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Since 1996, Lisa Kipps Brown has had a passion for helping small businesses. Her company creates web strategies for small business owners. She helps them grow, scale, and even sell their businesses.

We recently sat down with her on The Inner Edison Podcast to talk about her book, Boomer Cashout. It shares secrets to help aging entrepreneurs sell their businesses when they retire.

Lisa shared how she helps scale, automate, and sell businesses for retirees. Read on to discover some of her strategies.

The Problem

So many aging entrepreneurs set up their businesses before the internet. They have a proven system that worked for them before the internet, and they don’t change it much.

“That’s a problem,” says Lisa. Many aging entrepreneurs have a website, but they don’t use it in a strategic way—as an asset.

Another problem she sees is that people build their businesses around themselves. That makes them impossible to sell when it comes to retirement. “Only a third of businesses ever sell. The rest close down.”

She explains that most business owners have their wealth tied up in their business. If they can’t sell it, “that’s lost wealth” that they could have in retirement.

When You Should Start Thinking About Selling

Lisa believes you should start your business with the intent to sell it one day. Thinking of your business as an asset helps you find ways to make it a profitable business to sell.

You should answer these questions:

• Why would someone buy your business over starting their own?
• What systems and processes in your business can someone copy?

By having a goal in mind, you can structure your business for the day when you sell it.

The Process

You need systems and processes to grow, scale and sell for retirement.

Lisa suggests writing a document of everything you do in your business and how it’s done. She states it’s best to make it an organic document that you can add to and revise.

That provides ways for others to copy your model. If you have a business that’s easy to copy, you have a business that’s easy to sell.

She advocates that you find ways to:

• Create systems that are easy to copy
• Automate areas of that business don’t need you
• Refine your systems and processes

By refining your systems and processes, you make them easier to copy. That way, you’ll be in the third of businesses ready to sell at retirement.

The Sale

While the sale is important for retirement, it’s also about creating a lifestyle. What lifestyle do you want in your retirement?

That will change the goal of how much you need from your business, right? Will you stay local and help raise your grandkids? Will you travel and check off your bucket list?

These are two very different goals. Think about what your retirement looks like?

That helps you understand why you’re growing your business. It also provides insight into how big it needs to be before you sell it.

Like every goal, you can reverse engineer it. Use your retirement as a guidepost. That will help you make decisions about your growth strategy.

Looking to Retire Your Business?

Selling your business can be difficult. It comes with many financial and emotional challenges. If you’re looking to retire your business, pick up a copy of Boomer Cashout for added insight.

Need more help? Contact Lisa for coaching and advice. She loves to help small business owners realize their dreams.

We hope you liked this article and found it helpful. Using some of the strategies laid out here can help you think about your retirement.

Looking for more great content? Be sure to tune into The Inner Edison Podcast for more on business, entrepreneurism, and more.