Inc magazine reported that sixty-six percent of small-business owners have no formal succession plan.1 While the number may shock you, it probably doesn’t surprise you since so many small business owners are consumed by the myriad responsibilities of running their businesses. Nevertheless, owners ignore succession planning at their peril, and possibly at the peril of…

The ultimate indicator of how well a company and its management are performing is how much the company is worth. Any performance measurement or benchmarking system should include fair market value as one of its primary metrics. With public companies, it’s easy to monitor this metric by tracking share prices and market capitalizations on public stock…

Many stocks — such as Walmart, Dell and Google — trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or another public stock exchange. Shares in public companies can be converted to cash within a few days. But privately-held business investors do not have the same luxury. Their investments can take months or even years to…