Mostly what I talk about with business owners is regaining control of their time, their life, and their goals: i.e., owning their business instead of it owning them. But there is another aspect that is also critical to reducing the stress and turbulence of ownership: having adequate books, records, and licenses.

One in five owners I have met with turned out not to be the owners of their own business, technically speaking, because their corporate registrations or their business licenses were not in order. A couple were operating without all the required licenses and could have been shut down at any minute.

It might sound like just paperwork but they ended up putting decent sales contracts in jeopardy. One had to pay off someone who had picked up their business name after they had allowed it to lapse. More than one had to deal with people using “their” name or something very similar as a website domain name. I did not have this problem but there are owners who have lost control of their business or its assets because someone took over control of the lapsed business registration, reinstated it, and acquired legal title to their assets.

Clearing obstacles that will make it impossible to sell your business in the future and might force it to stop operating tomorrow if you got audited is an early step in the Business Value Booster Method. Most of these steps cost little to do (until it is too late to do anything). DM me to see how you can take the first steps.