PRIME business club

More than half of the visitors to this site taking part in a recent PRIME mini poll expect to sell their business as a going concern when they are ready to exit the business. A further 16 per cent also expect to keep it going, giving it to family or a friend.

Do you expect to eventually sell your business?

• 1. Yes - sell as a going concern 56% (49 votes)
• 2. No - will give away to family / friend retaining stake 15% (13 votes)
• 3. No - will give away to family / friend completely 1% (1 vote)
• 4. No - it will close but with sale of major assets 1% (1 vote)
• 5. No - it will close with sale of some minor assets 3% (3 votes)
• 6. No - it will close with nothing much to sell 22% (19 votes)
• 7. Other 2 2% (2 votes)

Source: visitors to www.primebusinessclub.com

About a quarter expect their business to close when they leave - and the great majority of these don’t expect to be able to make much from selling the assets.

So there is a clear split between those expecting to get extra money from the business when they exit and those who don’t. And this may be realistic - some businesses are worth something without the founder while for others the founder IS the business. The type of business is critical.

Where there may be some unfounded optimism is on how easy the business will be to sell. There does seem to be evidence that the size of the business is important here.

There is a well developed market for selling businesses over a certain size, with papers, notably Daltons Weekly carrying classified listing od businesses for sale, and specialist business transfer agents you can go to to help with a sale. But once you get below a value of about £250,000 for the business the market gets less interested, and the costs involved in selling start eating into the proceeds.

Related posts:

Tax bill for selling your business clarified

Exit strategy - a practical guide to selling your business

PRIME has teamed up with publisher Kogan Page to get you a discount off any of the publisher’s books. Kogan Page specialises in business books, and have many relevant small business titles. To get the discount just order via this PRIME book shop link, which shows a selection.

At the moment the discount is running at around a third off regular prices, made up of 25 per cent off from Kogan Page and 10 per cent off courtesy of PRIME, but we’ll be reviewing the exact deal in August.

Disclosure: Currently PRIME gets 10 per cent of the discounted price from any purchase you make. We are hoping this new revenue stream will help fund the free guides we ourselves produce. Please comment below on whether you feel this is a good way for the charity to make money. This will help inform our decision in August - when we’ll also know how much money is at stake.

If you are still thinking about whether to start in business or not, the Essential Business Guide has an 80-page workbook to help you think through the issues. You can download it as a PDF for free to read or print out. The company - which writes books and courses for small businesses, also has two worksheets (in Excel format) you can also download.

If you don’t have Excel on your machine you can still make use of the worksheets. If you get yourself a free Googlemail account it comes with other free software, including a spreadsheet program that can read these files.

All the 150-or-so books from WeBooks.co.uk can be read for free online. The publisher makes its money if you buy a normal paper book or a printable PDF version should you tire of tabbing through page-by-page. But it is perfectly practical to read the whole book for free online, or at least dip into the relevant sections.

Here are some of the titles in the business list.

Book-keeping and Accounting for the Small Business
(Peter Taylor) A useful guide to managing accounts & choosing accounts software, as well as information on double entry bookkeeping, double entry accounts and small business tax.

How to Start Your Own Gardening Business
(Paul Power) All about starting a business in the gardening industry, including writing a gardening business plan, financing the business and managing the accounts.

Preparing a Winning Business Plan
(Matthew Record) A full guide to writing a business plan. It explains what a business plan is, why you need one and how it should relate to your business idea, objectives and projected growth.

Raising Finance for Your Business
(Mark Blayney) Covers funding a business, getting a business loan, as well as looking at the lending market and other sources of finance.

Raising Start-Up Finance
(Phil Stone) Covers different ways of building capital, sources of finance including business grants and business loans, as well as how to assess the true cost of borrowing money.

Setting Up a Complementary Health Practice
(Patricia Bishop) Setting up a health business, including information on working from home, the start-up costs involved, marketing your business and achieving a healthy work-life balance.

Setting Up and Running a Limited Company
(Robert Browning) How to start a limited company, from writing a business plan and choosing a company name to dealing with company accounts.

Start and Run Your Own Business
(Alan Le Marinel) Guidance on starting and running a business, tips on preparing and managing accounts, and ways on raising business finance.

Starting a Business in the Country
(Wendy Pascoe) An in-depth look at starting a rural business - including start-up costs, rural advertising, working from home, marketing and research.

Starting a Sandwich - Coffee Bar
(Stephen Miller) How to set up and run your own coffee and sandwich business, from planning and creating your own identity, to hiring staff, sourcing suppliers and the daily running of the shop.

Starting and Running a B and B
(Stewart Whyte, Nigel Jess) Covers starting and running a small bed and breakfast business, including conducting a feasibility study, writing a business plan and financing the business.

Starting and Running a Catering Business
(Carol Godsmark) This guide includes a wide range of information, from writing a business plan, marketing, promotion and retaining customers.

Starting Your Own Business
(Jim Green) From the initial start-up costs, writing a business plan and marketing your business, to the different types of businesses and how to go after government grants.

Starting Your Own Childminding Business
(Allison Lee) Detailed guide to starting a daycare business, including the regulations, start-ups costs and running the business.

The Kitchen Table Entrepreneur
(Paul Power) Covers the initial stages of starting a business, including conducting market research, writing a business plan and self-motivation.

The printed paper version of “Working for YOURSELF - a practical guide to sales, marketing and preparing a business plan for people aged over 50″ is now available. You can still download the guide as a PDF, but if you would prefer a paper copy just email us your details and we’ll post you a free copy.

This PRIME guide concentrates on the subjects many people tell us they are least confident with - sales, marketing and putting a viable plan together. It doesn’t cover everything, but at only 40 pages long it’s quick to read and inspiring.

Contents
1. Customers and selling to them
2. Negotiating
3. Marketing
4. Setting prices
5. Business model, business plan
6. Checking with reality
7. Sources of support
Business glossary

If you are downloading the PDF to print out on your own printer, the square format should come out OK on standard A4 paper as it’s the same width.

The production of Working for YOURSELF, written in-house by PRIME, has been partially-funded by the Equal Diversity in Practice project, which is in turn paid for from the European Social Fund.

How do you start or grow a business if you don’t have much money? The answer according to US marketing guru Seth Godin is to focus on the advantages that your lack of resources brings. and build a business that consciously makes use of them.

This is not a collection of money-saving hints and tips. Instead it’s about something much more important. It’s about getting your business model and marketing strategy right so your success does not depend on resources you don’t have but is instead based on exploiting to the full what you do have. That’s why The Bootstrapper’s Bible is already a business classic.

Download The Bootstrapper’s Bible by Seth Godin

Don’t be put off by Godin’s American style. By page eight he has got the local cultural references over with and is well into a solid comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of rich and poor businesses. The remaining 90 or so pages is inspirational stuff, and likely to spark practical ideas about how you can turn your situation to your advantage.

A note on printing the PDF: it prints out fine on A4 as long as you select landscape.

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