New drawers, new liners, old stuff. Counter top appliances, cutting boards, trays, etc. Where does everything go? Do I really need a mini bunt pan stone? I’ve never used it. Or that tiny meat thermometer sheath, that I no longer own the thermometer for? No! So, this means, there is a time of readjustment to the new space. Time to decide what stays, and if it is staying, where it goes. One thing that made this easier for us is, when I packed up the kitchen, I put things  that we use all the time, in boxes together. And items we rarely or never use, I put in separate boxes, by themselves.

You want to make your business more valuable for the next owner? Start preparing the post-sale transition now. When the day comes to look at selling, your business will be easier for the buyer to see how the transition will happen and what to expect. That adds value.

If I had done this work all along, there would have been far less items in my kitchen that I was not using, less to pack up, and less work to put it back together. I would not have had to move that heavy mini bunt pan stone every time I wanted to get into my Pyrex pans. Sounds small, but these were buried in the back of a blind cupboard, that required contortionist abilities to get into. One time, I even hurt myself trying to get them out, and yet, I kept putting them away, because I kept holding on to what I had, even when it was not working for me.

Cleaning up your business now adds value to your business NOW, when you will benefit from it too. If you look at everything that goes into the process of preparing your business to Run Without You, your business will benefit now, long before you decide to sell.

“This article is 100% original content – The articles you read in this blog are created by Barb Stuhlemmer, not by AI.”

The post Anticipating the End is Not The Same As Being Done first appeared on Business Change Strategist.

• Growth beyond what you can do with your 24-hour day.
• Adding more revenue to your business.
• Discovering more opportunity and choice, to expand beyond your current focus.
• Creating sustainable and consistent business operations.
• Increasing the value of your business for the future.
• Building something you can sell.
• Attracting more buyers with the value and predictable income you create.

Buyers want to see a history of not only profit, but cash flow and growth opportunity. They want to be able to predict the future of the business, which is only really possible when they can see how successful it can run once you leave the company. This is success you cannot reach on your own. This is important because you cannot sell you.

Start now to remove yourself from the picture, so that one day, you are not the main asset in the business. Think of it this way. If your business is a structure, like a building, and you are the main load-bearing beam of the building, if you are removed, the structure is unsound, and will likely collapse. If you replace ‘you’ as the main beam, and everywhere you are holding up a structural wall, your building will stand when you are removed and it can continue to serve its clients, provide jobs, and contribute to the economy. Your legacy will continue.

“This article is 100% original content – The articles you read in this blog are created by Barb Stuhlemmer, not by AI.”

The post Still Doing It All Yourself Does NOT Equal Value first appeared on Business Change Strategist.

We’ve been planning for this for over 6 months. It was not just imagining the end result, it was looking at every aspect that will be affected by this change and determining how to manage that aspect, as we go through it. For instance, how are we managing a home with a kitchen that has no sink? No, I’m not doing dishes in the bathroom, although, if that was my only option, we’d make that work. We are fortunate enough to have a laundry room with a new sink, just off the kitchen. We moved all the cupboard contents into bins and kept the items that we use most often, separate so we can easily find them. We brought in a a small outside table to house a utensil carousel and just enough dishes to give one for each person. And, did I mention that there are 4 adults living in this home? The key process that is working so far, is ensuring that if we use it we wash it, immediately.

This is clearly not all the steps we’ve had to develop to make this plan work, but this one aspect will make or break our team (family in this case) if we cannot manage operations in the kitchen for 4 weeks.

This is the same for planning your succession. You cannot hope to sell your business and have it continue as it always has, without you.  You MUST prepare your business to operate differently without you. Depending on how reliant your business is on you for the operations, sales, and delivery of the services, will determine how long that will take. Removing you is like removing the sink from the kitchen. How does this business now work without its key utility? It could be months, but more likely years for you and your team to make the full adjustment from you being ‘The One’ to a business that someone else could easily take over.

For us, thankfully, we have many years of camping expertise under our belt, so we could utilize some of the process and skills we already had available to us, and it is working. And, in four weeks, we will have a new kitchen, adding a huge amount of value to our home for future sale, plus enjoyable value now, for our own use.

Don’t SINK your business (I know – bad pun) because you think, “I’m not ready to exit yet”. Start the process now, and create value for your future sale, as well as value now, while you are still enjoying being the owner.

“This article is 100% original content – The articles you read in this blog are created by Barb Stuhlemmer, not by AI.”

The post Don’t Sink Your Business first appeared on Business Change Strategist.

Determining the value of the sale of a business is hard to do when you have not done anything to prepare the business to be sold. People often say to me, “I don’t think my business would be worth anything.” Again, without putting effort into preparing a business for your exit, there is likely little or no value in the business.

The price of sale relies heavily on the value of the business. The value of the business relies heavily on the items in the business that are easily transitioned to the next owner. Let’s look at three factors that can affect both your business growth and your future exit from your business.

1. Valuation

First, what is a “Small Business”?  The government of Canada uses this term to include any firm with less than 100 paid employees in the manufacturing sector and less than 50 paid employees in all other sectors. Other entities put different limiters on it. At our local Chamber, they describe small business as under $1,000,000 in annual revenues. This is a big discrepancy in definition as the difference between the annual revenue of a profitable, 99-employee manufacturing company and the annual revenue of a profitable, 10-employee online service-based business, would likely be multiple millions of dollars.

If your business is a service-based business with under 20 employees, and you have an annual revenue of under $1M, you likely don’t earn enough to cover the cost of your employees, let alone all the other expenses in the business.

It is more difficult for a small business to find a business valuer than it is for larger businesses. Companies like BDC and KPMG work with Small and Medium-sized Business (SMB), but they really work with the largest of small businesses, mainly because their own costs to do a valuation is often more than the sale would be worth to the seller. So, owners of smaller businesses need to find a different way to determine their business value.

Do This: Start by having your accountant calculate your EBITDA value. This is a measure of your company’s ability to make money and is a way to benchmark your business in its industry, so it can be easily compared to other equivalent type businesses. It is like a window into how well your business runs. It does not show if you are earning a profit, just that it is able to earn income.

2. Profit

Of course, a business that is making a profit will be more appealing to a buyer, as it gives them some idea how long it will take to earn back their investment. Ideally, it would be good for a buyer to be able to earn back their investment in as few years as possible. But, just because you have a profit now, does not make your business valuable unless there is a history of profit. With historical financial reporting showing a profit over many years, you are able to ensure a more accurate proforma prediction of future earnings.

Do This: Start now to create a business history that will best predict the future of the business profitability – Because, it takes more than 6 months to show 3 years of profit value in the company.

3. Other Factors

There are may other factors that can make your business more valuable or lest valuable to a buyer. One is ‘fit’.

Let’s say there is a business buyer, with a company that sells online training, and your company sells coaching programs that helps people learn new skills. The buyer may be more interested than others in your company, as your key service could add value to their service offerings.

Do This: Research what types of businesses are competitors, or closely aligned with your business industry, to determine who may be a good fit as a potential buyer. Then you can start determining the value to them.

Understanding how your business EBITDA compares to others like you, gives you a foundation for your selling price. Knowing how easily someone will be able to earn their money back, will give you the insight into what buyers may expect from the business, and knowing how your business aligns with the buyer, in the ‘other factors’ area, gives you an idea of who would more likely be interested in buying your business. All these factors lend to the value of the business in different ways.

Of course, price is not that simple. There are assets, systems, relationships, good will, and other factors, that can affect the value of your business. Starting with these three factors will give you an understanding of what your business value may be worth. The price is not just a number, it is how a buyer may perceive the value to align with their own investment needs.

Additional reading from BDC

• https://www.bdc.ca/en/articles-tools/start-buy-business/buy-business/how-value-business-youd-like-acquire
• https://www.bdc.ca/en/articles-tools/entrepreneur-toolkit/templates-business-guides/glossary/ebitda

This article is 100% original content – The articles you read in this blog are 100% created by Barb Stuhlemmer, not by AI. © 2026 Barb Stuhlemmer

The post Value Not Price first appeared on Business Change Strategist.

Then the woman leaned on the railing and looked around. She seemed calm and content. We looked around and admired the view too. A minute later, she picked up the bag and continued. A calm, measured pace.

What I didn’t tell you was this was the view from our room in Italy. The front door of the B&B we were in was 125 steps up from the road (about 9 flights). We had already walked up this staircase carrying our luggage. By the time we got to the door we were both out-of-breath and there was a lot of cussing going on.

The woman was not coming to our B&B, she was heading farther up the path to her home (we assumed). She had another 9 flights of stairs to go, or more. What we learned that day was, not everything is a race. She took regular stops, to ‘live the climb’, not just get through it. From our North American perspective, this seemed lazy. Get to your destination. Don’t doddle. You’ve got things to do. But, when we go through life without actually experiencing it, we miss living the purpose of our actions. Not everything is a task that must be completed this moment. Not every moment needs to be filled with your next step.

In business this translates to finding the moments where you can stop and enjoy the work you do. Appreciate your circumstances. Even when things are not going well, paying attention to what is going well, helps our minds manage the path forward with more ease, in a more calm, measured pace.

Don’t just do the things to get through it:

Make sure you are living the life, enjoying the view,

so you are NOT just climbing stairs.

NOTE: The image is the view from our B&B in Italy, 9 stories up from the road.

This article is 100% original content – The articles you read in this blog are 100% created by Barb Stuhlemmer, not by AI. © 2026 Barb Stuhlemmer

The post Life Learning from Nonna on the Stairs first appeared on Business Change Strategist.

Picture the start of a short-distance running event, like the 100 metre dash. The runners are lined up at the start line, waiting for their queue. Over the loud speaker comes a voice with a command to the Runners.

1. “On Your Mark” : Has the runners put their feet in to the starting blocks.
2. “Set” : Has the runners position themselves in their crouched stance, ready to spring forward.
3. GO! : The horn sounds and the race begins.

Being ready to start their race is an advantage to winning. Imagine another runner just standing, not in position, not ready to take that next step and pounce forward on the sound of the horn. Just because they are practiced and have qualified for their race, it is very unlikely they could win the race if they are not ready to run.

This is true for business growth as well.

When starting your business, and likely for many years after, you have been working to grow your business in different ways. You gathered all the information you needed, set up accounts, software, process, defined your product, hired, trained, developed marketing and markets, etc. Every new idea you came up with, every change in software, or update to your process, required a new readiness to happen. When you were ready to launch that new program, you had spent months working on getting all the pieces in place. When you were ready to take on more clients, beyond your own capacity to manage everything and everyone, you spent months, or more likely years to be ready.

Being ready makes the next step in growth possible.

People often say to me, “I’m not ready to think about leaving my business”, but the reality is, if you are ready, growth is possible, because preparing your business to run without you, also prepares your business to take on more.

But the opposite is not true. Just because you are growing, does not mean your business is ready for you to leave. Like the runner, in the analogy above, that had prepared to be in a race, was not ready to take the next step to pounce when the horn sounded. Being able grow your business does not ensure your business is ready to transition ownership.  But, being ready for sale or succession means you are in ‘THE’ race for your future.

• “On Your Mark” : Has the company positioned to be valuable enough for someone else to want to buy it.
• “Set” : Has the processes and systems in place to ensure the transition will happen smoothly, for the new owner, for your team, and for yourself.
• GO! : When you finally sign the deal, you be able to move forward with ease and confidence that you got what you needed from the sale, and you are getting what you need from the transition.

Don’t wait until you are too old, too tired, or too unwell to have your business ready for its next evolution and for your next adventure. Plan now to ensure you get what you need from both.

If you want to discuss your Business Readiness with Barb, book this free call.

This article is 100% original content – The articles you read in this blog are 100% created by Barb Stuhlemmer, not by AI. © 2026 Barb Stuhlemmer

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The post Ready Equals Growth : Not the Other Way Around first appeared on Business Change Strategist.

• what you have now
• what you want to have after the plan has been implemented
• how long the plan needs to take to implement
• the resources you will need to make it happen in that timeline

By resources, I mean the money, inventory, tools, time, and people, etc. The list of resources to implement any type of change will vary depending on the plan. One thing is sure, if there are people involved, one key resource you will need will be excellent management skills to ensure everyone is able to do what must get done to reach the goal of the plan.

You’ve implemented plans before. Getting clarity up front is great, but once you start moving the ‘change wagon’, sometimes it is hard to keep track of these roles. Having clarity on what people will be doing is key to making change happen smoothly.

Clarity in Roles

Here are some key steps to ensure the roles you assign for your plan will be effective.

1. Describe the Change Desired

This is the ‘something’ that you want to change. You need to clearly define what that is and why it is important.

For instance, let’s say you are going to have your key manager take over your role of overseeing all employee issues, so you can free yourself up to manage the growth planned for the future.

• You will need to start by defining what an ’employee issue’ is. In this example, you might only want to offload issues that employees have, not issues that you have with employees.
• Describe the challenges of managing these issues, for you, the business, and the employees. This will help you describe the problems you experience when employees bring their issues to you, in a way that the key manager will understand and be able to predict future cases.
• Define what you usually do and the resources you need to manage the challenge for the employee (e.g. time, Zoom, office space, permission to make certain decisions, etc.).

Before you bring in your key manager, you need to know exactly what you are wanting them to do.

2. Envision the Future of the Change

This is a picture of what the company will look like after the change has occurred.

In our example above, you may have envisioned not needing to deal with employee issues ever again – but is that totally realistic? Definitely not at first, as the key manager learns the boundaries of their decision making, and you learn how to let go of what you have always had control over.

There is more than one perspective in this ‘future’ vision: Your perspective, the key manager’s perspective, and that of the employee. You can start defining what that looks like, but then you will need to ask the other perspective holders what challenges they see with this change.

In our example, your key manager may see the vision as you do and is eager to take on the role. But maybe your employees are not comfortable bringing issues to your key manager. This feedback will only be known if they feel comfortable telling you that they are not comfortable telling them their issues. How will you know if this is a problem? You must have an open line of communications in your company, or at least to you directly, at this point, to learn of the roadblocks your plan may face. Troubleshooting potential problems up front, before you start the process of implementation, will help reduce the costs later. And, the cost of poor change implementation can be time, loss of good people, loss of clients, reduced quality of service, etc. You definitely want to do this work early, with open communications, and support from the people that will be affected by the change.

3. A Clear Path

In this stage you are creating the path that needs to be followed.

In our example, this will mean that everyone in the company will need to know what the planned change will look like, so they know if they have a part in that change implementation. Maybe you will roll it out in stages. The key here is that everyone affected by the change knows what the stages and timelines will be and what their role in the implementation will involve for them.

Possible stages in our change example:

• Initially you oversee the issue while the key manager follows along with the written procedure. NOTE:  if there is no written procedure (e.g. SOP) have the key manager write it out as they learn the process.
• Then let the key manager oversees the issues while you attend the interaction. Give good feedback on how they handled the response and check in with the employee to ensure they got what they needed. Quality at this point will ensure less conflict and misunderstandings later.
• Then let the key manager do the work and you check in regularly on results.

Ensure the timeline for the stages is known (in weeks, or maybe # of issues) before moving on to the next stage.

Implementation

Now you are ready to make the change and you can move into the implementation stage. Everyone affected by this change knows what to expect and when. They know their part in this change process and you know your part.

We’ll save the implementation stage process for another article.

This article is 100% original content – The articles you read in this blog are 100% created by Barb Stuhlemmer, not by AI. © 2026 Barb Stuhlemmer

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The post Roles Are Key Planning Resources first appeared on Business Change Strategist.

In research done by Environics [1], that I have quoted before, “36% [of Canadian Small Business owners] don’t plan to give up ownership until they are not well enough to manage their business.” This means that more than 1/3 of owners could, one day, not be able to run their companies, leaving their employees and families in a bind to try and figure out a make-shift succession plan. No one gets training that is needed. Control over bank accounts, relationships, leases, etc. including decision making, is left up in the air. The chaos of this transition time will make it impossible to ensure business continuity. This may cause the loss of sales, clients, other intangible assets to the company, like the skills, knowledge, and expertise of long time workers.

If you never think about what your succession looks like, you are leaving the future success of the company to chance.

It is reasonable to have a project you want to put in place, and to know it is not the right time to plan it. If this is true for your succession, don’t just say, some day, state the date. If you have an important project that you know will make a difference to your company, you make an effort to define when that will start. This is the same for your succession planning. The planning will allow you to evaluate your potential exit timeline and will help you define the implementation process used to get the business, and your people, ready to Run Without You.

If you set a timeline to prepare, you can ensure this important project happens on time, on budget, and be successful, like any other project. Otherwise, it will become a ‘never’ event.

The ultimate planning is to start with the end in mind. You have likely heard that before. Now is the best time. Whether you are hoping to retire in 3 years, sell in 10 years, or you’re new to your business success, you should be thinking about what your succession looks like. Succession planning takes knowledge of the future, for you and for the operations of your business. It requires decision making, to define what you are actually hoping to achieve, and then it takes implementation. It is a change transition, from how you are working now, to what your business needs to look like in the future, when it is successful enough for someone else to want to purchase it from you.

If you want value now for the future, you need to start now on your future. Don’t let succession be a later or never decision.

This article is 100% original content – The articles you read in this blog are 100% created by Barb Stuhlemmer, not by AI. © 2026 Barb Stuhlemmer

[1] https://environics.ca/investments-and-planning/four-in-ten-canadian-small-business-owners-are-uncertain-about-retirement/

The post Now, Later, or Never : When planning matters first appeared on Business Change Strategist.

This article came from a simple comparison that made me realize how often we start something that we think we will learn quickly and then realize that, over time, we settle into our learned skills and stop looking for the next step.

Keys to being a…

Like driving (and in life in general), as we get older, our experience adds a more mature view of how we manage our skills and learning. The challenge with this is, at some point in our life we need to say, I need to stop driving. At what time do we come to that realization? That we don’t need to drive as often? That driving seems more difficult, not as pleasurable, or simply overwhelming? Maybe we are no longer a competent driver and for the safety of others, we should get off the road.  Or maybe someone has realized this for us.

This is the same in your business. At what point do you say, “It’s time to leave,” and what does that mean for us and our business? If we have not prepared ahead of time, to have a business that can run without us, it means a really difficult transition for us, our people, our customers, and the business.

Learn to prepare yourself and your business for the future. Don’t wait until you have no options. No one wants to have the unfortunate experience of someone else telling us, “you are too dangerous to drive this company”.

Keep practicing. Keep learning. Keep evaluating your options. And keep making plans for the future. Just because you have built the business, doesn’t mean you can coast. You should always be making plans for what you want to happen, and prepare for any other unforeseen or unexpected possibilities that might happen in the future.

Future proof your business so it will have value now and in the future, without you at the helm.

This article is 100% original content – The articles you read in this blog are 100% created by Barb Stuhlemmer, not by AI. © 2026 Barb Stuhlemmer

The post The Driver’s License for Your Business first appeared on Business Change Strategist.

• Moving
• Getting a degree
• Getting married
• Having children

We simply get started and then deal with the challenges as they come.

Getting started and just dealing with challenges is not a good way to make a successful change. Successful transformation takes more than simply hoping you get to the end-point.

The transformation happens over time, during the implementation. It is not a trigger moment; you start and now the new process is in place, exactly the way you expected. Picture your moving day. There was a lot of planning that went into preparing for the moving day. All that preparation is part of the implementation. Getting boxes to put items in. Hiring a truck. Arranging for friends to help. Cleaning the new location before your move in, etc. Yes, the day after you move, you have technically ‘moved’, but there are still things to do: unpacking, moving your old life into a new space. It could be days, weeks, or months before the new place feels like home to you.

The Transformation Stage in EXIT Readiness

Making a transformation happen in your business not only takes planning and preparation, it takes days, weeks, or months to implement a change and make it feel like ‘home’ again, for you and your team. The new process needs to be known, understood, and expected, moving forward. The old work needs to be let go of.

During the transformation, some people will still use the old process. Some have not yet made the new process part of their daily expectations. These are indicators that the transformation is not yet complete. Everyone must know when the old process should be stopped and when the new should be used exclusively. Like the ‘moving day’ analogy, sometimes you still have things in boxes, some things are all ready in place, and some decision will still need to be made.

Transformation has three phases.

1. The way it was
2. The way it will be, but is not yet
3. The new way

The “Way it was” phase is where you were before you started the process of thinking about changing. Everyone is doing it the old way, and it is working the way it is expected. During this phase, people are learning the value of the change, understanding the reasons for changing, and are identifying their place in the upcoming change.

In the second phase, people, including you, are doing things differently, but it is not yet the new way. You are trying things out, checking in on how the changes are working by managing peoples’ expectations. You are motivating people to continue the change, encouraging them to bring ideas, and celebrating the wins. And you are measuring the ongoing quality of production and services offered.

The transformation is not complete until everyone is complete in their role in the change and you won’t know that if you are not regularly checking in with your team to manage, motivate, and measure the progress.

Transformation is not a plan that you simply set in motion. It is an entire process that you oversea, evaluate, and adjust as you go through the change, until the expected outcome is the ‘New Way’.

This article is 100% original content – The articles you read in this blog are 100% created by Barb Stuhlemmer, not by AI. © 2026 Barb Stuhlemmer

The post ‘T’ is for Transformation, And It Doesn’t Just Happen first appeared on Business Change Strategist.