Who is running who?

Are you running your business, or is your business running you?
Over a decade ago, I wrote about a visit to a client at 8am on a Saturday morning; before he opened up his pharmacy. At the time of writing, he had been working hard in the same location for nearly two decades. The reason for my visit during that time was that he was a man whom you can never have a proper conversation with during working hours. Why? Because he was serving customers from morning to evening. The level of service he delivered was impeccable. He had built his business on top class service. The issue is if you removed him from the business it would slide down.
This was a six day a week man who had been working hard since the age of 11, it was in his blood; true of many an Indian. Also true is his family helped him run the business, so this obviously reduced staff costs and there was no issue of lack of trust, generally anyway. Consequently he had a thriving business, but very little time to himself let alone time to assess where to invest and how best to structure and to strategise on how best to go forward.
This was and still is our typical client; cash/asset rich but time poor.
Unfortunately many business owners think they are running their business, however, often the business is running them; sometimes right into the grave, or in our case the crematorium.
The business is centred around them, through hard work and high level of service, the business thrives but becomes dependent upon them.
So the business is them.
This means if you remove them the business ceases to exist in the same form.
The danger with this model is the owners cannot remove themselves from the business to enjoy their hard earned wealth. It is a common mistake which many self employed people make.
Property has some interesting attributes which serve to balance and rectify the above.
One is you are not required to work or even be awake for the property to rise in value or be rented. The right property will generate income passively.
The price of something is determined by supply and demand. The supply of land is finite but the demand is increasing due to various reasons such as migration, a mobile work force, the family nucleus breaking down, increasing the number of single person households and so on.
So above and beyond any temporary peaks and troughs certain pockets of the property market may go through, property is always destined to rise because of fundamentals.
If you are time poor or just can’t be bothered with all the hassle of buying property, and the games agents play, do get in touch see how we can help you.