Question:

Please explain absentee owner offers and what to believe. How often should the owner visit, how to manage, etc.

Answer:

Absentee businesses may sound like an ideal situation; however,

it is very rare to find a highly-profitable, well-run absentee business.

There are no hard rules for how often the owner should visit or how to manage. Each situation is different. There are a few things that you must be aware of to have a successful absentee run business:

you need above average, highly trustworthy employees.

You’ll want a manager who treats the business as their own. Consider having a profit sharing plan or even giving them a small amount of equity. Do whatever you can security-wise however; no matter how good the employees, or the manager, you’ll probably have a higher than average theft rate. It’s simple: if you’re not there to police the business, it’s going to happen.

Having said all this, let me state that I am not a fan of absentee run businesses. In my experience, part time effort means part time results.

If you’re going to invest your hard-earned money in a business then you should learn it, run it, build it, and manage it.

Once you have this down pat, then you can bring in others to take over slowly so you can spend time away from it.