Question 1

How do I give my team a share of the business?

Accepted Answer

Through a share scheme built around the job you want it to do, whether that is holding key people, rewarding what has already been built, or bringing in future owners. Each one points at a different structure, and the structure is very hard to unwind once it is in. Decide the purpose first and the shape follows.

Question 2

Do I need a new entity to enter another market?

Accepted Answer

Usually yes, and the ownership of that entity is the decision that matters, not the registration. Where it sits in the group determines how profits move, which tax applies, and how it reads to a buyer years later.

Question 3

Should I buy a competitor or grow into it?

Accepted Answer

Buying is faster and rarely cheaper. It makes sense when the thing you are buying is something you cannot build in the time you have, like a licence, a customer base, a team, or a geography. If you can build it in eighteen months, build it.

Question 4

Which parts of the business should a machine be doing?

Accepted Answer

Usually the work that should be happening and isn't. Reporting nobody has time to build, follow-up that gets dropped in a busy week, processes living in one person's head. Automating a poor process makes it faster and no better, so the order is to fix it, automate it, then check whether the hours came back.

Question 5

How much of the business still depends on me?

Accepted Answer

Write down every decision made in the last month above a set value and mark the ones only you could have made. The ones that are only yours because nobody wrote the rule down are the ones you can hand over immediately.

All the questions, in one place

Grow

Raise

Exit

If you didn't get your answer

All the questions, in one place

Grow

How do I give my team a share of the business?+

Do I need a new entity to enter another market?+

Should I buy a competitor or grow into it?+

Which parts of the business should a machine be doing?+

How much of the business still depends on me?+

Raise

Should I raise money or borrow it?+

What changes when an investor comes in?+

How much should I raise?+

What do investors look at first?+

Exit

How long before a sale should I start?+

Which parts of the business make a buyer pay more?+

What happens to my team when it sells?+

Do I have to stay in after the exit?+

Why is the price different from the profit?+

If you didn't get your answer