This Way Out
Fast Forward Your Exit on Your Terms

Do you intend to sell/scale your business in the next 3-5 years? Will you be one of the 5% prepared to successfully exit and transition to your reinvention — or not?

This Way Out is a half-day seminar presenting the overriding challenges CEOs must confront if they expect to cash out a private business.

You’ll leave this full morning session knowing:

• 7 core questions to prepare to exit your business
• Your readiness score to sell/scale your business
• 10 key questions about succession to ask now
• A range of exit options to explore
• Exit Criteria, Exit Planning and Exit Strategy Stages
• Timeline incentives for maximum valuation
• Transition to Reinvention criteria and parameters

Our guest speakers will provide real-life case studies of what worked and didn’t work as they moved through their exit process.

Kerri Salls, exit strategist, speaker, writer, MBA and CEO of Breakthrough Enterprise LLC will present This Way Out at the Sheraton Tara in Framingham, Ma on Tuesday, May 15.

Join us for the crucial content you need to shape your decisions and timeline to achieve your exit and reinvention.

Learn how you can exit your business on your terms, on your timeline. Register for $47. [Special 2 for 1 offer]

Who Should Attend

Established Business Owners of privately held firms who are exploring when and how to exit their own business

Expert Advisors who assist business owners to sell or scale their business

In addition, you’ll learn what nobody is talking about that you need to know now…

^*12:30p BONUS Session: Early/Late Exit Timing Tradeoffs

Register here.

Title: StepUp Vu
Location: Walpole, Ma
Link out: Click here
Description: Guest speaker for this semester-long high school entrepreneurship program. Presenting a case study.
Start Time: 02:00:00
Date: 2010-12-02
End Time: 04:00:00

These three International Marketing Mentors: Debbie Allen, Marie O’Riordan and Tracy Repchuk are on fire.

Time management is a key discipline for running any business. It’s so easy to get pulled into doing the easy tasks or the quick tasks first. From there, it’s a small step to letting things become a crisis before you handle them. One of the first places we get bogged down is with email.

We are all on email overload. Even with spam filters and junk mail folders, we get far more email than anyone has time to read or respond to. Letting prime business hours be consumed with email is a clear sign of procrastination, avoidance and even resistance to working on the day’s TODO list.

Use the following strategies to manage time, get organized, and keep digital messages from crowding out important tasks that need to get done.

Email vs. Telephone
Email and the telephone (or IM) are not always interchangeable. There’s a simple rule about when to use email and when to use the telephone. Use email to share information or distribute information. Use the telephone if you seek an answer, a decision or a discussion.

Limit Messages
The fewer email messages that come in, the fewer you have to deal with.

• Set e-mail software filters for messages you want to receive, but don’t need to read right away. They will automatically be archived or moved to a folder you designate. To set up a filter in MS Outlook, go to “Rules and Alerts”. In the Tools menu; in Gmail, click “Settings” (at the top right of your screen), then the “Filters” tab.
• Mark unwanted e-mails as spam. Future messages from the same sender will go directly to your junk-mail folder. Don’t read them there either.
• Use a hosted e-mail-filtering program to limit access to your inbox. Programs, such as ChoiceMail, automatically approve e-mails from only the senders you know and trust. They include: SpamEater Pro, CA Anti-Spam Plus, SPAMfighter, ChoiceMail One, Spam Killer, Spam buster, SpamNet, Spam Agent, iHateSpam, MailWasher Pro. Unapproved senders are blocked. Here’s a review of some of them..

Manage Messages You Do Receive

• Resist opening e-mails first thing in the morning. This is a reactive, not a pro-active way to start the day. Your priority list comes first.
• Don’t allow others to set your agenda. Set a schedule to attend to e-mail. A schedule that works for many people is a half-hour before lunch and a half-hour before you leave for the day.
• Turn off the e-mail notification function. This was the key for me regaining control of my work day. That ping (aka: You Have Mail) for each new message as it arrives suggests immediacy. By turning off that function, you control it and your time. You become more productive, just be completing tasks before you look at email again.
• Limit follow-up e-mails. Create a subject line that lets the recipient know exactly what your message is about. Re: Re: Re: doesn’t tell your recipient anything. Take the time to give them a hint, or even the whole message, in the Subject line.
• Respond to any e-mail that requires a brief response as soon as you open it. Don’t put it off to re-read later. (Same rule for snail mail too).
• Mark e-mails that require an action. You’ll be able to quickly find the action items later on.
• Empty your inbox every day. Set the goal that your day ends only when your inbox is empty. When you do, people quickly learn that they’ll get an answer before you leave the office. It adds closure to the day and helps you clarify your priority list of actions for the next day too.

Managing email, on your computer, on your blackberry or any other device, takes discipline and consistent habits. The result is more time for money making activities or more time for fun because you are no longer on overwhelm.

Kerri Salls
Breakthrough Enterprise

P.S. In the Productivity Bootcamp, we teach you the right and wrong ways to use email and your email system to make the best use of your valuable time.

Join this teleseminar on Thursday, July 15, 2010 4:00pm ET.

Renew YOUR Business for Success in the Economic Recovery

This list isn’t original with me, but certainly bears repeating to help us all improve as we strive to work smarter and not harder. The list came from ITBusinessEdge. The productivity comments are mine.

1. Don’t spend all day on your email - Turn off automatic email receive. You are in control of email. Don’t let it control or consume you.
2. Limit the time spent surfing – Surfing the web is wasted time.
3. Communicate visually – In this age of information overload, visuals are easier to absorb and retained longer.
4. Set specific goals for the day – Use your 6 Most Important Things List
5. Work in time slots – Chunk your work to minimize switch-tasking.
6. Place a time limit on meetings – Standing meetings don’t have to consume the full allotted time just because it’s scheduled and blocked out. When you set time limits on your meetings, everyone is more focused and you get more done.
7. Clear your desk of clutter - Organizing your desk helps you organize your day and your brain doesn’t have to ‘remember’ where each document/report/tool is.
8. Use the right equipment – You’ve heard this before about hammers and screwdrivers. The same is true for having the right equipment in your office. If your mouse is broken or the scanner does not work or the print driver on your computer does not recognize your printer – get them fixed/replaced. Unless you are the tech person in your office, these tasks should be assigned to someone and off your plate.
9. Use quick reference sheets – Use or create cheat sheets, procedures, process documents for everything that needs to be done more than once, on a schedule or in a repeatable format.
10.Limit work hours and take vacation time - More and more research is coming out showing that employees (even business owners) who limit the number of hours they work each day and take regular vacations, are actually more efficient and more effective than their workaholic peers.

Kerri Salls
Breakthrough Enterprise

P.S. For more productivity tips you can apply now, get my report: Jumpstart Your Productivity at Breakthrough Enterprise.