Often business owners feel like they are working hard pounding the treadmill but are not getting anywhere with their once thriving business. If this is the case, it’s time to re-evaluate, dismantle and revive your business to get it moving again - re launch! It’s about doing different things differentially.

What indeed?  Intellectual property is frequently underestimated and not really understood very well.  In many cases, it is not considered to be important or even relevant.  Usually it is only dealt with as an after-thought and normally seen as a cost to the business.  So why do many successful companies bother with it at all?

• It’s too early to think about it
• There’s never enough time
• Not sure where to start
• Haven’t got enough money to retire comfortably

Other reasons can be attributed to:

There’s some good news. There’s now innovative ways for business owners to borrow money and Crowd funding is one of them. Crowd funding is still relatively new, so it’s no surprise that SME’s are unaware of its potential to raise finance.

Last year, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that insurers will no longer be able to use a person’s gender as a factor in calculating the cost and benefits of their insurance. Gender has been one of the many factors that insurers use to assess an individual risk but this will need to change with the law being enforced on 21^st December 2012.

You’ve got one chance to get it right, and enjoy the future you’ve been dreaming of. A well thought-out exit strategy can help you to maximise the value you get from your business, successfully market your business to potential buyers or investors and ensure you end your involvement with as little disruption to the business – and trauma to you - as possible.

Now you have made the decision to move on and sell up, you must be wondering where on earth to start with the planning and what’s involved!

Let us help you with our 6 steps on how to prepare for your exit:

‘I’ll start my own business and be rich in a few years’

‘As my own boss, I’ll quickly secure my own financial future’

‘I will employ a management team to give me the flexibility of spending more time with my family’

What were your expectations of running your own business when you set out?

We often hear business owner-managers talking in a way which reveals that they expected that their company would automatically ‘grow’ over the years. Business growth means different things to different owner managers, depending on their personal objectives.

We talk to business owners every day and a common theme being voiced is that people are still buying but they are being cautious – reduced spend and taking longer to commit, making cash flow forecasts difficult

Here at CMC, we talk with small businesses everyday and recently a number of businesses have been expressing their frustration by a lack of support from the government. Do you feel the same way?