Client called the office today to ask what we had put in his financial plan as the sale value of his business. He couldn’t remember but had been offered £500,000. Having quickly updated his model we identified that he could sell providing he worked in the new company for 5 years (which he was planning to do) and didn’t buy a £1mill property in Spain!
Having agreed that the property wasn’t really an objective more a ‘if I had money to burn’ suggestion he and his accountant have gone ahead to make that deal.
What is special about that, you might say. The answer is that rather than focusing on what he thought the business was worth (everyone thinks their business is worth more than any potential purchaser thinks…) he focused on what he needed to live the life that he and his wife wanted (excluding buying most of the available property on the Costa Del Sol) and is doing the deal on that basis.