The entrepreneurial risk-taking journey is not for everyone but one critical reason is often overlooked. The propensity of owner-managers to overestimate their ability to manage risks they are taking today and underestimate what can go wrong at the point of realising wealth.

When the risk-taker uses the business as a personal “cash machine” to fund their lifestyle (salary, dividends, drawings tec) a form of co-dependency arises until there is a weird screeching halt at the point of, and post, a sale of the business.

That familiar replenishing cash machine is no longer, you are now exclusively in the investment management business.

Yet a great many small and mid-sized business owners are not good managers of their own personal capital (cash, credit and investment), and many are poorly advised. They leave it too late to change their own mindset, and behaviour and preparation for their new life.

They act like gamblers rather investing to win.

It is like the guy who wins on the first race at the horse racing track but who freely gives it all back and more to the bookies while entertaining his friends, and walks out a loser after the last race.

If you are serious about building, nurturing and realising business wealth for a long and improved life, you need the discipline and skills of a professional investor not a punter.