Young Small Business Travelers Spend More Than Older Counterparts, Study Finds

In the Hollywood movie “Up in the Air,” actor George Clooney is a jet-setting businessman who sees his fast-paced, itinerant lifestyle threatened by the rise of videoconferencing.

Well, no need to worry about any such threat, even if you work for a small business with a less impressive travel budget than the corporation featured in the critically acclaimed 2009 film.

For small businesses, travel remains an important way of finding and closing deals as well as reaching clients and customers, according to new study from the online travel site Expedia.

If you’re a millennial or someone older working for, or maybe running, a small business, the report offers insights into generational differences in viewing the perks and costs of business travel.

Here are five key findings from the study released Thursday:

Small business travelers are traveling more.

More than half, or 51%, of small business travelers say their business travel has increased during the last five years, the report says. Most small business travelers take an average of eight business trips a year and spend an estimated 17 nights total in a hotel.

Small business travelers prefer face-to-face meetings.

When given a choice, 58% of small business travelers say they would rather hold a face-to-face meeting than one by videoconference. For business people older than 55,  75% would rather hold in-person meetings than talk to a client or a co-worker through a screen.

Younger business travelers are less-budget conscious.

There’s also a generational divide when it comes to travel spending. If you’re a young business traveler, you probably turn in heaps of travel expense reports with pricey items. Small business travelers between 18 and 34 years old “spend more on flight, hotel and car rental than older counterparts,” the report says. Three-fourths of millennials are also more likely to “extend a business trip into a holiday” compared with a little over 40% for business travelers 55 years and older. And young business travelers are the most likely to splurge on such items as “room service, transportation, alcohol, entertainment, first class airline seats and advanced seat selection,” the study says.

Travel budgets are up for nearly half of small businesses.

The good news for business travelers with expensive tastes is nearly half of small business travelers say their company travel budgets have risen in the past year. This is particularly true for those in finance, information technology, and construction and trades. The average amount a small business traveler spends on a round trip flight is $987, according to the report. Small business travelers spend an average of $288 a night on hotels, and $214 on car rentals.

Small business travelers are more concerned with convenience than price.

Having bigger travel budgets also makes it easier for most small business travelers who, according to the report, “prioritize convenience over price for a business trip.” In fact, the most important thing small business travelers think about when booking accommodations is the hotel’s location, according to the report. Would they do the same when reserving a room for a personal trip? Well, no. When the trip being planned is personal, “price is ranked as most important,” the report says.

Benjamin Pimentel is a staff writer covering small business for NerdWallet. Follow him on Twitter @benpimentel, on Google+ and on LinkedIn.

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For more information about how to start and run a business, visit NerdWallet’s Small Business Guide. For free, personalized answers to questions about starting and financing your business, visit the Small Business section of NerdWallet’s Ask an Advisor page.

 

 

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Small Business Success Story: Art Gallery Startup Revamps Site With Bond Street Loan

Tze Chun found success as a small-business owner after launching an online art gallery that made buying and collecting high-quality, original art easier and affordable for young professionals.

But then she ran into a problem: The website for her gallery, called Uprise Art, just wasn’t as sophisticated as the paintings she was selling, and she needed quick access to funds for a much-needed overhaul.

Enter Bond Street, another startup that, like Uprise Art, was also focused on “customer experience” — not of art collectors, but of entrepreneurs like Chun.

She has just taken out a $75,000 loan with the small-business lender to pursue her dream of making art affordable to professionals who are just getting started with their careers and who, she says, typically view collecting art as an expensive hobby, something they should get into later in their lives.

“They put it off until they make partner or their next promotion,” she tells NerdWallet.

Chun’s original small-business plan for Uprise Art was based on a simple premise: “If you could pay $50 a month to have an original work of art in your home, you’re more likely to collect art in the future.”

The plan worked. Uprise Art’s revenue has soared eightfold in two years to half a million dollars. But the website just wasn’t capturing all the business coming her way.

It was time for a revamp. But how to pay for it?

In a way, Chun’s experience underscores a typical small-business dilemma. You’re a new entrepreneur at the helm of a small business that’s suddenly growing fast. You need money to keep up with that growth, so what do you do?

Look for a small-business loan, maybe one backed by the U.S. Small Business Administration from a traditional bank? Or maybe shoot for venture capital funding?

Chun considered those options and came to the conclusion that they would take too long.

“Bond Street was the easiest option, and less ‘expensive’ than equity since the website overhaul is really a capital improvement that we’re confident will be a profitable investment,” she says.

Tze Chun (left) with artist Diana Delgado. Photo via Leon S. Belt.

 

Surely, she could have gotten a better deal from a regular bank. Chun says her three-year-loan from Bond Street has a 16% APR, plus Bond Street usually charges a 3% fee upon successful funding, says Chief Executive and co-founder David Haber. But the company waived it for Uprise Art .

Despite the loan’s high rate, Chun says, “We feel that it’s very inexpensive money.”

The main reason is the speed and ease with which she got the loan. That allowed her to move ahead with the website revamp project quickly and without disrupting the company’s business momentum.

“The application took about 15 minutes,” she says.

The process included giving Bond Street access to the company’s bank and QuickBooks accounts, and then having a brief conversation with the lender’s chief credit officer, Jerry Weiss, who previously served as chief risk officer at Citibank.

Chun says Uprise Art “would have lost a lot of time applying for bank loans.” That was also a key motivation for Haber to launch Bond Street. He was working for a venture capital firm two-and-a-half years ago when he started coming across companies that were “profitable, growing but struggling to raise financing.”

“They kept telling me how painful the process was,” he tells NerdWallet.

Much of that pain sprang from the fallout from the 2008 financial crash, although a lot of it was also based on a trend Haber says small businesses have been wrestling with over the past 20 years: Banks have become reluctant to lend them money.

Bond Street Chief Executive and co-founder David Haber.

Small-business loans have simply become less attractive to banks, because they’re not that lucrative compared to corporate loans, and because of tighter regulations, he says.

That situation created an opening for many alternative small-business lenders, which have benefitted from growing demand for short-term small-business loans and from new technologies that make it easier and more cost-effective to assess the credit risks of borrowers.

To be sure, the loans offered by alternative small-business lenders are expensive. For example, a small-business loan backed by the U.S. Small Business Administration typically charges 5.5% to 6% interest rate.

An average Bond Street loan, depending on the risk profile of the borrower, would typically charge a rate of 10% to 11%, Haber says. The highest rate Bond Street has charged is 18%, and the lowest is 6%, he adds. Each loan includes a flat 3% fee “successful funding,” he says.

Still, Jeffrey Robinson, academic director of the Center of Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at the Rutgers Business School, says, “The rates are not bad if you think of them in the period that they are being repaid.”

And they can work for some small businesses looking for quick access to cash for a specific business need. “You can’t use it for everything, but it’s certainly something that can close the access to capital gap,” he tells NerdWallet.

That’s certainly true for Uprise Art, which is getting ready to roll out a revamped site in August. The online gallery is required to make a bi-monthly payment of $1,314 for three years, Chun says. But she says business is so good, she expects to pay that off sooner than that.

“We expect it will pay for itself in the next twelve months,” she says.

Benjamin Pimentel is a staff writer covering small business for NerdWallet. Follow him on Twitter @benpimentel, on Google+ and on LinkedIn.

For more information about how to start and run a business, visit NerdWallet’s Small Business Guide. For free, personalized answers to questions about starting and financing your business, visit the Small Business section of NerdWallet’s Ask an Advisor page.

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Xero Executive Talks Cloud Accounting for Entrepreneurs

As a small business owner, you’re an expert in your chosen field.  But if you’re like many other entrepreneurs, you may not have a lot of time and money to master complicated, expensive accounting software.   A better alternative for many small business owners is to sign up for cloud-based accounting, says Dennis Najjar, a CPA and co-founder of AccountingDepartment.com.

“Online accounting software packages are intended to deliver convenience along with a basic accounting product,” he says.  “They work especially well for starter businesses, those with up to a couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue.”

One major player in the cloud-based accounting software field is Xero (pronounced “zero”), a New Zealand-based company that has been selling in the U.S. market for a few years, Najjar says.

NerdWallet recently had a conversation with Russ Fujioka, U.S. president at Xero, on how entrepreneurs can benefit from cloud-based accounting.

How does Xero meet the accounting needs of small businesses?

We offer an accounting platform that has inventory, payroll, invoicing and other standard functions.  You get everything you need to start and run your small business up to a certain scale.  The platform is cloud-based, so you can look at your financial information from any connected device and be able to quickly see the strengths and weaknesses within your business.

Russ Fujioka, U.S. president, Xero

Describe a typical Xero user.

The customers that really embrace Xero are usually at the 100 employee count and below, and range from small businesses to microbusinesses. They are in a variety of industries.  We’re committed to small business owners, and we don’t have any future plans to move our resources to enterprise clients. We want to stay in this environment.

How can cloud-based accounting software make financial tasks easier for entrepreneurs?

Our strength is in the ability to take things like inventory, quoting and reporting, integrate them and make them collaborative.  Suppose you have a freelance editing business and you send a quote for book editing to a potential client.  At some point that client is likely to ask you questions about the quote.  Instead of going back and forth with emails and voicemail messages, you can manage this collaboration within the app and have all the details you need in one place.

Or say you’re working with your accountant and you need to fill out a form, but you put the wrong piece of information on the form. Your accountant might realize that there’s an error, but he or she still has to dig through a lot of receipts or ledger entries to resolve the problem. When you collaborate online with Xero, your accountant can simply ping you from the app and ask you to put the right piece of information on the form. It saves a lot of time and effort.

What do you offer small businesses that are in specialized verticals, such as retail?

We provide the core accounting system, but we’ve opened up Xero’s application programming interface (API) to other software developers.  We have over 400 add-on partners that help small businesses that have specialized needs.  Examples include integration with point-of-sale systems for retailers, employee timesheets and expense reporting.

Xero competes with QuickBooks Online and other cloud accounting packages.  What should small business owners look for when choosing an accounting solution?

Look for a program that you believe you’ll use regularly.  In order to have a clear view of your business, you have to be willing to go “all in” and put all your financials in one place.  Once your information is in the program, you can look at the accounting dashboard and quickly see where your business stands. This is especially important if you need to gather documentation to apply for a small business loan.

You should also look for software that’s backed by an active customer support team.  When you’re busy running your business, you need to be confident that if you have a question about the accounting program, someone in customer support will quickly respond to you.

The biggest piece of advice I have is that you should always be connected to a financial advisor, no matter what financial accounting system you use.  When you’re working with a good accountant or financial advisor, and you have a strong cloud accounting software program, you’ll be putting in place the building blocks for small business financial success.  We have many advisors that subscribe to our product.  They can invite a small business owner into our portal online and collaborate with them in the cloud.

How much does Xero cost?

Xero has starter packages that are $9 a month (for businesses with few monthly transactions) and standard packages that start at $30 a month.

The Xero Ecosystem

Xero works with over 400 add-on partners to customize the cloud-based accounting software for client needs.  Niall McGinnity is managing director of Nuvem9, an accounting software consulting company in Belfast, Northern Ireland, that in his words, is part of this Xero “ecosystem.”

“We’re primarily a consulting business that focuses on start-up companies.  When you’re a new company and you’re looking for funding, and you’re looking to prove yourself, it’s critical to be able get financial information quickly, and make sure it’s error-free.  We’re using Xero as the building block for these companies,” he says.

Nuvem9 also uses Xero APIs to offer specialized solutions, such as foreign exchange payment integration and invoice processing.  “Our clients don’t have the time or the budget to pay for a large desktop system, and this is a good solution for them,” McGinnity says.

Margarette Burnette is a staff writer covering personal finance for NerdWallet. Follow her on Twitter @margarette and on Google+.

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Limited Time Offer: United MileagePlus® Explorer Card by Chase Offers Signup Bonus of 50K Miles

Travel credit cards are a favorite for so many reasons. They typically have higher-than-average rewards, awesome redemption options and lucrative signup bonuses worth hundreds of dollars. The United MileagePlus® Explorer Card by Chase just upped the ante by offering — for a limited time — an additional 20,000 bonus miles. Instead of earning 30,000 bonus miles after spending $3,000 in the first three months, you can now earn 50,000 bonus miles. Here’s what you should know about the United MileagePlus® Explorer Card.

Why would I want the United MileagePlus® Explorer Card?

United MileagePlus® Explorer Card is great for people who fly United and check bags. Your first checked bag is free (and so is your companion’s first checked bag), you’ll get priority boarding, and you’ll also get two United Club passes per year. Of course, if you typically fly with another airline, you won’t enjoy all the benefits that come with this card. To reap the best rewards with the United MileagePlus® Explorer Card, you should be a loyal United flier.

The perks of the United MileagePlus® Explorer Card

Besides the United-specific perks, the MileagePlus Explorer Card has other great benefits. On top of the limited-time, 50,000-mile signup bonus, you can also earn 10,000 miles for spending $25,000 in net purchases on your card each year and 5,000 miles for adding an authorized user and making a purchase in the first three months. You’ll earn 2 miles for each dollar spent on United flights and 1 mile for each dollar spent on everything else.

The United MileagePlus® Explorer Card has no foreign transaction fees and a $0 intro annual fee for the first year, then $95. It recently added an EMV chip, so your transactions will be more secure both in the United States and abroad. The card offers purchase protection and auto rental collision damage waiver. It can also get you free room upgrades, early check-in/late checkout, and complimentary breakfast when staying in hotels.

The downside of the United MileagePlus Explorer Card

The MileagePlus Explorer Card isn’t for everyone, of course. Those who tend to fly on other airlines would benefit more from a flexible redemption travel card or another airline-specific card. It also has a high annual fee, which may not be worth the cost for infrequent fliers.

Bottom line: If United is your airline of choice, and you enjoy the luxuries of priority boarding, first bags checked free, and two United Club passes per year, the MileagePlus Explorer card is a good option. There isn’t currently an end date on this offer, but the limited-time signup bonus of 50,000 miles won’t be around forever. Make sure to earn these miles by spending $3,000 in the first three months, and add an authorized user for an additional 5,000 miles.

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Business Owners, Take Note of These Tax Deadlines

Whether your company is a sole proprietorship, partnership or corporation, one of the most important things to do as a small-business owner is to meet all your tax deadlines. We’re now past the April 15 due date for individual tax returns, but businesses have many more tax dates they should mark on their calendars, says Johanna Fox Turner, CPA and owner of Milestones Financial Planning in Mayfield, Kentucky.

It could be costly to let those dates pass with no action. “Meeting these deadlines is about as important as being on time for your wedding,” Turner says.

If you can’t meet your deadlines, the taxes are just the minimum you’ll end up paying, says Brian Devers, a CPA with Lovelace, Norvelle and Mathews, PC, a Virginia-based accounting firm. “You’ll have penalties and interest that will add up pretty quickly, and those situations can get real messy real fast,” he says.

To help make sure your business stays out of tax trouble, know these major deadlines. (If a date falls on a weekend or holiday, the deadline is the next business day.)

Sole proprietors (and single-member LLCs)

• Jan. 15: Previous year’s fourth-quarter estimated tax payments due.
• Jan. 31: Deadline to send 1099 information returns. (If you paid an independent contractor more than $600 last year, you must send a 1099 to that vendor.)
• Jan. 31: Deadline for W-2 forms to be sent to employees.
• Jan. 31: Quarterly payroll tax return (Form 941) due for the fourth quarter of the previous calendar year. The actual taxes should have already been withheld from workers’ paychecks, Turner says.
• Feb. 28: Deadline for 1099 statements to be sent to the IRS (the same 1099s that were due to vendors a month earlier).
• April 15: Individual tax filing deadline for the previous year. File Schedule C as part of your 1040 tax return to report business income.
• April 15: First-quarter estimated tax payment due for sole proprietorships.
• April 15: Last day to file for an automatic extension of your tax return (Form 4858, which pushes the deadline back to Oct. 15).
• April 30: Quarterly payroll tax return due (Form 941).
• June 15: Second-quarter estimated tax payment due.
• July 31: Quarterly payroll tax return due (Form 941).
• Sept. 15: Third-quarter estimated tax payment due.
• Oct. 15: Individual tax return due if an extension was granted earlier in the year (on or before April 15).
• Oct. 31: Quarterly payroll tax return due (Form 941).

Partnerships (and LLCs taxed as partnerships)

Generally the same as above, except:

• April 15: Partnership tax return due. Partnerships file using Form 1065.

Traditional corporations

• March 15 (calendar year corporations): “Your tax returns are due on the 15th day of the third month at the end of the calendar year,” Devers says.  That means that if your business operates on a calendar year and ends on Dec. 31, the tax return would be due March 15. Corporations file tax returns on Form 1120.
• Major due dates for information returns (1099, W-2) are the same as above.

Federal extension

In most cases, you can file for an extension before your normal tax return deadline and receive an automatic deferment of several months, says Diane Aksten, a CPA in Southfield, Michigan. But that’s only an extension to file, not an extension to pay. “You are still responsible to the IRS to pay what you think you’re going to owe,” she says. If you don’t pay what’s owed in time, you may be subject to late payment penalties.

Other important deadlines

If you have employees, you must also deposit payroll taxes either semiweekly or monthly, depending on your company’s reporting requirements, Turner says. If you’re not sure whether your company should be a semiweekly or monthly payer, read up on IRS Tax Topic 758 or talk to a CPA for help.

“Payroll is probably the most important deadline that you don’t want to miss as a business owner, because you’re submitting other people’s money when you’re submitting tax deposits to the IRS and the state,” Turner says.

State taxes

Check with your state’s department of revenue for state-specific tax dates, including renewals for LLCs. Many state taxes are due around the same time as federal taxes, but the exact dates may vary, Devers says.

Filing early

If at all possible, try to file tax returns well before the deadline, especially if you’re a sole proprietor, Aksten says. “We’re seeing higher numbers of identity theft. Some people are filing fraudulent returns using the Social Security numbers of taxpayers who are late filers,” she says. Once these taxpayers do get around to sending in their returns, it creates a red flag for the IRS and presents problems for the legitimate filers.

“The sooner that you can get your return filed, the less likely it is that somebody else will try to file a return under your Social Security number,” Askten says.

When to call in a pro

If you have cash flow problems, a professional can help you manage them in a way that’s OK with the IRS, Turner says. “There are different strategies that an accountant can help you with, that the average do-it-yourselfer may not be aware of, which could help with cash flow,” she says.

A lot of people hear “CPA” and think hiring one costs a thousand dollars or more, but that’s not necessarily the case,” she says.  “However, it could literally cost you two or three times that amount if you forget to pay the IRS,” she says.

Another sign that it may be time to get help is if you get to the point where you feel uncomfortable putting together your tax paperwork, Devers says. “It’s the same as home remodeling. I may be able to do it myself when it comes to replacing light bulbs, but when it comes to electrical wiring, I need a licensed contractor. With accounting, you can start out doing the best that you can, but sometimes you may need someone with expertise to help,” he says. Working with a CPA can help you make sure your small business never misses a tax deadline, he says.

Margarette Burnette is a staff writer covering personal finance for NerdWallet. Follow her on Twitter @margarette and on Google+.

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Freeze Your Discover Card: No Ice Required

If you’ve had the unpleasant experience of canceling a lost credit card and then finding it between your couch cushions the next day, the Nerds feel for you. And so does Discover: The issuer recently released a new card perk that allows you to freeze your lost credit card temporarily, instead of canceling it.

What it means to ‘freeze’ your credit card

Some cardholders used to freeze their plastic in a block of ice to avoid using it in a nonemergency situation. But there’s no frozen water involved here. In this case, after freezing your card online, on the Discover app or over the phone, the card will no longer authorize new purchases, cash advances or balance transfers until you unfreeze your account. This gives you time to find your lost card and the peace of mind that comes from knowing your card won’t be used to pay for someone else’s purchases.

One of the most annoying things about canceling a card is the need to remember to update all of the accounts you’ve set to be automatically paid from your credit card. With the freeze feature, this isn’t an immediate concern. Certain card activity — like recurring bill payments, returns, rewards redemption and credits — will continue to go through normally while your account is frozen.

Discover also has an option to temporarily deactivate your card, instead of freeze it. This allows you to use your card number for card-not-present transactions — like online or over-the-phone purchases — but your physical card can’t be used. This is a decent option if you’re sure that your card is somewhere in your possession and you need to make an online purchase or two. But it isn’t a good option if your card has potentially been stolen, since someone might rack up a tidy balance on your card via an online shopping spree.

‘Unfreeze’ with ease

Once you find your card, you can unfreeze it within seconds online, through the Discover app or over the phone. Your account number will stay the same, and transactions will go through normally again.

Discover will send you a reminder a week after you freeze, in case you found your card but forgot to unfreeze it. You can freeze and unfreeze your card as often as you’d like.

If you don’t find your card, it may be necessary to cancel it and get a new one. Discover cards come with $0 fraud liability, but it can be a hassle to deal with the aftermath of a stolen credit card even without any monetary expense. If you think your card has been stolen or lost for good, you should cancel and request a new card immediately. And remember, you’ll need to update any payment accounts with your new card information.

Bottom line: If you lose your Discover card, but you’re pretty confident that you’ll find it, you may want to consider freezing, instead of canceling, your card. Your recurring transactions will still go through, so you won’t have to change your automatic payment information on all of your accounts. Once you find your card, unfreeze your account in seconds. Alternatively, if you don’t find your card, cancel it immediately and Discover will ship you a new one.

Erin El Issa is a staff writer covering personal finance for NerdWallet. Follow her on Twitter @Erin_Lindsay17 and on Google+.

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3 Tips for Selling Your Small Business the Right Way

As a small-business owner, you may reach the point when you say, “Time to sell.”

Maybe your small business isn’t doing too well — or maybe it is, and you want to cash out, or you’ve decided that being an entrepreneur just isn’t for you and it’s best to quit while you’re ahead.

If you’re thinking of getting out, though, Chris Wagner has some advice: Watch your step. You can make expensive and painful mistakes if you rush into selling your small business without adequate planning, says Wagner, who has been through the process many times as director of transaction advisory at Strategic Wealth Partners. That firm, based in Ohio, provides financial consulting services to businesses and entrepreneurs.

Small-business owners’ “core competence is in their business,” Wagner tells NerdWallet. But “the sale process is unlike any business process that they’re used to. It’s just very different.”

Selling your business is obviously a tough decision, Wagner says. You probably spent years dreaming of starting your company and even longer planning and executing a strategy. And running that small business probably has consumed your life.

“Sometimes, the personal life and the business are tightly intertwined,” Wagner says. And sometimes a small-business owner decides it’s time to disentangle the two.

Wagner urges owners thinking of getting out to “do a gut check.” Ask yourself: “Do I still love what I’m doing? Do I still want to grow this business?”

“What’s really important is the passion, whether they really love and enjoy what they’re doing,” he says.

There are certainly many reasons for getting out. It could be for health reasons, or it could be triggered by the death of a founder or co-founder. Or as a small-business owner, “you’ve just run out of gas,” Wagner says.

Sometimes, it’s because the small business has become so successful. “The business has grown and becomes too challenging to manage from an operational or even a financial perspective,” Wagner says. “The numbers get bigger, especially when it comes to working capital.”

In other words, you need more money to keep going, which usually means incurring more debt. “They just start getting uncomfortable with the thought: ‘Gosh, I used to have a $200,000 line of credit. Now I have $2 million.’”

Wagner, who typically handles two or three business sale deals a year, offers these tips if you’re thinking of selling your small business.

1. Be clear about why you want to sell

You have to “really think about the motivation to sell,” because that’s an important consideration for how you go about selling, Wagner says.

For instance, if you want out because the financials are starting to get overwhelming, but you actually still have a passion for what you’re doing, you might consider selling just part of the business.

You “may not be happy selling the business and then walking away,” Wagner says. But perhaps you can find an investor to take on some of the financial burden, such as a private equity firm, he says.

In fact, doing so could even make the business grow faster. Small-business owners  sometimes get more conservative as their company and their individual net worth grow. “They become less risk-takers,” Wagner says. Partnering with another investor could fix that, he says.

“When you partner with a private equity firm, you start to use someone else’s money,” he says. “The entrepreneur tends to go back to being more of a risk-taker and being more aggressive in growing the business.”

2. Seek out and rely on expert advice

Selling a business can involve complicated legal and financial issues, Wagner says. The smart move is to consult with experts to deal with those matters.

He says some small-business owners who have decided to sell “just consult with their accountants,” even though those professionals have limited knowledge of and experience with mergers and acquisitions.

A small-business owner “will sell a business just once,” Wagner says. “They should reach out to experts in the field.”

3. Understand what it means for your lifestyle

Wagner says a common mistake small-business owners make is to start the process of selling the company and, six months into that, “realize that, after taxes, the valuation is not enough to walk away.”

Wagner says you must carefully assess how much capital you need to walk away from your company. Part of that, he says, is assessing your own lifestyle.

“They may be living a certain lifestyle today, but they may be living a different lifestyle when they walk away,” he adds. “That needs to sync up with the valuation and what they can get from that business in addition to whatever liquid assets they may have and what they need to retire or walk away.

“The last thing a good entrepreneur wants to do is sell a perfectly good business and then go to work for someone else.”

Of course, after considering these tips, you may not decide to sell at all, and you plan to keep running your small business. In that case, check out NerdWallet’s Small Business Guide for more advice. For free, personalized answers to questions about starting and financing a business, visit the Small Business section of NerdWallet’s Ask an Advisor page.

Benjamin Pimentel is a staff writer covering small business for NerdWallet. Follow him on Twitter @benpimentel, on Google+ and on LinkedIn.

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