Fr Maureen | Selling your business or retiring as the CEO

Published: Sun, 06/13/21

Fewer than 30% of businesses for sale successfully transition to a new owner and those that do typically take more than nine agonizing months filled with uncertainty. The longer a sale process takes, the more stressful it becomes for the owner & the deal team and the lower the probability of success.

The transition from a business (sometimes multi-generational businesses) or as the CEO (after many years) can cause stress for yourself and your family when you don’t have a plan for post-exit. This is when Denise steps in.

Denise Logan, Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author of the book The Seller’s Journey, How (Smart) Sellers Navigate the Obstacles to Exiting Their Business, joins the Get Hired Up podcast to discuss her choppy exit from her legal services firm in Atlanta Georgia. Whether you’re considering an exit of your own from your organization or leaving a corporate role, her lessons resonate for many of us.

With her diverse background as a lawyer, social worker, and business owner, she has guided hundreds of business owners and their professional teams to navigate the challenges and emotional struggles of selling their business. She’s helped business owners of multimillion-dollar businesses make a smooth transition out of the company safe and soundly without regret.

Denise carries two decades of research and thought leadership about work, money and meaning, and how executives navigate the waters of transition and reclaim their sense of identity outside of their business.

According to Denise:

“So only 30% of business owners who try to sell their business are successful, which is a tragedy. We cannot allow that to continue. And the truth is that every business owner will leave their business voluntarily or involuntarily.

So, I often hear business owners say, ‘I'll die at my desk’…well, you know, how tragic is that and how ridiculous, because that assumes that we have control over a whole lot of things that we don't have control over.

There is no guarantee that you will get to work and be healthy until the very last day of your life. What that signals to me is they don't know who they are without this work and how to get those needs met.”

Listen here.

Here in Nova Scotia (eastern CANADA), we’re finally getting to our cottage after a province-wide lockdown for more than six weeks. Our summer cottage is located near Chester Basin on Nova Scotia’s south shore, close to the Ross Farm Museum. After the War of 1812, the village of Sherbrook (renamed New Ross) and the Ross Farm were established by William Ross (1783–1822) in 1816. William Ross was originally from Cork, Ireland. During the Napoleonic Wars, he became part of the British Army 16th Regiment of Foot and stationed in Fort Amsterdam, Surinam. His wife Mary accompanied him. They had their second child while they were there. During their return to Britain, they survived their ship being wrecked on the Tuskar Rock off the coast of Wexford, Ireland. The museum is a popular destination for travelers from around the world.

I hope you and your family stay safe and have a great week ahead!

Respectfully,

Maureen Farmer

https://westgatecareercoaching.com/

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About Maureen:

Maureen is a global executive career coach and personal branding strategist for next-level executives and board nominees.

Westgate Executive Branding and Career Consulting Inc. would like to acknowledge that we are located in Mi'kma'ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq People. We are all Treaty people.