Podcast Ep 63 | How to Escape the Mediocre Middle

This week on the Growth Whis­per­ers, we’re dig­ging into Part 2 of the dis­cus­sion about the 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 2 of 2 we dis­cuss how to escape the mediocre mid­dle and pro­vide the tools to help you under­stand where you are on the time hori­zon and the things you will need to do to your busi­ness in order to endure.

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.

Brad Giles 00:13

Hi there, wel­come to the growth Whis­per­er is where every­thing we talk about is build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies. And espe­cial­ly so this week we always do. But now a lit­tle bit more. So this week we’re talk­ing about part two of a two part episode on build­ing great, endur­ing great com­pa­nies. Oh, get it out. Get a Kevin, I hope you’re able to get some words out this morn­ing. I’ll try. I’ll do my best, Brad. Good. How are you today, my friend,

Kevin Lawrence 00:42

I’m doing good. As always look­ing for­ward to our episode. I mean, for the lis­ten­ers and the view­ers to know like we, we real­ly have a lot of fun prepar­ing for these and kind of, you know, smash­ing our brains togeth­er around dif­fer­ent con­cepts. And you’ll, I’m usu­al­ly quite pleased with what we come up with. And, you know, and what’s com­ing out of today. And the pre­vi­ous episode is some stuff on as we’re work­ing on some new cre­ative work togeth­er with the out­put of a brain­storm. And one thing led to anoth­er thing led to for us some real­ly pow­er­ful think­ing, and I’m real­ly excit­ed about shar­ing it. So yeah, I’m look­ing for­ward to the show today.

Brad Giles 01:21

Awe­some. So we’re going to begin as we always do with Word of the Day, word of the day. So we encour­age peo­ple to start meet­ings with a word or phrase, just to kind of light­en things up, set the tone, get an under­stand­ing of where one is at. And for you, what might be your word of the day or phrase.

Brad Giles 01:40

Yeah, my phrase, my word, I’d say it’s just his rela­tion­ships. And, and just the val­ue and I am recent­ly so insane­ly grate­ful for the rela­tion­ships that I have. Now, at the end of the day, you know, you can have stuff, you can have mon­ey, you can have all kinds of things. But at the end of the day, the peo­ple that you get to spend time with are what real­ly make it all worth­while. And if I look back over the past week, and think about rela­tion­ships, and new and spend­ing some time with some good friends, some time with my son, some qual­i­ty time with my daugh­ter, and just the peo­ple that I’m sur­round­ed by, and the qual­i­ty of the rela­tion­ships is the qual­i­ty of my life, I guess is the way I would some­body. So maybe the phrase is my word became a phrase, Brad, the qual­i­ty of your rela­tion­ships is the qual­i­ty of your life. And I have an abun­dance of amaz­ing peo­ple that I’m for­tu­nate enough to call friends. You know, real­ly, real­ly good friends. And we’re there for each oth­er and tak­ing care of each oth­er. So yeah, that would be it. The qual­i­ty of your rela­tion­ships is the qual­i­ty of your life.

Brad Giles 02:55

Well, that’s love­ly mine, you know, that is love­ly. It just warms my heart and mine comes here it comes incred­i­bly cold com­pared to that one. And it’s one that you and I had spo­ken about recent­ly, but it’s real­ly been play­ing on my mind. And that is that. If it is not a law of nature, it’s an opin­ion. It’s not a law of nature, it’s an opin­ion, so many peo­ple, so many peo­ple have so many things that they sprout is being facts. But it’s prob­a­bly just an opin­ion. So grav­i­ty, for exam­ple, is prob­a­bly a law of nature, it’s very hard to say that’s an opin­ion. yet. At the oth­er end of the spec­trum, there are some things that peo­ple say, which are in actu­al fact real­ly just their opin­ion, but they’re mak­ing them sound like facts. So I heard that from a guy called Shane Par­rish who I kind of have lis­tened to for a while and like the way that he thinks, and yeah, it just real­ly res­onat­ed with me. And so that’s my phrase of the week.

Kevin Lawrence 04:13

I love that. So for the peo­ple that think the world is flat, they would say that it’s not an they must be able to say it’s not a law of nature, there­fore it must be an opin­ion that the world is round, and that the world could be flat. I can I’m kind of sure it’s kind of think it’s a law of nature, isn’t it broad, but the world is round.

Brad Giles 04:39

I can­not believe that you rise that because that there was a seed that I was think­ing about in rela­tion to today’s top­ic, like in the pre­vi­ous days, and that is if you go high enough above the earth, you can see the cur­va­ture of the earth and it’s Same, huh? Yes.

Brad Giles 05:03

If you get enough per­spec­tive, you can see the truth. Yes. But if you’re right on the ground and you’re too close to it, you can’t see past the end of your own nose, and you can’t real­ly get the perspective.

Brad Giles 05:16

Yeah. So, yeah, flat earth­ers. You know, they just don’t look for the sci­ence, they look for things that val­i­date their opin­ion. And that’s not, you know, nec­es­sar­i­ly it. Yeah, it’s not a law of nature, it’s an opin­ion. And lots of peo­ple’s opin­ions. You know, quite accu­rate. oth­ers not so much. So. So

Brad Giles 05:45

My phrase of the day, the qual­i­ty of your life, is the qual­i­ty of rela­tion­ships is the qual­i­ty of your life. Is that a law of nature? Or is that an opinion?

Brad Giles 05:55

That’s an opin­ion, you know, it is? Well,

Brad Giles 05:58

but if you look at a look in the ani­mal king­dom, the rela­tion­ships that you have in some with the some of these pack ani­mals, is their strength and their abil­i­ty to hunt. And their abil­i­ty to eat, like, I’m just you know, is that the qual­i­ty of their life, the qual­i­ty of their rela­tion­ships, because if you take a pack hunt­ing animal,

Brad Giles 06:20

you know, like wolves, they rely on each other,

Brad Giles 06:23

they do the qual­i­ty of their rela­tion­ships prob­a­bly is the qual­i­ty or the even the length of their life. I’m sure we get what we get. We could spin this any way you want. But I actu­al­ly won­der if it’s a law of nature, or if it’s an opin­ion, I mean, it is an opin­ion I have. But I won­der if it’s a law of nature. For you. I’m a killer whale. I just saw, by the way, as I was sit­ting here today on the phone with a friend, and I was look­ing out. And they and I said, there’s a whale, they actu­al­ly thought I called them a whale, which was not weath­er, which was a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the phone was a whole oth­er con­ver­sa­tion. But I saw the whale out the win­dow, and it was blow­ing when the whales come up to the sur­face, and they blow or they blow air out and make a thing that shoots up in the air. And I don’t know why I’m talk­ing about whales. What was it got me there I

Brad Giles 07:13

was law of nature,

Brad Giles 07:17

So killer whales are also pack ani­mals that hunt togeth­er and rely on each oth­er. So is the qual­i­ty of their rela­tion­ships. We don’t need to go down that road. That’s not what the show is about. But I won­der if that could be con­sid­ered a law of nature?

Brad Giles 07:34

Yeah, and I know. It’s an inter­est­ing con­cept. And I could­n’t convince

Brad Giles 07:40

you, I could go find some flat earth­ers and fig­ure out how they make their argu­ments for things that may not be and then I can prob­a­bly find a way to con­vince Well, we don’t need to go there.

Brad Giles 07:49

We do not. So this is part two of two. This is the sec­ond episode, there is a first episode, if you’re lis­ten­ing to this episode, I’d prob­a­bly rec­om­mend that you lis­ten to the first episode before the sec­ond episode may make a bit more sense today. Cor­rect. So today, in part two, we’re going back to the same ques­tion, are you plan­ning to sell or you’re plan­ning to keep your busi­ness? Or are you in this painful place called the mediocre mid­dle, which we talked about a lot in the pre­vi­ous show? And real­ly what we were talk­ing about in a pre­vi­ous show, a real quick sum­ma­ry for you is that, you know, the no plan is great for vaca­tion, some­times, some­times not always, or Sun­day after­noons. But it does­n’t real­ly work for busi­ness. And, you know, the avoid­ance of plan or free­dom from plans does­n’t give you free­dom, it actu­al­ly gives you more pain. And you know, hav­ing a strate­gic plan, and hav­ing a share­hold­er plan for what you’re going to do with this busi­ness for the long term, which in many ways would influ­ence Par­ti­tion Plan? And then real­ly, how do you know you’re in that mediocre mid­dle and the root of it is, you tol­er­ate a lot of stuff, you might not even think about it, you may not be even think­ing about the dif­fer­ence between you know, if I was to build this busi­ness for 30 years, or flip it in three,

Brad Giles 09:06

but no mat­ter what the busi­ness is prob­a­bly drain­ing you in a bunch of ways. And that that would be a root symp­tom. And you know, the phrase that we’ve kind of talked about, is it, you know, are you hav­ing to endure your busi­ness? Or is your busi­ness giv­ing you endurance? And as a sort of a dis­tinc­tion? That’s what we talked about in this last show. So today, in our show, we’re talk­ing Well,

Brad Giles 09:28

how do you get past that if you hap­pen to be in that mediocre mid­dle? How do you either get to the point where we would, you know, ide­al­ly rec­om­mend you try to get to it’s the ide­al place to be is build­ing it to keep it for a long term. If you’ve built an amaz­ing asset that pro­duces val­ue and pur­pose and cash, why would you get rid of it? Although if you choose to exit in the short term, you know, that’s anoth­er choice. And you know, you could make that too. So we’re gonna get more into some of the How to around it. Any­thing you’d add to that there, Brad? Yeah, I just want to rein­force con­cept from last week very quick­ly. And that is, if you own a busi­ness, you are either build­ing it to sell it, you are build­ing it, to keep it or let me rein­force that you have a plan to sell it, you have a plan to keep it. Or the third point is you are stuck in the mediocre mid­dle. And so many peo­ple are stuck in the mediocre mid­dle. Last week, we spoke about the what and this week, it’s real­ly about how do you under­stand and how do you? What do you do about that? So yeah, let’s, let’s jump into it. So like we spoke about not a few moments ago, if the high­er that you go up, the greater per­spec­tive you get, you can begin to see fur­ther and even­tu­al­ly you can see that the earth is curved. So it’s about the time hori­zons, if all of the think­ing that you’re doing is on a real­ly short term basis, like, you know, at this point in the year, kind of mid­dle of the year, I just want to get through to, you know, the end of 2021. That’s all I want to do. That’s all I’m focused on. If you’ve got that short term hori­zon, you’re kind of at one or 2000 feet, you can’t see that far. And you can’t think that far. But if you go up high­er, high­er, high­er, again, you can see a lot fur­ther away. And you can think beyond the next year, but on the next quar­ter on the next year beyond the next few years. And you can begin to get dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. And going back to what you said, Are you endur­ing your busi­ness? Or are you build­ing endurance into your busi­ness or some­thing like that? That’s real­ly what we’re say­ing is that if you have to work with your busi­ness, like we said in the last episode, for 20 years, if you wait­ed to that busi­ness for 20 years, would­n’t you build the busi­ness that you real­ly want to?

Kevin Lawrence 11:57

Exact­ly. And so to help us today, the start­ing point, is to real­ly look at this look at your busi­ness through time hori­zons are, as Brad talked about, you know, almost zoom­ing out to see it in per­spec­tive. And real­ly, there’s two dif­fer­ent tracks, you can look at it, if you want to look at it from an eco­nom­ic point of view, look­ing at your busi­ness through the next mar­ket cycle. So right now, for exam­ple, in many economies in the world, we’re at a high point in an eco­nom­ic cycle, mas­sive growth, like in Cana­da, things are incred­i­ble for most busi­ness­es, where the own­er we call the econ­o­my’s very frothy, there’s just all it’s just boom­ing, all time highs and lots of things, lots of our clients like record prof­its, it’s incred­i­ble, con­sid­er­ing we’re com­ing out of a pan­dem­ic. And so, you know, when when the cycles after a peri­od of boom, there’s a soft­en­ing at some point. And then there’ll be anoth­er boom, and then a soft­en­ing. So if we’re at a peak or approach­ing a peak, you nev­er know, it would be look­ing through the next trough to the next peak and real­ly think­ing about that. And gen­er­al­ly, that’s at least a decade into the future, but real­ly think­ing about, okay, what do we have to do through the trough to then bet­ter cap­i­tal­ize on the next peak, the sec­ond that some fam­i­ly busi­ness­es kind of might look at, they might look at it that way or anoth­er way is look­ing at the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­er­ship and whether it’s fam­i­ly or not fam­i­ly busi­ness. But basi­cal­ly, the time­frame at which the CEO and exec­u­tive team are com­plete­ly replaced, ie 100% 80% of them are replaced. So we’re work­ing with a com­pa­ny action in Cana­da, it’s been around more than 100 years. And we’re work­ing on help­ing them with suc­ces­sion for a CEO. And I think for a fall four or five of the key lead­ers in the ath­letes for and so so we’re going to work with them on assess­ing inter­nal can­di­dates and help­ing them to make the right choic­es with some tools that we have to help them do that. But this is a three to five year project to get that right. But they’re start­ing now because they’re, you know, and for a while they’ve been think­ing about when they have this next exec­u­tive team. So whether it’s next mar­ket cycle, or next CEO and exec­u­tive team tak­ing it through the next growth, the growth curve, you’re real­ly zoom­ing out to think about that and get­ting well beyond the dai­ly tac­ti­cal or even even more, more, more typ­i­cal­ly what we call strate­gic deci­sions. Yeah. So if you zoomed out a lit­tle bit, a lit­tle bit more, a lit­tle bit more. You could imag­ine some­thing that looks a bit like a sine wave. I don’t know if you know what a sine wave is. But if you can imag­ine some­thing that goes up and then hits a peak and then it goes down and then hits a trough and then it goes up again. So it’s going up and down and up and down. A bit like a con­tin­u­al roller coast­er. So in a con­cep­tu­al mod­el, that kind of what the econ­o­my does, it goes up and then it goes down. Or maybe that’s what the indus­try does now, except for it’s on a bit of a tilt. Because right, it goes to a new high gen­er­al­ly, and then the low is a low­er, low and the high as a high­er high. So it’s a bit of an angle. It’s in many ways. It’s kind of like a heart rate, mon­i­tor your heart rate when you’re in the hos­pi­tal, which, you know, I recent­ly found out about, and you can see your heart, your heart, you know, they’re check­ing your heart­beats, what­ev­er going up and down. And except for they just put that on a slant as it grows.

Brad Giles 15:37

Yes. Yeah, that’s right. So if you think back to, I don’t know, 2006 2007, things were pret­ty hot, then you go back to about 2009 or 10, where the GFC, things were pret­ty not. And then what’s hap­pened since then is things have become hot­ter again. And even­tu­al­ly that will turn and things will go down. And so it’s, we can’t be very spe­cif­ic about the time hori­zon, but it’s not quar­ter­ly. Right? And it’s prob­a­bly not near­ly you’re zoom­ing out fur­ther than that, to think about the mul­ti decade ups and downs at the begin­ning. And then kind of ask­ing, well, where are we at? And you men­tioned at the moment where, you know, things are hot, we’re kind of on the up, if not the top? And then where’s our indus­try? Rel­a­tive to

Kevin Lawrence 16:28

got it, Brad, it’s like, you know, it’s, it’s basi­cal­ly and we need a name for it, because it actu­al­ly will have the name. Because there’s tac­ti­cal, which is like a year or so there’s strate­gic, which is gen­er­al­ly three to five years for most com­pa­nies. And then there’s almost cycli­cal, or some­thing else like that cycli­cal would be dif­fer­ent, where you’re look­ing at that 10 to 15 year time hori­zon. And then Collins has the b hag. Yeah. And that’s, that’s like, Don’t clos­er for most com­pa­ny, he says 10 to 30 years, but it’s gen­er­al­ly, you know, that’s a 2030 year time hori­zon for a lot of the com­pa­nies we work with. So it’s this. It’s almost Yeah, tac­ti­cal, strate­gic, and then a cycli­cal point of view, and there’s a bet­ter name for it.

Brad Giles 17:16

I think that’s not bad. Let’s that’s it. It’s Yeah, like, that’s a good start. And maybe we’ll, we’ll keep that. But the point, the point is, so many peo­ple are caught up in the moment, right now, it’s hot. And, and peo­ple are guid­ed by often emo­tions, or sen­ti­ment. And if you can zoom out far enough, you can say to your­self, Well, you know, we’re almost at the top, that means, at some point, things will begin to go down. And when things begin to go down in the econ­o­my, or the indus­try or, you know, our clients indus­try, or what­ev­er it is, when things begin to go down, we will need to take a dif­fer­ent set of actions, and we need to be pre­pared for those actions. And that’s the rea­son that we’re say­ing this talk­ing about cycli­cal is endurance, because the only way that you can endure is if you can endure these cycles. If you could have you could build a fan­tas­tic com­pa­ny on the way up. But when things come down, if you’re sad­dled with too much debt, and you can’t ser­vice that debt, giv­en the new oper­at­ing envi­ron­ment, you’re not going to endure.

Kevin Lawrence 18:32

No, because you’re deal­ing with dif­fer­ent forces. And as I was, as you were talk­ing, I looked up cycli­cal. And I found anoth­er word rea­son was sea­son­al, right? You go through a sea­son of growth, right? And a sea­son of kind of plateaued in a sea­son of decline. sea­son­als anoth­er word out, we’ll get that word lat­er. But you just need to be able to han­dle the dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments, even with it. And this is it. Your strat­e­gy is excel­lent. But then it’s almost on a dif­fer­ent axis where you’re look­ing at the dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments. And what can you do today? Because right now in the econ­o­my, there’s a lot of peo­ple like cau­tion, Cana­da, I mean, we haven’t real­ly had a notable slow­down. Close to 20 years, we had a lit­tle blip in Oh, sev­en away, but Cana­da did­n’t get affect­ed that much. So first, a lot of peo­ple if you’ve been in busi­ness for 19 years, it’s like, you know, like peo­ple think the world’s flat you think the world is growth? Yeah, like you don’t know you actu­al­ly haven’t expe­ri­enced any dif­fer­ent. But what we’re talk­ing about is know­ing that things are cycli­cal, and that you need to see to the oth­er side of the next cycle. That’s it. So if it’s been almost pure growth for 20 year, close, close, know­ing that it’s going to do this and then it’ll know it’s going to dip and then it’ll go back up again for those who can’t see my hand mov­ing on the screen.

Brad Giles 19:59

So It’s being aware of it and plan­ning for it and then look­ing at your busi­ness through its abil­i­ty to endure that and come out stronger ver­sus blind positivity.

Brad Giles 20:12

There’s a famous investor, by the name of Bill Ack­man. And I heard bill speak­ing maybe two weeks ago, maybe three. And he, he said he was talk­ing about infla­tion. So the hot thing at the moment is infla­tion. Peo­ple are talk­ing about, you know, lum­bers up 100% Steel’s up this much, and so forth, so forth. And that’s the oth­er thing that we’re see­ing is a short­age of work­ers, cer­tain­ly where I am and in oth­er areas as well, here here as well. Yeah. And so when there’s a short­age of work­ers, often that dri­ves wages up, and the thing that bil­l’s said, when they said is, is tran­si­tion­al, or is it per­ma­nent? And what that means is, is this just for the pan­dem­ic, and like, we just, it’s, it’s all the stim­u­lus mon­ey that’s mak­ing this prob­lem? And he said, here’s the thing, it’s very hard to take away a pay rise. Yes. And, and so that’s, that’s where the infla­tion on the labor mar­ket comes from. And if, if you say we’re going to pay more so that we can get enough work­ers like your where is the point where you go, Okay, now, we’re going to come back to where we were, like, no one does it almost with wages in gen­er­al­ly, it’s very hard for it to go back out com­mod­i­ty prices can go up and down. Yeah. And we’re hav­ing this dis­cus­sion with a lot of com­pa­nies right now. Bri­an? Yeah. Because get­ting work­ers in, for exam­ple, in some coun­tries, like Cana­da and US immi­gra­tion is required for a bunch of the labor pool like, right, yeah. Why are they here? Yeah, but but but with COVID, and a lot of the immi­gra­tion halt­ed, then there’s less labor pool com­ing in. And so absolute­ly, con­ver­sa­tions we’re hav­ing in com­pa­nies is that as wages are get­ting more expen­sive, you know, as you pay mar­ket, where the oth­er cur­rent mar­ket wage for new peo­ple, well, soon­er or lat­er, you need to equal­ize it for exist­ing peo­ple as well. So it’s not just one per­son get­ting paid a high­er amount. Over time, every­one at that lev­el prob­a­bly will have to in the whole, the whole thing moves up a notch, which dri­ves the cost base of every com­pa­ny up? Yes, and prices have to go up to sup­port that cost base. And so in the end, you know, the real mon­ey going to those employ­ees actu­al­ly isn’t that much dif­fer­ent? Because they get an increased pay. But then infla­tion goes up. So that almost takes them back to where they were in the whole sys­tem just moved up a notch, which is infla­tion, except when you’re zoomed out and look­ing at this roller coast­er, this cycli­cal this sine wave, yep. And what­ev­er be the econ­o­my, or your indus­try or your clients, indus­try, and demand decreas­es for your prod­uct, and you’ve got these estab­lished high­er wages. What are you going to do about it? This is about build­ing an endur­ing great busi­ness. What are how are you going to deal with that you may have no choice but to put those wages up. But if you’re think­ing about the fact that that will even­tu­al­ly go down, and you will have these new high­er costs. Yeah. That is how you will do right.

Brad Giles 23:27

Yes. And exact­ly. And again, it’s zoom­ing out to see what’s real­ly going on, which takes time.

Brad Giles 23:33

Yeah, and I need and there’s a lot of vari­ables to under­stand this. So. So if you go back and look at this, real­ly, it’s, it’s about zoom­ing out and look­ing beyond, you know, beyond to the next cycle, which is that be that cycli­cal think­ing, not just strate­gic, or that next gen­er­a­tion of lead­er­ship, but it’s a longer term, stand­ing far­ther into the future, and think­ing about all the things we’re doing today, and how it’s gonna impact us 10 years down the road. And so you need the cer­tain right group of peo­ple look­ing at this, and you need the right ques­tions or the right con­ver­sa­tions to do it. And most peo­ple, as we talked about in the last show are so caught up in short­er term think­ing, which is excel­lent for run­ning the busi­ness. Right, you need to when you’re tac­ti­cal and exe­cu­tion, you got to be think­ing short­er term, but some­one, ide­al­ly is think­ing about the strate­gic time­frame, three to five years, and the cycli­cal time­frame of prob­a­bly 10 to 15 years. So I’ve got two ques­tions for you, Kevin. Ques­tion num­ber one, when will be the top of the mar­ket? And ques­tion num­ber two, when will it go down?

Brad Giles 24:42

Absolute­ly. What I can tell you is that the day that we hit the peak, I’ll prob­a­bly be able to tell you the week after. So when­ev­er it hap­pens soon there­after, we’ll prob­a­bly know. And then and then and how much it goes down and every­thing else. I will absolute­ly be able to tell you, in hind­sight, because we have no freak­ing idea. No, no, but I can remem­ber one time I was sit­ting in the Mid­dle East. And we had brought in these econ­o­mists to help us get a sense of what was going to hap­pen with cur­ren­cies. And I sat there with their best abil­i­ties and their most con­fi­dent opin­ions, to pre­dict cur­ren­cies and where they were going to go. And as some­one said, at the end of the meet­ing, and respect­ful­ly, these were very well edu­cat­ed, they were doing their best they said, of econ­o­mists could accu­rate­ly pre­dict any of that they would be the rich­est men and women in the world. And they’re not, because it’s impos­si­ble to call

Brad Giles 25:49

white for it. Are you ready? I’m here, we can’t pre­dict the top. And we can’t pre­dict when it will go down. But it’s a law of nature, that it will, it will, it’s a law of nature, this is

Brad Giles 26:07

beau­ti­ful, Brad, but it’s true. It is we know that it will go down, no idea what hap­pens or why. And you can trace back some­times, but it will go down. And then it will gen­er­al­ly go back up again. That’s that is what it’s done for how many years? Yeah, and that’s why even when we get to some of the things that you need to do, that’s why this thing called a bal­ance sheet is real­ly impor­tant. Because your bal­ance sheet needs to work when it goes up. And know­ing that it goes down your bal­ance sheet, you know, needs to be able to endure that. And it’s like your boat needs to be able to endure Big Stone storms, storms, if

Brad Giles 26:49

you’re in the ocean. And if you’re in the mediocre mid­dle, right, you’re not plan­ning to sell and you’re not plan­ning to keep. If you’re in the mediocre mid­dle, you’re not con­scious of the fact that it will go down and you’re not prepar­ing for that. quite like­ly. And some peo­ple in the mediocre mid­dle are real­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, and they might have you know, a whole bunch of cash in the bank or not have a lot of who knows. But the point of it is it’s being con­scious of that fact that it will go up and down. And what are you doing to thrive dur­ing that not hold on by the end of your fin­ger­nails? So time hori­zons is the piece that we’re talk­ing about. And real­ly what we want to share with peo­ple today

Brad Giles 27:34

is is that, you know, if if you know that the cycle is gonna change recur­rent cycles. So if you’re in a boom cycle, like we are in Cana­da and Aus­tralia, in the US and oth­er coun­tries, let’s just because we know it’s gonna go down. We know that. And as Brad has iden­ti­fied, we don’t know when, but we know it’s going to go down that is a law of nature. And so far a law of eco­nom­ics or prin­ci­ple of economics.

Brad Giles 28:03

What if know­ing that the econ­o­my will go down and it will know it’ll hurt some? What is the one thing in your busi­ness you should be tweak­ing now or, or bul­let­proof­ing, or to future proof your busi­ness for this next eco­nom­ic slump? And whether it’s two months or 24 months or 42 years? I don’t know, I have no idea what you gen­er­al­ly based on his­to­ry won’t be 42 years. But what is the thing that you know, you need to just take a sec­ond right now and think about it, know­ing the econ­o­my will slow down some amount at some point. In the near­er, near­er future, what’s the thing you need to do to bet­ter posi­tion your­self to do very well when it slows down? So here’s an exam­ple is a guy called jack stack, wrote a book called The Great game of busi­ness was famous for buy­ing a com­pa­ny called srg. hold­ings, I think from inter­na­tion­al. Thank you. Yes, SRC hold­ings from Inter­na­tion­al Har­vester I think it was. And because the com­pa­ny was basi­cal­ly los­ing mon­ey and was going to go out of busi­ness, turned it around. And sub­se­quent­ly, I think he built 60 com­pa­nies greater than $50 mil­lion. Like he’s no slouch in this area. In any case, so jack takes this view, the endur­ing great long term view and what jack and his team do is they say on the up with accu­mu­lat­ing cash, so they’re on the down, we can buy assets. And I remem­ber when I met jack in the US, and he told us the sto­ry, and I don’t think it’s out of school. I can say it, he said it was some­thing like they were buy­ing land at $2,000 a square foot, when in the upswing, it was like $15,000 a square foot or some­thing like that. prob­a­bly heard

Brad Giles 30:00

of them. I’ve heard him tell that sto­ry. But basi­cal­ly, yeah, they were pick­ing it up for next door to free. Yeah. Dur­ing the down­time when things are when there’s dis­tressed assets on the market?

Brad Giles 30:11

Yes, yeah. So if there is a down com­ing down­town com­ing, at some point, do you have the bal­ance sheet to be able to weath­er the storm a, and then be able to pick up dis­tressed assets that will make a mean­ing­ful dif­fer­ence on the next upturn. Because they will just like it’s gonna go down, it’s gonna go up. Yeah, and it always does. And you know, that when it goes down, there’s a lot of inter­est­ing a lot of peo­ple they get hurt in that process. And because, you know, they don’t have the cash to fin­ish. So a lot of, you know, real estate and things like that kind of get hurt in that process with a delay. Inter­est­ing that when com­pa­nies start to grow, it’s not as wide­ly known, but more of a fact is, is that when the econ­o­my starts to grow, again, more com­pa­nies go bank­rupt, because on the way down, peo­ple’s cash flow improves for a peri­od of time, because they’re car­ry­ing less inven­to­ry in or catch­ing all those receiv­ables are com­ing in, and the pre­vi­ous month sales have been high­er than the cur­rent month sales. So gen­er­al­ly, if they do it, right. Most com­pa­nies can do okay, in an ini­tial down­turn. Now, after a long time, it hurts. But when it cranks back up, again, peo­ple get­ting cash crunch­es. Because if they if it picks up too fast, they can’t cash flow, the growth, which is a whole oth­er piece that jack talks about a lot as well. So. So basi­cal­ly, you got to be pre­pared to win no mat­ter what cycle you’re in and look­ing at the next cycle is an incred­i­ble way to endure. And it’s a great way to pres­sure test your com­pa­ny. Yes, it might be work­ing great today. But is it gonna work great when the com­pa­ny when the econ­o­my is slip­ping? Yeah, and going down, right when there’s a con­trac­tion. So so we’ll want to do is want to kind of take a look and give you a sense of think­ing where you’re ill when things go down, whether it’s the econ­o­my over­all, it could be some­thing in your indus­try, because you know, there can be there’s the macro econ­o­my. And then there’s indus­tries with­in econ­o­my like oil and gas right now is has been for a while a lit­tle slow­er, even though while the gen­er­al econ­o­my is a macro has been doing quite well. So we’ve got nine, nine dif­fer­ent prin­ci­ples we’ve shared in pre­vi­ous pod­casts that we talk about, about build­ing an endur­ing, great com­pa­ny. And I think we’re going to take a look and take a look at some of those. Hey, Brad, is that the plan? Yeah, that’s right. So based on where your indus­try is at, based on where the econ­o­my is at, based on where your cus­tomers indus­try is at, that’s the kind of fram­ing that we’re begin­ning with­in them. We’re say­ing, think about these nine prin­ci­ples to build an endur­ing great busi­ness. And then ask your­self, so where is that? And do I need to do any work around that? So the first point, of course, is strong cul­ture and behav­iors. That’s the first prin­ci­ple. And so where you were at in terms of this cycli­cal move­ment at 100,000 feet that we’ve dis­cussed yours? Do you have a strong cul­ture and behav­iors that can with­stand the way up or the way down? or what­ev­er’s coming?

Brad Giles 33:16

Yes. So if the econ­o­my or your indus­try con­tin­ues to boom for anoth­er five years, is your cul­ture or your cul­ture and behav­ior strong enough to hold it togeth­er and sus­tain that growth? Or if there’s a decline, or your cul­ture and behav­ior strong enough to face a rever­sal in the econ­o­my? And where things are going the oth­er direc­tion? And that’s the ques­tion, and what might you need to dial in? In either sce­nario around your cul­ture and your behaviors?

Brad Giles 33:48

Yeah, yeah. And so impor­tant­ly, before we move on to num­ber two, we spoke about the exam­ple of jack stack buy­ing land cheap, but that was shoring up their bal­ance sheet, or that was uti­liz­ing the bal­ance sheet the best way, these are all of the nine things that you’ve got to con­sid­er mov­ing on to num­ber two, a long term vision. So when things are going south, when your rev­enues are per­haps drop­ping, declin­ing or stay­ing stag­nant or not grow­ing at the rate they used to, do you have a com­pelling long term vision that’s going to ensure that peo­ple stick around and know what they’re work­ing on.

Kevin Lawrence 34:29

Yeah, and it gives peo­ple that EU North North Star that South­ern Cross to be able to focus on and to stay think­ing about as they go through it, because they know there’s some­thing great on the oth­er side, they’re just going through a tran­si­tion­al phase. But is that vision com­pelling enough for what you want to do, by the way, and this is we’re talk­ing in con­text, if you want to endur­ing keep this busi­ness for the long time. But Heck, even if there’s a down­turn and you’re plan­ning to sell, you might have to hold on to the busi­ness a bit longer, and hav­ing that same time vision for peo­ple to focus on is is crit­i­cal. And a lot of times you find with com­pa­nies, they have a vision, when it gets lost, it’s not front and cen­ter like a big mag­net pulling it for­ward. So that’s the sec­ond one long term vision, it will do well, if you con­tin­ue to boom for the next three to five years, or will it do well, if we go into a stage of decline, whether it’s in your indus­try or the econ­o­my over­all, the third, and again, this is a great one to pres­sure test both sides of the coin con­tin­ued growth or slow­down, and is your strat­e­gy that gives you a sus­tained com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. You know, if we con­tin­ue to boom for three or four or five years, well, you’re con­fig­ured a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage still be strong busi­ness still give you a notable advan­tage. And a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage means you have a bet­ter abil­i­ty than aver­age to secure the work you want or sales that you want, at the mar­gins that you want, and don’t have to give up mar­gin to get busi­ness. So ide­al­ly, your mark, your gross mar­gin is sta­ble, and if not, if not grow­ing. And the same thing, if there’s a decline, does that advan­tage actu­al­ly work in a decline? Maybe your com­pet­i­tive advan­tages, it only works in a boom time, maybe that does­n’t work if the mar­ket goes the oth­er way.

Brad Giles 36:13

I had that exact same sit­u­a­tion with one of the clients that I work with. And it was an amaz­ing advan­tage on the way up and at the top. And even a lit­tle bit as we start­ed to decline. But you know, in their indus­try, we’ve just had four or five years at the bot­tom, just bounc­ing along the bot­tom. And peo­ple in the indus­try would say, this is the worst we’ve seen in our whole life, like, you know, even the old time and say, it’s nev­er been this bad. And it was like that for four or five years. And it did­n’t work. And so we just had to, because the com­pet­i­tive advan­tage was­n’t strong enough to sus­tain through those down times. And we could­n’t evolve it dur­ing the down­time. All we could do was keep cut­ting to try to keep the busi­ness going. We did suc­cess­ful­ly. And now of course it’s on the way up and it’s going gang­busters. But the strat­e­gy that deliv­ers a sus­tained com­pet­i­tive advan­tage should be able to endure through up and down of the cycle.

Kevin Lawrence 37:16

Yep, absolute­ly, absolute­ly. And it was inter­est­ing as a client that I was think­ing of, as you’re say­ing that, that Brad, and I’ll save that one for the next one. So that’s a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. It’s absolute­ly crit­i­cal that it works, you know, and or maybe you have an alter­nate ver­sion of it if the mar­ket shifts to the oth­er direc­tion. And that whole idea of this is zoom­ing out and think­ing of the long term and not keep­ing a rose-col­ored glass­es on all of the time, can we actu­al­ly flip to a dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy or, or tweak our strat­e­gy to be rel­e­vant in a dif­fer­ent mar­ket? gov­er­nance, you know, you’ve got gov­er­nance and the way that you run your busi­ness and gov­er­nance so that things run prop­er­ly, whether it’s how deci­sions are made or author­i­ty is done. And the ques­tion is, you know, is your gov­er­nance work­ing if the econ­o­my con­tin­ues to boom? And still, as I said, or if we slip into anoth­er mar­ket cycle? Is your gov­er­nance? Does it have the speed? Does it have the safe­guards? Does it have the risk man­age­ment in it to help han­dle a dif­fer­ent type of envi­ron­ment? Again, most gun com­pa­nies in the last 20 years have been in North Amer­i­can mar­ket have seen a fair­ly sta­ble growth and not had to think about a down mar­ket. So is your cur­rent what might need to change your hon­or gov­er­nance to be able to, to weath­er that storm? Yeah, and so that, that’s rel­a­tive to the size of your com­pa­ny, you’re going to five or a $10 mil­lion com­pa­ny gov­er­nance is not some­thing that needs to be com­plete­ly ignored, as opposed to say, a $250 mil­lion com­pa­ny where it may become more impor­tant. But it’s still a con­sid­er­a­tion, if you like, if you would like to endure for the long term gov­er­nance has to be a part of what you do. I have a team that I work with, not that larg­er busi­ness kind of 10 or $15 mil­lion, and they get one of the big four account­ing firms to audit their num­bers every sin­gle year. Now, that’s because they’re, they’re plan­ning to keep not because they’re plan­ning to sell. Because you might say, oh, they’re doing that. So they’ve got strong long term books so that they can No, no, no, they’re doing that, because they’re plan­ning to cave. Am I rec­om­mend­ing that you do that? Not nec­es­sar­i­ly. But that gov­er­nance ele­ment is what works for them. It is and our larg­er clients, many of them have audits not and not because the bank requires it, because they just want to make sure every­thing is being done right because the share­hold­ers are far­ther from the deci­sion mak­ing and the cash and it’s just a way to make sure the sys­tems are tight and there’s not any one weak sys­tems but also oppor­tu­ni­ties for cash to go walk­ing out. The door is Also inter­est­ing as some larg­er clients when we were get­ting about 100 mil­lion a year in rev­enue, but there’s mul­ti­ple part­ners. So when you have mul­ti­ple part­ners, you often need to have defined ways that deci­sions are made and agree­ments. When times are good, unless you’ve got some greed, some with between the part­ners or or, or per­son­al con­flicts, peo­ple are gen­er­al­ly good when things get a lit­tle bit tight. And there are things like cash calls and things like that part­ner­ships can get strained. So it’s like put the gov­er­nance in good times, don’t wait till the bad time to try and sort that stuff out. So the next one is exe­cu­tion sys­tems to make sure the most impor­tant things or pri­or­i­ties are iden­ti­fied and com­plet­ed. So, you know, if your exe­cu­tion sys­tems are tight, they’re tight. Exe­cu­tion sys­tems can piv­ot pret­ty well in good times or bad. But it’s just to make sure you have tight sys­tems. And most impor­tant­ly, that we find is that every quar­ter use, zoom out, and make sure the blind­ers aren’t on. And you just don’t exe­cute the annu­al plan, because you said you were at the begin­ning of the year. Some­times you have to take you know, notable turns mid­stream, you know, one of our clients that more, almost dou­bled their rev­enue, and more than dou­bled their EBIT­DA in the last year through the pan­dem­ic, which is incred­i­ble. And it’s an amaz­ing com­pa­ny. But it’s incred­i­ble. But we were look­ing at every quar­ter like a year, like our we took our exe­cu­tion sys­tem in an incred­i­ble boom. And every quar­ter looked at every­thing clean slate, like an annu­al plan­ning ses­sion, just to make sure and now that some things are chang­ing for them in the econ­o­my, and it might decline, we’re gonna do the same thing. Again, just tweak­ing the exe­cu­tion sys­tem because of the dif­fer­ent cycle. This state that I live in West­ern Aus­tralia, we have 10% of the Aus­tralian pop­u­la­tion, yet we con­tribute 30% GDP. Okay. And yeah, so real­ly, yeah. And we’re ¹⁄₃ of the geog­ra­phy, geog­ra­phy, geo­graph­ic coun­try land­mass? Okay, so the state econ­o­my is an extreme boom, bust, we’re either in an extreme boom, where it’s a strug­gle to find peo­ple, or we’re in an extreme bust. And because it’s min­ing based, it’s ulti­mate­ly sound­ing sounds like our province, which used to be pri­mar­i­ly resource. it’s changed in the last 20 years, but used to be pri­mar­i­ly a resource base. And it was like,

Brad Giles 42:36

yeah, we’d love to get some tips from you on how to move away from that. But you know, we’re like the Sil­i­con Val­ley of min­ing and resources here. Yes. So it’s extreme. And what we’ve learned is that you can, many com­pa­nies lose mon­ey on the way up, and they lose mon­ey on the way down. Okay. So poor exe­cu­tion can occur on the way up, because it’s a des­per­ate scram­ble. And these exe­cu­tion sys­tems get dropped or lost, because we’re so busy try­ing to exe­cute the big projects that we’re get­ting, or the big things that we’re doing and chas­ing all of that growth. So that’s not that’s specif­i­cal­ly not work­ing cap­i­tal require­ments. That’s not growth sucks catch. That’s just bad exe­cu­tion on the way up and bad exe­cute on the way down because every­one’s busy. So

Brad Giles 43:27

and some­times they’re exe­cut­ing, know­ing and think­ing that they get cleaned up as they go for­ward, they’re kind of push­ing the prob­lems ahead.

Brad Giles 43:34

Yeah, at the moment, I’m deal­ing a lot with those kind of prob­lems. So know­ing that you need to have the exe­cu­tion sys­tems, and the pri­or­i­ties iden­ti­fied on the way up and on the way down, and it may be dif­fer­ent. So let’s move on to num­ber five, you’ve got to ensure that you’ve got the data to make the right deci­sions. If you want to build an endur­ing great com­pa­ny, peo­ple who are man­agers, their job is to make deci­sions not to col­lect data, like you know, peo­ple who are going out to col­lect leaves in the for­est, their job is to receive the data that is pro­vid­ed to them and to make deci­sions. So where are we at six, in the cycle that we’re talk­ing about here? And the ups and the downs? Where is your indus­try at? Right? And what are the what’s the data that every­one needs to make at this point in time.

Kevin Lawrence 44:25

And, and gen­er­al­ly, a lot of times what hap­pens for com­pa­nies is when in a boom time is that they’re focused on rev­enue, and they often neglect cost because there’s so much rev­enue and growth hap­pen­ing. And the com­pa­nies that we work with that have been through a few cycles, the they’re a lit­tle wis­er for it, or some­times just the cul­ture, but they tend to pay a lot more atten­tion to costs. They watch the costs of the growth, and they don’t assume that the growth will cov­er the costs and time so it’ll be like watch­ing over­heads always and watch­ing the SG and a expens­es or the spe­cif­ic agen­da over­heads, anoth­er term over­head, but look­ing at the oper­a­tional costs of the Min­is­ter of costs and keep­ing a han­dle on them, you know, of course your com­pa­ny needs anoth­er per­son or to an account­ing team. But if you do math­e­mat­i­cal­ly, does it it is it war­rant­ed based on your indus­try, if account­ing should be point 9% of rev­enue, and you’re run­ning at 1.2, you know, you may have anoth­er issue. So it’s, you know, cost dis­ci­pline and, and, and data to help you know, and again, so dif­fer­ent, you might be look­ing for dif­fer­ent data in a down mar­ket than an up mar­ket cost being an exam­ple, prin­ci­ples, sev­en, con­sis­tent prof­it gen­er­a­tion and growth. So the whole idea is that the most endur­ing great com­pa­nies con­sis­tent­ly gen­er­ate great prof­it and they keep ten­sion around it. Now, it’s not that they’re afraid to rein­vent, rein­vest, they do rein­vest, but they have a

Brad Giles 45:52

dis­ci­pline around cre­at­ing prof­itabil­i­ty, they have a skill around cre­at­ing prof­itabil­i­ty, and one of the big ones is that they tru­ly review whether it’s week­ly, you know, jack, SRC, in his book, reg­u­lar busi­ness would have you be doing a week­ly. But you know, for a lot of com­pa­nies, they you know, they would, at min­i­mum, do it month­ly, but a full p&l review of every line item and mak­ing a hand­ful of deci­sions to improve prof­itabil­i­ty, and the per­for­mance of the com­pa­ny based on the num­bers of the month. Again, ide­al­ly, it’s done week­ly through KPIs and oth­er things, or nsrc, even through the finan­cial state­ments, but real dis­ci­pline around prof­it, easy to get loose around it. And good times, like I talked about with the expense exam­ple. But but but even more dis­ci­pline required to suc­ceed with­out and chal­leng­ing times.

Brad Giles 46:40

And then next, of course, bal­ance sheet to endure the biggest storms, the biggest storm cycli­cal­ly is what goes up must come down. It’s a law of nature, if you will. And so how I know­ing that these chal­lenges are com­ing, know­ing the stuff that we spoke about before, about if your wages are going up, okay, your rev­enue, or you know, the amount of demand that you’ve got may reduce over time, how are you going to with­stand that storm that will even­tu­al­ly come so that you can endure?

Kevin Lawrence 47:18

Yeah, and you know, in boom time, some­times we can get in short­er term think­ing we can get seduced into think­ing that things will con­tin­ue as they are. And again, zoom­ing out, what’s the word chest, how do we set our­selves up to not only do you know, han­dle the storm, but to be able to cap­i­tal­ize on it, because now the storms shake, a lot of things loose, a lot of trees will fall over in the forests, a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties open up. And if you’re there with a strong bal­ance sheet, or ide­al­ly, a stack of cash, a big moun­tain of cash, you can make some of your best moves ever. And final­ly, prin­ci­ple nine a peo­ple mag­net machine to attract and devel­op future lead­ers. And you know, peo­ple make the dif­fer­ence ten­nis as the last one on our list could be the first you could argue, but it’s crit­i­cal is that you know, in the boom­ing times, are you attract­ing and build­ing the right peo­ple on your team? And then are you set­ting your­self up for the down­times. So even it’s is, it’s as sim­ple as that I’m just hav­ing a flex­i­ble work­force, or are out­sourc­ing some parts of your busi­ness. So that if you do have to scale back, you don’t have to lay peo­ple off, you just use less of an out­source ser­vice provider or, you know, one of our clients is in the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing short term employ­ees to the med­ical indus­try. And and and it and when things slow down. They just use less of that ser­vice provider. And again, they’re not you know, hav­ing to change the core team. There’s many, many things around that peo­ple mak­ing the machine. But it’s real­ly what do you doing. So for exam­ple, right now, in a boom­ing econ­o­my, lots of com­pa­nies are dou­bling down on recruit­ment, because it’s hard­er to get peo­ple, right. And you can either pay a lot more or invest more in recruit­ing, for exam­ple, we talked about that a lit­tle bit ear­li­er. So what would you add to the peo­ple mag­net machine

Brad Giles 49:09

prob­a­bly two things. First of all, your employ­ee promise your employ­ee val­ue propo­si­tion, and then the vir­tu­al bench. So first of all, the employ­ee promise, so no mat­ter where we are in the cycle at the bot­tom, at the top, in the mid­dle, how are you build­ing your employ­ee promise your employ­ee val­ue propo­si­tion so that the top a play­ers that a play­ers in your indus­try are going to want to come to work with you? That’s the peo­ple mag­net machine and then sec­ond­ly, how? How are you going to iden­ti­fy if you’re, let’s say we’re at the top of the cycle, how are you going to iden­ti­fy who are the A play­ers that are going to be out of work in two years, or their com­pa­ny’s gonna go under.

49:59

Because if you are think­ing to the next cycle? You want to know that some com­pa­nies are going to take a dip? Yeah. And if you’re strong and focused and run your busi­ness, well, some of that amaz­ing tal­ent might lose faith in the com­pa­nies that they’re in. And you might have an oppor­tu­ni­ty for your­self there.

Brad Giles 50:15

Yeah. So, again, when you zoom right out, and you can think cycli­cal, who are the top 10% of peo­ple in the whole indus­try? Do you know who they are? And are you track­ing what’s hap­pen­ing to their com­pa­nies so that you can strate­gi­cal­ly tar­get them to try to poach them from those competition?

Kevin Lawrence 50:36

Exact­ly. So that’s the whole think­ing of what do you need to do to look beyond the next mar­ket cycle, in all these dif­fer­ent aspects of your busi­ness, as we went through those, some things would have popped into your mind, some dif­fer­ent things that you might be able to do to set your busi­ness up, not only for that dip, if you’re in a boom, but then the next boom to be notably stronger, and being ready for the next dip, and then the next boom and the next dip, and being able to thrive no mat­ter what hap­pens. So no quick kind of sum­ma­ry of the show. Again, this is part two of where you’re plan­ning to sell, or you’re plan­ning to keep your busi­ness or are you stuck in a mediocre mid­dle, you know, in the mediocre mid­dle, you’re a pas­sen­ger on this jour­ney. And we do not want to be we don’t want to be in the dri­ver’s seat, want to dri­ve towards sell­ing, or dri­ve towards keep­ing this thing for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And, you know, we talked about in par­tic­u­lar, look­ing at time hori­zons, and if you’re going to be in this build­ing, dur­ing com­pa­ny, you need to go from there’s the tac­ti­cal, you know, you’re so strate­gic three to five years. And then there’s cycli­cal, and then like 10 to 15 years that most cycles are. And then there’s that vision, which is you know, 25 or 30 years down the road. But some­times you got to be think­ing about cycli­cal and a bunch of your deci­sions to make sure you’re set up to thrive no mat­ter what hap­pens, and real­ly encour­age you to pick the thing you know, you need to do in more of a short­er ver­sion of what we’re think­ing. If the mar­ket were to change. And then a longer ver­sion, what do you need to do to ride that next wave or cap­i­tal­ize on the next boom? Any­thing else you’d add on there, Brad?

Brad Giles 52:18

No, I think that’s, I think that’s a good, that’s a good cov­er. Real­ly, what we’re say­ing is, if you want to build an endur­ing, great busi­ness, you’re either plan­ning to sell or you’re plan­ning to keep if you if you aren’t doing one of those two, then the third point is that you’re stuck in the mediocre mid­dle. If that’s the case, and you want to under­stand how to move for­ward, you need to zoom right out. Think about the whole econ­o­my or the indus­try in a cycli­cal man­ner, and then begin to put your­self where you are against these nine prin­ci­ples of build­ing endur­ing great company.

Kevin Lawrence 52:57

Yeah, awe­some. So hey, thanks for lis­ten­ing. This has been the growth whis­pers pod­cast, with Brad Giles and Kevin Lawrence. For Brad you can go to evo­lu­tion part­ners com​.au, or for Kevin Lawrence and co​.com. Or you can go to YouTube and just search for the growth whis­pers Hope you have a great week.