Knowing your strengths and playing to your strengths. This adage stands the test of time. While some may first think of an athlete and playing to their natural strengths, this adage rings true to honing our skills, expertise, and talents in any profession.
Successful People Surround Themselves with Talent
Going alone is a lonely journey and an undertaking where one will certainly come across challenges where one’s experience, knowledge, and capabilities will be lacking. Successful people tend to surround themselves with talented people, people who have other areas of expertise, backgrounds, perspectives, experiences, and specialties. I see this regularly with my clients, owners of privately held businesses.
My Clients’ Strengths
I have had the honor of preparing business valuations for thousands of businesses throughout my career. The variety by business model, organizational structure, revenue, and number of employees have varied tremendously. Some clients are faced with a shareholder dispute, need a business valuation as part of a divorce or estate settlement, or are selling all or part of the business. For many of my clients, their need for a business valuation is entering unfamiliar territory. It is completely understandable that they don’t know what to expect, how it works, and what it entails. For anyone, this is not a comfortable situation as most of us do not like being in a situation where we don’t know what we don’t know.
As part of our initial conversation, my prospective client may have a lot of questions or very few as they don’t know what to ask.
From appliance distributors to trade contractors to farmers to fisherman, manufacturers and professional services firms, my clients easily and readily highlight their strengths during our initial conversation. They can readily share with me the essence of their business, key drivers, market positioning, challenges, summarize their customer or client base and highlight top level opportunities. They don’t need a playbook or reference manual to speak with confidence and clarity about their business.
That is not surprising, right? They are, in most cases, doing what they have trained or were educated to do, having honed their skills and expertise to play to their strengths and be their own boss.
As business owners, they have leaned on their own strengths and in most cases surrounded themselves with other talented professionals to survive tough times, hold their own or grow, meet payroll, support the local economy, serve their customer base, and support their families.
Their strengths are naturally conveyed as they talk about their business with ease.
Evaluating Me as a Business Appraiser – Why Pick Me?
In most cases, a prospective client has been referred to me by someone they trust. I have worked with clients who found my website in an online search and do not know me from Adam.
So how does that play out when they evaluate me as the potential business valuation professional to help them in whatever situation they need the valuation for?
Simply, I play to my strengths in our conversation. I don’t have a script or a spiel. I answer their questions and explain how I work, how I charge, and what my proven process is. We have a casual, friendly conversation. I could have this conversation in my sleep as I am speaking about what I do every day and share what I have been doing for many years. I don’t veer off into other lanes. I am a certified business appraiser with the highest certifications available to best serve my clients. I am not a part-time accountant or CPA. This is what I do and all I do. I am a specialist and these are my strengths.
During this conversation, I am often asked, have you prepared a valuation for fill in the blank industry. I explain that my objective, detailed process is applied the same for valuing a farm as it is for valuing land full of minerals in North Dakota or for a rental shop in Hawaii. How I do what I do matters. But, neither the industry nor the trigger for needing the valuation (e.g., sale, shareholder dispute, divorce settlement) matters.
I am not selling during these initial conversations. I am explaining what I do and how I do it and confidently sharing my experience, the expertise I have and am offering that to privately held business owners to help them.
Conclusion
Playing to one’s strengths feels good. When we are in this mode, it feels like beast mode, we are confident, focused, and highly competent. We are not over our skis or outside our lane of expertise. We not only know what our strengths are, we are putting them to good use. We feel centered and confident, and intentions are on sharing our strengths for the benefit of others.
As a business owner, when you need a service such as a business appraisal, a service that may be new to you or unsure how to evaluate your options, it may feel like you don’t have the skills to effectively evaluate your options. I would propose that you have precisely the skills to evaluate a potential professional: Do you feel a sense of rapport? Do you trust the professional? Do they present their services clearly and logically? Do they answer your questions? Are they proven in their profession?
Owners of privately held businesses have many strengths to build on and that will serve them well in surrounding them with the right expertise to help them achieve their goals whether it is for marketing, sales, running operations, hiring an attorney, or securing a business appraisal professional. We are all best served playing to our strengths and when in doubt, rely on others you trust to bring their strong suits to the table.
For decades, I have honed my specialization in preparing detailed, thorough and objective business valuations. Over the years, I have appeared in court to explain the process, the rationale, and the logic to how I answer how the business valuation was determined and why the valuation is substantiated. I have been deposed, cross-examined, and questioned in detail about specific charts and tables in detailed valuation reports that are often over 100 pages in length.
Playing to our individual strengths feels good. Plus, at the end of the day, it is what helps others.
