Podcast Ep 52 | Build Your Business Like You're Never Going to Sell It

This week on The Growth Whis­pers we chal­lenge the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom about build­ing your busi­ness to sell it. When you’re start­ing your busi­ness some peo­ple say you need to know your exit strat­e­gy and be plan­ning to sell your business.

But there’s anoth­er view: when you start your busi­ness, you should expect to run it for 50 years, or 100 years, or gen­er­a­tions. That’s the alter­na­tive we want you to con­sid­er, and build­ing your busi­ness so you keep enjoy­ing it for many years into the future.

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Please note that this episode was tran­scribed using an AI appli­ca­tion and may not be 100% gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

Kevin Lawrence 00:13

Wel­come to the growth whis­pers pod­cast where every­thing we talk about is build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies. Those are com­pa­nies that peo­ple build and con­tin­ue to build for decades and decades and decades and resources to help them and their teams to do this thing. endur­ing great com­pa­nies. That’s what we’re about. And I’m here today with my co host, Brad Giles, as I am every week and Brad, wel­come to the show today. Today is a very spe­cial day like real­ly spe­cial day. Do you want to tell us about that, Brad?

Brad Giles 00:46

Well, today’s episode 52, it is our one year anniver­sary with so hap­py to have made it to one year it’s great one year of talk­ing about build­ing endur­ing great busi­ness­es. Every week, for one year, we’ve been doing this and we start­ed in the heat of the pan­dem­ic. This was Yeah, real­ly a tough time and now we’re enduring.

Kevin Lawrence 01:18

Yes, we are. And you know, like a lot of things that start­ed out as an exper­i­ment. Hey, let’s try this and give it a shot. We’ve been enjoy­ing it. bring­ing our brains togeth­er, you know, It’ll come togeth­er in a book and lots of oth­er great things. So yeah, it’s our 52^nd episode. Made it to a year per­sis­tence pays. And yeah, so what? So today, before we get into our top­ics today, Brad, what’s your word? Or your phrase of the day where you’re at today?

Brad Giles 01:47

Yeah. Joey chest­nut, obvi­ous­ly, so you’re not Joey chest­nut To be more spe­cif­ic. So accord­ing to major league eat­ing the World Fed­er­a­tion on eat­ing the world cham­pi­on, the undis­put­ed world cham­pi­on is Joey chest­nut, at World at eat­ing records. So Joey’s eat­en 75 hot­dogs in 10 min­utes. And if you do, then, and they have that com­pe­ti­tion on Coney Island in New York, and I think he’s also eat­en 32 Big Macs is the oth­er world record that he holds, right. But when Joey hit 75 hot dogs in 10 min­utes, okay, to give you an idea of just how much how far ahead he is. The num­ber two per­son is almost flak­ing out at about 45. Okay, so Joey is by far and away the world leader in con­sum­ing hot­dogs with­in 10 min­utes. But my point is that you’re not jel­ly chest­nut, we talk about all of these things. We talk about pur­pose, exe­cu­tion data, we talk about great lead­er­ship team and hir­ing the right play­ers. And so you are not Joey chest­nut, right, you can’t con­sume at a rate, the aver­age per­son can­not even con­sume at a rate of the peo­ple who are los­ing, let alone Joey chest­nut. So you’ve got to be real­is­tic in the man­ner in which you will con­sume in which you will intro­duce these con­cepts into your busi­ness and exe­cute them and get them to stick. So you’re not Joey chest­nut, there is only one Joey chest­nut, who can eat 75 hot­dogs in 10 minutes.

Kevin Lawrence 04:00

What you’re say­ing is you have to pace your­self when you’re imple­ment­ing things in your busi­ness. Yes, because most peo­ple can’t con­sume that much whether it’s infor­ma­tion or changes or oth­er things that quickly.

Brad Giles 04:14

Yeah. And you know what peo­ple say? Like, I want to get all of this stuff in right away. It’s cool. It’s also awe­some. Yeah, but you can’t wait until

Kevin Lawrence 04:24

lat­er we just not right. And if we try to con­sume stuff like Joey chest­nut, only half of its gonna get down and then it’s all going to come out and there will be no net in the sys­tem. Well, that will Yeah, quick­ly, the sys­tem will eject it very quickly.

Brad Giles 04:39

It just won’t work. Yeah. It’s not only about doing it, but it’s just accept­ing, like we can only con­sume this con­tent. We can only imple­ment this con­tent so quick and you may feel that that’s, you know, You’re not hap­py with that, because you want to get it all done. But it just does­n’t work that way

Kevin Lawrence 05:05

it is and I was talk­ing with anoth­er entre­pre­neur last week­end talk­ing about this about phas­ing things in slow­ly in their busi­ness. So they get sol­id and become excel­lent. Ver­sus lay­er­ing in a bunch of stuff that turns to garbage real fast. That is awe­some. So Joey chest­nut, well, that kind of leads to my word of the day, which is mas­ters. Inter­est­ing­ly, and I’m just reflect­ing on the past week on some amaz­ing peo­ple in my world that are absolute mas­ters. And I was think­ing about the guy that I trade around on a few cars, a cou­ple cars. And this guy makes it so easy. He just he makes it incred­i­bly easy. His name’s Cor. He’s so easy to deal with. He makes Yeah, he makes he’s fair. And he just makes it like fric­tion­less to make the changes that you want to make. And anoth­er con­trac­tor that I’m work­ing with on a project and again, just mak­ing it so easy absolute Mas­ter, most these guys have done it prob­a­bly hun­dreds of times. And just how would you work with Mas­ters in many in I think all around my life, I’m sur­round­ed by mas­ters on many dif­fer­ent things. So So yeah, deal­ing with Mas­ters, peo­ple that are excel­lent. It’s easy, it makes just makes things real­ly easy, which I’m sure we’ll come into our theme for today. So and by the way, those mas­ters in my in your oxy­gen mask first we call them 14x advi­sors, peo­ple who have been there and done that 14 times before IE they know these things like the back of their hand, they’re not mak­ing it up, and they’re not on the bot­tom of their learn­ing curve. So today, speak­ing of Joey chest­nut, hot dog eat­ing cham­pi­on and mas­ters who make things easy and even look easy, like Joey chest­nut would also do, what is what are we talk­ing about today?

Brad Giles 07:06

Yeah, well, because it’s Episode 52. We’re talk­ing about why would you want to build an endur­ing great com­pa­ny? Why? There are lots of peo­ple out there, who think that the only option that you can have is build a com­pa­ny and then sell it. And then we’re kind of just say­ing, there’s anoth­er alter­na­tive, there’s an option out there that you may not have con­sid­ered, which is build­ing a com­pa­ny for the pur­pose of the long term, build­ing a com­pa­ny and think­ing about it over a longer peri­od of time, which, you know, it may seem quite strange to some peo­ple. So today being our one year anniver­sary, we’re going to flesh that out. And yeah, see where it takes us.

Kevin Lawrence 08:06

Yeah, and there’s so much think­ing of there, this kind of get rich quick and build it and sell it, it’s the com­mon nar­ra­tive out there in the busi­ness world, and we just want to share it, we have a very dif­fer­ent view, under cir­cum­stances where some­one sell­ing their busi­ness could make sense, but we’re obsessed with and we work most­ly with peo­ple who want to keep build­ing their busi­ness­es for decades or gen­er­a­tions. That’s and that’s what this pod­cast is all about. We have some oth­ers that don’t. But the core of our, our pas­sion, espe­cial­ly in this show is about that. So the title is, you know, why should you should build your busi­ness, like you’re nev­er going to sell it, right. And even if you sell it, build­ing it, like you nev­er got what are going to sell it also gives you an advan­tage. And in one of these, we were talk­ing, I was prepar­ing for the show, like Brad and I were hav­ing some pret­ty pas­sion­ate debates about this, because it real­ly makes us mad, it makes us frus­trat­ed when we see peo­ple sell their busi­ness that we think don’t need to and we’ll get into some of the details. And, and, you know, when there’s the intent is just to open up peo­ple’s view of what’s pos­si­ble, ver­sus that com­mon nar­ra­tive of you should build it and sell it. And, and no, and espe­cial­ly, you know, as we get into this piece around, you know, if your busi­ness is real­ly con­nect­ed to a pur­pose, it’s like, Can you real­ly even sell that busi­ness, but what we’ll get into that today. Any­thing you want to add in there, Brad, before we get into our points,

Brad Giles 09:30

well, just that you don’t need to sell. I saw a com­ment online, I would say with­in the last few weeks and this per­son, let’s say a thought leader for one of a bet­ter term. They said the rea­son you know a busi­ness, the rea­son that you have a busi­ness is to sell it. And I don’t think that’s nec­es­sar­i­ly true. I I think that for some peo­ple, that’s our view, it’s a view. Yeah. So peo­ple have

Kevin Lawrence 10:04

it’s not a foun­da­tion­al truth of the uni­verse life grav­i­ty, which it’s an opin­ion, it’s a view, it’s an option. But there’s oth­er perspectives.

Brad Giles 10:16

And that’s the point. When that is the only rea­son that every­one thinks that a busi­ness exists. It does­n’t is not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of all of the views. And we’ve got to think that some peo­ple want to build and some peo­ple want to keep and some peo­ple want to sell. But yeah, there is a case to be made for the oth­er side. So let’s dig into that today. So that real­ly flows into the first, the first, I guess, def­i­n­i­tion nor­mal­ly will sort of say, Well, what are we talk­ing about here, there’s a com­mon­ly held belief that peo­ple are in busi­ness to make mon­ey and build a busi­ness, to sell it and make a pot of mon­ey. Again, that works for some peo­ple. There’s an indus­try around that, and it works very well. And what we’re say­ing is, if you take a long term mind­set, you may think dif­fer­ent­ly, if it’s your under­stand­ing your belief that, you know, I enjoy the busi­ness, I enjoy what I’m doing on a day to day, and this is the dif­fer­ence that I’m mak­ing in the world, it can real­ly make a big dif­fer­ence to you. Most­ly. Yeah. Any­thing to add to that?

Kevin Lawrence 11:39

Yeah, no, it says we kind of start­ed with isn’t there’s this belief that you build it to sell it. And then a lot of the com­pa­nies that we work with, won’t sell, I’ve got no com­pa­ny in the Mid­dle East, there were three years, India and all around the world com­pa­nies like they are sell­ing assis­tant, even on their radar, right, like, and in some cas­es, they may have some oth­er share­hold­ers in the busi­ness or part­ners or oth­er things, but they just want to keep on going. They keep on build­ing but they all have one thing in com­mon is that there is a pur­pose beyond prof­it in the busi­ness for all of them. And it’s not just about the mon­ey, although they gen­er­ate great mon­ey. Nor­mal­ly, they gen­er­ate great prof­its. But there’s a love and a pas­sion and a con­nec­tion they have to this thing that they’ve built and con­tin­ue to build. And com­mon­ly what you see for peo­ple, I see a lot of peo­ple that con­tact me that kind of out of frus­tra­tion that want to sell, because they’re kind of at the end of the rope, like yeah, this ain’t fun. And we’ll get into some of that oth­er stuff lat­er on. But it’s, it’s because they’re there, they, it’s caus­ing them more pain than it is giv­ing them you know, joy, right? It’s and there’s a frus­tra­tion and a bunch of oth­er stuff that we’ll get into it. So that kind of takes us into our sec­ond point. The first point is, you see the oth­er alter­na­tive, out­side the nar­ra­tive of you know, when you start a busi­ness, you got to know your exit, when you start­ed a busi­ness, you got to know your exit point and how much you want to get for it, that’s a view. Or when you start a busi­ness, your alter­na­tive is, you know, you got to know your pur­pose and the dif­fer­ence you want to make and ral­ly peo­ple around that.

Brad Giles 13:15

And, what return you want to make. So rather this. So rather than say­ing only your pur­pose, or rather than say­ing how much you’re going to sell for. So I want to make a mil­lion dol­lars a year or what­ev­er num­ber that might be that that meets your require­ments or $10 mil­lion, what­ev­er. The point is that just know­ing that there is an alter­na­tive is the first step. This is not the only option that’s avail­able. Yep.

Kevin Lawrence 13:45

So the sec­ond we want to talk about is what is your moti­va­tion for sell­ing if you’re think­ing about it? And again, maybe it is the right, right is the right deci­sion for you. We’re just hav­ing you see the non tra­di­tion­al per­spec­tive I’m not sell­ing so you know, are often when we talk to you is it you know, they for what­ev­er rea­son, they don’t like their busi­ness any­more. Like there’s some it’s not joy when they’re going to work and work on their busi­ness. Some­times it’s the team, some­times the only the com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ments got­ten real rough. Some­times they’ve gone through a real rough patch finan­cial­ly, and you’ll have prob­lems with their banks or oth­er things. Maybe they just burnt out. And maybe they’re just cooked. 1And some­times because of what’s going on, they can’t see how they’re gonna win in the future and they lose faith. And there’s all kinds of rea­sons and you know, you dig into them, and they’re all com­mon, like, you know, lead­ing a busi­ness isn’t the eas­i­est thing in the world, right you can get a job work­ing for your local gov­ern­ment, it’d be a heck of a lot eas­i­er. But this is meant to be a big chal­lenge and ide­al­ly a very reward­ing chal­lenge both for your spir­it and finan­cial­ly as well. So, so the main thing is no mat­ter what you’re moti­vat­ed, real­ly under­stand why is it I’m want­i­ng to sell, like, what is the gen­er­al­ly pain point that’s mak­ing me want to sell? Then con­sid­er alter­na­tives, like con­sid­er oth­er things that could help that. So for exam­ple, no one per­son I know that’s gonna sell their busi­ness, they’re just sick of the pres­sure. They’re just sick of the pres­sure that lands on their shoul­ders. Well, if you have too much pres­sure on your shoul­ders, that means that there’s not enough pres­sure on your team’s shoul­ders and or you don’t have a strong enough team. That means you’re prob­a­bly still in the chap­ter in my book, your oxy­gen mask first called make your­self use­less. Well, unfor­tu­nate­ly, you’re prob­a­bly still too use­ful. And if you’re too use­ful, that gets tir­ing, you need to have the team mem­bers who are in the use­ful posi­tion, and you were in the strate­gic role, and becom­ing more useless.

Brad Giles 15:53

And an inter­est­ing ques­tion around that sub­ject is, well, what if you weren’t allowed to sell? What if there was some gov­ern­ment man­date that said, You must own this busi­ness? And you were forced? You weren’t able? What would you do dif­fer­ent? Def­i­nite­ly fire Rob, just as that’d be the first thing. But then do it get Tina and that and that and you know, that cus­tomer ABC Corp? Or def­i­nite­ly get rid of them? If I was forced to own this busi­ness? Well, then why don’t you do it. So under­stand­ing that the con­straint of free­dom is not real­ly per­haps your best friend. And if you could intro­duce the idea of a dif­fer­ent con­straint, if I was forced to own this busi­ness, how would I run it dif­fer­ent­ly? Can actu­al­ly get you to illu­mi­nate the path of what you real­ly want to do?

Kevin Lawrence 16:48

And our point sev­en tonight takes that into account of how do you make this thing amaz­ing? Again, if it’s not, maybe it’s not me? And maybe you want to sell it because you got some­thing else you want to do with the mon­ey maybe you want to go and do a char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion and chan­nel the ener­gies there. You know, there’s lots of rea­sons but the point is tru­ly under­stand it. And if it’s a point of pain, is there a dif­fer­ent approach that you could take there is almost always there is no, and even if it’s, you know, if you’re men­tal­ly cooked, which burnout we deal with a lot, he might you might need a break, you might need a sabbatical.

Brad Giles 17:27

wait maybe debt lev­els too high? Well, then you need to work down the debt or refi­nance it, but the point is, under­stand what is the moti­va­tion for you want­i­ng to sell? That’s right. That’s beyond the cash.

Kevin Lawrence 17:44

Right? Exact­ly. Cool. So then, then the next thing, and this is the one that real­ly gets us because we have a lot of faith in peo­ple’s abil­i­ties. And we’ve seen how peo­ple can take busi­ness­es and scale it and improve it, because we do it every day, we’ve been doing it for a long time. It’s very sim­ple to us. And I know, he said, they say hard to do some­times. But you real­ly got to see how that lump of cash, you’re going to get whether it’s three, or five, or sev­en, or 14 times your prof­it or your eba, what­ev­er it is, you got to see how that can actu­al­ly be an a steal of a deal you’re giv­en to some­one. Because over the next decade, you could eas­i­ly have all that cash, go into your per­son­al bank account the same way if you sold it, and you still own the asset. And it’s prob­a­bly worth 2, 3 or 4 times as much if you keep build­ing it. So it’s basi­cal­ly nor­mal­ly you’re sell­ing it at a mas­sive dis­count of the future val­ue of your busi­ness. If you believe in the future val­ue of the busi­ness, and often you might not. But what’s pos­si­ble, it’s what­ev­er you sell it for is crumbs, com­pared to what it could be worth if you con­tin­ue to scale it and improve it and grow it over the next decade or two.

Brad Giles 19:05

And so I part of the con­cept here could be short term gain I sell­ing today could equal long term pain, or equal­ly an oppo­site, short term pain could equal long term gain. That’s sim­ple. That sim­ple phrase can apply. So often what we say is, if you were to go through the pain of actu­al­ly not sell­ing, could you actu­al­ly get a big­ger gain in the long term, or how long would it take you to real­ize that now in some cas­es, some­one’s going to come in with such a large check that it makes your eyes water just to see it right and, you know, the human ness of that sit­u­a­tion. You know, we would prob­a­bly poten­tial­ly say Yeah, you’ve got to go for that, that that oppor­tu­ni­ty is nev­er com­ing out. again and that may be an absolute­ly legit­i­mate path if some­one comes to you with let’s say crazy mon­ey but you but what are you going to do what are you going to do

Kevin Lawrence 20:14

because you’re sell­ing if you’re real­ly deeply pas­sion­ate what you’re sell­ing your soul like you’re it’s like you’re sell­ing off a piece of what you’re doing and then you got to go find anoth­er place to express your soul and your pur­pose in life which could be awe­some well that’s that’s which may or may not

Brad Giles 20:35

which could be an example

Kevin Lawrence 20:37

one of my one of my clients that i worked with start­ing actu­al­ly i just did an inter­view on his pod­cast last week actu­al­ly name his name is nigel ben­nett he has a com­pa­ny called aqua­guard and prob­a­bly close to 17 or 18 years ago we start­ed togeth­er any­ways he did­n’t like his busi­ness at all turns out he had a part­ner­ship prob­lem and he talked about this in my book but he put his hand on the door­knob and you feel like he was get­ting elec­tro­cut­ed every time he went into his own damn office hat­ed it want­ed to let tried to sell it any­ways long sto­ry short 18 years lat­er that thing is an excel­lent busi­ness he’s got his third per­son he tried his pres­i­dent turned out which is a long term guy that grew up in the busi­ness who became an excel­lent pres­i­dent awe­some com­pa­ny he’s still con­nect­ed to his pur­pose around pro­tect­ing water you know he’s involved in help­ing it plus he’s got free­dom to do oth­er things and he’s liv­ing a spec­tac­u­lar life spec­tac­u­lar so but in the end you know he’s you choose to keep keep it and let it build and it’s giv­en a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to as pres­i­dent cameron who’s doing a great job and and it’s turned out like it could­n’t have turned out bet­ter for him and this kind of ties us back in to our next point point four is ide­al­ly your busi­ness is a plat­form for your pur­pose like the dif­fer­ence you want to make if it’s just a plat­form for prof­it we under­stand why you prob­a­bly want to sell it because you prob­a­bly don’t like it that much but if you find a plat­form for your pur­pose some­thing you deeply care about and you feel that intrin­sic reward that you get con­nect­ed to through your busi­ness and you can bring it to life through your busi­ness and what­ev­er it hap­pens to be there’s no feel­ing like that and that’s why i know some of these peo­ple can’t sell these things because they tru­ly enjoy it so it’s a ide­al­ly it’s a plat­form for your pur­pose and if it’s not you might con­sid­er look­ing this direction

Brad Giles 22:36

and that’s why we talk about build­ing endur­ing great busi­ness­es because in an endur­ing great busi­ness you can ful­ly self actu­al­ize your pur­pose you can ful­ly build what you want to do you can real­ly fol­low your pas­sion and cre­ate the vehi­cle for you to live out what you real­ly want to do the dif­fer­ence that you real­ly want to make in the world and yes the prof­it is incred­i­bly impor­tant hav­ing said that it’s also impor­tant to self actu­al­ize you know that’s maslow’s hier­ar­chy bri­an at the top

Kevin Lawrence 23:17

so prof­its impor­tant but at a cer­tain point it’s not enough right but when your prof­it and pur­pose man that leads you to a great expe­ri­ence and obvi­ous­ly help­ing to build a great com­pa­ny and now you were talk­ing about tony shea upfront from zap­pos brad you’re shar­ing that exam­ple of how he sold to ama­zon and maybe you con­tin­ue with that sto­ry that you’re shar­ing and how that that that that ties into this

Brad Giles 23:41

so tony hid­ed com­ing to work as your your friend with the water com­pa­ny did he was at a busi­ness where you know i might dis­re­spect the sto­ry but i’ll do it with a smile on my face he did­n’t like com­ing to work and did­n’t love the team did­n’t love the prod­uct and real­ly just every mon­day was like oh god i got­ta go back to that work again so he end­ed up he sold that for north of $200 mil­lion i think he sold it to microsoft his first busi­ness and then reset and then thought i’m going to do it again but i’m going to build the busi­ness that i love to work in the one that’s going to make the kind of dif­fer­ence and it was around hap­pi­ness that’s his thing that’s his theme right zap­pos obvi­ous­ly being the com­pa­ny spent a few years build­ing that and then actu­al­ly i think he sold that for over a bil­lion dol­lars to ama­zon but part of that deal the only way that he would do that deal was that he got to con­tin­ue to run it with full auton­o­my in exact­ly the way that he want­ed to now ter­ri­bly unfor­tu­nate­ly tony recent­ly passed away Last year. But in terms of what we’re talk­ing about here, build­ing an endur­ing, great com­pa­ny, what’s impor­tant is that the sale still hap­pened, the first sale hap­pens so that he could build his sec­ond busi­ness. And then he trans­act­ed on the sec­ond busi­ness, but still con­tin­ued to build an endur­ing great com­pa­ny and Zap­pos. And that was him, ful­fill­ing, you know, his pur­pose. And so, it’s impor­tant to con­sid­er that the trans­ac­tions can still apply in some cir­cum­stances. But what we’re say­ing is the pur­pose, your pur­pose, the pur­pose is so impor­tant and not regret­ting that as you age.

Kevin Lawrence 25:47

So so so Tony basi­cal­ly got, it was very smart and got him­self the dou­ble dip, he got the cash ben­e­fit, and who­ev­er else had stock options, gods, you got the cash. So we got that you got the cash. And he got the pur­pose piece, because he was he set him­self up with the auton­o­my to con­tin­ue to run based on pur­pose. And it was a, it was a very smart deal that he did there, from both per­spec­tives, pur­pose and prof­it. So So the whole idea is, is that you know, the best busi­ness­es do feed your soul in some way. And it helps to man­age some of the pain that you have, as you’re build­ing, it’s not always easy. And look at your busi­ness, how is it feed­ing your soul? And you know, what could make it bet­ter? How do you bring that pur­pose back to life or make it more pow­er­ful, or to your own ben­e­fit, and to the peo­ple around? And so so the next point num­ber five is is is like it’s kind of inspired by Tony and maybe it’s, you know, 4.4 and a half. But look at where your per­son­al return comes from your intrin­sic reward your sat­is­fac­tion in the busi­ness beyond mon­ey. And some­times it gets lost. Like some­times we get so caught up in it, that it’s just, you know, you for­get what real­ly makes a chick­en ref­er­enc­ing my stuff. I know you’ve done stuff on this as well. But there’s, there’s a piece in, in your oxy­gen mask First we have you iden­ti­fy your sweet spot. That’s where you do your best work that ener­gizes you and you love doing it. Yeah, the com­bi­na­tions. And a lot of times, talk to senior lead­ers and CEOs. They’re not doing their sweet spot, they’re actu­al­ly hat­ing their damn job ever mind the busi­ness, they actu­al­ly what they’re doing, they are get­ting per­son­al­ly drained by what they do not per­son­al­ly ener­gized and they often got to recon­fig­ure it. And you got to restruc­ture. So I’ve got anoth­er CEO, the one from sev­en direct reports to three, game chang­er, absolute game chang­er, anoth­er CEO that had the respon­si­bil­i­ty for legal still in their hand. They out­sourced it, all of a sud­den, they love their busi­ness, prob­a­bly 20% more because they, they felt they had to deal with the legal issues and they hat­ed it, they actu­al­ly made them worse. But that’s a whole oth­er sto­ry. But it’s real­ly dial­ing it in so that you can get a great intrin­sic reward not nec­es­sar­i­ly just con­nect­ed from what the pur­pose is, but from your dai­ly work. And what makes you feel good at the end of the day.

Brad Giles 28:14

I do a sim­i­lar exer­cise and it’s ener­gy up ener­gy down. So what drains your ener­gy as a leader, as a CEO, and what gives you ener­gy? It’s a pret­ty sim­ple kind of a thing. But okay, why can’t we get you to offload the things that drain your ener­gy and get more of the things that give you energy?

Kevin Lawrence 28:36

You know, actu­al­ly, it’s we have to not why can’t you like we have to, oth­er­wise you’re gonna bonk is a leader and you need to be able to be inspired and doing your best and, and have per­mis­sion to build the team around you the way you want so that you can enjoy the game. So it’s like if you were play­ing, you know, soc­cer we would call it or you know, or footy or foot­ball as you guys would call it. You know the lit­tle round ball you chase around the field. If you like to be a for­ward but your goal a goal­keep­er, that’s not going to be fun. And if you’re a goal­keep­er, or vice ver­sa, like you got to play the posi­tion you want and play the sport you want because maybe you want to play bad­minton or cro­quet or you want to surf. So yeah, so in our roles, we often get lost and we per­son­al­ly don’t get

Brad Giles 29:24

to feel good about our work. We’d call it soc­cer. But Clay­ton Chris­tiansen said that in an orga­ni­za­tion, peo­ple look to the cor­ner office to the CEOs role, and they think the great intrin­sic val­ue comes from hav­ing the pow­er from being able to make the deci­sions from hav­ing the big salary. But then, once you get there, after a while you rec­og­nize that the great reward isn’t the pow­er or isn’t the deci­sions. It’s grow­ing the peo­ple around you. It’s hav­ing a team and get­ting The team to become bet­ter ver­sions of them­selves. That’s the great, intrin­sic, per­son­al return on invest­ment that you get.

Kevin Lawrence 30:08

Yes. So point five is mak­ing sure that the job that you’re doing is the job you want to do, how do you tweak your role to real­ly work for you point six is about invest­ing your­self and learn­ing. You know, a lot of the lead­ers that con­tin­ue to enjoy and thrive in their roles con­tin­ue to learn and learn a lot of stuff, and it helps them to one nav­i­gate and make bet­ter deci­sions, and to grow them­selves. And I eat the per­spec­tive we just shared Brad about, about almost basi­cal­ly becom­ing the coach ver­sus the best play­er. Right, that’s, that’s a shift that a lot of lead­ers need to make. But you need to learn about that and study and read about oth­er great lead­ers that did it and how they did it, and what helped them to do it. But it’s, it’s, you know, a lot of lead­ers again, that want to sell that when that espe­cial­ly when they’re they balk, and they’re tired, or they lose faith, they often haven’t spent enough time learn­ing, and they need to open up the hori­zon and see more and talk to them. And some­times, you know, they need a coach, they need some new men­tors, they need to go take a three day exec­u­tive edu­ca­tion pro­gram with a bunch of oth­er entre­pre­neurs are doing you know, lots of dif­fer­ent things and do one of those columns ses­sions that we do when there’s not COVID. But you know, it’s whether it’s addi­tion­al help, or a guide, or to build their belief or their inspi­ra­tion, or the strate­gic think­ing or to see new doors they did­n’t even know exist­ed, some­times you’re real­ly got to real­ly sharp­en your own saw and make your­self you know, sharp­er and more capable.

Brad Giles 31:40

And so if you’re going to build an endur­ing, great busi­ness, rather than Sell a Busi­ness, you’re going to have to invest in your­self, you’re going to have to con­tin­u­al­ly stay ahead of the growth curve, you’re going to have to be in front of it. And as advi­sors, as advi­sors, and coach­es, you and I and Kevin, we need to stay ahead of the CEO.

Kevin Lawrence 32:07

Yeah, 100%. And, and, and that’s when we have to spend so much time learn­ing and grow­ing our­selves. And we encour­age the best part is, you know, we just had a call last week with all our CEOs, or invite them all, and peo­ple are all shar­ing their best learn­ings and best resources in the past year. Now, the great thing is, when you work with a bunch of amaz­ing peo­ple, they have as many good sug­ges­tions as we do, and the tribe or the com­mu­ni­ty sup­port each oth­er. It’s just awe­some. We got some awe­some ideas that came out of that last ses­sion. And, and but we need to do that reg­u­lar­ly, not only for ener­gy and sharp­ness, but to help with our own growth.

Brad Giles 32:41

So let’s move on to num­ber sev­en. So why should you build an endur­ing, great com­pa­ny? Rather than maybe sell? Well? Why do you want to sell? Maybe you’re just burnt out? Maybe you’ve just had enough? Maybe you think any­thing is bet­ter than this? And so per­haps you just need a reset? Per­haps you need to start with the blank page. And I spoke about this ear­li­er. What if you were forced to keep your busi­ness? By leg­is­la­tion by the gov­ern­ment? Or some­one else said, No, you absolute­ly must hate this busi­ness. You are not allowed to sell it, then how would you run it dif­fer­ent­ly? You know, there was a famous actor, come­di­an direc­tor called Mel Brooks. And in one of Mel Brooks, movies, he had this famous line where he said it’s good to be king. Because the king gets to do what­ev­er he wants. And there was Yes, lots of food and ladies around him at that time in the tra­di­tion­al Mel Brooks humor style. But it’s good to be king in the con­text of your own busi­ness, because you can actu­al­ly start with a blank slide. In prepa­ra­tion for our chat today. We were say­ing one of the rea­sons that you would sell is because you want to clean out the garbage. Well, why can’t you clean out the garbage? Well, you still own it. So you don’t like this soft­ware, you don’t like this team, you don’t like that per­son you don’t like your debt?

Kevin Lawrence 34:16

Well, why can’t you don’t like your loca­tion, you don’t like your busi­ness mod­el, you don’t like a lot of stuff and you know that that clean slate blank page exer­cise is very free­ing and pow­er­ful. It’s just hard for some peo­ple, one they don’t make the time to they might not be com­fort­able doing it. So even if you go look at this, a lot of times when we get lost down a path, some­times you just need to start way over there. So anoth­er CEO we work with his busi­ness mod­el is get­ting com­modi­tized and com­modi­tized and com­modi­tized. And he’s been going through some strate­gic exer­cis­es to help them think dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, longer term, big pic­ture, and he’s gonna take a lit­tle slice of the busi­ness and go and build it into poten­tial. what would over­take the exist­ing busi­ness kind of exam i’ve got a few oth­ers that have done that but some­times you need to do it with­out con­straints and give your­self per­mis­sion and then go make those changes and it’s almost like if you if you’ve got a a beau­ti­ful old clas­sic car and then you keep repair­ing it and repair­ing it and repair­ing it now you don’t need to throw it in the garbage but you might send it back to the fac­to­ry or you might like some of the high end brands lijke Fer­rari you can send a car back to them and they’ll restore it or you might send it to a restora­tion shop and go and spend an amount of mon­ey that might not make sense but they will make every­thing brand new again it’s still that orig­i­nal her­itage it’s still got the the soul and every­thing of that orig­i­nal you know 1960s what­ev­er it hap­pens to be car but then they rebuild it brand new fresh so every­thing is brand new and fresh and revi­tal­ized and they might even do some­thing to even they could take it back to its root or mod­ern­ize it there’s a thing and in hot rods in the us called resto mod where they restore a car and high­ly mod­i­fy it and mod­ern­ize it at the same time so it looks with all the her­itage and every­thing but under­neath it’s like a brand new car

Brad Giles 36:16

one of my sor­ry one of my favorite com­pa­nies that do that as a com­pa­ny out of los ange­les i think called sin­ga yes beau­ti­ful­ly me they made yeah re imag­i­neer­ing i think they call it yeah and they take a porsche 911 from like 1988 to 1996.

Kevin Lawrence 36:42

and 1990 to 1994 it’s called a porsche 964 that they use as their base

Brad Giles 36:48

yes and it’s every­thing is mod­ern it’s the clas­sic look but it just they are just absolute­ly beau­ti­ful so the metaphor the anal­o­gy here is well can you do that to your busi­ness can if you become sick and tired of the busi­ness what can you do that to your busi­ness over a three to five year period

Kevin Lawrence 37:18

one of the teams yeah one of the teams i work with you know they said okay great let’s just walk out the door and let’s walk in as the new buy­ers of this busi­ness and what will we do to it yeah right fresh because a lot of times we’re caught up in old lega­cy stuff and we don’t want to deal with it but we need to and nor­mal­ly the exer­cise we go is let’s go three to five years in the future what does win­ning look like and then come back and with no emo­tion­al attach­ment to any­thing what would the deci­sions we’d make be we make those deci­sions then you go and look at how do you do it in a respect­ful way because it involves peo­ple but and in many ways you become you think like your own turn­around expert for your own com­pa­ny and some­times they need it and some­times it’s so refresh­ing like a snake shed­ding its skin just so refresh­ing and it allows you to grow again

Brad Giles 38:10

but it comes back to your core pur­pose it comes back to you know what do you want your lega­cy to be what is the dif­fer­ence that you want to make in the world and you know when you retired or as you when you were aged how would you look back and think you know i’m so proud of the dif­fer­ence that I made with the peo­ple i helped with the busi­ness that we built togeth­er yeah would i reset would clean­ing out the garbage would that help me to achieve that

Kevin Lawrence 38:46

yeah and if we kind of you know review this and sum this up look if you love your busi­ness if it’s if it’s a plat­form for your pur­pose and it should be beyond prof­it prof­it screen default and mak­ing mon­ey is awe­some it’s a plat­form for your pur­pose now there’s lots of things that you need to do some­times to make it work adjust­ing your role adjust­ing the busi­ness mod­el rebuild­ing things you should at least be able to have that pas­sion and ten­sion to keep build­ing it like you’re nev­er going to sell it and that you’re going to keep it for decades or gen­er­a­tions and if you did that may be a sep­a­rate choice but think­ing about build­ing some­thing spec­tac­u­lar for the long term will get you to make dif­fer­ent deci­sions some­times than if you’re just going to flip it over in a cou­ple of years right because you’re build­ing foun­da­tions for great­ness for the long term so let’s go back and review brad so the main point we’re mak­ing today is you want peo­ple to be aware of this dif­fer­ent view where you could build it and nev­er sell it build it and keep it for­ev­er because i think it’s a trav­es­ty some peo­ple sell they don’t need to and there’s the emo­tion­al thing where they sell it get a lump of mon­ey and then they’re bored they want to go back and do it again some might be relieved and then there’s the well then then they still need a plat­form for the pur­pose so they have to do some­thing else to be use­ful and feel ful­filled in this world. So num­ber one, you know, when we’ll take turns on his brow keeps, you know, see­ing this endur­ing alter­na­tive, which we’re putting on the map, there is an endur­ing alter­na­tive, build it, to keep build­ing it for the long term like many of our clients do.

Brad Giles 40:15

And then num­ber two, of course, is under­stand your moti­va­tion beyond the cash as to why you are enam­ored with sell­ing, why you think I would like to sell? What is that? Because, yes, the cash is one thing, what are the oth­er rea­sons? And then, can you look beyond those rea­sons? Can you say, Well, I don’t like the team or I, I can’t see a way that we can win in this busi­ness in the future? If that’s the case, then you know, maybe you should con­sid­er get­ting some help coach and advi­sor, to help to rec­ti­fy those things, because the cash is good. But there is also a case to be made for build­ing an endur­ing great business.

Kevin Lawrence 41:00

Yeah, and you can fix any­thing. Sec­ond­ly is see how what­ev­er cash you’re going to get, whether it’s three or 10, times your earn­ings, how if you, if you con­tin­ue to run it for a year, you’re going to get all of that and more and that can all go into your pock­et if you do things right. And, or ensure char­i­ties pock­et, what­ev­er you want. And you still own the asset, which is prob­a­bly worth at least twice as much, by that min­i­mum, if you do it right. And see­ing how that it’s just, it’s finan­cial­ly, it can look like a lot of cash, but it’s noth­ing com­pared to if you keep build­ing this busi­ness and mak­ing it bet­ter and better.

Brad Giles 41:32

And then num­ber four is your busi­ness is a plat­form for your pur­pose, right? When you are lead­ing a pur­pose moti­vat­ed or a pur­pose dri­ven busi­ness, it’s, it’s prob­a­bly or more often than not the thing that you’re deeply pas­sion­ate about. So if the, if the appeal of sell­ing around prof­it is, is the main moti­va­tion, per­haps your busi­ness isn’t con­nect­ed to your own pur­pose. Mm hmm.

Kevin Lawrence 42:05

For five, look at where your per­son­al return comes from, where’s the intrin­sic sat­is­fac­tion you’re get­ting from your work? You know, are you in your sweet spot? Are you actu­al­ly doing work that you love, and you get to spend your day, doing the things you love and make you feel great and cre­ate val­ue or need to find a way to restruc­ture your own role, or maybe the role of your teams, so your team mem­bers, so you can del­e­gate stuff that you don’t love doing and spend more time being inspired in your job.

Brad Giles 42:33

Num­ber six, invest in your­self, and you, maybe you’ve slipped behind the growth of the busi­ness, maybe it has­n’t become as much fun. Maybe you don’t have any advi­sors or men­tors or edu­ca­tion. And so per­haps you could learn and learn and learn that will help you to keep the busi­ness and evolve to build the busi­ness that you do love.

Kevin Lawrence 43:07

And then final­ly, some­times you just got to do a clean slate, you got to get a blank page, and you got to rebuild this whole thing. And some­times you can ren­o­vate and improve and fix. And some­times you just got to take the whole thing and start from zero like send­ing a clas­sic car to get restored, or com­plete­ly clean­ing the house and gut­ting the whole house and start­ing fresh or knock the damn thing down and rebuild a big­ger, bet­ter ver­sion of it on that amaz­ing foun­da­tion that you have. So at the root of it, I hope you get from today’s as many alter­na­tives than build­ing your busi­ness to sell it. And there’s a lot of peo­ple which will inter­view in the future. So a lot of peo­ple who have built busi­ness­es for decades and gen­er­a­tions and they would nev­er con­sid­er sell­ing it. Because they’re get­ting some­thing dif­fer­ent from their busi­ness­es that those that sell might not be get­ting. And again, it’s not right or wrong. But we want you to see this view we have of what’s pos­si­ble because there’s so much noise about sell­ing what you build. And I think you miss out on lots of things if you build some­thing great, and then give it to some­one else to con­tin­ue grow­ing. So that’s been the show for today, Brad. Thanks for lis­ten­ing. This has been the growth whis­pers pod­cast. I’m Kevin Lawrence here with my co host, Brad Giles, for Brad go to evo­lu­tion part​ners​.com​.au. And for Kevin, go to Lawrence and co​.com or go to YouTube if you just want to watch the pod­cast. hope you have an awe­some week. And con­tin­ue to think about how do you build your com­pa­ny so that you keep on build­ing it, get­ting lots of intrin­sic rewards. cash rewards as well are won­der­ful so that you can con­tin­ue to grow and do lots of awe­some things for oth­er peo­ple in the world.