JPAbusiness

The annual business planning process should address three critical questions about your business:

1. Where is the business now?
2. Where do we want the business to be in the future?
3. How are we going to marshal the resources we have, and which we can influence, to get there?

In this video I list four aspects of your business which you need to consider during the annual business planning process – Operational, Financial, Risks, People management – and drill down a little into some issues you should cover under each of those four elements.

Topics: Business Planning, Video, business advice, Business advisor, James Price, strategic planning, annual business plan, Parramatta, Orange NSW

Buying a business is a major investment and it can also be a very time-consuming activity.

In this video James explains how the Buying a Business Planning Sheet can help save time and also give direction to your purchase planning.

Topics: Buying a business, Business Planning, Template, Video, business advice, Parramatta, Orange NSW

Valuations are extremely useful management tools for business owners looking to maximise their current business performance and long-term value.

A valuation can help you identify what you are currently doing that is:

a) adding to your business value, and

b) detracting from that value.

My advice is that, if your business is greater than five years old, you should have it valued on a reasonably regular basis, say every 2–3 years depending on your growth track and the external environment the business is experiencing.

Topics: Business Value, Advice, Valuations, Video, business advice, business management, market appraisal, Parramatta, Orange NSW

It’s not uncommon for people to present really well in a job interview, be offered the position and then later be found ‘wanting’ when it comes to fulfilling the particular role they’ve been recruited for.

Similarly, there are many people who don't present well in interviews and subsequently miss out on jobs, who actually have a lot of substance in practice and would be valuable team members.

So how do we take the emotion out of the recruitment process and minimise the impact of our own biases and prejudices when dealing with these different personality types? 

In this video I'm sharing 4 tips to help remove that bias from the hiring process.

Topics: infographic, Video, business advice, Business advisor, staff recruitment, hiring staff, James Price, Parramatta, Orange NSW

Great staff are critical to our success as business owners and managers, but finding and keeping the right people is an ongoing challenge for many businesses.

Unfortunately we can't conjure appropriately trained staff out of the air for our clients and subscribers, but we can provide advice to make the recruitment process as successful as possible.

In this video I outline our 7 'golden rules' for successful hiring.

Topics: Employment and recruitment, Advice, infographic, cheat sheet, Video, staff management, Business advisor, staff recruitment, hiring staff

When hiring new staff there are a number of issues that need to be dealt with by a business owner or senior manager before a recruitment interview process begins. It’s much harder to retrofit this important information into a recruitment process after the fact.

In the following video I list 3 key tasks you should undertake before you begin the interview process.

Topics: infographic, Video, staff management, business advice, Business advisor, staff recruitment, hiring staff

The simple answer is ‘no’, you don’t need a valuation to sell a business.

However, in terms of engaging JPAbusiness to sell your business, the answer is ‘yes’: we always recommend clients have their businesses independently and professionally valued before they invest time and money in a sale process.

In this week's video I explain how our first experience of helping a client sell their business – combined with our many years of subsequent experience – has shaped this philosophy regarding valuation and its role in a successful sale process.

Topics: Video, business advice, selling a business, Business valuation, Parramatta, Orange NSW

When it comes to valuing businesses – listed or private – you will often hear people refer to ‘rules of thumb’. 

Some will say the value of a business is:

• ‘x times its revenue’ or
• ‘x multiples of its earnings’ or
• ‘a function of its after-tax profit’ or
• ‘a function of its gross profit’ and so on.

These ‘rules of thumb’ tend to be industry based i.e. “a business in Industry A is worth ‘x’ times multiple of earnings” while “a business in Industry B is worth ‘x’ times revenue”. (I won’t repeat the actual ‘rules’ I’ve heard – I don’t want to encourage anyone to use them!) 

In this week's video I provide a practical example which illustrates why relying on rules of thumb is too simplistic when valuing complex businesses.

Topics: Business Value, Video, business advice, Business valuation, Business advisor, business valuer, JPAbusiness, Parramatta, Orange NSW

We have helped some clients find the right business within six months while, for other clients, it has taken over three years.

The key phrase is ‘the right business’; I’m sure we could speed up the process if our aim was just to help our clients buy ‘a’ business, but that’s not our job.

In this video I explain why it's important not to rush into buying a business, and share four tips for managing risk during the business buying process.

Topics: Buying a business, Video, business advice, Business valuation, Business advisor, vendor due diligence, Parramatta, Orange NSW

Our guiding principle is that open and transparent communication with your staff is always a positive thing.

However, this is complicated by the fact selling a business is a sensitive issue and disclosing the fact it’s for sale can be detrimental to a business’ operations.

A pending sale can unsettle your team and, if it gets out in the market, it can cause difficulty with clients or suppliers.

In this video I share some strategies for sharing business sale plans with key staff:

Topics: Video, staff management, business advice, selling a business, business basics, Parramatta, Orange NSW