Podcast Ep 62 | Are You Planning to Sell or Keep Your Business? Or are You Stuck in the Mediocre Middle?

This week on the Growth Whis­per­ers, we’re talk­ing about your plan for your business.

Are you plan­ning to keep your com­pa­ny or are you plan­ning to sell it? Or, if you don’t have a plan either way, are you stuck in what we call the mediocre middle?

That is, you’re not work­ing towards posi­tion­ing your com­pa­ny for sale, and you’re not plan­ning on how to build for the long term. As a result, you and your com­pa­ny end up suf­fer­ing the con­se­quences of inac­tion liv­ing in this mid­dle ground.

And you’re not doing it con­scious­ly. You’re busy run­ning your busi­ness and that takes a lot of time. And some­times lead­ers don’t even real­ize that they need to make the strate­gic com­mit­ment to either sell­ing or keep­ing their business.

We real­ly chal­lenge you to make a deci­sion. Choose to sell and march in that direc­tion. Or plan on keep­ing your busi­ness for 20, 30, 40 years — and make dif­fer­ent sets of deci­sions. Just don’t choose to float around.

This week in part 1 of 2 we dis­cuss what it means to be stuck in the mediocre mid­dle and the cost that you pay for not hav­ing a plan either way.

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 Brad Giles and Kevin Lawrence, that’s us. Every­thing we talk about is about build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies, some­thing that we’re very pas­sion­ate about, ver­sus non endur­ing crap­py com­pa­nies. It’s not some­thing we’re pas­sion­ate about, although we’ve, we’ve seen a few. I’m Kevin today. And you know, Brad, my co host is here today, Brad, how you doing?

Brad Giles 00:37

I am excel­lent today, top of the world. In fact, win­ter is almost upon us and things are good here. in a good spot, and you how you

Kevin Lawrence 00:49

fun­ny I used to have a globe sit­ting there, I’d swear that you’re on the bot­tom of the world and not the top. Not where you’re locat­ed. I think you are you might be me. Maybe you’re a lit­tle upside down today.

Brad Giles 01:00

And that’s a north­ern hemi­sphere per­spec­tive. is yes. South does not mean down nec­es­sar­i­ly. It could mean towards the south

Kevin Lawrence 01:13

you think your Do you think you’re on the bot­tom and we’re gonna get a series is when you’re from where you live on the globe? Do you think you’re at the bot­tom of the globe? How do you see or is your globe only sell globes in Aus­tralia? Are they flipped around? So

Brad Giles 01:24

Aus­trali­a’s on top? Well, then not because they’re made in the North­ern Hemisphere.

Kevin Lawrence 01:30

Must I must be right.

Brad Giles 01:32

But if you saw a mere cura­tors pro­jec­tion of the world, would you see North Amer­i­ca in the mid­dle or Europe in the mid­dle? It depends on the per­spec­tive. Right? And it’s that one, but that’s very log­i­cal. Any­way, that’s very inter­est­ing. I am glad you feel like you’re on top of the world. Brad, that is great. So let’s, what’s the what’s your word of the day?

Brad Giles 02:05

Where did the die so we like to start meet­ings with a word of the day and that’s why we encour­age peo­ple to do it. Mine isn’t guard rails. guard rail, so work­ing with a group of entre­pre­neurs last week, and we built a hedge­hog. for them. It was just a small team. We work to build a hedge­hog and so that they could think about a moun­tain at the top of the moun­tain is your B hag along the way is your three hag your one hag your you know, your one year, your three years and your 90 day plan. And so the hedge­hog as you climb that moun­tain, pro­vide you guard rails, you know, when you kind of dri­ving through a curvy road up a moun­tain, they’ve got these rails on each side so that you don’t acci­den­tal­ly crash and die off the side of the road. Well, I’m think­ing about guardrails. So the hedge­hog is the guardrails as you ascend the moun­tain that keeps you on track, so that you don’t do things that should­n’t be doing. And what’s yours, Kevin? Love it.

Kevin Lawrence 03:10

Well, inter­est­ing. Mine is inspired by an inci­dent with a guardrail of sorts that I had I had a cou­ple of days ago. But yeah, mine is patients. So I’ve men­tioned a few times on the pod­cast, a pas­sion for car rac­ing and kart rac­ing, which is a very fun and intense thing to get to do with a lot of my friends and their sons. And through an unfor­tu­nate event and a mis­take that some­one made, non mali­cious­ly, I had to avoid some­one at a very high speed and col­lid­ed with a guardrail of sorts, that made it very hard for bump when I hit it. So I spent the greater part of Fri­day in the hos­pi­tal with great patience. And as some­one who nev­er sits still, and does­n’t like to sit still, I had to sit for four hours before I saw the first doc­tor. And they did all kinds of tests, then you wait for the results and then do oth­er stuff. And then they sent me to a anoth­er hos­pi­tal to get anoth­er test. So all in all, I, you know, the whole process took about 11 or so hours. Thank­ful­ly, I was all good. So I got to go home. But it was actu­al­ly great because I’m not patient by nature. And I but I am thrilled to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to wait for good care, because they did all the right things. Anoth­er doc­tor, I talked with the track Africa did all the right tests, they dou­ble checked all the right things to make sure there was­n’t any inter­nal bleed­ing and all this oth­er stuff. So I was very patient and I had no prob­lem sit­ting and wait­ing because I want­ed that expert help. And I got it and I am thrilled to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to wait because I know in some parts of the world, you don’t even have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to wait for prop­er health care, you know, and as much as we’d like things to be faster. So yeah, my is patience. And although it’s tied into your it’s a cat­a­lyst for it was a guardrail is just what is your word of the day? So, um, yes. And patience. Patience is a won­der­ful attribute for a non-patient per­son to have. Grat­i­tude, deep grat­i­tude. I’m real­ly appre­cia­tive. The med­ical peo­ple that helped me Oh my gosh. Oh, wait any time that I need to for­get hope.

Brad Giles 05:25

So you had patients hang­ing out with oth­er good patient patients? Wait­ing for the doctor?

Kevin Lawrence 05:32

Yeah, yeah. And I got­ta say, these doc­tors were awe­some. They were so won­der­ful. They put me at ease. I mean, I think I’m not good with nee­dles. And I had like four or five nee­dles jabbed in me. And they were the they were so nice and gen­tle about any­ways, good, fun. thrilled to have great health. So today, what are we talk­ing about? Brad, we have, we’ve got a split episode. Today, we got two sep­a­rate ones that we’re doing. And you know, today is part one, and next week will be part two. So So tell us what’s,

Brad Giles 06:00

what’s the theme here to this super excit­ed, super excit­ed every sin­gle episode, we talk about build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies. But you know, what, why? Why are we talk­ing about endur­ing great com­pa­nies? Well, today, we’re going to dig into that. And specif­i­cal­ly, what we’re ask­ing is, are you plan­ning to sell or plan­ning to keep your busi­ness. And if you don’t know, if you’re plan­ning to sell or plan­ning to keep, maybe you’re stuck in what we call the mediocre mid­dle. So this is part one of two.

Kevin Lawrence 06:36

Yeah, and the mediocre mid­dle is a place that we’re going to give you some things to think about and encour­age you to not be because the mediocre mid­dle is also the painful mid­dle, or the excru­ci­at­ing mid­dle, the mad­den­ing mid­dle, so we’re gonna, we’re gonna dig into that today. That’s super impor­tant. Because, as you know, we bradon you know, you and I do a lot of dis­cus­sion about work­ing with endur­ing great com­pa­nies and a major­i­ty of the com­pa­nies we work with, you know, they’re build­ing their busi­ness­es to keep them for a long time. And to make them into amaz­ing machines, and then some, you’ll build them and they want to sell them. But they’re both doing it with a dis­tinct pur­pose, either to sell it for a great return in a few years, no hand­ful of years, 357 years, two years, or, yeah, keep it for 357 decades. And often when we start work­ing with com­pa­nies, some­times they haven’t made up their mind yet, or they think they want to sell because they can’t stand it. Or they think they want to keep it because they don’t know what else to do. And so it’s just a mat­ter of sort­ing things out. So that’s, that’s what we’re dig­ging out to today. What camp Are you in? And let’s just make sure you do it with a pur­pose. And I remem­ber some­thing my mom said to me many times as a kid and she say walk with a pur­pose. Right? Like if you’re going some­where go, you know, and ver­sus just kind of wan­der­ing or lol­ly­gag­ging around, and I think we want to do the same thing, you know, like

Brad Giles 08:05

lol­ly­gag­ging nev­er happens.

Kevin Lawrence 08:09

That would be some­thing that we talked about on the top part of the world. It’s It’s just about you’re wan­der­ing aim­less­ly float­ing around. Okay. Yeah. lol­ly­gag­ging that’s a very I don’t even I don’t I got­ta look up where that comes from. Check that in a minute. lol­ly­gag­ging so. So we got a cou­ple of key things to talk about. But the first is that you know, it’s it’s tied into lol­ly­gag­ging, which again, I’m going to have to look that up. But it’s, you know, the no plan. Like I love doing the no plan. Some­times on a Sun­day after­noon, I got free time. You know, it’s beau­ti­ful. If you’ve got this adven­ture vaca­tion, and you can just wan­der around and just see where it takes you. It’s awe­some thing to do. It’s just not a great thing to do in busi­ness, going with the flow and wan­der­ing with wher­ev­er the winds kind of take you usu­al­ly does­n’t go so well. And if you don’t have a real pur­pose and aren’t real­ly dri­ven towards, you know, some­thing, in this case, the some­thing we’re talk­ing about is build­ing it to keep it or build­ing it to sell it. Yeah, it’s it basi­cal­ly it’s an excuse to have an undis­ci­plined way to run your business.

Brad Giles 09:25

Yeah. Many peo­ple might say, well, we don’t even we don’t think about sell­ing, but then that’s it. There’s, we’re not think­ing about sell­ing but then it’s just a void of empti­ness beyond that. And then they say, Well, look, if some­one came up with a huge check, we’d prob­a­bly sell like, you know, if they want­ed to give us a ridicu­lous amount of mon­ey we prob­a­bly sell. But that’s the kind of point of this episode is that hav­ing that is not nec­es­sar­i­ly good for you because that is what we call the mediocre mid­dle So yeah, if you’re going to, to be in the mediocre mid­dle, there are some neg­a­tive con­se­quences that come with that. And so what we’re doing is we’re say­ing this is a spec­trum between we’re plan­ning to sell, or we’re plan­ning to keep, if you’re not one of the, if you’re not at one of the ends of that spec­trum, you are at risk of being in this mediocre mid­dle that can pro­duce mediocre results poten­tial­ly, and can put you at a risk of not being able to endure. You know, it’s a risk that you don’t even know that is there.

Kevin Lawrence 10:40

Yeah, and you could be at risk of lol­ly­gag­ging which I looked up for us, Brad, thank you for that. lol­ly­gag­ging is to fool around and waste time. It’s sim­i­lar to the word Don­al which is to spend time idly or move lack­adaisi­cal­ly or to spend fruit­less­ly or lack­adaisi­cal­ly No, no. So basi­cal­ly, you could be dawdling. You could be lol­ly­gag­ging. Or you could be hav­ing the time of your life. We’re not say­ing you’re doing some­thing wrong, but we’re just gen­er­al­ly if you’re if you’re kind of stuck in a mediocre mid­dle, it could hurt me like that, where the lol­ly­gag­ging is, this is gonna be your new favorite word, Brian.

Brad Giles 11:21

Yeah, wel­come to the gram­mar whis­pers every­thing we talk­ing about is build­ing bet­ter gram­mar? Yes. No, it’s not No, no, no, no, no. So let’s go to hous­es, right. Let’s go hous­es. So he, some peo­ple buy a house to flip, they buy it, they improve it, and then they sell it a short peri­od, you know, months or a cou­ple of years lat­er. Oth­er peo­ple, they build a home, they buy a place to become a home. And they might even want to keep it for gen­er­a­tions. So an extreme exam­ple of that might be a, you know, the Kennedy man­sion, or the Kennedy prop­er­ty on Cape Cod. Now, maybe you haven’t been there, maybe haven’t seen any pho­tos of it. But the Kennedy dynasty, the Kennedy fam­i­ly have a prop­er­ty on Cape Cod, that has been there for gen­er­a­tions, and they plan to keep it for decades to come. So they treat it dif­fer­ent­ly com­pared to the per­son who is build­ing to flip or build­ing to sell buy­ing to flip. And they also treat it dif­fer­ent­ly to the per­son who’s just kind of coast­ing along and does­n’t even think about Should I keep this house for a long peri­od of time.

Kevin Lawrence 12:39

Yeah, and that’s some­thing that we can fall into the trap of, and again, peo­ple are doing this because they they are, you know, con­scious­ly decid­ing to be there. And that’s what we want peo­ple to get, you know, you can have a place that is a mediocre place to live or a place that you tol­er­ate. Or you can have this place that you’re think­ing about for gen­er­a­tions and just the future, which some peo­ple do, or you can flip it, that’s good, too. Don’t just get stuck in the mid­dle of, well, it works. It suf­fices, it’s okay. Right? You want to have it that it’s meant to be amaz­ing for the long term. Or it’s great to flip for the short term. And don’t get stuck in the mid­dle. Now, we’re not say­ing if you’ve got a home that you live in, that’s fine. And it’s all you need for right now, we’re not say­ing that we’re using the metaphor, because maybe that’s the way you want to live. But we’re talk­ing the extreme of a busi­ness, which is a com­mer­cial enter­prise. It’s not the place where you raise a fam­i­ly. And some peo­ple get stuck and just hav­ing a busi­ness that becomes lack­lus­tre. Not fun. And that’s what we’re look­ing at on this. Is that real­ly? Yeah, decid­ing and being con­scious of it, because you make very, very dif­fer­ent deci­sions now. And it’s inter­est­ing, ear­ly on in our dis­cus­sions, lots of com­pa­nies will have strate­gic plans of how they’re going to make the busi­ness bet­ter. Right. They’ll have plans and they’ll have goals, and that’s great. But what’s the share­hold­er plan? Like what’s the plan for the share­hold­ers? You know, from that per­spec­tive, the team can be ral­ly­ing towards, you know, mak­ing a stronger com­pa­ny. But from a share­hold­er per­spec­tive, is this a, an asset that we’re going to build and make great for 10 2030 4050 years in the future? Or are we flip­ping this. And in some some­times I’ve seen com­pa­nies where the CEO and exec­u­tive have a very good plan for the busi­ness, but the share­hold­ers don’t and the way the share­hold­ers look at it could direct­ly or could have a notable impact on strat­e­gy. Because if they’re think­ing a 30 year time hori­zon, that’s very very dif­fer­ent in terms of how they invest, how they look at their team, and how they look at all kinds of oth­er things, is very dif­fer­ent if they’re going to flip it in three years, no dif­fer­ent than the house exam­ple, you know, the Kennedy Cape Cod home, that that com­pound that they have, you know, they would think dif­fer­ent about main­te­nance or what they build, ver­sus if they were gonna flip it in three years.

Brad Giles 15:21

Yeah, yeah. I love that a strate­gic plan and a share­hold­er plan. So the strate­gic plan is how we’re going to basi­cal­ly build the busi­ness and grow the busi­ness, but then hav­ing a dif­fer­ent page, a dif­fer­ent doc­u­ment where we’re think­ing, Okay, so how are they? How are we going to make it work for the share­hold­ers? Now, that may be an 80% over­lap with the first doc­u­ment, but it’s a dif­fer­ent lens through which to con­sid­er this a dif­fer­ent way to think so how, what are the share­hold­ers look­ing for? And it could be you it could not be you, you could be a part of that. But know­ing that the share­hold­ers are the share­hold­ers, you know, maybe they’re look­ing for div­i­dends over the long term, maybe they’re look­ing for some slight cap­i­tal growth. But what­ev­er it is mak­ing the deci­sion around that and say­ing, Yeah, we need to deliv­er these things over a peri­od of time makes a huge dif­fer­ence. Yeah. And it even

Kevin Lawrence 16:20

affects the risks that you’ll be will­ing to take, Heck, even think about bring­ing chil­dren into a busi­ness. If you’re sell­ing it in three years, you don’t even con­sid­er it. Yeah, if you’re keep­ing it for 300 or 30 years, you’re prob­a­bly going to teach your kids more about the busi­ness, you might have a plan of how you involve or don’t it all. As soon as you zoom out to a longer term time hori­zon, you change your think­ing and change the con­ver­sa­tion. Ver­sus same as when you zoom in to a short­er term exit, you change the think­ing and the conversations.

Brad Giles 16:59

And that’s real­ly inter­est­ing, because in my con­ver­sa­tion with a lot of entre­pre­neurs, what they think is they feel they can’t zoom out, because the exis­ten­tial threats are too big. Okay, so they think that they’re going to if they try to think in the long term, that some they will get tak­en out, and they won’t be able to endure. Right. But I think it’s a it’s a illog­i­cal con­cept. Like, it’s, it does­n’t make sense to say that, because it is, they if they have an endur­ing mind­set, they will get over that they will sur­vive and endure, and adapt and piv­ot and change with­in the con­fines of their hedge­hog to get to that endur­ing place, they will cor­rect. Because they have the endur­ing mindset.

Kevin Lawrence 17:53

Right. And so it’s def­i­nite­ly the entre­pre­neur thinks they can’t zoom out because it’s dan­ger­ous. Yeah, but the under­ly­ing great per­son knows they need to zoom out, and they need to zoom in, they know they need to do both. Because if you just zoom in, you could get lost in the for­est for the trees that you could, you could lose your way and lose your per­spec­tive, if you only zoom out. That’s dan­ger­ous, too. So it’s an ad, but it was inter­est­ing, you know, our, our icon that we use in our firm Lawrence and CO is the end sign, you know, when I say pri­mar­i­ly, yeah, the amper­sand, it’s, it’s like, basi­cal­ly, it’s about not com­pro­mis­ing. It’s about thriv­ing at work, and hav­ing a great life. And I caught up with a friend of a friend recent­ly, that’s inter­est­ing­ly, in in, she’s been think­ing about the same thing and some of her stuff about the pow­er of the end, you know, it’s this not hav­ing to choose, and it’s about how the end is crit­i­cal that this can hap­pen. And that can hap­pen, where a lot of peo­ple think they have to choose, in some cas­es between two things, and some­times you do, but some of the best deci­sions are fight­ing the end. Yeah, right, is you have to zoom out and zoom in. Now, that kind of goes against one of the things that we’re say­ing here. But you can­not real­ly think­able build­ing to sell a com­pa­ny in the short term, it’s very hard to and then do an end for the long term. And yeah, you know, and truth­ful­ly, you can have, if you’re real­ly going to do a good job of sell­ing a com­pa­ny in the next three or so years, you prob­a­bly are gonna have 80% plus on the long term 90% on that loss rate on the short term, and a lit­tle bit about the long term because you got to allow the thing to suc­ceed. And the same thing, if you’re, if you’re build­ing it to endurance to keep it you can’t have every­thing only focused on the long term time hori­zon. Because there is a busi­ness to run today. The point of it is that if We go look at some peo­ple feel this bal­ance between zoom­ing in to details and short term and then zoom­ing out to longer term strate­gic, you need to do both. And it’s just a mat­ter of how much you wait on each. And if you’re going to build an endur­ing, great com­pa­ny, you’re going to wait more to lat­er on, right to lot longer in the time hori­zon a lit­tle longer time hori­zon, where some peo­ple won’t put almost any­thing on

Brad Giles 20:26

1. And that’s, and that’s, you know, one of the things that we’re say­ing, you’ve got to, you’ve got to pick in by not pick­ing you are in the mediocre mid­dle. And that’s real­ly the whole point of today’s episode is so are you build­ing to sell? Or are you build­ing to keep? Do you have a plan to sell the busi­ness? Or do you have a plan to keep the busi­ness because the absence of one of those can cre­ate a real, you know, a real risk that you actu­al­ly won’t endure, you won’t be able to zoom out to that 1000 100,000 excuse me feet per­spec­tive and make those long term con­sid­er­a­tions and deci­sions on where you’re going to head?

Kevin Lawrence 21:15

So you’re not even because you’re not even think­ing about it. And it’s not Yeah, because it’s just not some­thing. And again, if you don’t put ener­gy into it, it does­n’t usu­al­ly move along, or kind of hap­pen the way you want. And that’s it. So it’s real­ly we’re try­ing to say today is, Hey, are you con­scious­ly build­ing to sell in the short­er to medi­um term? Were you con­scious­ly build­ing to build it for the long term and build an endur­ing great com­pa­ny for decades? But don’t allow your­self to float in between or not even think about it, pick one, and dri­ve hard towards it?

Brad Giles 21:47

So how do you know that you’re in the mediocre mid­dle a lis­ten­er might say, Well, we’ve got to be hag? I don’t think because we’ve got to be hag, I don’t think that we’re in the mediocre mid­dle. big, hairy, auda­cious, big, hairy, auda­cious goal is the be hag acronym. So how would we react today? No,

Kevin Lawrence 22:09

you’re in a mediocre mid­dle? Well, your busi­ness­es prob­a­bly mediocre in lots of dif­fer­ent ways, real­ly, that’s lit­er­al­ly like, so you know, whether you look at, you know, the kind of peo­ple on the team, like, if you’re gonna sell a com­pa­ny, quick­ly, you need amaz­ing peo­ple pro­duc­ing Well, yeah, or you’re gonna blow it out for a cheap price in a fire sale. But if you’re gonna get all the mon­ey for it, if you’re build­ing an endur­ing, great com­pa­ny, you need to have darn good peo­ple mak­ing the deci­sions and dri­ving it ahead. So peo­ple could prob­a­bly be mediocre. Your per­for­mance could be mediocre, right, your mar­gins, you know, your mar­gins, and, and your prof­itabil­i­ty, like­ly could be mediocre. And even think­ing about the bal­ance sheet. Like, truth­ful­ly, if you’re going to sell your busi­ness, you might be ful­ly lev­er­ing up your bal­ance sheet to max­i­mize growth, right, max­i­miz­ing growth, which would max­i­mize, depend­ing on the vis­i­ble max­i­mize sale price. But if you’re build­ing an endur­ing, great com­pa­ny, you’re prob­a­bly going to have a notably less lever­aged bal­ance sheet. Yeah. Because you want back­up and, and buffers for when the econ­o­my gets weird. Yeah. And or so you can cap­i­tal­ize an oppor­tu­ni­ty. So, you know, your bal­ance sheet would prob­a­bly be quite dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent. But in the mediocre mid­dle, you know, it’s prob­a­bly either not great. Or it could be or it’s not ful­ly lever­aged, because you’re not push­ing for­ward aggres­sive­ly. So what else do you think would tell peo­ple go ahead? Well, because

Brad Giles 23:55

you’re think­ing about this short­er term, you’re think­ing, oh, I’ve got this oth­er dis­trac­tion that I want to, you know, take mon­ey out for, or I want to, I want to, I’m not wor­ried about weak­en­ing the bal­ance sheet of the busi­ness. Anoth­er way could be cul­ture, maybe your coach­ing is, is not as strong as it is because you just kind of, you know, oper­at­ing you’re not real­ly build­ing for endur­ing great­ness there. Isn’t that vision there? Maybe your vision? Yeah, maybe you do have a bag, but maybe peo­ple aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly as con­nect­ed to it, or it does­n’t impact them in a mean­ing­ful way. So yeah,

Kevin Lawrence 24:38

I mean, it’s like in the house metaphor. Like, if you’re just, it’s just a place to sleep. Yeah. You know, you’re not gonna clean it up to flip it and max­i­mize the prof­it. Or you’re not going to make it cozy and feel like a home for your­self. And I know what we see a lot of peo­ple that haven’t con­scious­ly made the choice suf­fi­cient to build it. Dur­ing great com­pa­ny, they don’t actu­al­ly love the busi­ness. Like they don’t real­ly enjoy it. You know, it’s inter­est­ing, I was chat­ting on the week­end with some friends, and we’re talk­ing about dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es and the pros and cons. And I made ref­er­ence to the fact that, you know, the con­sult­ing busi­ness, if you want to, you know, get rich and sell your busi­ness for $100 mil­lion. con­sult­ing is not the place to go. coach­ing and con­sult­ing, that is not like­ly to hap­pen at all, although many of our clients are, do and are able to do that. And, and a friend of anoth­er friend said, Hey, as we’re talk­ing to our kids, and about me on busi­ness, and invest­ing and stuff on our, and I said in a bit like con­sult­ing, need to take your extra prof­its invest­ed. And that’s how you kind of, you know, you build wealth for the long term. And anoth­er friend said, Hey, Kevin, just just just just don’t for­get, though, you love what you do. Right? And, and, and not every­one that builds some of these amaz­ing busi­ness­es does love what they do, because I mean, I love what I do, because I’ve picked a busi­ness to endure. I want to keep doing this when I’m 80. Yeah, and I have to stop myself from doing it too much. Because I love it. I know, Bri­an, it’s the same for you. Yeah. And so I but that’s, that’s, that’s it’s almost like, it’s, it’s I don’t have to endure my busi­ness. I love it. And it gives me endurance, because it gives me so much joy back, which is, which is a piece of it nuts if you’re on that par­tic­u­lar road. And so you got to find a way that your busi­ness is not some­thing you need to endure, and you make some good,

Brad Giles 26:36

so maybe your busi­ness drains, you maybe is a sign that you’re in the mediocre mid­dle that you’re not that you don’t have a plan to endure. Is that you feel­ing drained? Because if I said to you, you need to still be in this busi­ness in 20 years time. What are the things that you need to do now? Yeah, to be con­fi­dent that you will want to, and you will enjoy it in 20 years time? What do you need to do? You know, one of the first things I might say is, well, I’m going to fire those two people.

Kevin Lawrence 27:11

Well, then let’s get after it. It’s good. All right. But that’s a great ques­tion, Brad, how would you feel? If I told you you would be doing this busi­ness for the next 20 years? Yeah. At the pace you’re doing it today? Yeah. Because if your answer is awe­some, then your busi­ness is set up in a way where it works for you. And if it’s not look around at the points that aren’t awe­some, fix those damn things.

Brad Giles 27:43

Because that is an indi­ca­tor, again, that you’re in the mediocre mid­dle. And that that is that inspi­ra­tion, it’s not there. And you can plan your way through and beyond that, it’s impor­tant to real­ly under­stand that. And that present, when you’re not pas­sion­ate around that, that present risk, that that, you know, it presents a risk that you won’t endure, by not putting in these longer term plans, not by not being able to be cer­tain that you’re going to endure, it inad­ver­tent­ly cre­ates the risk that you want to do.

Kevin Lawrence 28:24

Yes. Because you’re not build­ing it and set­ting it up so that you can endure and want to enter it ver­sus get­ting bur­dened by it.

Brad Giles 28:33

Yeah,

Kevin Lawrence 28:34

that is awe­some. So if you’re real­ly, you know, what we’re talk­ing about here is, is that, you know, in that mediocre mid­dle, there’s a bunch of stuff that won’t work for you. Because you’re basi­cal­ly accept­ing a low­er stan­dard of what­ev­er, what­ev­er it is, that that would be dif­fer­ent. If you chose to flip it quick­ly. or, or, or you were going to, you know, hin­der it for the long term. I just had this flash in my mind. Some­body know, who will remain name­less, lived in this house for quite a while. And it was, it was a place to sleep, let’s call it like, you know, a bunch of there were some how much a half fin­ished projects, and you know, and things were just sort of, you know, every­thing was okay. Well, they decid­ed to sell the damn thing. Man, did they whip that place into shape? Yeah, they got all of their projects fin­ished. They got every­thing cleaned up, the gut­ter orga­nized, The place looks so dif­fer­ent. It was­n’t fun­ny. And I did­n’t say any­thing, which is unusu­al for me. But I laughed to myself, it’s like, okay, so you live in a place that to your in your mind was mediocre for all these years. You decide to sell it and you clean it up so the next per­son can enjoy it. And you don’t get the ben­e­fit of that. And you know, and maybe that was­n’t impor­tant to them, I don’t know. But it’s just fun­ny how peo­ple make their places awe­some when they We’re going to get rid of it. Yeah. And it’s, it’s it makes, you know, why would­n’t you make it awe­some and keep it or make it awe­some and enjoy it. And again, dif­fer­ent val­ues? Maybe that did­n’t mat­ter to them? I don’t know, maybe it was only an eco­nom­i­cal motive eco­nom­ic moti­va­tion. It’s fascinating.

Brad Giles 30:15

It is. Awe­some. So a good chat today, we spoke about the ques­tion are you build­ing to sell? Are you build­ing keep a busi­ness? Or are you in the mediocre mid­dle? So this is part one of two. And in the next episode, we’re going to specif­i­cal­ly talk about how, how do you build this? What do you need to do? And how do you con­sid­er how to build an endur­ing busi­ness in this sense, so that you don’t end up so that you don’t stay in the mediocre middle.

Kevin Lawrence 30:53

So the key points today were the no plan is great for vaca­tions or Sun­day after­noons were not for busi­ness. And real­ly, free­dom from plans is not free­dom, you end up being at the whim of what­ev­er hap­pens. And so you need to have a strate­gic plan for your busi­ness, and a share­hold­er plan for what you’re gonna do for the long term with this amaz­ing asset or busi­ness. And then we talk about hous­es, we say, well, it real­ly there’s hous­es you flip, there’s hous­es that you live in, or just a place to sleep, let’s call it or live in for a short time. And then there are homes for gen­er­a­tions like that Kennedy, Cape Cod home. And we’re encour­ag­ing you to con­sid­er, either you’re going to flip this darn thing. Or it’s gonna be a home for gen­er­a­tions, but don’t get stuck in that mid­dle. Because in that mid­dle, it feels mediocre. It often drains you. And as I wrote down, the thing that actu­al­ly came into my mouth as we’re talk­ing, you end up need­ing to endure your busi­ness means tol­er­at­ed or put up with it, ver­sus your busi­ness giv­ing you endurance in the form of joy and ful­fill­ment. So is that some­thing that you feel you need to under? Or does it give you endurance, and that’s real­ly a great, a great sum­ma­ry of this. And what we want for you is to not risk build­ing a great com­pa­ny and hav­ing the endurance to do it and miss­ing out on the oppor­tu­ni­ty in front of you. And sell­ing it just because you can’t stand it. Again, if you sell it strate­gi­cal­ly awe­some. But if you’re just sell­ing it because you can’t stand it. That’s a whole oth­er thing.

Brad Giles 32:22

Awe­some. Well, we hope that you enjoyed this part one of two episodes of the growth whis­pers where we always talk about build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies. I’m Brad Giles, and you can find me at evo­lu­tion part​ners​.com​.au and Kevin, the North north­ern hemi­sphere in that half

Kevin Lawrence 32:41

of the world we would like to call it yes has

Brad Giles 32:44

been chat­ting through­out this episode. You can find him at Lawrence​and​co​.com. We hope you enjoyed our episode and we hope you can join us next week for part two. In the mean­time, have a great week.