Your Path to Doubling Your Business's Value: What is Holding You Back and How to Change It

By Markus Mueller

Are you a business owner who feels stuck IN your business? 

Are you dissatisfied with the performance of your business and want to improve it? 

Do you eventually want to sell but NOT leave money on the table?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Kulm LLC
• Release date: Jan 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9798989634118

Markus Mueller

Markus Mueller, the author of Your Path to DOUBLING Your Business's Value-What is Holding You Back and How to Change It, shares with business owners his recipe for increasing the value of almost any business beyond the owner's imagination through a systematic process. There are no shortcuts or magic bullets, but instead, sound guidance informed by Mueller's own successes and failures. A successful entrepreneur, angel investor, consultant, corporate executive, and board member, Markus Mueller believes that the owners of most small to medium-sized businesses can at least double the value of their businesses through working on the business instead of in the business. Executing a proven process will unlock the hidden value of the business and liberate the owner. Markus Mueller lives in Seattle and in Interlaken (Switzerland), has business interests in the USA and in Switzerland, and earned an MBA from the University of North Florida, a PhD in Applied Management & Decision Science from Walden University, and a post-graduate certificate from Harvard University. His mission is to help small to medium-sized businesses owners exceed their value goals. You can contact Markus Mueller at [e-mail]

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Your Path to Doubling Your Business’s Value

YOUR PATH TO DOUBLING YOUR BUSINESS’S VALUE

WHAT IS HOLDING YOU BACK AND HOW TO CHANGE IT

MARKUS MUELLER, PH.D., MBA

NEW KULM LLC

Copyright © 2024 by Markus Mueller, Ph.D., MBA

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Published by New Kulm LLC

ISBN (paperback): 979-8-9896341-0-1

ISBN (ebook): 979-8-9896341-1-8

Book design and production by www.AuthorSuccess.com

This book is for all business owners, small to large, who deliver valuable products and services to consumers and other businesses. These owners have overcome economic cycles, managed through adversity, created jobs, and consistently provide the fuel for our economy.

It is for those who agonize over the next business decision, cashflow shortage, staff shortages, personal health issues, family matters but keep going.

I dedicate this book to you. Thank you and may you continue to beat the odds.

CONTENTS

Introduction

I. Your Starting Point

1. Defining the Value of Your Business and Why it Matters

2. What is the Value of Your Business Today?

II. Your End Point Should be Double the Current Value of Your Business

3. The Elephant in the Room—Are You Ready to Change?

4. How to Validate Whether Your End Point Is Realistic

III. Your Path from the Starting to the End Point

5. Options to Get You from the Starting to End Point

6. Validate Whether Your Preferred Options Are Realistic

7. Execute the Change Options

IV. Emergency Tool Kit for When Things go Wrong

8. How to Get Back on Track After Missing Milestones

9. How to Overcome a Business Crisis

10. How to Recover from an Unexpected Personal Crisis

V. After You Have Doubled the Value of Your Business, What Comes Next?

11. Put Yourself First—What are Your Preferences?

12. Collect Your Rewards and Celebrate

Conclusions: Final Thoughts — Do You Want More?

Resource Section

Acknowledgment and Thank You

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

If you are a business owner or you are planning to be a business owner and you want to agonize over staffing issues, unreasonable customers, how to make the next payroll, how to fund an expansion, or whether or not to expand the business; if you are looking for tips about how to survive the next virus, recession, or other calamities, how to exit the business, and what to do after you exit the business—this book is not for you!

On the other hand, if you want to be a business owner largely free of anxiety (at least from business reasons), with a sense of calm because you have a solid strategic plan that can be changed when necessary, are committed to implementing the plan, and want to at least DOUBLE the value of your business, then this book is for you.

How do I know? After years of business ownership, worrying about everything, dealing with crisis after crisis, with no time to reflect (at least I thought so), and feeling like the hamster on the wheel, I am finally recovering! The process is not complete and likely will never be perfect, but things are moving in the right direction. My day is not consumed by operational crisis after crisis, I am working mostly on the business instead of in the business, and I am enjoying what I am doing. What a change! I am convinced that you can have the same experience.

My hope is that by sharing my stories and the lessons I’ve learned through the course of my thirty-plus years of acquiring, building, running, and selling businesses, I will save you from enduring many hours of unnecessary stress, costly mistakes, wrong turns, and disappointments. Follow the process I recommend in this book and you will never look back.

Business ownership is a complex process that is multifaceted, intertwined, and frustrating, but also rewarding. Where else can you directly experience the economy at work, human behavior at its best and worst, grow from mastering management challenges, survive various business risks, and have some fun, sometimes all within the same day?

If you ask me, owning a business beats going to work as an employee of a company every day of the week. It is my preference and I arrived at this conclusion from my experiences both as an employee and as an owner. Now, I will admit that I learned invaluable lessons as an employee, and my then employer paid for the lessons, either voluntarily or involuntarily, that I applied later as an owner.

Here is a brief explanation of how I became an owner. It is personal and the path for you was or will be different. But you will likely recognize certain milestones or key events that sound familiar.

I grew up in a small village in Switzerland and bought my first bicycle with money saved from working in a shoe store and cutting the lawn of one of my teachers. After graduating from a business school in Zurich, I moved to the U.S., earned an MBA, and started my first job as general manager of a Union 76 truck stop. Talk about culture shock: the store was open 24/7, hired minimum wage employees, there was a high staff turnover, and they used all manual systems. But in that position, I also got the opportunity to sell a travel agency that the company owned, bought another truck stop, started a Michelin dealer franchise, and co-founded a commercial bank, all of this in four years. A detour to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida got me into health care administration. After leaving Blue Cross Blue Shield, I opened a consulting practice, started a third-party administrator (sold after six years to a publicly traded company), cofounded a physician management company in