Page 68 - Paulisms: Gold Nuggets for Small Business

The other important thing to remember is to factor into your cash flow if there are three pay days in the month if you are paying fortnightly.
It is all about considering the number of days in your figures, as it is significant. If you allow for this, it is a sign you actually have good financial control of your business.
Paulism: The number of actual working days in a month can dramatically affect your turnover, profitability and cash flow and needs to be allowed for.
3.1.6 Have your business ready to sell tomorrow
In my first twenty years in business, I ran it a bit like a ‘ma and pa business’, meaning it wasn’t as corporate as it needed to be and the accounting was poor. In saying poor, poor by my standards, but still superior to most. Yes, it was a great business and doing well, but the owner (me) was too involved in it. It was set up that I could go away regularly, but was still too reliant on me.
I was getting older and I had to start thinking about succession. My children had been in the business, but they had started families or moved on to other careers, so I needed to think succession. I reviewed my goals regularly. I wanted to retire on a passive income so I was set up for the rest of my life, and selling the business was part of that equation. I started to groom the business for selling.
Out of the blue, a prominent company in our industry approached us. I was a lamb to the slaughter. They were majority owned by an equity