As you know, owning a business can be “exciting” but it requires hard work, often long hours, perseverance, and the dedication to turn your dream into a reality.
But what does that mean? “Turning your dream into reality?”
For many of you, it means being able to sell your business one day and get the cash to move on to bigger things, or retire, or do whatever your heart desires.
It’s why 70% of business owners want to sell their business one day.
But here’s the big problem: 80% of business owners trying to sell their businesses fail, and they often end up dismantling or working until they’re 100 just for the salary the company provides.
It’s why I do not own a restaurant.
I lived “By Big Fat Greek Wedding” with the Greeks I grew up with in the Chicago area, who often made their money from the restaurants they owned.
They made decent money, the house and lawn were nice, but the parents of my friends were always working. 7 days a week – nearly 365 days a year (except for the couple of days they closed for some holiday).
If my friends were lucky, their parents owned the restaurant with their cousin’s family so they could cover each other for the inevitable summer trip to Greece for 2 weeks.
And my friends hated it – all of them.
In fact, all of them went to University, received their professional degrees, and stayed miles away from the family business.
Which put their families in a somewhat difficult spot.
Because many of these restaurants were not very sellable or if they did sell, the value was mostly in the equipment and hard assets.
So if the parents couldn’t sell the business, the next best thing would be passing it down to their children.
But the children didn’t want that life. They didn’t want to be shackled to their own company.
And boy that sucked for many of these parents…
Like my friend Alexandros, who fled the pots and pans for an engineering degree and got into the University of Illinois internet ecosphere in the 90s and built himself a successful life.
His father was very hard working, successful, and died early.
Alex avoided that fate. Last I saw he was collecting vintage cars, real estate and pretty much any asset except restaurants.
Now to be clear, I’m not picking on restaurants. They can be very successful and can sell at a premium – but that happens when they are run a certain way.
Which I’ll start talking about tomorrow…