Webinar Recap: “Seven Proven Steps for Increasing Your Company’s Value at Exit” with Rich Manders

Boosting Your Company’s Value with SPARKLE

What does your company’s five year vision look like? Odds are you want a more valuable company. Whether that’s to set up an exit or additional investment, CEOs and business owners need to constantly assess new ways to drive value in their business. As we’re always on the lookout for the best frameworks for growing businesses, we were especially thrilled for Rich Manders’ coach webinar on that exact topic. 

Experienced entrepreneur Rich Manders joined Align for our February coach webinar on proven steps for increasing the value of your company. Having led multiple successful exits, Rich sees three potential paths for leaders planning to someday move on from running their firms: keep growing and adapting, passing it on to the next generation, or “harvesting” the business by selling it. Regardless of which option fits best, Rich’s SPARKLE strategy contains relevant best practices to build a company that is sustainable, valuable and attractive to outside investors. Numerous businesses have successfully used this model in their businesses, and Rich has shared similar presentations for the Strategies for Maximizing Your Exit program at Harvard Business School.

You can watch Rich’s talk below and view his presentation slides here!

About Rich Manders

Rich is currently the Co-Founder and coach at FreeScale, which helps CEOs and their leadership teams scale their businesses while at the same time scaling themselves. He brings decades of diverse experience as a serial entrepreneur, lifelong learner and student of business. This includes: 

• Co-Founded and managed iAutomation from $0 in sales to become the industry-leading company with 180 employees and ~$90M in sales. Profitable from Q3 onward for more than 20 years at 3~5+ times the industry average.
• Brought in and developed leadership team to run the business, professional investors to fund growth and sold the company at 2X the average return on investment
• Successfully sold two companies as founder:
  • iAutomation to the leading private equity firm in the middle market (Riverside) and then later to Saw Mill Capital
  • CSI to a rollup consortium
• Played key role in seven acquisitions and dozens of evaluations (on both buyer and seller side)
• Since 2007 worked hand in hand with The Riverside Company the leading private equity firm in the middle market and grew the company 8 fold during this time resulting in a 50% IRR to our original investors.
• Developed a large knowledge and contact base through membership and board level participation in EO (Entrepreneurs Organization) over a 15 year period
• Traveled extensively worldwide building market and support channels in the US, Far East, and Europe