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Love Your Business TV – 19th May – Why Making BIG Business Changes Don’t Work

Love Your Business TV – 19th May – Why Making BIG Business Changes Don’t Work

This Week’s Show

Love Your Business TV, weekly live stream show presented by Adrian Peck. The show provides free business advice, hints and tips to enable the world’s Business Owners and Entrepreneurs to work less hours, earn more money and have more fun.

In this show, we discuss why BIG changes kill business growth. We’ll explore why trying to make big changes to your business never work, what you can do differently using small changes and we’ll look at two case studies of how this approached transformed British Cycling and trebled the earning for the owners of a UK business in just 4 years. 

Transcript From Live Show

Good afternoon, everybody and welcome to Love Your Business TV. We are a couple of minutes late today because of a slight technical fault, but we’re back on it and we are ready to go. So, good afternoon.
I am Adrian Peck. I am the entrepreneur and founder of Better Never Stops. We deliver business advice and coaching programs to entrepreneurs and business owners who are typically over 45 years old and want to run one million pound plus turnover companies.

I am also the author of How To Fall Back In Love With Your Business: The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Rediscovering Your Mojo and Enjoying Everyday By Living Your Dream. And that’s exactly what I do. I help business owners either stay or fall in love with their businesses. Invariably, over time, what happens is the business owner kind of builds a business up and it gets good momentum, and then at some point they run out of time, run out of enthusiasm, and run out of some business ideas as well.
So, I help them formulate a plan, get them back in their business and get them loving their business again, and hopefully get them living back their dream and getting all the things they want out of life.

Welcome again to Love Your Business TV. We have been going now for a couple of months. I’m here to help and support business owners across the world, particularly in the UK, with some sound business advice and a place to go for some support every single week, and we tackle various subjects over the weeks as well.
So, you can catch up with us, we’re live on Facebook and on YouTube as we speak. We turned this into a podcast, which goes out onto Spotify, Apple, and also to Google, and you can look at all our previous episodes, as well on Love Your Business TV channel on YouTube.

So, really great to have you here this afternoon. As always, thank you for the feedback that you give me every week. It’s really encouraging. If you want to reach out with me today, you can leave a message. Any questions you have on the topic we’re going to cover today on the message bar. You can also reach out to me at [email protected], and I can obviously catch up and answer any questions you have there as well.

This week we are going to be looking at big changes. Big changes kill business growth. Absolutely, it’s a topic that I come across a lot when I’m working with businesses or before I work with businesses and as they’re trying and do lots and lots of big projects. And I’m going to explain to you why that’s a really, really bad approach and why that approach fails. I’m going to take you through as well, what the better solution. I’m going to tell you really about why does it kill growth, what is a better way. I’m going to give you a couple of case studies, and then I’m going to leave you with some call-to-actions as well at the end of it.
Let’s crack on…

Why does making BIG Changes in your Business kill growth?

What I’m talking about is that a lot of companies and a lot of business owners, they get their business to a point, and then they see the next step of their business growth is this kind of massive hurdle. It’s this next really big jump. If only we had this, if only we could do this. And they try to build it up on a really, really big project.

What happens is that they procrastinate about moving those projects forward. And the longer and longer you procrastinate about moving a project forward, is we have this kind of human thing that when we put things off, they grow bigger and bigger in our minds. Therefore, to get those projects done and to get those initiatives done, they get bigger and bigger in our minds. Therefore, that mountain just grows taller and taller and taller, and that puts us off even more.

Where do we start? Because they’re such big projects, what do we do first? How are we going to do it? And invariably, because they keep putting it off over a period of time, changes happen or something comes up, and therefore the project never gets started because of that.
“Well, we were going to do it and then this happened and therefore we haven’t got around to doing it.”
Or, “Oh, I must get around to doing that one day.”

Resistance: when you try to implement big changes into a business, there’s going to be resistance internally from it. The one thing that people are very wary of and very resistant to is change. And the bigger and bigger that step change is trying to be, the bigger that project or initiative is to that business, the bigger that internal resistance.

Ownership & drive: what tends to happen as well is not a single person drives the project, and these projects do need driving. Otherwise, they will just run out of energy and they run out of focus, they run out of stream, and they just do not happen.

Scope creep: what you started off wanting to do invariably has changed over that time. Because the project take time to get started and finished, business needs change, new ideas are added and the finished project just creeps further forward and wider.
“Did it even work?” It’s very difficult to actually to find out what you have implemented is successful and therefore that puts you off in doing anything else in the future.

Fear of Failure – The bigger and bigger the initiative is and the changes you want to try and make in your business, the bigger and bigger that risk is particularly for you as the business owner. And the bigger that risk is, is we have inherent thing we have in our brains that then starts putting this fear of failure in there. What happens if I try and do this and it fails? I’m going to look stupid. I’m going to look stupid in front of my team when I’ve been pushing for these changes and these initiatives and they don’t work.
So, that then builds up this massive fear of failure, and that fear of failure is probably the biggest reason of all that stops business owners from making changes to their business. It’s that fear of failure. And the bigger and bigger that project is or that initiative is, the changes you want to make, the bigger that fear of failure. And that’s really what stops it.

Head in the sand: with all the reasons above and the fear of failure, the easy option for the business owner is to put their head in the sand. Hope it will all blow over or sort itself out and not do anything. And in most cases that’s what will happen.

What’s A Better Way

It’s what I call the formula one principle, the principle of marginal gains, small changes and improvement. The reality is your business is not broken. Very rarely do I work with businesses that are completely broken. Normally, if they’re that bad, there’s an insolvency practitioner working on them.
You’ve built your business so far. It works, it generates money. Yes, it can be improved, but it’s not broken. Therefore, you need to move into what I call is the formula one principle. The formula one principle is about making small changes in lots of areas. And that’s how formula one works. It’s all about the small little changes that add up into a big change and as time goes on.
Sometimes those changes aren’t immediate and you do have to have patience with those changes. And my analogy is around ice cubes. If you took an ice cube and you put it into a fridge, obviously it would take longer to melt. But every increment of degrees that warms that ice cube up, the first few increases in temperature don’t have much change at all. It’s actually, as soon as it hits a point and all of a sudden, the ice cube starts melting quite quickly. And it’s the same when you make changes in business. There will be times it feels that they’re not having any effect. But then, boom, the changes all start to come together and the momentum changes.

So, it’s all about making small step changes. Small step changes across lots of areas of your business. These small improvements, they are fast and manageable. You can make these changes quite quickly. Using your team, get their buy-in and make them the central to all of the changes.
Change management is a delicate subject. There’s a guy called Charles Handy, and he has had various management theories about change management. And his analogy was about boiling toads. And it’s a great analogy. It says that if you were to put a toad into boiling water, the toad would just jump out because that’s an instinctive reaction. But actually, if you put the toad into body temperature water, so that is what its toad is comfortable with. If you slowly turn the temperature up on that toad in the pot, the toad sits there and gets quite warm and snugly, and it’ll actually boil himself to death because it won’t jump out because that change is so gradual. He won’t jump out.
And that’s the same when managing changes in your company. Make those changes gradual and they won’t realise or notice those changes.
It’s all those little increments, 1%, 1%, 1%, 1%, they make a big change in the end. And that’s the bit that’s going to drive the performance. That’s the bit that’s going to make the change in your businesses.

Only Shit Happens; If you’ve watched any of my shows, you’ve heard me talk about this before. It’s only shit happens. It’s one of my mantras in life. Only shit happens. Everything else you have to make happen.
Now, the one thing about making those small changes is it tends to kind of drive the energy and the motivation and keeps the momentum going of making changesIf you get good at it, it becomes a habit for the business…Better Never Stops. You can keep those changes going. You can make them smaller, more manageable, faster changes, and therefore that momentum keeps going.
Case Studies

So, I’m going to quickly touch on two case studies just to kind of reinforce the point.

The first one is the British cycling team. Anybody that’s sort of cycling will know of the last 10, 15 years, British cycling has gone through this absolute revolution. Now to give you a bit of a backstory, the last Gold medal won in the Olympics, I think it was 1908. Around 2005 Sir David John Brailsford was brought into British cycling team. His whole principles are based on these small marginal changes. And he basically stripped down the whole process from the maintenance, their sleep, the nutrition of the athletes, through to their sanitization, their training, recovery. He stripped every single process down, rewrote it making marginal change. Even down to the point, the athletes were taught how to wash their hands. Are you thinking, how the hell can that be relevant to riding a bike? When actually it’s all about the cleanliness that they have in their hands and therefore less germs that they have and therefore the less viruses they pick up and therefore the fewer illnesses they’re going to have, that’s going to stop them training, stop them performing in their events. So, you can see how his thinking was about even the minutest of details. The things that sounds quite bizarre, how it can affect what they do. They had a set of bedding that followed the teams of the web as well.
All those marginal changes added up and added up and added up. And they went on to be this amazing cycling team that won the Tour de France. Now I think four or five time. Out of 10 years, I think they might have been five or six times they’ve run it in a 10 year period. Some years obviously back to back, the amount of medal, and so on, et cetera. You know the story. It has been amazing bit, but it’s all done for those marginal gains.

The second case study refers to one of my clients or all my clients in general, because this is how I work with businesses. I work on the principle of marginal gains and I have this process called SECCESS, which stands for strategy, empowerment, control panel, cash efficiency, separate and scale. And what I do and how I work with business owners is we go around every single part of the business and we make small changes on every part of their business and we keep going. Better Never Stops.

So, we keep going round and round the business time and time again, making those small incremental changes all time. To give you an example of just one business that I’m working with in a four-year period, we’ve taken that business for £1.2m to over £3 million pounds this year. In that time, they have more than trippled their gross profit percentage as well. And based on that revenue, you can kind of get a good idea of what kind of gross profit they’re doing now. But it’s all been through that principle or those marginal changes. Keep going through the business and keep making little step changes through and throughout all.

Your Actions

I want you to have a long hard think about that stuff you’ve got on your to-do list. Those big plans, those big projects, those big changes you want to make. I want you to now draw a line through them all, a big cross through them. You’re not going to do them.
What I want you to do instead is I want you to sit down with your team. I want you to sit down with your team and talk about the small improvements that you can make. And it could be the minutest of detail that somebody says, “Well, wouldn’t it be better if we just had this?” And just go through all those small changes and those small changes want to be stuff you can do in a maximum of a month, ideally within a week. And some of these will be almost the instant stuff you can do. Some will be ridiculously small stuff as well, but it’s all little changes that will start adding up and get will that momentum going.
Why don’t you have every weekly meeting with all your staff or as many staff you can get together in a team. You have that meeting with them. You have it for 10 minutes and go, “Okay, what changes we’re going to have? What we got to do less now?” And you keep going through those to-do list. And you keep adding the little ones into it and you keep making those changes.
And that will all add up to that big change in the end. Trust me it really, really will.

If you want to know more, obviously you can grab a copy of my book. If you haven’t got one already, please contact me at [email protected]. Send me an email and I’ll send you a free book. You can also get all of the tools that go with the book on my betterneverstops.global website. There’s a section there called Free Tools. You can go on there. You can get a lot more help and guides and stuff that are on. They support this.
You can catch up with all the previous episodes as well. There’s a scorecard. If you want to look at about some of the changes you make across all of your business, have a look at the scorecard. It’s peckuk.scoreapp.com, and you can go on there. It will take you about 20 minutes to do that.
That score scorecard is a piece of business health check. And it does look at every single aspect of your business. And it will give you a score and it’ll give you a 20 page report that comes off the back of it. And they’ll tell you all the things that you need to do to improve your business as well.

So, next week we’re going to focus on lead generation and I’m going to talk around some lead generation stuff. I put a survey out last week about some of the stuff that you want help with. And the strong thing that came back was generating leads. So I’m going to do a couple of weeks now about a lead generation.

Hopefully, the week after next I’ve got a couple of guests who want to line up over the next three weeks to come and join me on that. They’ll give you some extra content as well. That will really, really help you. So, thank you very much. And thank you for joining this week. And I look forward to seeing you again next week. Be safe. Again, if you want to reach out to me, please do. And you can go on, jump on to Love Your Business TV as well.

And remember…Better Never Stops

Love Your Business TV – 5th May – Putting The FUN Back Into Your Business

Love Your Business TV – 5th May – Putting The FUN Back Into Your Business

This Week’s Show

Love Your Business TV, weekly live stream show presented by Adrian Peck. The show provides free business advice, hints and tips to enable the world’s Business Owners and Entrepreneurs to work less hour, earn more money and have more fun.

In this show we show you how to create a FUN plan for you and your business, so you can put the FUN back into your business.

Transcript From Live Show

Good afternoon and welcome once again to Love Your Business TV with me, Adrian Peck, entrepreneur and founder of Better Never Stops and author of How To Fall Back In Love With Your Business; The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Rediscovering Your Mojo And Enjoying Every Day By Living Your Dream.

Every week we are bringing you Love Your Business TV, streamed live on Facebook and on YouTube and I’m pleased to say we are growing and growing every week. You can also get all the podcasts on Spotify, Apple and Google. You can catch up on our previous weeks by going to LoveYouBusiness.TV, that takes you to our Better Never Stops website, but it takes you predominantly to the landing pages for all the previous shows as well.

It’s really great to catch up with so many of you and lots and lots of great feedback. Again, last week one, particularly from my mum. So she said she was very proud of me, which is makes me feel real great.

Lets crack on with this week. I’m really, really passionate about what I do. I’m really, really passionate about helping Entrepreneurs, Business Owners like you to either stay in love, or fall back in love with their businesses. And hopefully my passion is as an oozing out and helping you make your businesses better. And that’s the prime focus of what I’m doing. I’m here to support you and your business.

I’m here with you every single week to share with you some hints and tips and business advice that will help you particularly have more fun in your business, earn more money and also go on and actually grow your businesses as they should be as well. So as always, you want to reach out to me, it’s [email protected].

This week we are going to be looking at putting the fun back in your business.

We had a lot of feedback from lots of business owners that they were taking this time to really evaluate their goals and their personal journey. So over the last four or five weeks, I think it is, at least now I’ve been taking you through what’s called the Personal Ambition Plan. It’s very much focused on you. It’s been looking at your personal visions, your values and common purpose, your business exit, to create a personal plan with a personal vision plan which we covered last week.

This week we’re going to move on to your fun plan. It’s normally part of a four week personal and business strategy program, which I work through with the business owners, so you’re getting a flavor of really what I deliver, albeit an abbreviated version.

If you want to have more content, please reach out to me and I can tell you more about those programs. As well, most of this content that I’m going to share with you is actually my book of course. Which if you contact me direct, I will send you a free copy. If not, you can jump onto Amazon. If you go search my name or search for How To Fall Back In Love With Your Business, you can get your copy.

So moving on this week, last week we looked at the personal vision map and I showed you how to create from all your personal values, income and purpose. I showed you to how to create that really powerful visual map of what it is that you wanted to achieve. And I shared you one of my old ones and the gave you kind of a flavor of what that’s all about. This week we’re going to move on to creating a FUN Plan. What I want to achieve is to enable you to put the fun back in your business. I meet a lot of business owners, and its why I wrote the book, that have fallen out of love with their business. And a strong reason why is because those business owners don’t have any fun in their business.

And I wanted to share that with you. It’s a very important step that I take business owners through on that strategy program. And because I believe really passionately that you as business owners and entrepreneurs, you must have fun in what you do everyday. Otherwise, what’s the point? If you’re not having fun in your business, you’re in control of that. So why aren’t you having fun? If you’re not, change it, either change your business or change yourself so you do have fun. And I’m going to share with you a simple plan today about how you can put that fund back in your business.

I want to share with you the story of bamboo, yes very strange angle. Bamboo is the fastest growing plant in the world. But well, the top part does, and that’s the really important part, the part you see.

And when you see high achievers (sports stars, successful entrepreneurs etc) you only see the top part. You only see their success. Like bamboo, you see these huge canes that can grow three or four feet in a few days. It’s absolutely amazing growth. But the bit you don’t quite realize about bamboo is that it takes three to five years for it put its roots down and during that time it doesn’t grow out of the ground at all.

In those 3-5yrs it’s putting all those roots are down and what you then see is this huge spike of growth as the canes rise up. And it’s very easy for people to fail to see is all the foundations that that grown.

And that’s my message to you about having more fun in your business. It’s about all those foundations you lay down to get your business going. And when the ‘canes’ start to shoot out is when you should really be having fun. It’s very easy just to see the bamboo canes and without realizing the foundation that goes in. And as you, as business owners, you shouldn’t feel in any way guilty about enjoying the moment and enjoying the success of your business.

And remember “The Journey Is More Important Than The Destination”

The goal itself brings very little enjoyment, the end celebration is all the hard work the long journey that gets you there. So if you don’t have fun and enjoyment along the way, you’re going to feel real bad when you reach the goal. Standing on top of Mount Everest last for a few minutes compared with the struggle to climb it!!

Personal Vision Questionnaire – back on 7th April we covered the Personal Ambition Questionnaire; key questions to extract the deep stuff about why you do what you do and what you want out of it. We’re going to use some of those answers to complete the Putting A Smile Back Into Your Role.

You’ll see the first page of Putting A Smile Back Into Your Role is in four quadrants.

The first thing you do, going back to the Personal Ambition Questionnaire, write down all the things that you love doing. These are the things I love doing. The statements I’m looking for, what are the things that you do or that you used to do, that you really like doing. If you were to look forward in your diary; “next week is going to be your best week ever at work” because??? What would those things be? What would that look like? What are those activities? Spend a bit of time to really think about what these would be and write the statements here.

The next step, in the quadrant underneath, is to write ‘What Stops You Doing These Activities?’

Again you should have a list of statements. Be honest with yourself. What stops you doing these enjoyable activities?

We’ll now move onto your ‘Dislikes’ – what are the activites that you Dislike doing. You don’t need to list why, just list the activity statements. What would your worst week look like? What activities would they be?

And underneath these, write why you do them. Again be honest. You’re the only person that can do them, right??

We’ll now move onto the second page, Your Fun Plan.

We’re going to mapping out a, a plan of action. And this is going to be a live document you’re going to create. From the ‘Dislike Doing List’ what are the easy, quick wins; the activities you could stop doing NOW? What are you going to stop doing, Who’s going to do them instead? Assuming they need to be done? And then when you’re going to have that done by. And then once you’ve completed it, you can put a tick in the box. Pick out some of the things that you hate doing and therefore put them into your ‘stop plan’. The ‘who’s going to do them instead’ will need to be briefed of course.

Now move onto the second part of Your Fun Plan, ‘These are things that I’m going to do (either more of or start doing), again from your list above pick out the easy, quick wins. When are you going to start doing them?

This now becomes a live document which can be reviewed weekly. Yes weekly, plan a time in your diary to spend just 10 minutes each week to make sure you stay on track. And yes’ it’s only going to take you 10 minutes. Once you’ve got this list of activites cracked, move onto the next activities in your ‘Like & Dislike’ quadrants.

Soon you’ll have a week full of stuff you like doing and very few activities you dislike doing.

So that’s your fun plan. That’s you, Putting The Fun Back Into Your Business. Keep it simple and it will be achievable. You can always improve it.

And remember…Better Never Stops

Love Your Business TV – 21st April – Exiting Your Business

Love Your Business TV – 21st April – Exiting Your Business

This Week’s Show

In this show, we look at Exiting Your Business – What are your options? How Much? Who would be your most valuable purchaser?

Transcript From Live Show

Hello and welcome to Love Your Business TV. I am Adrian Peck and I am very, very pleased that you are here with me today. This is my ninth week into doing these podcasts with you the nation, the nation of business owners and entrepreneurs. My passion is to help you either fall in love with your business or fall back in love with business. I am Adrian Peck. I am the founder of Better Never Stops. We deliver business advice and coaching programs to entrepreneurs and business owners who run or want to run £1 million plus businesses. I am also the author of this wonderful book, which is How To Fall Back In Love With Your Business: The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Rediscovering Your Mojo And Enjoying Every Day By Living Your Dream.

Like I say, I have been doing this now for about nine weeks. Obviously it was pre-lockdown and pre all this disaster happening, but I am getting more and more comfortable doing it. I am hoping that I am giving everybody lots of value. You can now catch up with us, we broadcast live every Tuesday afternoon at half past three. We are live on YouTube, on Facebook. Where also you can download the podcast every week on Spotify, Apple and Google, and you can catch up with previous episodes either on YouTube, Facebook, or on our website, which is LoveYourBusiness.TV and that takes you through to our main website as well. So really, really pleased to have you here this week. I, Again, I’m always flattered by the comments and the stuff that you pour back into me, so I really, really thank you for all that and the positive stuff.

So, this week I’m going to carry on with the theme around your personal goals and we’ll catch up on that in a second. If you want to reach out to me, as always, it’s [email protected] and let’s crack on really.

So we’ve been looking at the Personal Ambition Plan. This is on the back of the feedback I had from lots of business owners that I network with and I talked to, that they were using this time to sit and reflect, those ones that were locked out and their businesses been put on pause. They were saying to me, “Look Adrian, I’ve put my business on pause and I’m using the time to reflect in my business really and particularly look forward about what’s going to happen post-lockdown.”

So, the things I have been sharing with you over the last couple of weeks really is around this Personal Ambition Plan. It’s something that I use with a lot of business owners that I work with. It is normally part of the initial four week strategy that I do with them, which is around really setting that personal business strategy. The content I am going to share with you, again, is the stuff that I do with my business owners. It is also in my book and there is a whole chapter dedicated to this, and if you go onto my website betterneverstops.global, if you go onto the free business tools section, you will see all of the stuff that I’m sharing with you, all the models, the forms, the questionnaires, all that kind of stuff I’m sharing with you. That’s all on there. You can download it all completely free of charge. It is out there for you to use and abuse and hopefully feedback on me and give me positive praise about, I do hope.

Over the last couple of weeks we have been building up. There is a couple of weeks ago I shared with you the formula for success, and really demystifies that myth that genius is born and hopefully I approve credit category that isn’t picky with the help of the, the Hungarian genius, the chess man and hopefully the collapse. So then last week we, the last couple weeks within then the Personal Ambition Plan around your personal ambition questionnaire and then went to work onto the values, income and purpose. So what we have done so far really is kind of style betting in what it is that you want out of. What do you want out of your life, what is you want to have your business and therefore kind of how does that all start come together? You have a personal plan, a personal ambition of what it is you want to achieve and that is so important for you to really understand what that end game is, and it’s all very much built on the basis that the journey is more important than the destination.
I am going to touch on this in a couple weeks time. I have a whole presentation on this just to really kind of push the point home that you have to enjoy what you’re doing and there has to be a purpose to what you are doing. Otherwise, what is the point, in essence, what is the point if you do not enjoy it? So this is what it is all about. What we will move on to this week is actually looking at your exit and exiting your business. Now arguably, that may seem quite a strange question, that moment, given what is going on in the world and probably or actually not, it may be not the first thought that you’ve got in your head about exiting your business, a lot of it’s about survival at the moment, but the exit is really, really important.
There are so many business owners that build a business and when they come to sell it, it all kind of goes horribly wrong and actually find out that they canceled. I am going to share some insight that we will be there in a second about that. So the whole reason about looking at your business from a point of selling it, to me it’s a bit like when you own a home. When you own a home, you don’t leave all the improvements and the maintenance until the day that you come to put on the market to sell it. It is something that you do all the time in your house. You know, you look after it, you redecorate it, you try making improvements because you are doing that on the basis that at the end of the day you want to sell your house. Invariably, you try to not do something to your house that is so personal to you that would stop other people buying it.
So to me it is the same with your business. A well run business is a well run business, and if you have got that mindset or that you have got an eye on the game that is actually about exiting your business and therefore, what you are doing today in your business is actually part of that strategy. It is part of that thought you have got, that I need to build this business so at some point I need to exit it. So it is an ongoing maintenance thing you do and it is an ongoing process that you have is that there’s always an end game to it. If you don not, it has some real ramifications because all of a sudden you have got business that you may need to exit. You may need to exit in a hurry because of health or because of a personal needs you need to do, and you can not exit or it has no value.
So that is why it is important to think about this all the time. And to start with that, that bit. I touched on this in my book and it is a book I read many moons ago actually, and I have re-read it a couple of times since, to be honest. It is a book by Steven Kovey. It is a very, very popular book. It is about the habits of, the seven habits of highly effective people. And one of the bits in his book is about starting and beginning with the end in mind is the way he tones it. And it is the same with this really. What I am suggesting to you is that you should run your business with that end in mind all the time.
So, okay. Why is it so important? Over 80% of businesses for sale do not sell. And that is a fairly scary statistic. 80% of businesses do not sell that go for sale. And these are the four real big reasons that they don not sell as well. One of is lack of preparation and it kind of goes back to that house analogy I gave you that if your business is not in the state to be sold, it is very difficult then to sell it. It has very poor financial results. And of course whoever is going to buy your business is looking for return on investment. So again, it is about having the financials in place. There is an over reliance on the owner and that happens time and time and time again. And it is a bit like the juggler juggling the balls. You can take some of the balls away, but you can not take away the juggler. And you have got to not be that juggling your business.
And the fourth one, and not surprisingly, and I have been on the receiving end this a lot when I have gone out and worked with my business owners to buy businesses, is the unrealistic valuation. People believe that they’ve got a million pound business and therefore it’s worth £2 million. And £1 million turnover business and the way for what is worth £2 million. And actually when you scratch away it all they are barely earning a £100,000 a year out of it. The numbers just do not stack up. So you have got to have that end game in mind about what it is you want out of your business and how you are going to exit it.
So, what I want to share with you now is I am going to take you through, there is about six really, what the options actually are to exit your business. So we would go through each one by one, we are not going to go through in huge detail. I am very mindful of people’s time. If you want to dig in more, there is a whole heap of information in my book, and there is also the guides and stuff that I have shared with you online is all online on the website.
So what are those six options? And there are six key options. A couple that are touch and run, but in the end, really there are six key options. So the first one is liquidation. So actually what you can do, is you can run your business with a mind in fact that you are just going to sell it at the end of it. It is kind of a bit more of a lifestyle type business and you know that you are the main guy and at the end of it you are going to sell it.
So, I was talking a couple of weeks ago to a guy who runs a very particular tax type of currency or a consultancy type business, and whilst he’s got a team of people that help him to support him and help him do some of the nitty gritties on a day to day basis, the reality is, is that expertise is all about him. So it has been very, very difficult for him to sell that business outside of him because he is the expertise. It is kind of almost like, you know Chris Evans trying to sell Chris Evans’ business. Chris Evans is Chris Evans. So you get the point. It’s all about the business owner.
Now that is not a wrong strategy. If that is what your business is about, then that is not a bad strategy. The bit you have got to be able to do out of it, is that when you make your money to reinvest into other stuff. So actually what you do every single year is you purposely run the business very lean, very slick, and you use it as a vehicle to then January, you cash to go invest in other stuff. That other stuff could be pensions, et cetera, could be property, could even be other businesses. But that is kind of how you do it. And for a lot of solo entrepreneurs and single business owners, invariably that is the only option is to liquidate the business at the end. You sell off all the assets and the rest of it is got very little added value to it. So, you kind of strip it all of its money. I say it is a very relevant reason. It is not bad strategy at all, not a bad use of strategy to have.
So, the next one is that about family and where you are going to look to pass your business onto a family. I have worked with a couple of business owners now and one of them is definitely there to pass on to their son who we are helping and grooming in that process to eventually take the business over. Obviously you need to groom that successor and there is an ability then to stay on in a capacity, and at the end of it as well, as an advisor.
There is a few sort of kind of cons with it in terms of you have to make sure there is a willing and interested in still family member to take it on. They also can cause some family tension when there are other siblings and that person is taking over. I have seen that a couple of times and always difficult with family businesses. Sometimes it can be slow to develop that person as well. It’s not necessarily a quick exit plan, but it is something if you have got a five or 10 year view you are taking of it you can kind of do that. Also, the business owner, the current business owner, you have to be very mindful of the fact. It might be difficult. You have to ask yourself that really deep question is, can you let go? Are you even now to let go of your baby and not interfere? Because That is kind of the worst thing you can do if you are going to hand over.
So, that is the family one, let us move on then to selling to them to your employees. Often known as a kind of management buy out, but you can do what is called an employee share ownership plan as well. Where the shares of the company are actually divided up to employees and employees become shareholders. I think it is, it comes from the second is one of the big brands is is this way as well have the name just going out of my head, but that they have that. There is a couple of big brands out there. They have got this kind of insurance that the employee shareholder type options. I worked with a business a few years ago, a big engineering company. The owner had died, and in his will he actually wanted the business to be passed over, in a two year period over to the employee. So, it can be done.
Again, it’s an easy transaction business cause it has very little disruption to it because it’s literally going to step out and have people up and then literally the people that are in it and then carry on running it. Again, you can be kept on with in an advisory capacity and there is, you can be very loyal to people that are working with, I know that a lot of times I work with business owners. One of the things that’s always in their head when they’ve grown this business and that put people there is they really care about a bit of the people that they brought. So very rightfully it. When it comes up for a sale, they’re very nervous about what’s going to happen to the employees and they want their employees after the Lord who they have shown to them. So this way it is is absolutely kind of cement that and you can then say pass the, the ownership of the business over to employees.
However, it doesn’t mean that the whoever is there and there’s a management team that is willing, interesting and skilled enough to run the business, the if the, they have to be able to raise the funds. So the whole proposition needs to be financially viable. And again it can be such slow at times. We’ve got the handovers. That handover may need to happen over a few years. It may not be something that we’ve done very, very quickly.
Okay, so that is that one. And we move on to number four, which is the option just to sell up the open market. So, then you know there are various agencies out there, mergers, acquisitions type organizations or consultancy type companies that can hopefully advertise your business and go sell it. You have got me, bear in mind that only 20% of those list of business actually do sell. But if your business is profitable and well run and it will be attractive and it will sell quite quickly. So there is no reason that it is not a bad option. The difficult ones are a low margin, excuse me, low margin and high assets.
So, I work with a lot of engineering type businesses, engineering manufacturers, and they have a lot of plant equipment that is quite expensive. And therefore, in order to buy the business, there is a price for that on the balance sheet. For instance, if there’s a million pounds worth of equipment as valued that sits in the balance sheet, then you have got the kind of working capital that needs to be in the business and then you’ve got your, your Goodwill that you will be paying for.
So, let us say we are up to £2 million now that somebody has got to buy this business. Clearly, if that business is only making a £100,000 a year, net profit, that is a really bad ratio in terms of I spent £2 billion to get a £100,000 back. So, the finances have really got to stack up on it. And it is really difficult with some engineering businesses that work on very low margins to actually then do the exit. But it can be quite quick and it can be quite a straight sailor as well. But it is that kind of mindful of that it has gotten stacked up.
This is number five or selling this to a competitor. This is probably the most likely, is probably the most valuable option for you. If you just think through the logic of it, just take the scenario, whose most, if you’ve got a car that is two years old, you got a two year old Audi A-4 for instance, the person that is most likely to buy it is one with a four or five year old Audi A-4. You know that is the most likely person. The most likely person already owns an Audi. So, very similar to selling your business to a competitor, the person that is going to value it most is somebody that is already running that type of business. Or, is somebody that can readily bolt-on your business into their business and therefore extend what they have.
Like I say, most likely where you are going to get most value is from one of your competitors. They can bolt it into their existing business. They can remove you from the market. So, therefore that puts them in a more competitive edge straight away as well. They are going to have some economies of scale by taking you out of the market because they will not necessarily have to put all the head office infrastructure in. They can just kind of absorb that into their business potentially. So it is a great way, and probably say the most valuable way, of getting a good return on your business.
One of the things you will be very mindful of is if you are very loyal to your employees and the people that have worked for you and help you build your business, you have got to really make sure the motives of who is going to buy your business. And I was involved in something last year and it was very clear that when we sat down and talked to the people that made an offer for the business, that they will literally going to strip that business and they were going to basically fuck and fire all the employees in reality. Straight away, the business owner I am working with that put them off completely from doing it because that loyalty to their employees and there is no way they were going to do it.
So in terms of a few cons along it, the one thing you are going to do is you can be very vulnerable in the process because you, yes, you have nondisclosure agreement and you pull that stuff in place, but to be honest they need bloody nothing really. If you are going to open your heart and soul to a prospective buyer and in particular to one of your competitors, they are going to see your business, warts and all.
And you know, it’s a real kind of drop your pants time and look at what got and you know, they can know exactly that. So you’ve got to be very clear about this. You have got to be very clear in your process of choosing who it is you are going to invite to buy your business because of that vulnerability that you are going to have. And if you choose not to sell your business at the end of it, clearly you have shown them, you have shown them everything. So that process can fall down at aim and as well.
So yeah, so that is the option of selling to your competitor. The last option I have then is for, it is a managed, so it is about managing, turning your business into a managed business so you are going to step out of it, and you are going to put a management team or have the extended management team to carry on running it for you. Now in reality, this is only a staged exit. There still has to be a golden exit from it, but it is something certainly that you can do and keep the business going for a long time. So for incidence, I have worked with a business owner before and he was absolutely adamant, when I pulled this, we helped him pull the strategy together. He was absolutely adamant that he was going to take this business to the grave. He was actually going to do it and that is what he wanted to do.
I helped him put a strategy in place that at some point he can put that management team in place, which allowed him then to step back from it. He carried on in a chairmanship type role and had some involvement to it. But he kind of let go with it and it was an absolute deliberate strategy we have done. He, had a real massive problem with letting anybody basically you cut off his baby, I don not know, it was just something that he just could not see, did not want anybody else doing. It was his baby. Only he was ever going to look after his baby. So tha was kind of what had to be done. So there is a way of doing gang, you’ve got assume their skills and they’re willing to the managers to to take it over and the business is proper enough to have a management team and still pay you a good income out of it as well. Again, this are some time constraints that may take you to do it as well. And even though you are still going to be involved, you’re still got to let other people get on and manage your business as well for you. So you’ve got to be very mindful of that.
The, the, you have a lot of shoes. I did touch on the kind of, that’s the kind of six main ones there is the option, the option of putting your company up in the stock market. It’s very, very unlikely for the sort of businesses that are from most walks of life and the stock market stuff that tends to be the businesses that I’ve, you know, started off with that view that this is what they’re going to be is that they’re aiming to to float the business from day one. Of course within those, the six that I’ve shown you, there are many kinds of hybrid models in there where there are stepping stones or something that might take you to your end exit. So the net, and they’re not kind of rooted in both, I’ll take you through the sixth. There are kind of say different versions of those you’ve been dragged through as well.
There is also other things you have got to be mindful of that if you do sell it and if there’s any kind of earn out situations in there as well because owners invariably will say, well we will pay you this lump fee and we will pay you that lump here. So, there are various kinds of scenarios around as well, but you need to just have, the whole point of this is that you have an understanding of what that is likely to happen so that you start running your business today with that mindset in place, and therefore, you are not a bit like when you do have your house, you something to put in a grotesque, I do not know, mannequin on top of the roof of the house that there’s no way that somebody else is going to buy. You have got that end game in the mind with at the time, so that is your personal ambition plan.
That is your exit. We have now discussed there’s all your options if you want to go through them. There is a chart that I have done for you and if you go onto better now stops and the three business tools, there is a chart you can download if looking for exit options on the strategy. That is a chart you can download and go through and that is it.
So, next week we are going to move onto your personal vision. That is something I love the death and I am looking forward to sharing with you and it is a great way of visualizing your goals and to keep you highly motivated to achieving those goals as well. So, I am looking forward to sharing that with you, which is a personal version that next week. And say if you want any more, if you want a free copy of my book and just reach out to me, [email protected] and I will send you a free copy of my book and as always, stay safe and I look forward to spending some time again with you next week. Keep that feedback coming in. I do appreciate it. And if nothing else, it lifts my spirits. So thank you very much. And remember, better never stops.

 

Love Your Business TV – 14th April Survive & Thrive 2020 – Video

Love Your Business TV – 14th April Survive & Thrive 2020 – Video

Free business advice & support for business owners & entrepreneurs.

Weekly Love Your Business TV live stream on Facebook & YouTube presented by Adrian Peck from Better Never Stops.

Free business advice & support for Business Owners & Entrepreneurs who need to rekindle their enthusiasm and passion, increase their earning and, most importantly, have more fun.

This week were looking at the 2nd part of writing your Personal VIP’s – Values, Income & Purpose.

Along the way I’ll share with you a brief story about Emma Yang – well worth a listen.

Love Your Business TV – 7th April Survive & Thrive 2020 – Video

Love Your Business TV – 7th April Survive & Thrive 2020 – Video

Free business advice & support for business owners & entrepreneurs.

Weekly Love Your Business TV live stream on Facebook & YouTube presented by Adrian Peck from Better Never Stops.

Have you got diamonds hidden in your business and life?

Now a great time to search them out and refresh your personal goals…

Love Your Business TV – 31st March Survive & Thrive 2020 – Video

Love Your Business TV – 31st March Survive & Thrive 2020 – Video

Free business advice & support for business owners & entrepreneurs.

Weekly Love Your Business TV live stream on Facebook & YouTube presented by Adrian Peck from Better Never Stops. This week we prove “There’s No Such Thing As Natural Talent” but using The Formula To Success you CAN achieve anything you want.