my business they saw a high level of spend committed for the next three years. This was an important lesson I learned from my businessman father. Remember I told you about his photocopier business and how he sold it and retired soon after his fiftieth birthday? One of the best secrets to success he shared with me was, ‘you’ve got to have a back end.’ To explain, he gave the example of his own business. While the sale or lease of each copier was worth a lot of money (especially in the 1970s when these huge machines were a relatively new addition to business productivity) the real value came from the additional contract that went with each machine. This locked the customer into buying all their ink, toner and paper for the life of the machine, as well as regular paid servicing – which meant that, for every machine sold, my father had income guaranteed for the next 10 years, enabling him to predict with complete accuracy his future income. You can see why this made by father’s business attractive for a buyer. They could see a guaranteed return on their investment. It made sense to me when I started my own business, and I hope it does to you too. It will get you a higher price when you come to sell!

A business with committed future revenue that is not dependent on its owner to deliver that revenue is a business worth investing in.

You’ll find these 5 factors, and a whole lot of other ideas, tips, stories and exercises about creating freedom from business in my book – Liber8 your Business: The revolutionary business planning technique that will set every small business owner free.

Are you brave enough to have a powerful brand? Find out here…

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Laura Humphreys

As anyone who has worked with me will tell you, I’m an avid fan of branding. I look at a client’s brand and ask myself, does it tell me something exciting, original and impactful about their business? Does it set the foundation for everything the business stands for? Does it place them instantly a head and shoulders above the competition?

Often times the answer is no and I recommend that they engage a brand specialist to help them. One of these specialists, Steve Bailey features in my latest book The Liber8 Disciplines. Here’s an excerpt from the book about a conversation Steve and I had about branding and bravery:

“Over lunch recently, Steve asked me if I thought the readers of this book would have the courage to create a powerful brand. I stopped and peered at him over the bowl of hot soup I was enjoying. “Why do they need to be brave?” I asked. To which he replied, “Because if we succeed with creating the right brand for someone, they will get noticed… a great brand doesn’t let you hide away and be safe”.

Steve gave me an example of a small business client he had worked with recently. They came to him wanting a new brand, something that would build on their existing business but take it to a whole new level of excitement and attraction. He and his team came up with a new name and brand approach that was so perfect for them, when he told me I laughed out loud. “That’s great!” I cried. From the name alone I knew exactly what this business did and I could see their growth plan ahead of them in an instant. I could see a chain of stores nationally or globally; or a franchise model. The name was so catchy I already knew what the brand would look for and what they stood for. “But they weren’t willing to change their name,” Steve told me, “which I understand – it can be too big a step for some, especially when they’ve been around for a while. So we did a new brand strategy working with their existing name. We came up with a positioning platform and graphic device that shifted them into the next league almost as well”. Steve described this new idea to me and once again I laughed out loud. “But that’s great too!” I cried. “That really works. I can already see all the marketing ideas that go with that idea”. Steve shook his head, “They were too scared to do this too” he said. “They’ve gone back to their original logo”. I knew the company he was talking about and I knew that they really needed to change their image in order to become more relevant in the marketplace. I felt sad for them. They had missed an opportunity to evolve and they didn’t even know it. Now I understood what Steve meant about being brave. Being willing to have a powerful brand might mean you have to let go of what you already have to a certain degree. Or you might even have to change it completely.

I realised from listening to Steve that it is almost as important to understand what a brand isn’t as it is to know what a brand is. Why would someone go to a brand strategy agency if they were not willing to change their brand? I wondered if perhaps they just hadn’t really understood what there were really asking for”.

Do you know what it really means to have a great brand? Do you have any idea how powerful it can really be for you? Would you like to know more about branding? I’ve dedicated an entire section of The Liber8 Disciplines to this topic – it’s that important. If you’d like a sneak preview of this chapter, before the book is published – just email me (laura@liber8me.com).

From the desk of Liber8me. Business mentors and publisher of Liber8 your Business: The revolutionary business planning technique that will set every small business owner free.

What causes customers to leave you?

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Laura Humphreys

Why do customers leave?

Guest blog by Mike Brunel.

I am continually asked why my advertisers leave me after a few campaigns. I do not think for one moment that has not happened to you. It has me, several times, and every time it does I learn something.

As a business owner why do your clients leave you? Do you know?

It actually stings quite a bit; you are just getting to know them when they stop returning your calls, completely ignoring you.

Here is a typical scenario that often happens. You work on a client for a few months and finally they toss you a little order or money. If you have done your job well, you might get some more.

No one returns your calls

Over time you get to sell them more products and services. Things seem to be going along swimmingly. Then all of a sudden, they do not return your calls. You try to call them a few times. SILENCE.

What have you done? They liked you; they seemed to be getting results from your product.

So, what have you done wrong? What did you do?

It’s not what you think; Here are some tips you might find useful if this happens to you.

Solve the problem before it starts.

These days customers like to be advised. If you start giving them everything they want, they will not take you seriously.
Don’t be like all the others companies who sell similar products. If you really want to partner with them, do crazy things once in a while. Don’t be boring. Push them a little. Be a marketer.
Find out early in the relationship what their interests are outside of work and do all the research you can about the topic. This gives you something else to talk about, and helps build trust.

Finally, if you get the “vibe” that this might not work, be up front with them and say “Hey, I do not think this is working.”

It just might be the tonic to get them thinking a little about your relationship.

“They will spend one day, I promise.”

That is like saying, “That girl will go out with me one day.” Sometimes it can be painful, but you are better off working with the customers that you know will be of benefit to you, and not go after clients that you have no show of getting.

Mike Brunel is partner in NRS Media, the world’s leading provider of Revenue Growth Solutions and Customer Acquisition programs to media companies. The company has offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto and Sydney and employs more than 175 staff. Mike teaches people how to sell… he loves it with a passion!

From the desk of Liber8me. Business mentors and publisher of Liber8 your Business: The revolutionary planning technique that will set every small business owner free

Want to create a business success story? Learn to see the future

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Laura Humphreys

I’ve interviewed many wealthy entrepreneurs as part of my mentoring programmes, always seeking to find out what makes them so successful. How do they build businesses that achieve such growth and generate such great financial returns? The number one trait that comes through without exception is their ability to look into the future and see what their business looks like five, ten or fifteen years out. Successful business people have a really clear picture of their business when it’s ‘complete’, they can see where it is all heading. Rarely do they start a business without a clear idea of where they will take it. They do not randomly wander into business, nor randomly wander out or give up when it gets too hard or they run out of money. Successful entrepreneurs know where they are going.

One of the first things a successful entrepreneur will do is create a vision for their business that is set firmly in the future. They are very clear that the business is separate from them and as such it must have a reason for being that is bigger and more inspirational than the owner/s of the business. When I started my advertising agency I knew it needed a higher purpose, something clearly articulated that would attract clients and talented staff and give us something to strive for. We set out to ‘change the face of our industry by setting a new benchmark for agency service and quality of results’. This vision for our future kept us focused and ultimately created the success that attracted a multi-national company to want to buy us.

What is your vision for the future of your business?

To achieve a successful exit, it helps to view your business as a product…

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Laura Humphreys

A successful angel investor friend explained to me the concept of exit strategy like this:

To achieve a successful exit, it helps to view your business as a product. A good business person empathises with their customer and understands their reasons for buying your product. You know what need your product fulfils in the market and who will want to buy it. You use your expertise and experience to create the best possible product to meet this need. You build a relationship with potential customers with a view to making sales.

Now, step back and look at your business as a product. Why would someone want to buy your business in the future? Which companies could take your business and create more value with it? What needs do they have that your business could fulfil? How could you build your business to make it easy for them to acquire and integrate it with theirs? This is your market and selling proposition. And just as it takes time to build a customer base for your product, it takes time to build a relationship with your potential buyer. So start now.

Excerpt from Liber8 your Business: The revolutinary business planning technique that will set every business owner free

Here’s to a successful exit!

5 critical success factors for a future business sale… what every small business owner should be thinking about right now

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Laura Humphreys

Businesses do not typically sell by accident. The owners that end up selling their business for a significant amount of money have usually been preparing for that day for some time. You don’t have to be thinking about selling your business any time soon to start planning now for the day when you might want to. If you consider the following five things, you will be in good shape when the big day finally arrives…

1. Set your end goal. Decide how much you want to sell it for and by when, and work backwards. You’ll find a tool to help you work this out at www.liber8yourbusiness.com/tools.

2. Name your buyer. It’s important to have a good idea who might want to buy your business in your early planning. Imagine spending 10 years building a business you intend to sell only to realize you have created something nobody wants to buy. If you build a business with a buyer in mind, you have a much better chance of building something they really want.

So who might want to buy your business? What are you building that could add huge value to someone’s offering? Now is the time to start thinking about these things.

3. Remove the dependence on you. To make your business attractive to your future buyer, it cannot be dependent on you. That’s a key message I want you to learn:

No one will outright buy a business that’s dependent on its owner.

If the buyer takes you out of the picture and no business remains, they will either insist you stay in the business or they will walk away. So whatever your strategy is, whatever your end goal, whatever that picture is of your shed or your man on the moon … it needs to not have you in it. I did that at my agency by making sure the clients loved the business but weren’t dependent on me. In the last few years, I hired two senior guys and put them in charge of our biggest clients, so my buyer could see the clients were not reliant on me.

4. Start building a team as soon as you can. I couldn’t afford to bring in those big guns until later in my business growth. I started by hiring people I could afford, with a couple of youngsters straight from college. I trained them to do things exactly the way I wanted. I call it ‘training your clones’. I kept building my team that way until we could afford to hire more senior people. And then we had to make sure we had a really strong culture to manage senior people.

5. Secure future earnings. Getting all our key clients on fixed-term contracts was another critical strategy that worked. They all had two or three year contracts so when the buyer looked at my business they saw a high level of spend committed for the next three years. This was an important lesson I learned from my businessman father. Remember I told you about his photocopier business and how he sold it and retired soon after his fiftieth birthday? One of the best secrets to success he shared with me was, ‘you’ve got to have a back end.’ To explain, he gave the example of his own business. While the sale or lease of each copier was worth a lot of money (especially in the 1970s when these huge machines were a relatively new addition to business productivity) the real value came from the additional contract that went with each machine. This locked the customer into buying all their ink, toner and paper for the life of the machine, as well as regular paid servicing – which meant that, for every machine sold, my father had income guaranteed for the next 10 years, enabling him to predict with complete accuracy his future income. You can see why this made by father’s business attractive for a buyer. They could see a guaranteed return on their investment. It made sense to me when I started my own business, and I hope it does to you too. It will get you a higher price when you come to sell!

A business with committed future revenue that is not dependent on its owner to deliver that revenue is a business worth investing in.

Hope these five things have given you something to think about. Good luck!

The above is an extract from my book, Liber8 your Business: The revolutionary business planning technique that will set every small business owner free. Available now on Amazon.

How do you build a saleable business? Here’s a tip you can start thinking about right now…

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Laura Humphreys

Here’s an excerpt from my book Liber8 your Business… a very useful tip when it comes to planning a business that will attract a buyer in the future:

A successful angel investor friend explained to me the concept of exit strategy like this: To achieve a successful exit, it helps to view your business as a product. A good business person empathises with their customer and understands their reasons for buying your product. You know what need your product fulfils in the market and who will want to buy it. You use your expertise and experience to create the best possible product to meet this need. You build a relationship with potential customers with a view to making sales.

For more useful strategies for building a saleable business check out Liber8 your Business: The revolutionary business planning technique that will set every small business free. Available on Amazon now.

From the desk of Liber8me. Small business mentors and publisher of Liber8 your Business.