OWL 101: Why Business Owners Must Let Go to Grow, Pivot, or Sell

Tell us a little bit about your interesting background and diverse background. You went through Stanford with with a physics major and an MBA from Wharton. What an interesting background. Tell us a little bit about that and and what you do for your clients.

Well, one of the things that's great about physics, I, I did think at the time I was going to be a physicist, and then I started putting in the work and as with a lot of things that our dreams when we were little, you start putting in the work and you go, wait a second, this isn't really what I had in mind. But one of the great things about physics is it's, we work a lot from first principles, so really getting down to the, the brass tacks and not overengineering things. And which sounds crazy because people think of it like that, but it really is a wonderful background and I think bringing that into business, it's the same thing, and I'd like to take that to my clients to really help them. Strip away, you know, they've read all the books. They've got all sometimes they bought all this software they've got had 6 or 7 advisors, and they really just need to get back to the basics and really kind of come down to the first principles of how they want to run their business and how they want to leave their business. Yeah, that's a good point. I think a lot of people do get caught up kind of in the weeds after several years of running their business, don't they? They, they get into a situation where You know what they originally may have thought they started the business for kind of gets overwhelmed by all the stuff.

I hear that all the time from business owners that are really burned out just saying, you know, I just feel like the business is running me now and there's so much going on and you have a phrase a helicopter parenting your business and why you need to stop it as a business owner. What does it mean? What does that phrase mean to helicopter parent your business?

Well, if we think of, you know, if people who have, especially with, you know, boomers right off and they've got kids who are in their teens, twenties, is helicopter parenting is when, you know, you're still doing your kids' laundry, right? They're in college and you're driving out to pick it up. Because somehow they couldn't take care of themselves, or writing their kids college essays or doing their homework or putting a tracker on their phone to keep track of them when they're really capable of living their own lives. People do the same thing in their business because it comes from a place of love, of course, and same thing in the business, often you want to sit on a sales call, let's say. And there's no reason if you're running a business and you've got, you know, a couple of half dozen sales people, there's really no reason that you need to be involved at any point in the sales process, right? You're a sales strategy, but you know I have a great client who runs a real estate practice and it's, it's, and when I first started working with him, I mean he was trying to get on and close every single prospect. And he had a great team, right, but he wanted it was he he couldn't let go of that and he really wanted to still be involved.

Yeah, you know, I think I resemble that remark. I think, you know, that when I think about times when I really tried to expand my business and I hired, I hired good people and I just wasn't seeing the results, and I think that probably directly reflects back on me and my processes. And so I didn't fully trust that the people that I had involved, and we see this a lot in family businesses, right, that I didn't fully trust, you know, it's like, yeah, I'm, I'm delegating this to you, but I'm also watching. I'm watching and that that's the helicopter parent.

I'd like to, you know, yeah, you're, you're in college, but I'm gonna still gonna check your laundry. why is it so hard for owners to stop doing this? What, what do you think it is that that doesn't allow a business owner to just say, hey, I, I trust you completely, go, go do it.

Well, I think there's often people don't know what's on the other side, so you think about selling a business, and everyone's like, oh I wanna sell my business, I wanna sell my business. Well, what are you gonna do once you sell the business? So the same thing happens even if you're growing the business. Oh, I, I wanna stop doing all these sales calls, but what happens? What are you going to do if you're not on all the sales calls? So a lot of times people just haven't thought about what's on the other side. They're, you know, they're trying to, I was helping people grow out of the world they're in, but you also have to know what you're gonna grow into. And that is one of the things that is because it's gotta be something on the other side, otherwise it's just like a vacuum, right? And, and you're a business owner, I'm a business owner like we like we like to work. And we like having control over our own destinies, right? That's part of why we, we run our own businesses. So the idea of having this vacuum on the other side where you have what are you supposed to be doing all day and what what are you supposed to have control over, that's very, very scary. So that's pretty much one of the first things I do with people is I gotta sit down, I gotta talk about goals and I gotta talk about what happens after.

Let's get a good vision on what you're going to be doing with your time, right after, after you're not doing this anymore and for I think for a lot of owners, a lot of businesses out there may not be able to, you know, we talk about this a lot, Kea, that a large percentage, 8 to 9 out of 10, try to go to a business broker and think, I guess I'm going to sell my business like they're going to sell their house, you know, but it ends up not going well. They're they're either dejected because the price is too low or they're rejected because the broker says, I'm not going to waste my time on your business because it's all about you. So if it's all if you're going to get out of that, how do they get out of that? What can you tell our listeners some practical tips to break out of this pattern of helicopter parenting their business?

Well, I do think the practical tip is to do some goal setting, right? That's, that's very important and that's something you may need, you know, professional to help. There's lots of tools and techniques, but I think it is really important to, you know, I tell people to do an ideal day to really look at like what do you want your day or your week to look like on the other side of the transaction so you have that thing to hold in your in your mind. The second thing you gotta figure out is what you're gonna give up. When you're gonna go to the transaction, what are you gonna give up? You're gonna give up being the most important person, maybe having control, maybe having steady income. sometimes people, they don't, they get scared by the idea of I'm gonna sell this business, and I'm gonna go from having a salary to having now a lump sum, right? So there's a very much the mindset has to be there. If you've got those two things, then it's all just tool kit, right?

It's that from that point it's really all process and the first thing I say on that side is you gotta take a look at your team. You gotta look through and you gotta really understand. Can the people I have here do the work that I am doing at a minimum, right? And if the answer to that is no, and I would venture a lot of times it's yes, it's just that you need to train them or you need to set them free and just let them do the job. But if the answer to that is no, then you have to have a real conversation about hiring and how you're gonna bring in talent that is not complimentary to you, but is in fact competitive with you because you're trying to bring in talent that will replace you. So kind of get your head straight. And then you gotta really take a good look at the business, and then you have to go and decide if there's a training issue. Where I need to like there's knowledge transfer is this a control issue where I'm just afraid to be here and realize that you know what my sales staff is they're all better sales people than I am. Right, or they're all better architects than I am, depending on what your business is. Like, that is also scary for people, but that's what the goal. And then if you don't have that in in in-house resource, you do have to be realistic about, you know, how am I gonna find this externally. Or sometimes people look at you and realize your exit strategy is not really a sale it's more like you're gonna merge your book let's say you're a lawyer or something if the business doesn't exist without you, you might be looking at finding someone to merge your book into, and a business and then negotiating something out of that. So sometimes there's there are many alternatives, but the first thing you gotta gotta do is figure out what you want.

Very good. So, so some really good goal setting, you know, it's funny because I always tell people that it's, it's about 3 T's, but listening to you, I think I've just added a 4th T. The 3 T's are your timing. When, when you want to be either part time or fully out of this business. Second is your your target. Who do you want to run the business? And third is the treasure. What do you need to get out of this transaction? But the fourth one that I think I just added because of you is team. What do you want? What does your team need to look like? And you know, a big part of that is making sure that your team doesn't run away when, when you tell them that they have a new owner or a new leader.

So you have something called a 3D model, and I don't want to, I don't want to mention it below it for you. So what what's the 3D modeling and tell us what's how our listeners can use that.

Well, the 3D model is the, and I got this from somebody else, so I don't want any no trademark on that, but it is the, delete delegate due. It is the order of action. So when you and to your point earlier, all of my clients are doing too much, not getting enough done. So that is when you start to get into let's say the the part that often happens well I, I can't possibly stop doing X, right? Or the whole I, I'm too busy or I'm, I'm too busy to plan for my sale. I mean I'm sure you can see it all the time and you're like, you know, well, you're, you're not gonna have a sale to plan for if you're too busy all the time, right? So one of the things to look there is is really going through the task and going through what's on your calendar and going what? Asking for what actually do these things have to happen at all. Often I mean there's a level of over engineering. I, I had somebody once and he's like, well I need to send as a financial advisor, and he's like, well, I gotta make sure the email gets sent like this and that and I was like, does the client care? Like, does this matter to the client at all? No, so it's like delete, right?

Take that one off and then the delegate is that process of really saying who's on the team and what task sometimes it's outsourcing, sometimes there's functions. My guy, I had a guy who was looking to sell his business and he was like, You're gonna pry the bookkeeping out of my cold dead hands. I found my checkbook. I love it. I love it. I love it. Took about 6 months. It's no longer in his hands, right? So is that for, and then the do is really what do you need to do? What is what is at your pay grade, and this is another thing that can be hard for people to say as the business is growing, it's not that you're above the work where you could certainly roll up your sleeves and help, but that work, the front line work. The middle management of the business keeps growing right that is below your pay grade. So what is at your pay grade when you get to higher and higher levels, and that is that more strategic work that is negotiating with partners, right, if you have that makes sense to your business to have strategic partnership that can be preparing, you know, the operations for the sale. There can be a lot of things, but that's the do. So that's the 3D model delete you know.

It's so important that as owners head towards an exit as they start to say, you know, OK, the next 3 to 5 years, that's a common timeline I'm sure you here too, is I want to be out of this thing. Well, are you the CEO, the chief executive officer, or the CEO, the chief everything officer where everything you do everything in this business because you have to morph your duties and and get rid of like you say, the Elite, delegate, get rid of most of your duties because you're going to have to pick up a whole bunch of new duties on the way to grow your way out of a bit out of, you know, owning a business, and that's, I think that's the key thing I see a lot is a lot of owners, the key thing they need to do is be the chief value builder. They need to start growing the value and the attractiveness and the sustainability of their business on the way to the sale.

So what you have something called 3 things every business owner needs to know before selling your business, and maybe we've touched on some of those, but if not, tell us what those 3 things are. Well we definitely touched on them and it's where what are you doing afterwards, right? That's why I think we said that on the other side of sale and then and then what are you giving up? The last one is who's on your team, and that includes the broker, where I mean there's a huge variation in quality and having a really solid business broker is is critical that can be a financial planner that can be your legal as well as all of your internal team that can be your strategic the the target like you said, the person who's gonna, you're trying to sell it to. You know who are they and are you positioned with them that they're gonna it's a team right? so that they're looking to yeah there's money but this is this is a collaborative process of getting the sale done as opposed to an antagonistic, you know, negotiation, for getting the sale done so those are the three things you need to know.

And is that, is that an area where, where you come in and help an owner because what I, what I find is this is that oftentimes they say, well, I have, I have advisors, but yeah, have they ever worked together as a team? I mean, do they, do they know each other? Do they, do they talk to each other? Do they look at each other's ideas and shake their head, or do they nod their head? And so do you get involved in that way to help owners say, look, We really need to be clear on these goals that we're talking about so that we can communicate that to these other advisers so they all have the same perspective.

Absolutely and I, I am always encouraged and there's always some legal stuff, but I, I encourage my clients to say let's get all, all get together, right? Let's get on the phone, and, and make sure. That the client is giving the same message to everyone as well because sometimes the client is still, you know, especially when I work with them, they're still trying to figure stuff out so they may have told a lawyer they talked to 3 months ago something now that we're doing some work they're coming, you know, that I've had clients where a lot of times there's some unfinished business they wanna grow the business. They wanna, they wanna, they might, you could be in your 60s, but there's some dream they wanna get going on the business and so they've been talking to a broker a year ago about selling X and now we're working to transform the business and that broker doesn't even know you're trying to sell a new business, right? They don't know that you added a new product line, or you went upmarket. Right, and that makes a big difference to what they're, what they're working on. So I think it's very important to get have the team on the same page and then work with people who are collaborative in nature. So, that's often a good screen too. I've occasionally have people where they're like, oh, let's get the financial advisor on a financial advisor's like, no, no, no, we do this internally, we have a this, we have that, whatever. And I'm like, you don't, this is not the financial advisor to help you get through a a a transaction. If they are determined to have you only use their in-house resources.

Yeah, I think one of the ways, especially for, I can think, especially for men who are business owners that are thinking about sports analogies is are they a better golfer than they would be a basketball player if, you know, if a team's, if your advisory team is a basketball team. Then they're not going to hog the ball all the way up and down the court. They're going to pass off, right? They're going to, they're going to have to, right, but if they're golfers, they're, they're working on their own and they're, they don't really collaborate with others. They're they're just playing their own game and so it's really important like you said, to have that someone you can talk to as a business owner to Who can pull those goals out of you and get those into a written state so then that can be shared with all your advisers so they all have the same perspective and and be able to change that as as they learn new data. I've had a lot of owners who Thought they were stuck on one strategy, one exit plan, and then they realized, boy, it's not, it's not everything I thought it would be. So great, great tips.

How do our listeners best get in touch with you and learn more about you? Well, I am, if not the only one of the only Kezia Robinsons on LinkedIn, so that's always a great place to reach out to me, and I love just hearing about people's businesses. So, please, if, if you have anything that's, you just want to kind of tell me about your business, feel free to reach out. And I also, you can reach me through my website which is www.casia-partners.com. C A S S IA dashpartners.com. That's the name of my business. And just for those who might not might not know, Kezia is spelled K E Z I A H. Robinson.

Kezia Robinson, very nice to talk with you and great to have you on for the first time. I always tell first time guests, you know, if you, if you'd like to come on down the road and share some more, we just scratched the surface today, so thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a real pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks so much for having me on.