As both an entrepreneur myself and someone who’s helped a lot of successful entrepreneurs and business executives with their retirement planning, I’ve had a lot of time to look at what separates the successful businesses capable of making it in the long term from the ones that fall by the wayside.
While there are obviously a number of factors at play, I’ve found that the ability to overcome three particular challenges can go a long way to ensuring the viability of any business.
Values and alignment
It is difficult to make effective and efficient business progress unless the owners of a company are completely aligned with their company’s mission and vision, and have complementary or matching values. If the values are not clear and are not shared among all the owners, it’s likely that there will be friction, which can cloud the business’s ability to move forward.
It can be beneficial to go through a process where the shareholders all lay out what their financial and life values are, and clarify what these values mean to them. From there, they can prioritise what will most benefit. It’s important to realise that, in any business, managing risk is crucial to its long-term survival . As an entrepreneur, you will have put in a great deal of effort to build up your business, so it’s natural that you would want to protect it at a later stage.
It is crucial that there is complete candour among the shareholders so that everybody understands where everybody else is coming from. This can actually bring people closer together and make them even more aligned, providing the business with more energy and a greater sense of purpose and togetherness.
Protection and risk management
In any business, managing risk is crucial to its long-term survival . As an entrepreneur, you will have put in a great deal of effort to build up your business, so it’s natural that you would want to protect it at a later stage.
However, it’s also the case that entrepreneurs are generally optimistic. This means that we sometimes don’t look closely enough at potential risks.
Whether it’s the early death of a major shareholder or someone falling seriously ill, there are major contingencies that every business should factor in. Because entrepreneurs are so positive about the future and because they are generally very busy as they build up their businesses, they often don’t think such things through fully. And after something tragic has happened, it may be too late to prevent serious fallout. That is why risk management and contingency planning throughout the life of an entrepreneur are so important. This may involve setting up a dividend insurance policy so that, should a shareholder die unexpectedly, there is protection for the shareholder’s heirs. Without this sort of policy in place, there can be a great deal of hardship for the other shareholders in the business. Legal cases often flow from this, and it may even threaten the future existence of the business.
The importance of networking
Networking is the answer to a multitude of questions that arise in business. Whether you’re looking for new opportunities or to build connections with those in the same industry, joining a community of like-minded people is the first step in creating these opportunities. A network helps you as an individual combat business loneliness and also creates opportunities to discuss any issues or dilemmas you might be experiencing. Networking and sharing experiences and insights with other business leaders allows you to draw from the expertise that only another entrepreneur would have. Entrepreneurs Organisation London (EO), of which I am a member, is one such organisation, but there are others related to specific fields and geographic locations that every entrepreneur could benefit from being a part of.
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By Robert Wilcocks, Managing Director at Wilcocks & Wilcocks and member of the London chapter of Entrepreneurs Organisation
About the Author
Robert Wilcocks is the co-founder of Wilcocks & Wilcocks, a family wealth management business. The company helps successful entrepreneurs and executives overcome the three key challenges they face at retirement. Wilcocks & Wilcocks has been voted one of the best Independent Financial Planning firms in the UK in 2022.
