Business owners are prone to making some fundemental mistakes when determining the value of their business, suggests Tony Arena, Managing Director of BCI Business Broking. They're errors that are easily avoided so make sure you've got your eyes wide open by reading the tips offered by Tony.

In the last twelve months exit and succession planning has become one of the hottest issues for small and medium sized businesses.

"When we initially conducted the research most business owners paid little attention to the concept of an exit strategy." Says Kirrily Dear, development director of EWO, "While there is now a lot of discussion in business media, very few business owners appear to be taking action."

Recent research completed by Eyes Wide Open identified the characteristics of people most likely to find themselves trapped in their business. This article will help you discover if you are one of the people who will have choice and flexibility around how and when they work in their business.

The final step in extracting yourself from your business is to build accountability and responsibility into the business.

Business owners often comment that no one in their business is as passionate or committed to the business as they are. On some levels this is true. It can also be symptomatic of people not being properly engaged in the business. Building accountability and responsibility in the business will increase that level of engagement.

The final step in extracting yourself from your business is to build accountability and responsibility into the business.

In this series we have been looking at what it takes to extract yourself from your business. The term 'exit strategy' is often used in relation to business. Typically it refers to succession planning and the legal and financial aspects of the transition. Addressing these aspects takes care of the skeleton on which the business operates. But how do you instill the heart and soul of the business, that keeps it alive and thriving?

Keeping the lifeblood flowing is essential to providing you will an ongoing income ensuring the business is a highly valuable and saleable asset.

In Part 1 of this series we identified three steps to extracting yourself from your business.

• Transferring your knowledge into your business through systems and processes
• Shifting your approach from micro-managing to leading
• Building accountability and responsibility in the business

In Part 2 we will be looking at how you can complete the first stage, that is, transferring your knowledge from you to the business.

People decide to start or buy businesses for a lot of different reasons. But when it comes to the long term outcome we find business owners come up with one of two options.

• Sell the business in a way that maximises their return on investment
• Continue to own the business and draw income from it while spending less time in it

Which of these two outcomes are you planning for? This is Part 1 of a 4 part series that helps you map how yu can get what you want from your business.