At the time of writing it is 98 days to go until the World Cup Rugby starts. It doesn’t seem long ago that the tournament was held here in New Zealand and the nation’s productivity dropped to ‘very unproductive’. (I think the only time the productivity stopped was with the America’s Cup, when Team New Zealand was 8 games up and failed to win the last one)…
I love team sports, but also individual sports, as long as it is competitive. I love coaching my son’s soccer team and see them do well, I love watching any sports on tv, I enjoy a beer over a game of darts at home and I love to play soccer (which I haven’t done since I left the ‘beer-team’ in my native hometown in the Netherlands 15 years ago). All in all; I love sports!
The one thing I admire is the work these sports people put into their competitive sports. Personally I am more of a soccer fan than rugby but, comparing rugby with Business makes it interesting, even for a Dutchie like me!
These people, with their coach on the helm and with all the backup staff behind them, are one big business where strategies, coaching and training are really important.
A human being only has a short period of time to be learning the game, become a great athlete and pass the knowledge on as a coach years later. Trying to become good by yourself, without a coach, is a challenge and very rarely these people make it to athletes. When they finally get there, their body has already reached the peak of their performance, having missed out on scholarships, sponsorships, endorsements etc.
In business also there is a time frame from concept, to start-up, to being a sustainable business ready to be sold and taken to the next level by the next owner.
Failing to invest in your team, your education, your business and growing it, will ultimately mean that what is left to sell isn’t the optimal potential. Where the sale of your business could result in early retirement or you realising your dreams, now might become working in your business until the age of 68 and, hopefully, there is one dream to fulfill.
In the next 10 years, more and more businesses will come to market. This is mainly because most baby-boomers (born upto 20 years after World War II) now don’t want to sell their business; unless their children choose to take over the business they HAVE to due to their age.
Like Business, Sports will never get old or get out of fashion. Even though, in both categories, only a very few make it to the top, there will always be an influx of young talent. They are driven by the glory, the money, the lifestyle or they do it just because it is in their blood.
The way we do business now is increasingly different from when our parents ran a business. Over the next 5 years, failing to make investments to improve cashflow, your people and new technologies to improve your systems and marketing, will result in a reduced value of your business. This will have a double impact on the sale of your business as now there will be more businesses on the market and, unfortunately, buyers will keep comparing apples with apples.
If you are not prepared to invest in your business in the next 2 to 5 years, start the discussion of selling your business now.
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