Buying a business is one for the most important investments you will make in your lifetime. This is true for many of us. However, some will never take that step. It is sad to say, but true. Others will take the step more than once. Regardless of how many times you purchase a business or enter a new industry, you want to do so with a knowledgeable mentor. This is where age and experience have its benefits.
Related: Why You Should Use a Specialized Business Broker When Buying a Business
A mentor is not an attorney or CPA trying to assist you with entering an industry where neither you nor your advisors have experience. A mentor is someone who has been in the trenches and someone who has exited the other side with all of their hair and a great deal of knowledge, well, maybe not so much hair.
I make this point because there are so many individuals who offer a helping hand and yet retract that very same helping hand just when you need the help you were promised. How can you be assured this will not happen when your future is at stake? Talk to your mentor and get the program in writing. If he or she promises to help you with growth, get it in writing. If he or she promises to help you with management, get it in writing.
The promises made to you by National Pool Route Sales is written out on our website for the world to see. We truly enjoy helping individuals build their business and improve their profits. For everyone at National Pool Route Sales, the most knowledgeable and experienced mentors in the industry, helping you become more successful is a calling. It is actually good for you and it is also good for us.
There is a place for accountants and attorneys. The place is just not as mentors in an industry where they were never a participant. If they haven’t been in the trenches, battling every day to reach that pinnacle of success, take their mentoring with a grain of salt. Let me explain the origin of this sage advice.
The phrase origin include Pliny the Elder‘s Naturalis Historia, regarding the discovery of a recipe for an antidote to a poison. In the antidote, one of the ingredients was a grain of salt. Threats involving the poison were thus to be taken “with a grain of salt”, and therefore less seriously. The Latin word salis means both “salt” and “wit,” so the Latin phrase “cum grano salis” could be translated as both “with a grain of salt” and “with a grain of wit.”
Whichever translation you would choose from Wikipedia, be on guard for the errant professional. Be smart! Take inexperienced advice with “a grain of salt.” If you are uncertain as to the amount of help you will receive from your current mentor, you can always contact the experts at National Pool Route Sales. It’s where most of the industry knowledge lives.