Month: May 2024

Once you’ve decided on selling your small business, get ready for a journey through a thorny thicket! If you’re not careful, you might find yourself stuck by an un-foreseen challenge. Here are five prickly issues you should keep an eye out for:

Dreaming Too Big with the Sale Price

First things first, let’s talk money. Setting a realistic sale price for your small business can be trickier than it seems. If you aim too high, potential buyers might think you’re living in a fantasyland. On the flip side, lowballing can leave you counting your losses. To navigate this, take a good look at your financial situation, check out what’s happening in your industry, and be honest about your business’s worth. Your CPA or a small business exit specialist can also help you determine a realistic business value.

Rocky Earnings and Financial Rollercoasters

Buyers are like detectives when it comes to finances – they’re going to dig deep. If your earnings are all over the place or your cash flow resembles a rollercoaster, you might scare off potential buyers. Before you put your business on the market, tidy up those finances. It may take some time to clean up the financial statements, but it’s well worth it in the end. Keep in mind the ideal time to sell your business is when your sales and profits are on the uptick.

Messy Books and Records

Details matter, especially when you’re selling a business. If your books and records are a chaotic mess, you’re asking for trouble. Buyers want to see the nitty-gritty of your business, and if they can’t make heads or tails of your documentation, you might be in for a rough ride. Spend time getting your paperwork in order – it’ll make the whole process smoother and more attractive to buyers.

Sticking Too Hard to Your Terms

Getting to yes is an art and being too stubborn can be a deal-breaker. Whether it’s the payment plan or the transition period, a bit of flexibility goes a long way. If you’re too rigid, you might send potential buyers running for the hills. Find that sweet spot between meeting their needs and protecting your interests. It’s like a dance – two steps forward, one step back, one to the side.

Forgetting to Plan

Winging it might work for a road trip, but not for selling a business. Lack of planning can turn the full process into a chaotic mess. Take the time to create a solid exit strategy. Map out the steps, address potential bumps in the road, and make sure everyone involved knows the plan. Planning might not be the most exciting part, but it’s the GPS that’ll keep you from getting lost on this journey.

In a nutshell, selling your small business is a balancing act. Keep it real with the price, improve financial results, tidy up those financial records, be flexible in negotiations, and plan like there’s no tomorrow. With these strategies, you can navigate the tricky road to a successful sale, ensuring a smooth transition for both you and the lucky buyer taking the reins of your business.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What thorns and thistles do you foresee in selling your business? What might get in the way of a potential buyer taking over the reins from you? I’m curious what might prevent you from exiting your business the way you’d like. Please make a comment or ask a question below. Thank you.

I’m so excited. It’s nearly summer! If you’re like me, getting outside and enjoying nature, sunshine, warmth, and family are top of my list. With that though often come sunburn, skin damage, and potential dehydration we all want to avoid.

How can we get the lovely, bronzed beauty look of the sun, without the negative downsides? What’s more, how can we avoid foundation altogether, yet not have the weird look of a pale-face (from using sunblock) with a lovely, tanned body?

Looking weird is, well, bottom of my list, so with that in mind, here are my suggestions to have a sun-kissed look without the sun damage.

Bronzing Gel

In the above video, I demonstrate how to use a bronzing gel without foundation to add color. Bronzing gel can be amazing, or it can make you look like you’ve been vomiting. I used FACE Atelier Pro Ultra Sheer Bronzer, which goes on sheer and adds a lovely warmth to the skin without heading toward the crazy-lady orange-face look.

You can also combine your foundation with the gel bronzer, or apply a sheer foundation on top of the bronzer. I chose to go for the no-foundation look, with a little Amazing Concealer to brighten under my eyes.

Powder Bronzer

Having some definition under your cheekbones, jawline, and forehead can be really stunning in the summertime. It’s a simple trick and makes a huge difference. I used Bobbi Brown Medium Bronzer blended in on top of the gel bronzer to achieve this.

As a warning, if you have oily skin, be sure to powder your gel bronzer before you use the powder bronzer. You know that streaky makeup look you see on some ladies in the grocery store checkout queue? We want to avoid that. It’s an extra step, but worth the time spent.

Cream Shadow, Cream Blush

Break out the cream makeup! Cream eye shadow and blush hold up wonderfully well in hot, sweaty weather. Recently, I worked on a photo shoot in the 90-degree heat of Costa Rica.

Besides getting dehydrated, diarrhea (too much information, I know), and nausea through the whole four-day shoot (yikes), the makeup looked gorgeous and didn’t need retouching because I used almost exclusively cream products.

Thank goodness, because I kept dashing to the bathroom and guzzling Coca Cola to keep me from passing out (always fun).

In the video, I used MAC Pro Longwear Paint-pot in Groundwork all over my eye lid, and Jane Iredale Gel Mystikol Eyeliner in Dark Topaz. On my cheeks I used MAC Glowplay Blush in Cheer Up blended on top of my cheekbone and into my brow bone. It’s a lovely peachy shade that makes my skirt fly up.

Don’t Forget the Sunblock!

There must be a million sunblock products on the market. I love Image Skin Care Prevention SPF 30, and have been using it for years. In truth, you don’t need an SPF higher than 30, as the difference in length of time and quality of protection between 30 and 50 is minimal.

If you’re out in the sun, be sure to reapply every two to three hours. Having said that, we have all been locked inside for a year due to the pandemic, and we need some vitamin D! My advice is to protect the skin on your face but allow your body to receive the full suns rays until your skin starts to turn color, then apply sunblock.

Enjoy the summer sunshine, protect your skin, and look like the bronzed goddess I know you are! Happy family time, outdoor activities, and sunshine!

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What do you expect to do as the weather warms up and summer arrives? How do you plan to protect your skin? Do you use sun tan makeup to look sun-kissed? Which products are your favorite during the summer season?

I have never been an up-to-the-minute sort of person. It takes time for the latest thing to filter itself down to my consciousness. Even the not-so-latest thing.

So, forgive me if I admit that I never really knew much about life coaches at all – much less about those coaches who advise women in their mid-to-late 50s about how to approach their later years.

And yet I have met quite a few of the latter recently, at least online.

This is because they find out about me and want to interview me, as an active 82-year-old woman, who calls herself ‘the granny who stands on her head’. This is the title of both my most recent book about why I like being old and, more recently, my Substack newsletter which goes out fortnightly.

Planning for the Future

As I was planting out some early flowers in my garden this morning, I was thinking about what I would advise if I were a life coach. Or advising my daughter if she were approaching retirement age.

First thought – yikes, she is! She is already 55 and her son is off to university this autumn. She is successful in her work and not about to retire. And not yet worrying very heavily about this stage in life.

Second thought, OK, how would I advise anyone else? Here I am, well past retirement – indeed, 20 years beyond my early 60s, never mind my 50s.

Surely, I should have something to say.

I imagine life coaches work carefully with each individual to bring out what they would most enjoy doing in the last part of their life. What did they always want to do but never had the time for? What talents would they like to develop? What places do they want to see? And perhaps much else.

My thoughts were that yes, all that is good, but they should first take a step backward (perhaps they do, I don’t know). Before you can plan for an active future, you need to do what you can to assure you will have an active future.

Fitness and Health

And when I thought about it, the thing that has most affected my ability to enjoy my life nowadays is real fitness and good health. I am strong, I am flexible – and, surprising as that may sound, I wasn’t in as good condition when I was younger.

I put a lot of this down to yoga, which I have been practising for 30 years. Back then, I chose to do Iyengar Yoga, considered one of the hardest forms of yoga. I did so not because I looked into it in any great detail ­– but simply on the advice of a friend.

It is hard work, it is not always fun to do at the time, but my goodness, it has really made me able to cope with things now. You can see a video of me standing on my head a year or so ago here.

I am not claiming perspicacity. I did not know when I started that this would be the happy outcome. It just seemed a good idea to get a bit more fit, a lot of people had recommended it, and I thought why not ‘give it a go’?

I don’t urge everyone to do yoga. There are plenty of other activities that would keep you fit and healthy. You can swim (I also do that), run (no), play tennis (no), dance (sadly, no) – no end of possibilities. Even ‘chair yoga’ which keeps being advertised on Facebook.

But I do urge all middle-aged and older people to do something – and to keep to it through thick and thin. My daughter also does yoga (a different variant) and bought a treadmill during lockdown, which she uses regularly.

(Of course, it is also important to eat healthily, but there is so much nutritional advice here and everywhere that I see no reason to discuss any of it here.)

Getting Down to It

The real issue is actually getting down to exercise and building it into your day.

Yes, I know you have heard this all before. You have heard it until you want to scream. Moreover, you have been hearing it all your life! Why make a special fuss at exactly that time when feel you should be able to relax a bit?

The answer lies in the fact that this is exactly the time when fitness and health, left to their own devices, are likely to decline. You want to do everything you can to fight that natural tendency. It will make such a difference to your life – the ability to move and walk freely is needed for almost any activity you might want to take up in your later years.

And being strong means you are less likely to fall – and therefore compound the general difficulties of old age. And if you fall, you are less likely to do any serious damage.

Health is not wholly under your control. I am no expert, but I am sure that genes have a lot to do with it. Not to mention all sorts of accidents that might have happened along the way.

But put simply, without being fit, you won’t have much choice in what to do in retirement. You won’t be expanding your talents in new ways. You won’t be addressing your bucket list.

So, from looking back from age 82, I would start with that.

Good luck.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What kinds of exercise do you do? What got you started? Has it changed your life for the better?

Gabby Prescod’s Striped Pleated Polo Dress / Summer House Season 8 Episode 14 Fashion

I feel like right now we’re in this fashion era where polo style tennis/golf outfits are very in style. Even if it’s not meant to be worn on the court, like the striped pleated polo dress Gabby Prescod wears on tonight’s Summer House episode. I think it’s a super cute trend and a great summer look. Which is why you shouldn’t be afraid to take that next step and commit to shopping a similar one from below.

Sincerely Stylish,

Jess

Originally posted at: Gabby Prescod’s Striped Pleated Polo Dress

Originally posted at: Margaret Josephs’ Gold Y Lariat Necklace