***Ten Critical Commandments for Entrepreneurial Success

Critical knowledge from The 10 Golden Rules for Buying a Business

In my blog post of August 30th, I explained why buying a business can be the smartest step you will ever take toward becoming a wealthy and successful entrepreneur.

Today, I'd like to take the process one step further by sharing more detailed information, drawn from the free special report, The 10 Golden Rules for Buying a Business, which I wrote for the students of Trump University.

What are The 10 Commandments? Let me give them to you in condensed form:

• Commandment # 1 - Pay for the past, consider the present, but buy for the future. The past financials about a company you are buying help you determine the purchase price, but they do not tell you what the business will look like under your management. You have to evaluate it carefully to know what it can yield after the purchase.
• Commandment # 2 - Buy a good business that you can make great. Buying a cheap business is like buying a bad used car. You'll spend all of your time trying to patch "leaks" and have little or no time left to build it. Buy a solid business instead and grow it from there.
• Commandment # 3 - Remember that ingredients are nothing without a recipe. After you purchase the business, can you put all of its parts together into one cohesive unit? What is your plan to make it grow?
• Commandment # 4 - Fall in love with the profit, not the product. If you get too emotional about the business before you buy it, your judgment will be clouded forever. Stay objective.
• Commandment # 5 - Buy a business that lets you do what you do best. It should use your greatest strengths, not pull you away from them.
• Commandment # 6 - Look for a company that offers "autopilot" and "cruise control." To a greater or lesser degree, the business should be able to run on its own so you can focus on building profits. If you have to be too hands-on, your business will get stuck in place.
• Commandment # 7 -Find the hidden gold. Nearly all businesses possess components that the current seller has not exploited. Identify and exploit them.
• Commandment # 8 - Buy a business you can talk about compellingly. It must make you proud.
• Commandment # 9 -Identify what is not perfect yet. Every business has faults. But there is opportunity in those faults, because the smallest improvements in them will yield the greatest results.
• Commandment # 10 - Know specifically what the business is worth to you. After all, there are great businesses that should not be bought by you, but by someone else. You need to objectively identify them.

My 10 Commandments are called Commandments because they cannot be bent, avoided or broken! Any business you buy must pass muster against all of them, with no exceptions.

But if you find a business that meets all 10, it represents your golden opportunity. With you at the helm, it is certain to grow and flourish. But remember, the advice I offer in this blog post is just the tip of the ice burg. To get the information you need to know before buying a business of your own, I urge you to order my free report, The 10 Golden Rules for Buying a Business.

Richard Parker is author of the free special report, The 10 Golden Rules for Buying a Business. An authority on business acquisition, Richard is developing a soon-to-be-launched new home study course, The Art of Buying a Business, for Trump University. For more information, click here.

Trump University Professor Richard Parker developed Trump University's self-paced multimedia home-study course on Buying a Business. Professor Parker bought his first business when he was 12 and sold it for a profit when he was 13. He has now bought more than 10 businesses and is a national authority on the subject.