Protecting Your Business The best protection for your business is to make sure you have adequate insurance coverage yourself. I normally recommend the first step in doing a business plan is to do personal planning first. Do you have adequate life insurance? Have you insured your ability to earn an income with disability coverage? Is your retirement plan being properly funded? Have you set up your long term care plan? Once these personal needs are taken care of then the future of the business can be discussed. This also includes protecting business debt with proper life and disability insurance. Usually when the future of a business is being considered the real question is how do I or my family get the value out of the business. There are three possible alternatives that could happen. The owner dies prematurely, gets permanently disabled or lives to retirement. In order to receive the proper value for your business you need someone to sell it to. And if you have that person or person(s) then an agreement is needed to establish the conditions and price of the sale. It is pretty easy to find a buyer for a business if there are partners involved. Read the section concerning Buy and Sale Agreements for more details. If the business is a sole proprietorship then it may be more difficult to find a buyer. Perhaps a child is involved in the business or a key person would like to buy it. Another possibility is to arrange to sell your business to a competitor.