July 2024

Overall, I’ve been very disciplined in my personal life and business. But recently, I found myself “slipping.” I found myself NOT doing the morning routine I really wanted to do! My desired wake time is 5:00 a.m. — I’ve been an early riser for some years. However, I’ve recently been waking up late, around 7:00 a.m. or 6:00 a.m.

When I would wake up this late, I would skip doing things I wanted to do. I’d skip my morning devotions, skip my morning walk, skip my gym time and skip other things.

I knew I had to be more disciplined if I was going to do what’s important to me and have the morning routine I really wanted. I had to change.

Related: 4 Ways to Create a Powerful Morning Routine

Two small changes

So, I made two small changes to my routine, and I’ve seen a huge difference in the past few weeks.

The first change was going to bed earlier.

Instead of staying up late with my wife and going to be around 2:00 a.m. or so, I’ve had to go to bed earlier. I explained to my wife that to do the things in my morning routine, which is so important to me, I had to go to bed earlier. She fully understood.

I had been sitting on the couch and then dozing off, and then my wife and I would get up and go to bed at the same time. But now, I go to bed around 11:00 pm. My wife is now going to bed earlier, too!

The second change was setting my alarm 15 minutes earlier, to 4:45 a.m.

Now that I was going to bed earlier, around 11:00 p.m., I was more rested. Getting about six hours of sleep, maybe five, is perfect for my body. In fact, my eyes open at about 4:30 a.m. automatically.

What’s important to you

What are the simple changes you need to make to live YOUR best life? To know what changes you need to make, you need to know what goals you want to reach.

My morning routine is important to me.

This includes:

• Bible reading and prayer

• Eating fruit, drinking water, having Cafe Bustelo

• 30-minute walk, 15 minutes in the gym

• My morning 7:00 a.m. live show

If I do these things, the rest of the day goes well. When I miss out on these things, I feel I’m in catch-up mode.

Related: 8 Tiny Changes to Make Your Life 10 Times More Enjoyable

The power of habits

You’ve probably heard this so many times, but forming good habits is important. You can also develop new habits pretty quickly. I’m now starting to enjoy going to bed “early,” and I’m in the habit of waking up early.

James Clear‘s book Atomic Habits says this about forming habits:

1. Make it obvious: Set clear cues for your desired habits.

2. Make it attractive: Pair habits you need to do with habits you want to do.

3. Make it easy: Reduce friction for good habits and increase it for bad ones.

4. Make it satisfying: Create immediate rewards for completing your habits.

5. Use the two-minute rule: Scale down your habits to tasks that take two minutes or less to start.

6. Use habit stacking: Link a new habit to an existing one.

7. Focus on systems over goals: Concentrate on the processes that lead to results.

8. Use habit tracking: Measure your progress to maintain motivation.

9. Never miss twice: If you slip up, get back on track immediately.

10. Shape your environment: Surround yourself with cues that promote good habits.

Communication

It’s so important to communicate with your spouse, close family members and friends about your priorities and habits.

When they know what’s important to you, a good friend or caring family will respect what you’re trying to do. Now that they know what habits are important to you and why, they won’t force you to do things that go against your lifestyle.

When you fail

You will fail on the journey to create better habits for your life. You’re only human. As you start out, you might fail often. But as the habit gets stronger and more routine, you’ll find yourself being more consistent with it.

In fact, you’ll find that you begin to LIKE the habit you’re doing and it becomes second nature to you.

Related: 9 Ways to Actually Adopt the Better Habits You Know Will Help You Succeed

So, let’s summarize

I wanted to be better at doing several things that were important to me for my daily morning routine. “Reverse engineering” why those things weren’t getting done helped me realize what the problem was.

Being able to prioritize and community with my wife was the key to now living a much more balanced life.

Let’s apply this to you

Do you find yourself always pleasing other people?

Are you putting yourself last and feeling busy and unfulfilled?

Do you find your day goes by so fast and you’re tired and a bit annoyed?

Does everyone else seem to get the most out of you and there’s nothing left for yourself?

You don’t have to be in that rut. Do what I did. Prioritize what’s important to you. Know what you really, really want. It’s okay to put yourself first so you can show up as the best version of yourself for others.

Entrepreneurs are busy. Often too busy for their own good or at least the good of their legacy. You’re likely very dialed into your balance sheet and P&L, but what about estate planning?

Procrastinating on estate planning can become a hidden cost for successful entrepreneurs, and the solution is available to you regardless of how young you or your company are today.

If you have seen the musical “Rent,” you likely hum along to the very memorable “Season of Love” song that reminds us that there are 525,600 minutes in a year. Each minute matters when you have a valuable business. Think of the cost of procrastination as a measure of the growing estate tax liability that can become an obligation that your family bears and one that impacts your ability to leave a legacy.

To put it into perspective, assume a $50 million net worth that grows at 7.2%. The additional estate tax over ten years is approximately $20 million. This translates into an increased liability averaging $166,667 per month. A net worth of $100 million becomes $333,334 per month. Tick, tick, tick…

Related: 4 Things to Know About Credit Financing Your Business Following the ‘Fed Pivot’

The hidden liability that is estate tax

The problem for business owners, in particular, is that estate tax can be a “hidden liability,” as it is an obligation the family pays directly in cash to the IRS when you are gone. We call it hidden because this liability has an unknown due date and amount.

If you are your lender’s CFO or an underwriter, the liability can be hidden because it is an estate and family planning issue versus a direct company obligation. But if most of your net worth is tied up in the business or other illiquid assets like real estate, it is no longer hidden when millions of dollars come due. Thus, the tick, tick, tick becomes “BOOM!”

For a private business owner, how this is handled can mean the difference between gaining and sustaining a competitive advantage for your business and heirs and losing it.

For example, for a business owner with a $75 million net worth today, you will need to answer: How do you pay $20 million in taxes in cash to the IRS and still compete in your industry segment? No business owner wants to sell their business to pay the estate tax liability.

Related: 7 Advanced Tax Strategies for the Self-Employed

Properly position for a zero estate tax plan

Conversely, proper planning and positioning can actually provide an opportunity to enhance your long-term competitive position. The estate tax is the only “voluntary tax” you get. You may know it as a “zero estate tax plan,” – and relative to your competitors who may not have a strong plan, it can be a strategy to position your business for enduring success.

By the way, if you are over 55, the cost of “funding away” the problem with life insurance is not feasible. The cost of insurance becomes prohibitively expensive with each passing year, or worse, it could become unavailable to you due to health issues that may impact your ability to secure adequate coverage.

Know and avoid this worst-case scenario

If you need an additional incentive to consider your estate tax plan now, even if you’re not over age 55 and are in excellent health, consider the impact your unexpected demise could have on your estate based on timing alone.

We know that most industries – and the companies that make up an industry – go through significant business and economic cycles, typically every 4-6 years. Imagine a scenario where the business owner dies at the business cycle’s peak, which establishes the amount due as an estate tax.

Because the wealth is tied up in an illiquid asset (the business), it takes several months up to a few years to sell the company to pay the estate taxes. Unfortunately, a down business cycle soon after the death pulls the value of the business south. Essentially, the untimely death of the business owner positioned the otherwise healthy business for a fire sale simply to pay the estate taxes.

Related: 3 Smart Ways Entrepreneurs Can Make Tax-Efficient Investment Decisions

Strategically plan your beneficiaries to eliminate estate tax

In my business, we like to say that there are only three beneficiaries when it comes to your estate: the IRS, family, and charity. Potentially, your employees can become a fourth beneficiary, but again, without a plan, that’s an unlikely outcome. Thus, “planning away” the problem becomes the most effective way to minimize or eliminate estate tax consequences.

It is possible to strategically position your estate and redirect the IRS estate tax to the other beneficiaries. Rather than 60% family and 40% IRS, a good plan can make it closer to 75% family and 25% to charities or other beneficiaries.

Related: Capital Gains Tax on Real Estate: Here’s What You Need To Know

Create a SMART plan to preserve family harmony

Have you ever heard someone complain, “My parents built a great business, but my brother ran it into the ground.” The reality likely was that the brother couldn’t overcome paying the IRS roughly 50% of the value of the business to the IRS while fighting to keep the business competitive. So, it’s not just the money that stings due to poor planning; the fighting and litigation risk among family members can ensue. The business succession and estate planning work must be done to create an efficient and harmonious transition. It is a SMART (Save Money And Reduce Tensions) wealth transition plan.

There’s some urgency attached to this task beyond untimely events. The impending expiration of current estate tax laws at the end of 2025 will worsen the burden. You have a good time horizon to work with if you start now and give a few hours to converting a growing estate tax liability into a multi-generational asset for the family and your community. Start by asking your peers or advisors for their perspectives and who you might invite onto your team to help you create a plan that sets you and your legacy up for success.

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Crafting an investment teaser for your business each year might seem premature if selling isn’t even on the radar yet. But this important forward-looking exercise does a lot more than prepare your business for an eventual investment or sale. It helps business owners visualize the pitch they would have to be able to give to achieve the business valuation of their dreams. The gap between what you would like to say and what you can credibly say is exactly where to focus your next frenzied period of energy and investment.

My partner and I learned this the hard way. We sold two consulting firms about ten years apart. The first was to a strategic buyer at the lower end of the cash flow multiple range, while the second was to a private equity buyer at the higher end of the revenue multiple range. Yes, the market conditions were a little better the second time around. But the real difference was that we started focusing on how to maximize our exit multiple on day one. We kept a rolling sales sheet in our heads at all times, and were constantly rethinking investments that didn’t pass the sales sheet “smell test.”

To get started with your first business teaser, put yourself in the right mindset. Remember, you are writing a forward-looking elevator sales pitch for your company aimed at getting an investment or strategic buyer to chomp at the bit. Visualize bounding into the tenth VC conference room of the day, rattling off the perfect narrative to an awed audience. This should include a deck chock-full of data and trend analysis with recent financial results that make it clear your business thesis is spot on.

Related: Selling a Business Starts on Day 1: Here’s What Founders Need to Know

Total addressable market

Every good pitch starts with the total addressable market (TAM) discussion. You want to be able to showcase the team cherry-picked the fastest growing part of the addressable market in a highly disciplined way. You should have gained plenty of insights during the launch phase to more narrowly tailor this market and make the case for what products and services deserved the highest level of investment. If you don’t have those insights at your fingertips, this is the place to start.

In our first business, investors yawned during the TAM discussion. We had only two entry points into a public company to buy our expensive consulting services. To make it worse, the number of public companies was in a slow state of decline. Not exactly a growth industry, even though we had grown revenue in excess of 30% annually for several years. In Business #2, we tweaked our service offering to support expanding our TAM from two business titles to eight, expanding our TAM nearly three-fold to $1 billion.

Growth strategy

The next section should cover the growth strategy. List and prioritize the business’s most important growth levers. Think of two or three home-run ideas that will really get the buyers nodding, not 12 weak singles. If your list is long and still feels a little like throwing darts at the wall, start narrowing. This is critical because you are going to swing for the fences with these by directing nearly all of your valuable business investments there.

In our first business, we focused on a land and expand strategy. We made significant investments in external salespeople, custom marketing tools and company-sponsored networking events. It worked. We attracted a few large clients who provided the base of a referral network that is still feeding us today. The downside? It made scaling expensive, and introductory sales meetings became our total existence.

Business #2 had far lower customer acquisition costs, which investors loved. We cracked the code on using thought leadership to open doors with potential clients and kept fine-tuning what they were most likely to read (real-world how to’s rather than deep strategic musings) to continuously improve our chances. The majority of our marketing money went to web-based marketing to get more eyeballs on our thought leadership. Margins were higher, and we built more inroads into potential clients than simply cold sales leads.

Related: The How-To: Building An Exit Strategy For Your Business (Even Before You Start)

Financial model

The last and arguably most important portion of the sell sheet is the financial model. The model needs to showcase the key metrics that translate great ideas into profits. Before you lead with whatever is the best metric in your operating deck, gather some industry intelligence on the industry metrics that matter most right now. Don’t try and do this in a vacuum. Reach out to recent industry sellers to ask their single most important financial decision. Figure out what multiple businesses are selling at and what metrics drove their company’s actual selling price. If those metrics don’t show your business story in a good light, you may have to make real changes in investment spending, operating expenses or pricing model.

Business #2 had very low overhead expenses as we spent less on office space and geographic expansion, and more on automation tools. It helped that this was during the pandemic, and our public company clients better understood the lack of a glitzy corporate headquarters. Expenses were lower, and excess cash flow was spent in a very surgical marketing campaign. We maximized our cash flow and margins, and as a result, more than doubled in two years the money that went into our pocket from a sale.

It may be years before you sell your business, but the discipline of annually writing your own investment teaser can be an important factor in effective investment decision-making. Picture standing before seasoned investors, articulating how your business strategy and concentrated investments are delivering unrivaled growth opportunities. By prioritizing clear, compelling growth strategies and aligning investments directly with them, you position your business not just as a contender, but as an irresistible opportunity.

Related: 6 Proven Ways to Sell Your Business for 10x or More