Many people in the midst of buying control of an existing or launching a new business, see it as a sequential “process”, I don’t. It is a series of interconnected issues that need to be performed in parallel.

If you must submit and gain approval from a regulator that should never stop you proceeding with your pre-launch work or withholding investment investment in key components of the “new business” (capital, people, triaging client and prospect lists, readying marketing plan, technology, resources and so on)? The only caveat is where the regulatory process strictly states you cannot engage with individuals or access proprietary data.

If that “hold up” with regulators, many of whom are short-handed or struggling with a 15 month backlog, is no longer 4 weeks but now 8 or 16 weeks, it is madness to “down tools”. Yet increasingly, I am seeing both new and experienced executives and entrepreneurs doing exactly that while bemoaning their fate. Keep moving forward fast!