A long time ago, a very successful factory owner with a wonderful product told me that the secret to his success was not attributable so much to his product as to his record keeping and accounting.
So before we move on to the rest of the Prepare Your Business For Sale series, I want you to find yourself a good quality lever arch type file, a new pack of file dividers, and a safe place to keep it.
Once you have that physically in place, you should create a new folder on your computer’s desk top. Call it “PYBFS”, and password protect it.
Consider your lever arch file and where you intend to keep it. You need a balance between security and safety, and ease of access. Call it something appropriate, so that in the event of you not being available to hand it to a suitable business transfer intermediary, it will be identified!
“Security and safety” because some fairly confidential information is going to go into that file, and depending on your circumstances, you may want to give no hint to staff that you are preparing your business for sale. It is possible that they will take it the wrong way. After all, how are they to know that you are preparing for a possible event, and not an imminent one? At the same time, you want this file in a place where you have ready access to it, are reminded to update it every month, but most importantly where your loved ones will find it in the event of an unfortunate event.
With regard to the folder on the desk top, let your spouse / partner / significant other / someone… know that it is there, and tell them what the password is! You may want to consider making it a shared folder in Dropbox, GoogleDrive, Box, OneDrive or whatever your level 1 backup system is. You don’t have one? We should talk!
In addition, have access details for both your lever arch file and your computer folder placed in your will…. Ouch! That struck a note, didn’t it?
Well contrary to your current mindset, you are not immortal, even the more so for the fact that you feel that an annual medical checkup is not necessary.
Next we’ll look at what we’re going to put into the file and folder.