How Do I Know What To Do After Selling My Business?

In This Episode

If you think it feels lonely being a small business owner, just wait until after you sell your business.  There are even fewer people who can relate to that.  Especially if you sell the business for enough money and you don’t have to work any more.  I mean how do you answer the question when your kids’ friends wonder why your mom or dad doesn’t go to work?

We know, you can’t wait for that challenge right?  The challenge of having to fill your time with stuff to do that you want to do vs. what seemingly everyone else wants you to do, from employees to customers to vendors to your family.  I mean how hard could that be?

Be careful what you wish for.  We’ve been blessed to help several clients not only grow their businesses successfully, but also exit those businesses.  Each one initially had a response like we mentioned above where they almost blew off the idea that they need to figure out what they are going to do next.  During the show today we shared several of those stories as well as some personal ones to give you some ideas for how to approach your activities post sale.

Here are some things to consider when it comes to your next move after selling your business:

• Take A Break: we know it’s hard to think about taking a break.  It can feel impossible to go from 100mph running your business to a complete stop or just bumping along at a few miles per hour.  As small business owners, one of the things we’re really bad at is taking care of ourselves and giving ourselves a break.  Jack talked during the show about how he took a break a couple of times during his career before pursuing new ventures and just how valuable those experiences were.
• Find Your Next Business Venture: you now have all this knowledge from owning, operating, and selling your business.  So what do you want to do with this knowledge?  We’d encourage you not to become one of these underutilized resources who is just sitting on the shelf.  Get out there are start figuring out what you want to do next.  It could be advising other small business owners (either for free as a mentor or you could be actually charging for your advice).  Perhaps you have some friends, family, or other Know Like Trust people who would value AND pay for your counsel.  Maybe you can even try going to work for somebody else for a while and remember what it’s like to be an employee!
• Get A Hobby: this is a foreign concept to most small business owners as they typically don’t have much time for hobbies.  Now that you’ve got some time, maybe it’s time to pick up that hobby again.  It could be anything from word working to golf to bird watching to getting a new pet!  Whatever you feel like you’ve been missing out on, give it a go again.
• Wander/Spend Time With Your KLT People: we all have folks who Know Like and Trust us (“KLT”).  Chances are you haven’t spent as much time with those folks over the years due to life and business demands.  Make a point to spend some time with these folks and just engage with them.  See what they are up to and see if there are ways you can help them.  There’s a good chance your next adventure might be hiding with one of your KLT people.

Whether you’ve thought about selling your business or not, when you do start to think about it, be sure to spend some time figuring out what you’d like to do with all that free time.