I bought this restaurant on a rent to own basis, if I may call it that. I made a down payment and had a debt of $50,000 to the seller which I would pay as I made sales. When I took over the business I noticed that the claims made were not as accurate as I was made to believe. Being my first experience in buying a business I trusted the agent to do due diligence. He said he did. Events showed he did not. Lesson learned. Anyway, the amount I made the first month was nothing near what was told which was the basis for the sale. Oh, yes! I started asking the seller questions. Of course he came asking for the payment for that month. I stood my ground and insisted he showed documentation to prove the claims he made were true. This was around December 2018. It's July 2020 and I haven't seen him. I have not paid him a dime and he hasn't called to ask. Does this mean he has forgone $50,000? Probably. Why? If he pushes me and I sue the court will force him to provide those documents. If he fails he might go to jail. Chances are he doesn't have any and he overvalued the business.
I have not taken this lesson for granted. It underscores the importance of keeping documents in whatever you do. One day you will be asked to go back in time and show evidence. If you don't have documents you could lose a lot.
The importance of documentation cannot be overemphasized. It is the marriage between a plan, it's initial execution and continuous operation of the plan. Every goal, plan, process or procedure or method must first be written down to be considered to exist. When this has been done an execution method follows. This is necessary to be sure the plan has been executed accordingly and the execution can be monitored for compliance or non compliance as the case may be. As a Quality Management consultant I do not toy with documentation. In fact whatever is not written down is considered to not have happened. If you don't have vehicle particulars it's possible the car doesn't belong to you. If you don't have a marriage certificate it will be hard to prove you are married. If you don't have land documents you will be hard pressed to prove the land is yours and so on.
We keep track of all the above but where it concerns our career we have no record of what we did yesterday at work. In my consulting days, because I wasn't on ground everyday, I made the workers I supervised keep log books of their daily activities. The format was simple. I wanted to see their plan for the day, how they executed it, what they accomplished, what they couldn't accomplish and why. Initially they disliked me for it but when they started seeing the benefits (they became more efficient at their jobs) we became friends.
As I run my restaurant today, I have a record of every purchase that has been made, every sale that has been made in store and online, every bill that has been paid and so on. I sent all these to my accountant alongside other documents listing assets and he has valued the business way above $50,000. I don't know how else to show you the benefit of documentation. I hope you start today.
There's a lot of benefit in documentation though it's never an easy task. I won't forget your efforts in training me and insisting I must document every single thing I do. Thank you once more for that. I could remember vividly in my former company,when chemical raw materials I issued out to the production unit was stolen in their custody and they denied the fact that they received the items from store but it was proper documentation that saved me from paying for the stolen items that costs millions of naira.
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