Deciding to sell the business you have invested so much in both financially and emotionally is not the easiest decision. In fact, Todd and Amy Harding hadn’t planned to sell Alliance RV when they did. ‘We thought perhaps we would have the business for another five years, but life changes our children were leaving home and we realised that the only thing that was dependent on us day to day was our business,’ says Amy. ‘It’s hard not to be emotionally invested in your business, but we took a step back and we thought, ‘hang on we’ve achieved everything we wanted to, we’ve reached all those major goals that we set out with Michael as part of our business coaching sessions with him’,’ adds Todd.
The next step was to set up a meeting with Michael. ‘We were quite nervous to tell Michael! And he questioned and challenged our decision, he wasn’t afraid to make sure we were doing this for the right reasons,’ says Amy. As Todd says, ‘The last thing you want is a business coach to just smile and nod, that’s not going to help you grow, but Michael was so supportive, he wanted us to know what was involved with selling, what the financial implications would be if we sold now and what we would actually be left with.’ After meeting with Michael, Todd and Amy had the confidence to sell and got the process underway. Of course, it’s not just as easy as signing on the dotted line and Michael coached the couple through the process. ‘Michael and the whole of Grace Team Accounting were very supportive, there was no such thing as a stupid question, we never felt judged, it just felt like having a friend at the end of the line.’ During their coaching Michael had helped Todd and Amy to see that as business owners they couldn’t do everything, they had to have support and they had grown their team, this did mean that they had to tell their staff that they were planning to sell the company. ‘We didn’t want to just spring it on the team that we had sold the business, we wanted them to know early on, but we were nervous to do so. With the help of Michael we were able to take our emotions out of the decision, make a plan, get on track and let the team know,’ explains Todd.
Even once the company had been sold there was still a long wait for it to be finalised due to financial restrictions. It was a taxing time as Todd and Amy waited for everything to go through, but Michael continued to check in with the couple not just to see how the numbers were stacking up, but how they were personally doing.
‘As a business coach Michael has shown us that as business owners it’s about making sure the business is delivering what we need it to for our life. We’ve learnt so much, there have been so many light bulb moments and it really has given us the confidence and skills we needed to grow our business. We saw we are in control, not the business, we can decide to turn left, turn right, or in our case take the exit route! Currently our plan is to not have a plan for a bit, but if we do start a business later on, it’s going to be very exciting to see what we can do with Michael the second time round now that we have developed our business ownership skills through his coaching.’
Note; Amy and Todd have been in the Grace Team Business Coaching program for just over four years. To read more of this part of their journey head over to a previous blog here