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By John Warrilow  John Warrillow has started and exited four companies and is the author of Built to Sell: Creating a Business Than Can Thrive Without You. Dear John: I’ve decided to shut down my business. It’s just too time consuming, and I’m not earning a good enough living to compensate for the time it is taking to run. It’s not sellable because it is too dependent on me personally. Do you have any advice on salvaging some value from my business? It seems a shame to just walk away. —Cathy, Oakville, Ontario There is no shame is closing up a … Read more

By Richard Helling We recently sat down with a client and were going over the financial statements from the previous several years when we noticed something unusual. He had lost clients but had increased profitability. When we asked what he had to done to increase profitability while losing clients he simply replied that he had “let go of some dead weight.” While that is a relatively unusual way to look at clients, it is actually a great business tactic. His point was that regardless of how much business they bring, not all clients are worth the same. A client that … Read more

Editor’s note: This post is by Jeff Korhan, new media speaker, blogger and writer.  We think it is thought-provoking for those contemplating building the value of their businesses in anticipation of a sale sometime in the future.  Here is a link to his site JeffKorhan.com and the original version of this post. Today I read an interesting post by Robert Scoble about Yammer.  If you are not familiar with Yammer, it is almost exactly like Twitter – with the exception that its population of users is specific to one enterprise or corporation. In other words, Yammer is a private version … Read more