The 20/20 Solution - What is Your End Game?

A couple of quick notes – check out our news service from YouTube. This week we are featuring the true US monetary problems. My apologies to our non-American readers but given the size of the US economy, we want to supplement the main stream news services because they don't deal with the root cause behind issues. Additionally all developed and developing countries are experiencing the same problem; growing entitlement programs as reoccurring liabilities that eventually crowd out all other expenditures. As you review the YouTube segment, understand we are business scientists and economists – not politicians – and therefore take no position on who is in power, only their programs.

Additionally we are running a poll on two issues that will shape our next segment of Inc blogs – what is your end game for the business and what is its current growth stage – please take a couple of minutes and complete the polls in the left margin.

Now for this weeks topic – the 20/20 Solution

If you were a renegade from the corporate world before moving into the ranks of the self employed, you recognized this weeks advice on Inc. I was summarizing the techniques of lean manufacturing applied to startups and early growth stage companies. I will expand on those ideas over the next week.

The Poll and what it means?

How to grow your business is not a very difficult question to answer, the complication is What. Your decision on the end game is critical because it drives all other decisions about growth. As we discussed in an earlier blog, there are no right or wrong decisions - all the decisions are neutral until evaluated against your four general choices:

• Liquidate - at the end, you sell everything off and walk away
• Sell - you sell the existing business to new ownership
  
• Merge - another company purchases the business and merges it with an existing company
  
• Sustain - you intend to grow the business and hand it off to professional management; keeping it private or going public through an IPO
  

Given your decision on the end game, what are the factors to consider to establish a long term growth plan that maximizes your resource investment of time, energy, and money?

	Capital	Labor	Customers	Infrastructure	Core Issue
Liquidate	Create and hold cash	Outsource	Low investment High return	Minimal	Ease of disposal
Sell (Purchased as stand alone)	Invest in appreciating assets	Outsource	Low investment High return	Minimal	Balance sheet
Merge (Purchased to merge with existing business)	Invest in growth	Insource	Niche leader	Sufficient	Brand Customer base Infrastructure
Sustain (IPO or Privately Held)	Invest in growth	Insource	Market Leader	Robust	Brand Reinvention

We assembled our group of experts in the Angel Investment, Venture Capital, Mergers & Acquisition, and Brokerage disciplines to compile this chart. Tomorrows blog entry will detail of the categories and the rationale for each item. Please record any questions you have in the Comment Section or in the One2Many chat window.

Thanx and talk with you tomorrow.