How To Sell A Business In Australia

AI is the greatest impactor on productivity that we've seen since probably the computer came into play. Right. It's just huge. But having said that, it's not perfect.

Right.

It's great for productivity. I think it's going to get even better. I think running, doing your content, running basic processes that it's currently designed for. Wonderful.

Are you looking to exit your business? I think in truth we all at some point end up exiting our business. Some by choice, others not so much. But sadly a lot of business owners, they just don't think about it till it's too late. So that's really what I want to explore today with my guest Simon Beddard. He's from Exit Advisory Group. I met him quite a few years back. Now Simon had me speak at his Buy, Grow, Sell summit and it was immediately clear to me that he's a super sharp operator. He's been in the finance and investment game for more than 20 years. He's personally started, bought and exited multiple businesses and now he's helping other business owners build and realize top value in their business. Many of our clients, they come to the systemology world as they're starting to think about exits. Sometimes it's just about exiting the day to day, others it's about exiting and cashing out and trying to get top dollar. So I'm very much looking forward to this discussion, probably as much as you are. So first things first. Just like to welcome you Simon, to the call.

Thanks for having me Dave. It's a pleasure to be here.

Maybe as a way to start, if we go into your history and then we start off thinking about one of the businesses that you've exited and I'd love to get some insight as to what prompted the exit and maybe a little bit about that story.

Yeah, for sure. So I've been involved, yeah, as I said, a few businesses and have exited for different reasons. You know, one of the, and just straight off the top of my head, you know, one, because the business was making money and I just felt it was time, you know, good opportunity to cash out, let somebody else take it and build for the next level. One because I had a falling out with a business partner who I found was stealing money and when I just need to get out of this scenario, one where we had a small tech business and it just great idea but just ran out of money and so at some point it sort of just, it just runs out of fuel and so. So yes, I've seen a few different styles of exits. Yeah, I certainly think the one that was probably more positive and ending, you know, was with. With, you know, I saw a good opportunity, thought it was time to exit. Even then I sold to a known party and, you know, just say, I think you work. You work really hard. And I think business has grown in levels and layers and, you know, know, I think just broadly speaking, it's kind of like you're on that journey, you're on the highway, and sometimes there's just obvious exit ramps that allow a good, clean, simple exit, as opposed to kind of not thinking about this to the last minute and going, I want out, and just turning into the wall.

Yes. I'm imagining that's how most business owners exit. They're burnt out, tired out, had enough, and then they go, all right, I want out. Is anybody going to buy this? I'm assuming you probably see a lot of people before that, as in, if they're coming to you, they're thinking about exiting in their planning. So are there common reasons that you see for people wanting to exit, taking aside people just being tired out and burnt out?

Yeah, look, absolutely. And I think they're kind of. It's a bell curve of scenarios, really, but waiting from going from the super, super negative to the super super positive, it's you. I see the uncomfortable things around business partner breaks up and divorces and all those kind of things, or even a health crisis. They're all the really sort of tragic reasons why people end up getting out of businesses. And that often erodes a lot of value. Those exits through to, of course, the, oh, my goodness, I've been approached by somebody and it's a lot of money and I have no idea what I'm doing. Please help. So that can be a really fun and exciting exit. But look, I think a lot of the people in the middle are just people who kind of have enough awareness about themselves so that they're on the journey. They recognize that fundamental truth that you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast here, that, hey, we all exit one day, whether we like it or not. So, hey, if I recognize that as a truth, then like every other decision or thing we've done in our business, we probably should get our head around that a little bit and have a little bit of a plan. Um, right down to some people who will call me up and say, look, I. I know I kind of need to get out in the next three to five. Like, business is good. I still enjoy it a bit, but I don't want to do this forever. So if I've got three to five years left. I kind of just want to know how to maximize my opportunities with the time I still have available. And, you know, I love those kind of people because they're, you know, they're a little bit, you know, there's a bit of emotional intelligence in that too, you know, that, hey, I recognize myself and where I am in the world and how I feel and willing to kind of put a bit of thought around what might be sometimes some uncomfortable conversations and questions.

So I think obviously if you leave it too late, you become a real don't wanter and it becomes like a fire sale because you just want out and you'll take whatever options you've got. If you're wanting to maximize exit and get value, when do you reckon the right time to be thinking about strategy for exit? Is that like from day one? Do you build that in mind? Or is it something when, you know, well, we need a Runway of three to five years to get a proper exit? Or how do you approach it?

Yeah, it's a really good question. And I'll probably be a little contrarian here in that, you know, there's the old adage that the best time to plan your exit is before you get started. And like, I actually don't sit in that camp. I actually don't think that's, that's really logical or practical for most people. If you think about how most people get into business, it's usually because they're doing something in their life, They've had some experiences, maybe they're working for someone else for whatever reason that's either ending or they go, I can do this so much better, or I'm just sick of working for other people. I'm going to go do it for myself. So they tend to kind of see an opportunity, they start chasing. And I can tell you, like, I know when I've started my businesses, I've never thought, oh my God, well, let's sit down before we do anything, let's have a nice exit plan. You know, it's like, okay, proof of concept. Is this going to work? How will it, you know, how do we get a customer to pay us something? Right? Then of course, you know, you start to get early traction and it's, how do I get this thing to wash its own face and at least break even, Right? So I don't think an exit conversation there is realistic. It's just kind of shit, let's pay some bills and get this to work. But certainly at some point after there, when the business starts to run and it starts to have consistent revenues. And yes, it's probably showing a bit of profit. And, you know, somewhere beyond that, asking yourself, how long do I want to keep doing this? You know, little check in with yourself around, hey, am I enjoying myself? Do I feel like it's purpose driven? Do I have the energy for this stuff? You know, if all those are yeses and you go, well, God, I could do this for the next 10 years, I cool, like, that's great. Maybe your exit is, well, I've still got a lot of time, but at some point in the next number of years I got to, you must have to have to think about structures and people and all that other stuff. Anyway, so point one is, I don't agree with the whole, you need to have an exit plan from day one. Two, I do think that as people start going on that journey, those energy questions and those things around, well, the big question is, how long do I want to keep doing this? Right? And I always ask people to kind of reverse engineer those thoughts for themselves. Because I had a chap just on the phone yesterday, he said to me, I don't think I need to really kind of do much at the moment. I'm happy to keep going. I probably want to get out and stop completely in the next three years. I said, okay, well, keep in mind that if you were to sell your business now, there's a really good chance, given the nature of your role, that the buyer would expect you to continue working in the business for a minimum of a year, but probably two now, if it on average takes 12 months to do a transaction, if you're telling me you want to completely stop working in three years time, you probably need to start right now. And that means, by the way, you don't have a lot of time to fix the business. This is kind of more. You're starting to go into prep for a transaction mode. So, you know, I think people need to be realistic about what does a transaction look like, what is the transition integration piece after that, what is their involvement? And some of that is, well, I don't know.

Right.

So nobody can because every buyer will be different as well. So the, the short answer to all of this is this is a big world of, of unpredictable kind of things that you can't control. So the best thing to do is give yourself some time. And I would typically say three to five years out, you need to be planning, you need to be starting to take active steps to prepare yourself.

Yeah, I think a lot of business owners, they tend to focus on the important and urgent because they don't have time to do anything else. And the reason I know that is I see that a lot with systemization and getting process down, always very important, non urgent, and therefore it sits on the to do list. So I kind of get that sense that until it feels urgent for a lot of business owners, it will just sit there and, and oftentimes that'll cost them more than they realize. Because the exit is the biggest sale you'll ever make.

Absolutely.

What are the main drivers then that determine the business's value beyond profit, I think. I mean, everybody just goes, oh, yep, well, how much is this business making? And let's take a multiple of that. But there's obviously a lot of other factors that the buyers are considering. What sort of things should we be thinking about three to five years out building and working on these numbers to get that top exit?

Yeah, once again, a really good question. And I think as I'm answering this, I'm going to come back to your point about just leaving things that don't seem urgent because I think a lot of business owners need to look at their business through a different lens. You know, entrepreneurs, right. You relate to this as I do. We're all hardwired for growth and getting there and we see opportunity and we're on the inside of this thing and we're looking out and we're all inspired and excited and drive, drive, drive. And look, we kind of have to be that way, right, to get into businesses and want to do it in the first place. But what business owners need to recognize is that the investors are on the outside looking in and they are complete opposite. They are risk kind of motivated or concerned. And so there's a lot of factors we need to think about in assessing what is urgent and important. But to come back to your question around what things other than just profit are important? I'd say to people, when you do a business sale, we're talking really simplistic terms here. When you come up with a valuation, there's usually a financial metric. Usually profit could be revenue, could be a couple of things, but let's just call it a financial metric. And then it's times a number happily called the multiple. Right? So I think a lot of people go, okay, I want to grow the value of my business. I need to double sales and double this and double that. And it's all about the financial metric. And I don't know about you, Dave, but I know if I say to a business owner, how easy would it be to double your sales. And most people go, oh my God, it's taken me so long to get to this point. You know, like the thought of doubling revenue by doubling sales is tough. So my quiz point to a lot of people is that you've got two metrics here as a part of this value equation. There's two levers you can be pulling and maneuvering with and that gives you a lot more flexibility. So I'd like to look at the multiple to start with. You know, the final financial metric is what it is. We can't actually really change that much, so what can we move the needle on? And that multiple to me is made up. You know, we've got a model we call our value 360, which kind of breaks down a lot of this stuff. But I'll rattle off a few things that are really key. Number one, what business buyers want to know is that your company is going to continue producing revenue and profit. There's got to be a consistency to it. You know, the, the history is lovely, your trophies on the wall and your awards are all lovely, but they actually don't give a shit. You know, what they want to know is that the money is going to keep coming in. And so they're looking for reliability. In fact, the best buyers always or the most professional, experienced buyers come to me and go, give me the most boring business you've got. I want boring, right, because they know boring makes money. Consistency. It might not be the exciting highs, but it's just reliable. And so how reliably can your business generate leads? How reliably can it sell? How reliably does it deliver? How reliably does it run? You know, do you have metrics? Do you, can you measure this sort of stuff? You know, which is, which is why I, you know, love what systemology does. It's taking what can be perceived as a non urgent boring factor for a lot of business owners and says, well, actually if you do this, not only will your business run better and you'll probably find it a hell of a lot more enjoyable, but it actually increases the value of your company, even without necessarily driving sales. So systemization and predictability around a business is just one of those core factors. And I'll give you one really simple, simple example. I had a client, they were just marketing pros, absolute pros. They know all their various different channels. They were really well defined. They knew all their metrics around what they would spend, what their conversion rates were, what their cost of customer acquisition was, what their customer lifetime Value was. And they could sit there and go, we know if we turn this dial in these channels, we will generate more leads up to a point. And then it starts to drop off because of saturation and whatever. But they just knew their business so well. And so when a buyer comes in, they go, hey, it's not me selling this stuff. Like, here's a model, let me explain to you and show you how the metrics work. And you just watch a buyer's eyes light up because they go, oh, my God, I could do this. This is work. Same with sales, right? When you can pull up a list of, hey, we've got five salespeople, here's their conversion rates, here's their responses on leads, here's how they manage it. We can say with absolute certainty that if I give that guy 10 more leads, he'll close six of them. Because they've just done it inside out and we track it. So, you know, it's that sort of staff that sets you apart from the guys who go, and I get this a lot. Oh, well, you know, the business just makes money, even gets leads, because we've been around a long time. You know, it's. Oh, we get a few referrals. And, you know, like, that's not a system. That's just a kind of, oh, well, I'm just hoping it keeps working. I don't actually know how it works. So, yeah, so that's part of it, a couple of quick other ones, you know, And I'm sure you've got other questions, but look for key risks. It's not just all about the opportunity. It's about, you know, do you have any key man risk around the owner, around employees? Like, does somebody have some of your special source in their head? That's not consistently applied through the business. Right. You know, what if that person leaves? What if that person got hit by the proverbial bus? Concentration, risk. See this one a lot. You know, what portion of your revenue is your largest customer? Because I can tell you, if it's over 15%, I'm starting to ask questions. If it's over 25, I've got alarm bells going off. By the way, I had a client who had a. Their biggest client was 93% of revenue. And I told him, I tried to convince him for five years, do something about this. And he didn't. I still took him to market because I said, I still think you've got something here. I did find two buyers. We had a written offer. We were three weeks away from closing this Deal. And that customer cancelled his contract. Not just deal gone, business gone. Right. So that's the sort of stuff that we're looking at is the kind of the core risks. And all of this still circles around for a buyer. How consistent and reliable will this business continue to generate revenue and profit for us?

Oh, hey, I know you're tuned in right now, so I'll keep this super quick, but you like awesome YouTube videos, don't you? Well, there's not really that many YouTube channels that create great content about how to systemize your small business. So I want to make sure that you catch every video that I publish. So if you haven't already, firstly give this video the thumbs up and then go ahead and subscribe to my channel. You can even hit the bell notification to make sure that you're the first to know when I publish anything. So go ahead, do it right now, I'll wait a sec and then I'll transfer you back to the video. Yeah, you mentioned some of those red flags. I think the key person dependency, whether that's the business owner or really anyone in the team, because that IP is trapped in their head. It's funny, a lot of those different value drivers you mentioned, I can keep tracing back to the system or the process. It's just about getting super clear around the way the business works and the results that it delivers so that there are no cobwebs, hiding or, you know, skeletons that are going to scare away a potential buyer. But are there any other red flags that commonly pop up that, that are going to decrease value?

Yeah, yeah, look, there's. There's definitely a few. But just to sort of build on your point there about, you know, I think what happens is we all get the blinkers on. Right. Like, like you said before, people are running hard, they're doing their business and, and you. They're not cognizant of some of the risks that are sitting around them. And, and because those risks aren't kind of biting in them in the backside every second day, they're not really worried about it. I kind of liken it a little bit to if somebody was afraid of flying, you're walking across the tarmac, you're about to get on the plane, you're walking along, chatting to the pilot, you're shitting yourself because you're afraid of flying. Like you're about to get on that plane. The risk to both pilot and passenger is exactly the same, but the perception of risk between those two people is very, very different. And so it's like helping business owners understand and look at their business through this different lens is going to be very, very important. And some of that even is. It's not necessarily that you can completely mitigate every risk in your business. You can't do that.

Right.

If there was no risk, there'd probably be no reward. We all understand that thing, but we also are probably all familiar with the expression that what gets measured gets managed. And if you've got a dashboard where you're tracking some of these key things, and whether it be your biggest customers and concentration risk or biggest concentration risk with your suppliers, staff, salespeople. Like. To me, when I think systemization, not only have you documented how everything works and then probably gone through a process of optimizing how they work, you've now got a system of measuring it and making to tell you if something's off track. And by the way, sitting above that dashboard, where it's telling you how the business is running, is what I like to call the owner's dashboard, which kind of sits a little bit above that dashboard. And that's where you've got your business valuation. Because to, to me, if you want one metric, or you give me one metric that's going to tell me whether you're truly growing and truly growing value, it. It is your valuation. Right?

Yeah.

Get to the end of the year. Hey, we were 2 million at the end of the year. It's two and a half million. Okay. We actually didn't have increased sales this year, but we've driven more value into our business. Wonderful. What do we do next? So, yeah, so look, I've probably danced around your question. You're asking me about more risks and red flags, but I just, I can't stress enough that if there's, there's risk and opportunity, but if you don't know what's going on in your business, how the hell are you going to know if it's a risk? So get a framework, measure it, and things will start to become far more obvious to you in your specific business.

Yeah. I, I'm imagining you would have had some examples of like, big shifts or maybe rather small shifts that happen in the business that cause big changes, whether that's operational changes, cultural changes, or other things. Is there anything that you think moves the needle on valuation more than anything else? Like, and selfishly, I'll come back to the idea of systems, because I know you put that in place and it just affects all of the business. But are there any other things that you notice where you're just like, hey, you've got to work on this piece.

Yeah, I mean, I break it down. So my buckets, in our sort of value360 model, there's five big buckets and then there's lots of sub buckets that sit under it. But we look at financial performance, and that's not the actual number. It's the qualitative story behind the numbers. Right. I'll give you a really super quick example of that. We've got two companies, both turnover 5 million. Of course, I'm just making stuff up here, but both do a $1.5 million profit. They're both in the same industry doing the same stuff. Are they worth the same amount? Most people kind of go, well, probably. And I go, okay, well, what if I now told you that company A has just consistently grown by 10 to 15% every single year for the last 10 years? Company B has zigzagged and volatile, and last year they actually made a loss, but this year now they've made a $1.5 million profit. Do you still think they're worth the same thing? What if I now told you that company B, by the way, their largest customer represents 62% of their entire revenue? Do you still want to pay something out for that company? So it's some of this kind of intrinsic stuff that people don't necessarily put a focus on until it's actually too late. You go to sell, you can't change how your biggest customer is engaging in your total mix. Right? So that's part of that story. So financials, we look at the growth system as another bucket. Growth system, to me, is pretty much everything you do that gets you all the way to a customer willing to pay you money. Generating leads, the sales cycle, the conversions, is it documented? Systemized? Once again, I always ask people, so what's your sales process? They go, what do you mean?

Like, really?

Okay, a lead comes in, I make an inquiry. What happens? Oh, well, we'll probably give you a call and have a chat and whatever. And I'm like, okay, like, that's not a system like you. You can't replicate good quality here. So I guess I'm the output or the end result to me is you have inconsistent sales. And that's a problem and a red flag. The solution to this is you haven't actually systemized in the background. And that's your point of systemization touches everything. And that's as I go through the buckets. Financial performance, growth system, your fulfillment system, how you deliver on what you've sold People in leadership. And finally is your overall operating system which speaks to systemology as a whole. Everything from your strategic planning down to your weekly cadence meetings to your risk management to what are your different growth channels for the future. You might branch out. A new stuff like all of that gets captured and each one of those in themselves needs to be actually systemized and documented. And I'll finish just one comment on these sort of buckets. You're asking me for stuff I was chatting to, I won't drop names, but there was CEO of one of really, really large, well known PE firm here in Sydney. And I actually said to him, so you know, after the financials, because let's just assume you're not going to look at a deal unless the numbers make sense, right? Like that's kind of the ticket to ride. But assume all the numbers are good and meeting key metrics. What's the most important thing to you when you buy a business? And he goes, oh, that's easy. It's management team and culture.

Yeah, interesting.

Management team and culture. He goes, we don't want to run the business. We need to know the people. It's run by competent people and we need to know that those people have a good culture. Because culture is not something I can just throw a few dollars in and change. Culture takes time, culture takes all these sort of variables and funnily enough, I don't know about you Dave, my simplistic, simple bloke definition of culture is kind of the way we do things around here. And funnily enough, when you have a good system that sits behind a business and you go, well actually I'm not just telling you how we do things around here, I'm going to show you how we do things around here. And here's the checklist in the video to go watch when you got some more time.

Yeah, I love that. The way I think about what a process is as well, they're documented habits. All you're really looking at doing is, well, you're brand new here, you don't know how we do things yet. Follow this documented habit until it becomes a habit and then now that's just the way that you do things. And that is the culture. Oh, we make sure that a customer never waits to hear from us and as soon as that inquiry comes in we get onto it like that proactive attitude. So it's, you're starting to shape and shift behavior at the system level by going, well, these are our standards that we need to uphold. Yeah.

And I think when you Know that that's fully now, fully baked into your culture is when you're, you know, walking the floor type thing. And it could be in a virtual meeting, whatever, but when you hear your own staff, you know, maybe they might use different words, but actually saying to other people in the team, actually, that's not the way we do things around here. Let me show you, you know, what the standard is. Because, you know, let's be honest, right? High performers don't want people who are bad actors or poor performers either hanging around. It's either pull your socks up and run it, run at the pace of the herd, or this is not for you. Right. People, high performers want to work with other high performers. So, you know, that's. I think when you do it right, your team will reinforce that culture. And that's when you've got some special sauce around a business that, as I say, you can't just throw a few bucks at it and create that. It takes time and a whole bunch of other inputs.

I think I remember that classic story of Amazon buying Zappos because of the culture. Like they were trying to figure out, what is it that you're doing and how do we then take that and spread it into other parts of the business.

Yeah.

When it comes to risks, because that sounds like a big part of what a buyer is looking to do is to reduce risk. They're looking for consistency and repeatability. And because they're effectively buying that business, hoping that it will continue on that same trajectory. I. I know a big risk or a big unknown right now is everything that's happening with AI it's already starting to disrupt and change a lot of businesses. How do you see that influencing and impacting the way people assess value over the next few years? And is that something that's already becoming part of the conversation?

Definitely is part of the conversation. Once again, come back to this core principle that a buyer is saying, if I buy your company, will it continue to generate the revenue and profits that we want out of it? And of course, there may be a question of how do we blow it up and 10x it and do all this other kind of cool growth stuff, but at its core, will this business continue on in a reliable, consistent way? And, you know, so buyers are 100% looking at businesses and saying, will AI disrupt this? Is AI going to eat your lunch? And if it is, they're not buying, you know, unless. Unless you've got some other kind of unique little bespoke thing that they go, yeah, your core business is probably Going to have some challenges, but I already know the answer to that. I want this other factor that you have going on. But, but I can assure you they're not going to pay full freight for a business like that. You know, they're going to pick the eyes out of it. And it's, it's. I saw a recent example where it happens quite often actually where a company will have two almost kind of, it's almost like two different business offerings under one banner and they're trying to sell to certain people. And I say, well, the buyers only value one of those, which means you're wanting them to value both and pay you X, but they really only want to pay half X because they actually don't value that other half at all. So, you know, unless you're finding more of a unicorn buyer who just loves everything that you do, which is hard. Yeah, you got to think about where you're going and how you're going to manage that. I get the question too. Should I go cross sell or should I go deeper in my channel And I go, well, cross selling will make you money today. Deeper in your channel will make you more money when you sell. So, you know, you've got to think about the game plan.

How about in your exit advisory space? Like where are you seeing AI impact that, whether it's in your business personally or how people are using it to value businesses, or what are you seeing at the moment?

Lots. Just from a day to day operational perspective. For us, of course, like AI is the greatest impactor on productivity that we've seen since probably the computer came into play. Right. Like it just, it's, it's just huge. But having said that, it's not perfect. Right. It's, you know, I have quite amusing arguments with ChatGPT, you know, in my spare time on the weekends because I'm just a bit of a nerd like that where I'm calling it out for lying to me. Oh yeah, sorry, thanks for calling me out on that. You know, it's like, oh, bloody hell. So I think AI is, is great for productivity. I think it's going to get even better. I think running, doing your content, running basic processes that it's currently designed for. Wonderful. Can it do financial analysis? Yes, it can, but you better double check the work and answers it gives you. So I think our sector is looking at this from one, how does it help improve productivity in just the day to day stuff? Two, people are now getting AI over data rooms to say, scour this stuff and give us insights and I think that's quite interesting. And how can it help manage a transaction more efficiently? And also of course I think if you're in the service world like we are, you'd be stupid if you're not saying will AI replace a big chunk of what we do today in the future? And I think it definitely can do that. But I'll finish that point on with, with something one of my clients said and who's a, he's actually a lawyer by trade, but he was a, he's a CEO of a different business. And he said I see AI in for example the law sector as being something that will look at cases. So two AIs will literally be able to communicate with each other. And anything that is rules based case law, if this then that, you know, clearly defined outcomes, the AI will probably solve 90% of a particular dispute. But then when it gets down to the 10% complicated stuff, it'll go okay, human, you need to now work out this last bit. I see our business doing a similar thing, simple processing stuff, you know, simple decision matrix decisions that are made with a matrix. Sure, you know that's a no brainer. But in the end like I have people talking to me about their family and their son who's been taking drugs for the last five years and how do I manage that and the emotion of my family and the employees who I've been to their wedding and now I need to get out and I don't know how the hell to manage all of this. Like I can't answer that for you.

Yeah, I'm definitely seeing that as a recurring theme across different industries. I've got an accountant who is a client of ours and a lot of her back office processes now are getting handled through automation and AI. And what it's done is freed the accountants up to take on more clients and offer more value added services through to the clients where they may have been running out of time. Well now I can spend a bit more time to give you those key insights that I wasn't previously able to do. So I feel like it's been a little bit of a game changer in that space. And I had another friend who used to have this framework, it was 108010 and it's almost like he used to talk about it as you do the 10% up front, you get your team to do the 80% and then you come in for the final 10%. Whereas I think for many tasks that big 80% chunk in the middle is going to be the machine you brief in what you want, it does the bulk of it and then you jump in at the end and tighten and tidy it up for delivery.

And I agree completely with that model. That's certainly how we use it. And I would just say to anybody listening to this is, don't be lazy. Do the last 10%, because that's how Deloitte got caught out. And, you know, that's a really, really bad place to be. Right?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Well, we've explored quite a bit. I think the main thing is for a lot of business owners, they want to think about this early and it's just about running better businesses. I don't think there's anything that you've said today that hasn't got me go, well, I wouldn't want to do that anyway. Like, that's just about running a better business. Because the better business you have, of course, the more valuable it's going to be to someone else.

Yeah. I'll come back to the point I made earlier and I just. I think we all. I put my own hand up here. We all get caught up in our businesses. We're running hard. We're doing stuff that we know is moving the needle. It's urgent. It's all this stuff and it's, you know, some of it's exhausting, but a lot of it's fun. And we ignore some of the stuff, like getting clearer on systems and all that sort of stuff. I just keep saying to people that some of the things you might think are boring or less urgent actually make everything else work better. And I had a perfect example with a client. We valued their business about six years ago. It was worth about 10 mil. There was a whole bunch of stuff in there that wasn't working. He wanted to sell, he was over it. But after I got him in a room, we talked for a lot. I was kind of picking apart and hearing him speak about his business. And I said to him, I've got the impression that it's not so much that you really want to sell. You've just got these two or three really big issues here in your business that you can't seem to solve. And that's just. You kind of hit the end of the road, you're over it, and you just, you know, selling is the solution to get away from those problems. And he goes, oh, my God, that's. That's exactly how I feel. And I said, well, I mean, don't get me wrong, I could sell your business. And that's a very, very lucrative part of my business. I'm. I could make a lot of money doing this and I'd be happy to sell it, but why don't we just fix that? Yeah. And, and he goes, you think we can do it? I'm like, dude, you turn over like 30 million bucks, you making 5 million bucks a year in profits, you're like, you could fix this stuff. This is not that hard. Yeah. And so in the end, a lot of it came down to systemizing different components so it no longer required him in the day to day stuff. He wasn't being badgered by silly questions that frustrated him. And literally three years later, there we were at the Oaks here in Sydney having lunch and a glass of wine and he's like, I actually don't think I can, I can't see me selling now because I know one day but like loving it. He goes, I'm working two days a week. I've taken up surfing again. I'm like, like works great.

Like, yes.

Like that's awesome. Like you're enjoying it. You're probably, you know, he actually was more profitable. They were growing. We did end up selling it, by the way. We sold it about a year ago for 18 mil. He did well. His life changing money, you know, good exit happy guy. But yeah, I mean, if you can do that and exit the day to day operations along the way and enjoy it a bit more, like, hey, isn't that a nice thing to do?

Yeah, I love that. It gives the business owner the choice, really. That's what most business owners lack is they're a prisoner in the business and they don't get to choose how and where they work. And that's really what ends up killing a lot of the business owners. If they had the freedom, many of them would choose continue to pick the fun stuff that they enjoy and continue to work hard. But it's the, that lack of freedom. When they got into business for freedom, which, which is the sad bit.

It's the irony of it all, isn't it? You know, I. For freedom by working harder than I've ever worked. It's like, you know, and, and you know, final point on that is that, you know, funnily enough, when you're kind of running a really good business like that, or it's kind of running itself and it's profitable, guess what, that's probably when more people will come knocking going, do you want to sell? Because this looks like a great business.

Yeah. What great advice if people want to dig into more of your work. Where's the best place to send them.

Yeah, look, I mean, by all means, check out exitadvisory.com I mean, that's our core website which talks about the sort of services we do. But if you kind of just like some of the stuff you've heard today, jump onto the Buy, Grow, Sell podcast if you, you know, there's lots of people there who've very kindly shared their stories about how they exited and what their transaction looked like and things that went well and things that didn't go so well. And you know, I was like, it's good to hear from other business owners. Right, because they don't have a horse in the race, so to speak. So it's, yeah, if you just want to hear more of that buygrossell.com we'll get you there. So yeah, yeah, perfect.

All right. Thank you, Simon. Always a pleasure to catch up.

Thanks, Dave. Good to see you again.