You’re Going to Want to See the Picture at the End
As a former Guinness World Record Movie Marathoner, #Barbenheimer was always going to happen.
I can recommend both movies – Oppenheimer will win more awards, but Barbie was the more enjoyable of the two, and it’s been fascinating to watch how their ‘rivalry’ created the biggest Box Office weekend since the beforetimes.
Scroll to the bottom of this email to see me in the Barbie box!
Now onto business…
Knowing when and how to implement your family business succession plan can be difficult, and the reality is that every business and every family is different.
In this week’s #BlackboardFriday, I share a successful family business case study, and three general principles I applied to help ensure the transition was smooth and profitable for the family, the business, and the team.
But what if your family don’t want to take over the business? See how Japan’s leading M&A business is using AI to improve Succession outcomes in the world’s oldest country.
- Blackboard Fridays Episode #19 looks at Family Business Succession,
- SMEs are being sandwiched out of the AI revolution. From next week these newsletters will evolve to focus more on execution and less on new concepts and tools.
- Your AI Tool of the Week is helping plan business succession in the world’s oldest nation.
Hot Tip: Something Digital is 4 weeks away, I’ll be there, and you can get your tickets here
1. Blackboard Fridays Episode #19
This week’s short video developed from a Family Succession case study I ran.
That project began when ‘Dad’ gave me a phone call: “Jacob, I have one more thing that I need to do with the business, and then it will be perfect to hand over to my sons. Neither of whom currently work here.”
Whenever a business owner tells me that business is done, is perfect, I get scared.
I get very worried for them – because it means they don’t have that next big vision.
They’re not looking at how they can continually improve, and if you’re not looking to constantly improve in your business, one of your competitors is and that will lead to problems down the track.
So, I knew we had to act fast, and this was the conversation we had.
Click here to read the article or watch this week’s video.
2. Next Week This Changes
When I sing the praises of the Deep Generalist, I discuss breadth (all the different skills) and depth (how well you know each one).
Since the start of this year, I’ve been going wide on AI Tools. And when new breakthroughs are proven to me, I’ll still let you know!
But the shift in your business (and mine) must now be to your depth of execution.
Starting next Friday, I’ll share more about:
- How my business is evolving to better help my SME business coaching clients
- Specific ways real businesses with tight budgets are leveraging Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, and.
- The case studies and project guides I’m helping implement, across all 28 functions of a small or medium-sized business.
A reminder you can forward this email to the team members who will benefit most, or have them subscribe here.
3. M&A Holdings – AI for Private Business Exit Planning
The Pitch: “Satisfactory M&A for All Managers”
(I have to think some of that was lost in translation)
Baby Boomers began retiring more than a decade ago (and just in case you still think the 1990s was 10 years ago, the earliest Millennials are sending their kids to university and entering perimenopause).
Ageing business owner populations are a huge economic risk in most developed nations. Nowhere is this more apparent than Japan, where 28% of the population are older than 65 (the highest percentage in the world).
The need for older business owners to sell their business, and realise the financial reward for their years of hard work, is an obsession for business coaches and advisors (like myself) wherever this demographic is at play.
In Japan, one of the leading solutions is M&A Holdings, a company founded by the youthful Shunsaku Sagami.
You can dive deep into their business model by clicking the link here. Frankly, for a publicly listed company at that size, their current business and growth plans remain overly reliant on recruitment and training.
But last year, they began to leverage AI to change that. Specifically, Artificial Intelligence now plays a key part of their Buyer Identification process. In a marketplace where there are far more sellers than buyers, M&A Holdings pride themselves on being able to rapidly identify which companies or investment funds are best places to make a strategic acquisition.
This speed to market is helping them achieve more sales, quicker sales, and (because speed and competition are key to this) better valuations.
At an enterprise scale, AI delivers the most value when it’s fed with abundant, clean data. That’s much easier to do with large-scale Buyers than the multitudinous SMEs looking for an exit, so it makes sense that M&A Holdings are first using AI in that space.
It also points at a common theme from my emails: SMEs are at risk of being sandwiched out of the AI revolution. On one side by large corporations with big data and huge, bespoke technical budgets; on the other side by solopreneurs and micro-businesses (<4 employees) who can effortlessly pivot their business model to most leverage SaaS AI tools.
Click here to learn more about M&A Holdings.
And if you haven’t run an AI review for your SME, then C’mon Barbie, let’s go Party…
With love,
Jacob Aldridge
International Business Advisor
jacob@jacobaldridge.com
+61 427 151 181
PS: Did someone forward you this email? Get your own copy (and sound smarter than them next Friday) by subscribing here.
