The Exit Engine Podcast Episode Fifty Nine: Working toward the best outcome

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Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast, episode 59. Questions going because you never know what amazing thing someone like Doug Pudney is going to bring is going to you know is going to bring up in this conversation. And the first thing we're going to talk about, Doug, is that shirt.

What about it?

It's wonderful.

Yeah, it's a happy shirt. It's a happy shirt. Yeah, actually, this shirt's done, you know, it's got quite a bit of history because it's got some transactions behind it.

Oh, really?

Some happy deals with this shirt on.

I can tell that. That's the thing. It's got— and no real stains on it. You don't have the coffee stains and stuff like that.

No, not yet. Not this one.

Exactly. That's awesome. So, uh, guys, welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast. Uh, I'm, as usual, I am Joe Stapleton. Uh, I am here with my, uh, as always, with my esteemed colleague and, uh, and partner, John Kniff. Good morning, John.

Good morning, Joe.

And we are talking today with, uh, with a good friend of ours, uh, Mr. Doug Pudney. Um, Doug is a seasoned executive and business coach who helps committed business owners particularly in the small and medium-sized enterprises and family-run firms move from being stuck to achieving real-time and financial freedom. Doug is not a buy side or sell side. He's proudly, and I love this, value side, helping leaders align, scale, prepare their businesses for transition, succession, or sale. Douglas Pudney, thank you for joining us on the Exit Engine Podcast today. How are you?

Good, Joe, and really good to be with you and John. Thank you very much, gents. I've been looking forward to this for a long time now.

Oh, thank you so much. No, us too. And Doug, you and I have had some great conversations, you know, in the recent past, particularly about— and I'm interested, first of all, on your take about this value side perspective, because I think this is something that is incredibly important in differentiating. Because what you do, and like what we do, it's not exactly what people are used to seeing in the marketplace in terms of How they approach their exit strategies, um, the way that they are looking at selling their business. Many people are coming— come to brokers, um, when they think they're ready to sell. The problem is, right, is that a lot of times they're really not as ready to sell as they think they are.

They should have been knocking on the door quite some time before, right?

What do you talk to people about? Describe your approach, this value side approach, and, and, and how it distinguishes be— between, like, you know, the buy side versus the sell side and things like that?

Well, we came up with that, Jo, for probably a couple of reasons. One, we had many, uh, sell-side and buy-side people that thought we were competing with them. So the, the M&A people, uh, the corporate finance, business brokers, uh, business listing platforms, they were wondering Doug and Bridget are competing with us, and maybe that's not cool, you know. So we made sure that they know that we're not buy side, we're not sell side, we're value side. As you guys know, value before valuation. Get the values right. In fact, your strategy starts with your core purpose and your values, and get, get, get start there, and then you'll get to the valuation that you probably deserve. Without that, it's not going to happen. So it was for 2 reasons, um, to let the, the business owners, the, the, the founders and the SME owners understand what we do. And it probably, you know, we do what it says on the tin now, and, and we're not competing with the people, with, with the professionals in the marketplace. If I may just carry on for a sec.

Yeah.

Just over half our clients are the elite, the leading M&A advisors, business coaches, exit planners, business platform listing businesses, family offices, and then professionals that serve SMEs. Here I'm talking solicitor, tax advisories, family offices again, change management companies. They often the people that can't take their own medicine, they can't diagnose their own issues. You know, the plumber's taps leak. And then the smaller half of our clients are ambitious owners who recognize that there's more blue sky above them.

That's, that's the key thing, right? And that's something that we talk about all the time. It's like people don't realize it. We say it like this. It's like people, you know, founders just don't know what they don't know. Right? Like, the ability to be able to understand that you have some much more control over this than you, than you realize, right?

Yeah.

And if you can start, if you can find out where you are right now, right, and be able to say, hey, in the future, in the near future, if it's 3 years or 2 years or 10 years or whatever it is, I would like it, the value of this company to be here, right?

Correct.

Actually set a plan and actually have a roadmap to be able to accomplish that, right? Which is different than just, you know, generating a lot of revenue, for example, right? It's looking, it's generating revenue, it's also being able to fix the back office and be able to make sure that your systems are in place, that you've got efficiency, right? That you are basically able to deliver whatever you're delivering as a service or a product in the most efficient way, and that you then have a transferable, a repeatable process for all of this that is transferable.

And the value is just Going up and up and up.

Keep going.

What's so exciting, and I've said it to you before, we're fishing in the same pond and singing out the same hymnbook. Our language and literacy is the same. We have common beliefs. I really enjoy this. Maybe it's the start of other things to come.

Yeah.

Let me ask a question, Doug. So just for the listeners, we've talked a couple of times, but can you just lay out sort of what your What is your sort of fundamental philosophy or the way that you approach a client engagement? Obviously, no client names or anything like that, but, but let's say that you're having an initial call with a founder. What are you interacting with them? What are the questions you're asking?

Quick question back first, John. Have I, have I started working with them? We're engaged. I've now been employed. I'm their consultant. Or is this—

It's a good point. Let's assume that yes, you've been engaged, you're having that initial— that I guess they're not initial call, but they've hired you. What are you doing in that initial call to sort of talk to them, to assess their business, to see what they need, given that you know, you probably know a little bit about them at the beginning, but there's a lot of stuff you don't know? Let's put it that way.

I'm going to look for a couple of things, and I'll probably use a tool depending on which tool would depend on who I'm talking to. It's always a pleasure. You've sent the first invoice. So now you're not on the clock, so to speak, because I don't work on time. I work on impact. And that's maybe a conversation that we can have in 10 or 20 minutes' time.

Yeah.

But, you know, I look at the 3 C's and I look to see— and I've got an assessment for this— I look to see what clarity they've got. And I look to see what conviction they've got and what codification, the systemizing that you're talking about, John, Joe. And, and, and it always starts the same. I've, I've shown you guys my business wheel that I started using in the '90s. And this wheel has got strategy firmly at the hub. So it doesn't matter who the client is. we start working with strategy. We'll get strategy right, and that unlocks so much more. Because once you've got strategy, you can have really good marketing and sales. Your messaging can be on point.

Right.

What's, what's a good symptom of marketing and sales that's really pitch perfect? You can have a predictable cash flow. That's what owners are looking for. So it always starts with strategy. And I'm giving you the short version of the answer now, but it starts with strategy. And then it— and then we'll do after that, after strategy, once you've optimized strategy, we'll then work out, are we going to execution? Are we going to go look at cash and finance and viability and breakeven, condensing the cash flow conversion cycle, looking at financial operating ratios? Are we going to go look at team and the leadership of the business and the format of the team and maybe look at Patrick Lencioni's learnings and what we can apply, bring DiSC or Myers-Briggs into the conversation? We may go and look at marketing and sales because at this stage, revenue is normally needed. So very more often than not, it goes strategy, and down to marketing and sales. And then also the other angle that we may go to is the client or client-centric approach. You know, those important numbers, the Net Promoter Score, the client acquisition costs, the lifetime value of the client, how many clients you need to achieve the revenue goals that you need, that you have, et cetera.

Okay.

But if you had to ask me about strategy or where that comes from, That's another conversation. But, uh, where would I start with a client? 100%, every time, a coconut strategy. It's at the center of the universe of your business. It influences cash, team, marketing and sales, and the clients, and then execution.

Yeah.

That's around the wheel where the rubber hits the road, so to speak.

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Well, and it's a good point because if you start with strategy, or when you start with strategy, I should say, what you're saying is everything flows from that strategy. Everything needs to be aligned and just in support of that strategy, whether it's marketing and sales or customer acquisition costs and the revenue that flows from that.

So. Correct.

And do you find that when you walk into some of these places, and again, obviously it depends on how long they've been around, how, how, how, right, how successful they've already been, right? To a degree. But the idea is that when you walk, how, what are the common things that you find? Are there common things that you find, you know, across almost everybody's business at the beginning when you first arrive? Are there things that are very commonly Either underperforming, right? Maybe not even being examined, somehow being lost, right? That kind of stuff.

Joe, we're all going to find the same issues. There may not be enough owner independency. The business is too dependent on the owner. They may have weak strategy, poor systems. There's a myriad of issues, but Fortunately, part of the sales process, part of the onboarding process is a questionnaire which I'm going to go through with the client. So we often will give out a short assessment which is about 12 questions long, and that's just a conversation starter. And for, for the business coaches out there, the family offices, the fractional CFOs, the, the The SME advisor that's serving SME owners, it's a wonderful place to start, isn't it?

Mm-hmm.

Because you, you, it's a conversation starter. So we supply those to many professionals, uh, in the marketplace. Um, you know, proper, uh, a purpose-built assessment for your niche that you're working in. You may be an exit planner, you may be, uh, a chartered accountant, Whatever it is. Right. Anyway, I probably went off track there. Did I answer the question? Yeah.

No, I think so. I think that's the thing. These are the things that are common. And what we're trying to say is that, again, guys, we have had so many guests on this podcast already, right, who are all saying the same thing, right? Which is that there are, first of all, the very common things are, first of all, you have more control over this than you realize. And if you— but if you don't, it's like anything else. If you don't take control of it, it will take control of you, right? So we always say, are you, are you running your business or is your business running you? Because most people say when they're asked, why did you get into— why did you want to start your own business? And the number one answer is, I wanted the freedom of being able to do and be my own boss and set my own schedule and things like that. And what they ultimately end up— almost every case end up With is this business being a very large albatross, right? Like, right? It becomes that it becomes they are slave to it, keeping it going, right? They are micromanaging every single aspect of it. They're working.

They're working way more than they would have worked if they in their corporate job that they had before that they started this business, right?

Yeah.

I always say, gentlemen, I always say our plans. Discover their freedom in their routine.

There you go.

The diary of an executive tells a story. If you can get the CEO or the founder's diary to look good and have a lot of defaults in it, that they have a habit, their 3 main things, their priorities for the day, that they've made appointments with themselves to do that body of work, they can start to shed these habits off them, just share them around the business. Let everybody else start to work the same way. You just— you're sucking the friction out of the business.

It's such a good point because I was reading something recently where Jamie Dimon— he, you know, I picture like when I used to wear like a collared shirt and have a pocket, and he would write down the 3 things he wanted to get accomplished today. And he wasn't doing those 3 things. He would have that in his pocket. He'd walk around and be like, all right, I got to talk to the CFO about The budget. I have to talk to marketing about our digital campaign, and I have to talk about human resources about a problem we're having in Asia, or something along those lines. It's like you're free, you know, you're getting those things done. And to your point, Doug, it's a routine. It's, I gotta check in with these people because they're doing the work. I'm sort of sitting over the business running it, but I'm not involved in the day-to-day.

You're quite right, and that's the rhythm that the CEO sets. One of the things that a CEO can never delegate is the rhythm in his business, the rhythm of how information flows up and down the business, in and out to stakeholders, to customers, up and down from the leadership to the soldiers. And that comes from the CEO. There are a couple of other things that the CEO can't delegate.

Yes.

That's another conversation for another day. But things like values and, you know, your core values.

And talk a little bit about that, about the gift of communication, because you touched on a little bit of it. So are you saying that, like, in your, in your opinion or in your expertise, like, is the, is the CEO that chief communicator? Right. Because he or she is, is sort of getting all that information from all different people. And really, it's, is it, is it her responsibility to feed that back to the, to the troops? Or just talk about that a little bit.

That's an interesting question, and my approach on communication is that the business needs to have a guide to communication. So that's part of the strategy. So, so the strategy of, of our clients is built on a myriad of foundation blocks, or what we call strategy anchors. So that's your core purpose. Your core values, your unique value proposition, etc. And then what we get, what we call the broadcast values. Now, the broadcast values are things such as your tone of voice. So, so you— one would expect that part of the GPTs of that business and the AI prompts, etc., would be a tone of voice. There would be broadcast anchors such as the keyword strategy and a myriad of other— of the manner and the fashion that this would take place. Also, where and when communication takes place is critical, and that comes back to the rhythm of the business that I spoke about.

Yes.

There's a line meeting every single week without fail. That's Lion, as in the Big 5. So you can recognize the South African accent, as in lion and elephant, etc. So L-I-O-N. You're talking about the last week, the issues arising, the opportunities, uh, coming up, and next week. So you make certain commitments and promises regarding your metrics for next week.

Right.

And then the Lion meeting will start next week with Now let's look at those numbers. You know, you've obviously completed your dashboard before the meeting. The other metrics, the other meetings are that little captain's huddle that will happen every day for a division or a department. And prior on, on when there's a line meeting, there won't be a huddle that day.

Mm-hmm.

So therefore, therefore, huddles, then you'll have a monthly meeting. and you'll have a quarterly meeting. So obviously, you'd have in a quarter, you'd have 2 monthly meetings and the quarterly meeting in the 3rd month.

Yeah.

And then, and then your annual meeting would be quarterly, quarterly, and then 3 quarterlies, and then your annual meeting. So your team, because you always prepare for meetings, they need to have a very good idea of what's expected in terms of communication. what they're reporting on, what they're accountable for, where they're just soldiers and they're responsible for certain things. That's what they need to be ready to report on.

I love that routine.

Sorry, go ahead.

Remember I said your freedom comes from your routine, right? So when it happens like clockwork and it's automated, your growth is like clockwork, right?

And you're not spending— and this is a big lie that people tell themselves. And I think that we have gotten this to an extent in this, in, in the world where this has just become absurd, that the, the, that there's this notion that if I'm not spending every waking hour on my business, that I'm not going to be successful. And that is a— What about fishing, right?

What about fishing? What about golf? What about your tennis?

That's it. What about traveling with my wife? What about my kids, right? And this is why we have created this whole thing that we've, we've created created a lie about what I have to do in order to be successful. And that lie has been perpetuated by some of the productivity. It's all about productivity and getting as much as you possibly can and blah, blah, blah. And the reality is, I think people think that they are afraid with your system, Doug, and doing it the way that you just outlined, right? That's the that you made yourself when you started the business.

Correct.

I will be able to have time with my family. I won't be doing— I'll be doing this for myself, etc., etc. Quickly becomes— goes away. And the friction in your life starts, really starts at that point, right? Because now it's like, again, it's wives and children and husbands, right? And partners and, you know, and people like that where you're— and again, you will get busy. Right. And again, being busy, that's— you're busy as a CEO. But the question is, what are you working on and what is meaningful? And are you working in it in a meaningful way that actually is the way that you're supposed to be doing, as opposed to why are you looking at email copy? You're the CEO, right? So maybe what you want to make sure is that direction has been set and that you've got people and you've hired good people around you that are going to take that to the next level and execute that. On your behalf while you're playing golf.

The efficiency is part of strategy. But before I go on to that point, Jo, if I'm just to come back, you asked me a question about communication. I left one point out. Every single meeting with all of our clients, and I've got clients going back to the '90s that still do the same thing. Every meeting starts with a round robin of good news.

There you go.

Anybody at the meeting, it's a quick 20 to 30 second round robin of good news. And none of our clients will ever start a meeting without that.

Well, I love that. And I'm going to tell— I'm going to tell a quick meeting story. But some— we had— I had friends over Sunday night over the holiday weekend. And he was telling me that at his company, he calculated this because he's doing a project. 28 of the 40 hours in the week for a certain set of executives was set aside for meetings. So they had an hour-long meeting every day with the executive leadership team and then a 3-hour team meeting that happened not every day, but every, like, I think it was once a week. So I guess in that point, like, your system, Doug, has a wonderful part of it because there's structure.

Yeah.

But it allows people to get work done too. To your point, it creates a routine that people can expect and that people— not that they can work around, but they can work within those parameters. Right. It's, it's I'm going to have breakfast at 9. I'm going to have lunch at 1:30 and I'm going to have dinner at 6:30. And the prediction— I'm going to exercise at 6:15 in the morning or 8:00 at night. And it allows the people in the business to work around that, prepare for those meetings.

Yeah.

And, and, and work within the parameters of what you've set up. And it's— and again, it all flows from that strategy, which I love.

That's absolutely awesome. And, and, you know, John, what Jo was saying, um, he was talking about the efficiency and the execution and the smoothness. And I don't believe that you should— in fact, if I found— if I came across a new client that was having all those meetings, we'd break that apart quickly and just work out what's happening. And in any case, you know, we— the first 6 weeks of our relationships with our coaching clients or consulting clients is very similar. We're busy building the strategy anchors.

Love that.

Those are the foundation blocks. And we'll build, depending on the business and the industry and the age of the business and the sector, we'll build between 10 and 15 anchors. And later on, we might build another half dozen or even a dozen if they're— I'm talking $100 million business, not a million-dollar business. But we'll build these anchors, and some anchors are synthesizing or moldings or blends of other anchors. So for instance, a critical anchor in any business, it's your secret source for revenue. is your brand promise.

Yeah.

Now, to me, the brand promise— and we've discussed this before, Jo— the brand promise is the experience that you promise to every single person through every single engagement, whether they're a prospect, a client, they're speaking to you, the service department, or the complaints department. They deserve that. And when you, and when you bring As a CEO, you evangelize this brand promise to the extent that your team brings it alive. Your business is going places. Now, your brand promise comes from 4 other foundation blocks, or what we call strategy anchors. One is your core values, your core purpose. That's your core purpose, why you exist. Your honorable purpose beyond profitability. It comes from your client's core needs. So in other words, 10 or 12 core needs of what they really need from you out of your solution. Let's face it, no business would exist if it wasn't providing a great solution. And the fourth, because your brand promise lies at the intersection of 4 things: core value, core purpose, core needs and your own core strengths. What do you do better than no other business can do? And you use— we've got powerful AI tools now, and we synthesize that, and we come up with a brand promise that kicks butt. Now, now, once you've got your dozen— let's call— decide we're doing a dozen anchors for this business— we then synthesize these into strategic drivers. Now, these strategic drivers When the anchors are complete, they don't sit in isolation. They merge into strategic drivers, and they become the working engines of your business. This is what brings the efficiency so that you have your strategic vision, your overarching strategy that provides your North Star.

Right.

And that comes from, you know, 5 or 6 of your different strategic anchors, your strategy anchors. You've got your strategic core pillars, and they set the big themes of focus, the 3, 4, 5 pillars, depending on the magnitude of your business, that your business stands on. And then your objectives, so your core objectives, they give the measurable priorities. So everybody knows what they're responsible or accountable for in terms of numbers.

Yeah.

And that's where the efficiency starts to come. And then we use the same AI platform to come up with an actionable roadmap. So there's an actionable roadmap for a quarter.

And the alignment, again, the alignment between all those things, Doug, is what I really— what I love, right?

It's—

and that's why it takes time, right? This isn't something where you jump on a call on Tuesday after they've said— after you've signed the contract And we get going on Thursday. It's like, no, no, there's got to be a— because again, what you don't want to do is have to do it again. It's, it's you're setting up the core, you're setting up the strategic anchors, and everything flows from that strategy, the communication. And you need to set up your core values. If you don't have core values, how can you move forward?

John, can I stop you there and just tell you what normally happens? Your first bit of homework, because our clients, it's not just a a pleasure cruise with us, you've got to do the work.

Good.

You either have a crap or you get off the pot. Sorry about that. You may have to beep that one. But your first bit of homework is you're going to get a big page, an A4 piece of paper. You're going to draw 3 lines down it. Okay, so you've got 4 columns. The first column— and you maybe, if you want to do this tonight when you get home— write down your own personal values. The values that you can carry a deep personal conviction about, and the second one, you're going to sit down with your partner and you're going to say, love, maybe once you you've had your first pint or you halfway into a bottle of wine, say this crazy South African said or he's British now. He suggested that we work out our family values. What are the values that our family lives to? Then the The third column, that's going to be the three, four, five, six, seven values that will inspire customers to enroll and stay with you as as as clients. Okay, and the the final column are the three, four, five, six, seven values that will inspire the best of breed in your industry to come and be part of your team and to stay with you. Now, once you've got those 4 columns, you're going to see, circle the common threads. Yeah, there's your value system. You— it's not an academic exercise. It is about your beliefs. You live to those values.

Yep.

And they're the core and base of all your decisions.

And that's the thing. That's your touchstone, right? You called it the North Star. Right, which I love this notion that if you are— if anything that you're doing in your business does not support one of these values, you shouldn't be doing it.

100%.

That's simple, right? That's it. If— and so everything that you do gets checked off of this. I did a lot of brand development work in my younger days, and the idea behind the brand system that we created too was similar to that, which is a matter of, again, you're Everything that your brand is doing, okay, needs to be consistent, it needs to be cohesive, it needs to be constant, and it needs to be comprehensive. 4 C's, right?

Love it.

And if you can do those things and that every decision that you make, right, refers back to them, you're, you're taking that—

I'm—

the brand to me at the time came out of those values, right? You could sum up values with the brand, and now it's a matter of everything that you do. Does this meet— yeah, does this meet the criteria for our brand? And if it's every single interaction, it's not just about your sales guys, although that's the first level, right? It might actually be— maybe it's before that with your email campaign or your website or whatever, right?

Yeah.

And so all this stuff is basically flowing out of this, and that— and that you want everybody seeing— we say it all the time— singing from the same sheet music. Right? That everybody talks the same way. Everybody uses the same language. Everybody— it's why we get along with Doug so well, right?

Well, it can inform things like the charities that your business donates to, right? Like, so I think back to past companies I've worked for, and one company in particular did a really good job of what both of you just said, right? It's, yes, it's customers, it's communication, it's coming up with the core values, but then it's living those values, right? It's It's not— the core values are not something that just exists on like a page that's never really visited on your website or like is platitudes. They are part of your whole business.

As a CEO, if you don't bring your values alive, your business is slowly dying. Refer to your values when you're making decisions. Refer to your values when you admonish, when you praise, when you delegate, when you hire and fire. Refer to your values. Can I just take you back a sec? I said to you we would mold these foundation blocks, these, these strategy anchors, into strategic drivers. And I mentioned, uh, the strategic vision, your overarching strategy, and I mentioned the pillars and the core objectives, and I also mentioned the actionable roadmap. So you've got a roadmap for the month, for the quarter, for the 3 years, etc. That comes out the system. But another strategic driver that is critical is your market positioning. So now you've got lots of other strategic anchors, such as your, your, and then the marketing anchors. So that's your unique value proposition, your employee value proposition, your ICPs, your ideal client profiles, which is a, is a significant document because it's all about the emotions. If The emotions that people have if they've got John and Joe looking after them. Imagine how they'll feel if they don't have Joe and John looking after them. Their psychological triggers, their problems that you solve, that all goes into that ICP document. And then you've got a myriad of others and you mold them all together and you come up with— oh, you're going to add in things like your SWOT analysis, your trend analysis in your industry, and your sector. You're going to add in things like a competitive matrix or competitor analysis matrix, and you use AI to put all this together and synthesize it, and you're going to come up with a market positioning that's going to work for you. And you need differentiation because if you don't differentiate, you're slowly dying. We all know that.

Right.

And it's so beautiful because you can get the messaging pitch perfect. You are now no longer chasing, looking for leads. You've become a magnet. You're attracting leads. So you use the law of attraction instead of chasing.

Yeah, sorry, because you have a clear— you, you know, you know exactly who you want to serve. You have a clear way of doing it. You have a clear position in the world. It's like a— it's almost like forming an opinion, right? You, you have an opinion. And I want to use sports radio as a— as an example, but like, I don't really listen to sports radio all that much anymore, but they— those personalities on those— on those shows have an opinion, and, and people can either like it or—

Or the polarizing one, right?

Right, the polarizing one. And, and that's almost what you're talking about, Doug, is you're creating a, a, a place in the world for people to to come to you and like, hey, I like your values. I like your customer value proposition. I like— I am your ICP. And you attract those customers as opposed to chase them.

I love that.

That works. And then we've got a couple other strategic drivers. I'll mention one more. And the last one I'm going to mention is the client-centric approach. And we've taken other foundation blocks or strategy anchors And we come up with a client-centric approach, which is just— it defines how you design your client experience. And you know, if you get that right, clients that are happy are going to put money into your business. And when money goes into your business, you— it empowers you to put money into your team, and your team can then do great marketing sales, and they're going to delight the clients. And you've got this virtuous cycle going. And the wheel just picks up speed. So that's why strategy sits at the hub. It influences and empowers every part of the wheel that shapes your cash, your funny, your your funny, your money, your money matters. It strengthens the team. It sharpens the marketing and sales. It defines how long and how you serve your clients. It sets the rhythm for your execution. So anchors stabilize the business, and the drivers drive it forward. Get the strategy at the hub right, and the whole wheel turns well.

And Doug, this isn't like, this isn't new, right? Like this, what we're talking about here is like, this is like, you know, again, seems kind of elementary, right? When we say it out loud, right? Which is like, yeah, of course, this is what we have to do. But you walk into these places, just like we do. And I say these places, I mean, to these companies, And, and I am often amazed at how they have succeeded despite themselves.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

And again, because they— so many people don't have these things aligned. They don't have these things even written down. Maybe they don't even know how they feel about these things, that they are basically just— what they're really doing is that they have— any success they have had has probably also come right at great expense. And what I mean is that it's, it's a matter of— you're talking about attracting versus chasing, right?

Yeah.

The way that we often talk about it sometimes is that, is that you can, right, you can manhandle it, right, or you can allow it. And I think that what happens is that so many people are so busy manhandling and, and pushing and changing and doing things and, and paying attention to great details of things in their business that they are often missing the bigger picture in the forest for the trees, right? And that the idea is that you might be growing your business right now in one way, you might be solving a problem that you have right now, but the reality is, is that are you, are you at a level at which you can actually step back and see everything, right? Or are you, or as the leader of this organization, are you too mired in the details to be able to see the bigger picture. And I wonder if when you get into places and whatever, what is it like to get people to start this process in the first place? Because, you know, look, for many people, especially if they are successful, and what I mean is that they've made a lot of money, right? Which is that it's, it's the more I find that the more money that they've made, the harder it is to talk to them about change. Do you find that that's the same? Do you find that the same?

Absolutely. They often, you know, the 2 most expensive words in business are, I know, I know. And, and it's, it's very sad, but there are just too many people like that. And let's think of the formula for change. They don't know better. So why? So what makes change take place or, or happen, or what stops it? It's, it's I'm going to go through it quickly. It's D times V plus FS must be greater than R. The D stands for dissatisfaction. So if I'm struggling to get a client to move forward, I'm going to poke my fingers in their ribs into the sore parts. And that means that I'm going to talk to them about dissatisfaction, because if you're not dissatisfied sufficiently with the status quo, that ain't going to work.

You won't.

So if you're thinking of maths, in brackets, you've got D times V. Dissatisfaction, so that you need a high score out of there, out of 10, you know, like a 9 or a 10. The V stands for vision, and the vision is what the business will look like if I get this thing right. So you understand the gap. You think of gap selling from Keenan, uh, between the dissatisfaction now and the vision of what it's going to look like. And then the FS is the first steps. It's your job, John and Jo, and it's my job to, to help the client with the first steps. And then so, so now the, the dissatisfaction's a high score out of 10, and the, the vision— they've got the vision now. They've worked out what it will feel like, look like, taste like, this business, who it's going to serve. So the vision's good, the first steps are good. That's going to be greater than the resistance. And get those 3 things right and you can, you can push a lot of businesses over the next hump.

If you get—

where do—

where in your, in your work, where do people fall down the most?

Like, where, where do you find either A, they, they either fail or they push back on you and that they have— there's the most resistance either internally or from the CEO that they don't want to either change Or they don't buy into what you're selling?

I probably wouldn't have been working with them.

Okay.

So I'm going to look for 3 things when I bring them on as a client. Okay. And among the things that I'm gonna look for is, do they have blue sky? Do I believe that they've got blue sky? And do they believe that they got blue sky? Uh, another thing I'm gonna look for, are they people of integrity? By that I mean, Will they do what they say they're going to do? And then the final thing I'm really going to look for is, will they get there faster if they've got Doug at their side? And and if I don't believe that, I'm not going with them. Right.

And because because your ICP, right, to take your own medicine, yes, is is basically that that you are that the only people that you know you can help. are people who are willing to first help themselves.

That's right. So, so we're going to have some hard conversations before we, we start this, uh, consultancy engagement relationship, and they're going to be firm relationships, but we're going to become like family. Um, you know, we're going to tell each other the hard things.

Well, yeah, you're not just going to stay with it with the easy stuff, right? It's like, it's like a good point about your family. You, you tell your family everything, and you have— you can have those hard discussions. You can't have heart discussion with a stranger on the subway.

Yeah, no, a lot of our coaching clients have been with us for a very long time. I'm talking multiple years. So, you know, I've been in, in this country now for just over a decade, and, um, I've got clients that I've had for donkey's years. I've got a, a, an international client that's about to— in October, we're having a 5th birthday of 5th birthday of our coaching relationship, which I'm really proud of. They, they, uh, 5 years ago were doing just sub a million pounds, and they, in, in January, they did over £5 million this year.

Awesome.

So, so they're looking, they're gonna, it's gonna be touch and go whether they get to £20 million this year. So in 5 years, that's a great, uh, That's right.

But look, but this is what, this is what we're trying to talk about here on this podcast and in all the work that Jon and I do and why we have people like Doug on the podcast and why we create these relationships with these advisory partners like Doug. Because I, I, I can't stress enough how important it is to be able to, to be able to have an outside look, right, at what you're doing. You know, right, and that's— look, any consultant is going to say that, right, is going to say yes, right, having another set of eyes, I don't have the institutional bias, I don't have the— right, I've got a lot of experience from looking at other companies and stuff. So in general, any kind of outside, you know, look, opinion is probably going to be helpful in some way, right? But the real key to all of this, I I think is that, that, that as a founder, you have to be open to the idea, okay, that you may not know everything. Okay? And that there are certain things that just because they've been working this way, or this is the way that you've been doing them, aren't necessarily optimal.

Right? I love what you're saying. It's our duty, the 3 of us here today, to elevate most of our clients are absolute experts in their industry, but they're not always experts in matters commercial. So we've got to elevate their commercial acumen to match the level of their industry acumen. And I get goosebumps when we, when we get that right. I spoke about the 3 C's. It's what we're looking for. They need clarity, conviction, and codification. When the purpose aligns the courage grows and the systems lock in. The scale becomes inevitable. You know, it's the 3 C's to us are the signal that they're not just surviving. They're building greatness by design. That's the beauty.

It is. And by the way, you were saying it by design. And like, look, guys, this is a, this is a blueprint for this. This isn't about, right? This isn't like, oh, my business is different. No, no, it's not, right? It's not because you are a human being, okay? And so if you are— unless you're not a human being, and then we can have a different discussion— but right now you are a human being. You are going to be prone to certain behaviors.

Yeah.

You're going to, you're going to, you're going to, you're going to like your own— you're going to sniff yourself, right, when you start getting— right, when you start making money. And you've been, and you've been paying yourself $400,000 a year, and you've got the You've got the second house and the kids are going to good schools, and you have the— I say this, this exact thing almost every week, right? You've got all this stuff, right? But what you don't have, right, is a, is a sellable business. And the worst part is you don't even know it.

That's the issue.

So until you step back, all right, and, and allow some other people like Doug or anybody else, frankly, right, in to see and say Can I actually— what am I going to be able to do with this? Because you are making a lot of assumptions, uh, with all— with potentially leaving, potentially leaving a lot of money on the table, right? And, and, and potentially even leaving your— a little bit of yourself and your legacy and all that stuff too, right? If that matters to you. So again, I think that the idea is that what Doug is saying here today, guys, is so important because it is— and we've only scratched the surface so far. That this is the first 5 minutes, right? Like, you, you need to be in a place where you're able to step back and say, okay, I'm willing, right, to have somebody else tell me, right, what, what I might not be doing right. And that takes some guts.

Absolutely. Right?

So I celebrate anybody who is willing to do that.

Well, and like we've said, again, I'm gonna come back to the, the, you know, what got them here will not get them there, right? And, and we keep repeating that in all of our, you know, I work— was fortunate enough to work with Marshall Goldsmith briefly for a long time ago. But when he said that, it like unlocked something in my brain. It's like all the successes that these entrepreneurs had, and they've built this business up to $5 million, and they've done it in spite of, you know, forgetting to do some of the things that Doug has mentioned before, or not doing them, or avoiding them, right? Because entrepreneurs, what I found is—

They're strong. they've found a way through their complexity ceilings because maybe they had one at a million, then they had another one at 3 bar, and they've now— they've got another complexity ceiling at 5 million and they don't even know that they've got it.

Well, yeah, right. And, and it's— and again, they're succeeding in spite of themselves, right? They've either avoided something.

They've—

I'm not a finance person. How many times have we heard that, Joe? I'm not a finance person. I don't understand the numbers. I'm not a marketing Those things happen all the time. But I guess the point is someone like Doug can come in and sort of fundamentally help them. And he's not reinventing the whole business. He's helping them with the, with the foundation so that you can grow.

It's, it's alignment, right? It's, it's understanding who you are.

It's alignment. It's like if you work with me, it's like having 100 of the world's best consultants, investment bankers, and coaches in your pocket. Imagine the confidence that that brings, because once you've built your strategy anchors, and we use AI, uh, to synthesize them into the drivers, and then these add the value and suck out the friction. They don't just give clarity, they optimize the execution, the go-to-market, the sales, the client relationships, the money matters, the teams. It sucks the friction out so that your business wheel just gathers momentum. It's as if it grows. It's automated growth. And that's the feeling of having these 100 of the top advisors in your pocket.

And I want to point out that having that automated kind of growth that way is a clear sign that you have a repeatable and transferable business.

100%, right?

And that's the key. That is the key to have to exiting on your own terms, right? You are bringing— you are raising your multiple because you are becoming a premium business that, that lots of different people may be interested in, right?

Let's think, what is the number one thing that a purchaser is looking for? Number one, it's the C word. Certainty, right? They want certainty. And if you as the seller have built your business by design, you can give the purchasers certainty.

That's it. And that's what the more certainty you can give, the more certainty you can give them, the more valuable your business is.

Exactly. Yeah. So you're not— your business isn't chasing You have built a repeatable system that you've been talking about, Joe. The, the work flows in. You've got— you've become a magnet.

And that magnet extends now to the buyers. It extends to the private equity firms. It extends to the strategic, but, you know, you know, buyers out there, right? All that stuff. So you are— and, and by the way, it is a competitive situation as well. So if you are this one, if you can be this guy and have a certifiably sellable Right? Uh, like you said, um, um, uh, certain— certainty business, right? That's raising your multiple, it's raising your value, it's raising your— right? You're now— you've got a bidding war. Now you get your pick. You're picking who buys it, you're picking where you want to be, you're picking the terms, right? And now you're in full— this is why we talk about, you know, it's being in control of your business destiny.

We're coming back to optionality. You're picking, you've got the options. You can grow, you can scale, you can exit, or you can just stay if you want to.

That's it. Those options. And by the way, the options in which— and the ways in which you can do that also vary and multiply, right? And so now you're in a situation where, yeah, I'm gonna hold on to this thing. I can franchise it.

I can—

Well, it's so funny, like, You know, people would view like that situation for a company like us that helps people exit as a bit of a failure for our business. And we view the exact opposite is if we come in and we help the business grow and we put them on better footing and the owner rethinks selling the business, that's a win, right? That's a win for everybody. She stays in her position. She grows the business. We have a successful, happy client, and, and she goes off and continues to run her business.

And one day—

this is why so many people love you guys, because you're giving them the optionality. You've given them the ability to choose their next move. Then they're choosing that next move from a position of strength. As I said, scale, sell, pivot, hold— it's on their terms. Right, because you've given them that power.

And, and I think the beautiful thing is too, is that again, in the process of all this, you're not only— are you making money, you're making more money, right? You're making— you're getting more influence, you're getting— right, your, your, your whole thing is getting larger. You're not necessarily spending an overabundance of wasteful time on the business, right? So you've gotten that freedom back, and now you've got the ultimate freedom of being able to say What do I want to do? I want to sell it, I want to keep it, I want to grow it, I want to give it to my daughter or my nephew or whatever it is. I'm gonna, I'm gonna sell it to my employees. I'm gonna do what— all these things now become real options, right? Because, because simply because you have made a business that is the— that can run by itself.

Yeah.

And that's, that is the key to all of this. The way that What I love about what Doug brings to the table is that Doug is doing this in a very orderly, kind of understandable, bite-sized-like way. Okay, he's using AI, which we're all using to some degree, right? But Doug has spent a lot of time building prompts and doing things that are going to help the AI analyze the business and things like that and be able to put together these hooks, these anchors, right? And give you these kind of strategic focuses. The ability to be able then to execute that stuff, right, becomes a matter of— because now you've got a whole other issue, which is what most people are not good at, managing projects. And so now you're in a situation, right, Doug, talk to us a little bit about the execution side of this, because we understand that the strategy is that important. We understand that there are values and there are, you know, there are my— I've got that, like you said, that crossroads, that fork points, right? My values, what the customer wants, what I can do well, right? And what was the— then the 4th one was what is expected of me or whatever, right? And so—

Yeah.

The idea of having that stuff is really great footing, and you can see where— how with your communications plan and the way that you schedule things out and all that stuff really makes a difference. But the execution, right, is often the difference, right, of success and failure. And so talk a little bit about how you coach through that. How do you help? How do we manage through that process and kind of keep everybody, you know, on the same page?

The system does it for themselves because we build the system so slowly that it just becomes part of the DNA of the business. So starting going back to the beginning with the values, the purpose, the brand promise, etc., etc. The rhythm, the flow. It becomes documented. There's SOPs or standard operating procedures that are documented. We always are analyzing how attractive the business is to potential acquirers. We look at it from time to time. We're applying valuations to the business to see what it's worth, and we're scoring ourselves, and we forever. Working hard to suck the friction out. So if we have this system, that's now let's think of it. We we we now are attracting because we're doing the right things. So what happens? The symptom is a predictable cash flow that's growing and positive. We are measuring the the client acquisition costs, and we're trying to minimize that. We're looking at the lifetime value. The whole thing, just everything is trying to make the business wheel work better. And, and, and the execution is where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. The execution influences every, all 4 of those sectors of the business wheel that I've showed you: cash, team, marketing, sales, and the clients.

Right.

And so you've got strategy at the hub, and the execution around it. And those principles have stood with me since the '90s. And, and you just apply it slowly. And probably within 8 weeks, you've got most of the principles in your business. And we'll just start putting more in and more in and tweaking it and getting more and more people to understand how you think and how you want the business to operate. It feels as if it's hocus-pocus, but it's the swan effect. You know, you're looking on the surface, you're looking like a swan, graceful.

Right.

And I think that again, that, but that again, to look like a swan, right? And then we use it, we use the iceberg analogy all the time, right? Which is that most people are looking at their businesses and the whole thing, and they're seeing what's above the waterline. And that looks pretty good, right? And what they're not seeing are the things, the mistakes that not seeing the things they're ignoring. They're not seeing the longer-term effects. We talk about business. How does a business go? How does a business go out of business, right? Very slowly at first and then all at once, right? So this notion of being able to examine the things in these early days, our process starts with that first, that first is examining what exists, right?

Yes.

What, where are you right now, right? What have you done up until now, right? And where are all these things? And by the way, can we show you where there is latent value, right? Can we show you already where there are places where if you just change this report or reported this correctly, right, or we're capturing this information, that you would instantly be able to raise your value and salability, right? Because you just didn't know, you didn't, what you didn't know. The ability to be able to— and then, and then on top of that is then, so the uncovering, I think the looking under every rock and right for the way for that examination is such a, such an important piece of everything because it starts— you can't create a roadmap without 2 pieces of information. I gotta know where I am and I gotta know where I wanna go.

That's it. That North Star.

That's it. And that's your, you call the North Star. Exactly right. So But without either of those things, right, I can't do anything. And so the— what I don't— you know, the people that— the people that are, are unwilling to go, oh, let me examine this, or let me look at this and the whole thing, have no chance. I mean, no chance. You might get lucky. You may have built something, whatever, and someone comes along and you get a thing. But here's what you won't know. You won't know what it could have been, right?

Sure.

So even when people think they've been successful at all things, we can point to ways in which probably they weren't as successful as they thought they were in the— even in an exit situation, right? So I think what we're saying— I'll again summing up here, you know, what Doug is really kind of really telling us today, I think, is that it's very simply that your— the success of your business in its— it as a— as an asset, okay, as a business and as an asset, okay, all stem from the same thing. Which is your ability to be able to understand who you are, what you're trying to achieve, the way that you go about doing that, right? What is your unique position in the world and all that stuff, right? And, and, and, and by putting all these anchors into place, suddenly all the decisions and all the things you need to do suddenly become very, very clear, right? It's the clarity that you spoke of. Without that insight at the beginning, we have— we don't— without that clarity, about where we are. Okay, forget about where you want to go because you can't— I don't even— how do I know how long it's going to take me to get there if I don't know where I am right now, right? And so the ability to be looking at all this stuff, examining the, examining the business this way, being open to examining not only the business, but as you pointed out, Doug, yourself as a leader of that business is the, is really the foundational thing that's going to, again, not just for exits' sake, but just for health and overall sustainability's sake.

I love what you're saying, John and Joe. And just one thing, Joe, if you're taking somebody right to the front door and they're going to exit and that's the plan, we will add a few extra layers in. We will take them, we will get them a data room and we'll start packing it out and getting it ready and preparing it. They will go to— they will be ready. They'll have gone through due diligence with us already so that they're full of confidence. That confidence exudes when the purchases are around.

Well, yeah, we are. Yeah, go ahead, continue. Sorry, Doug, I interrupted.

Yeah, no problem, John. What, you know, we had a case, um, you know, I was talking to a private equity firm that just bought One of our clients a short while ago, and they said to me what gave us so much confidence. And I won't name the guy now, but they were quite happy for us to at the at the offset talk to the junior management, not the the few senior people that were prepped and deal deal ready. You were happy for us to go, and we did the passage test, the old Jim Collins test. Walking down the corridors, and we spoke to the people, and we asked the questions. And what came through was that everybody knew where this business was going and were excited about it, and they could evangelize the values and the brand promise, etc., etc. So being open, and, and the, the acquirers, the buyers will soon see whether you've got true confidence or whether you're blagging it.

Well, it's so true because I used to buy companies for a company from one of my old employers, and I did that exact thing. I talked to people, the branch managers and the people.

Correct.

And I actually made a point of talking to the admins, and the admins were, okay, well, everything's, you know, they were all singing from the same songbook. And it wasn't a big company, right? It was a very small company. I don't think that they used consultants. But they had drilled down that the client was at the focus and that there was, they had a very clear system for, you know, we do everything for our clients and we're at our, at their sort of beck and call. And it resonated when, when I talked to them and they didn't know me from anybody. It's like, OK, like, it was very consistent, which was helpful.

Yeah.

Well, Doug, this is, I mean, we just spent a, we're running out of time, unfortunately, because we could do a whole nother hour on this and probably should. Um, this is really just— this is really just the beginning about this. But, but, but guys, I think that the, the most important thing to take away from this today is that the work that we're talking about doing here isn't necessarily hard, okay? It's work, okay? But it's, it's the kind of work that actually ends up being easy if you know how to do it in the way and you know how to look at it, okay? And, and you're willing to do it, right?

So, so yes. It's not, as Joe pointed out, it's not hard work, but you must be willing to do it and you must be willing to change because a lot of what Doug is talking about, and we haven't talked about that word too much, but if you're going with the way that Doug suggests and that we suggest, is it's going to be a change from the way you're currently operating.

Correct.

It is going to be a change. And the fact is that it probably needs to be a change.

Yes.

The question is whether or not you're open to it from the beginning and understanding that that change has to occur. occur, right? And so, and what Doug's bringing to the table is a system, right, that is very easy, that is very kind of easy to follow, right? Makes a lot of sense and is really about— starts, it really begins and ends with you as the leader, your companies, and what you are doing and what you can, what you can kind of uniquely bring to the table, right? And when you stay and you live within those, within that framework, right? That's where the magic of the business and the ability to be able to, you know, the ability to make it continue to drive and all that stuff. That's what makes a sustainable business. And not only a sustainable business, but a de-risked business, a business that is easy to potentially transfer. Okay? And all of these things are now making your business more valuable at the end. Right, Doug, talk about where people can get in touch with you. How can— if I want, if I want to talk with Doug Pudney, how can I, how can I reach you?

Probably the easiest place is Douglas Pudney on LinkedIn. Uh, I'd be very happy to have a chat from there if they wanted a, uh, a meeting link. In fact, they could go to my About section on LinkedIn and there's a 30-minute meeting link there on my About section. So Douglas Padney. It's my full name. When I was in trouble as a youngster, my mother always said Douglas. So maybe I should call myself Doug Padney on LinkedIn. But I'm Douglas Padney on LinkedIn and look forward to people reaching out. I do have a number of American clients and I see— I work with my Americans on certain days and not on the same day that I'm talking to Australians. early in the morning because that means it's a really, uh, very early start. And, uh, yeah, right.

Absolutely. That's great. Excellent. Thank you very much. Um, Doug Pudney, thank you so much for being here today on the Exit Engine podcast. We learned a lot. Can't wait to do it again, guys. Exit Engine, uh, we've got a special thing we're doing here at Exit Engine. This is no longer just the— Exit Engine's becoming not just the podcast but a, a, an ecosystem. We are putting together, uh, what we believe to be the world's first, uh, exit planning ecosystem that's going to include, uh, access to our content, the ability to be able to learn our, our framework and how to be able to, to, to examine your business, how to set your exit trajectory, and then be able to also hook up with advisory partners like Doug and others who can potentially help you move the needle in the way in which you need to move the needle in order to be able to raise your value and salability. So what we'd like you to do is right now is go to myexitengine.com and give us your email address. That's it. That's all we are asking you to do right now.

We are not—

we are not—

yeah, we are not going to spam you. We're not going to send you all sorts of, you know, messages that don't relate to what you want. As Joe mentioned, we're creating this, this, this, uh, community, this ecosystem, and also the benefit of not only the advisors but also other entrepreneurs and founders who are going through the exact same growing pains and challenges that you are, are going to be in the community. So yes, you can learn from wonderful advisors like Doug Putney, but you can also learn from other founders that are going through the similar situations that you are going through.

And also our exit engineers are all experts in being able to actually move these needles and help you through the process of figuring out your value and raising your value and salability. Again, also, guys, if you subscribe to this podcast, please, wherever you're listening to it right now, please subscribe. Send us a comment. If you want to reach out and talk to, have a question about anything that has to do with exit planning or setting your exit trajectory in any way, shape, or form, you can always email us directly. You can email me at jo@myexitengine.com. Or john@myexitengine.com anytime. Find us on LinkedIn. Um, and again, subscribe to the podcast and go to LinkedIn. Yeah, sorry.

Sorry, go ahead.

Yep, I was just gonna say, and the last most important thing is go to myexitengine.com right now and give us your email address, and we will give you information on the launch of, of the, uh, of myexitengine.com, the ecosystem for exit plans. Um, Doug, again, thank you so much for being here today. We really appreciate it, and we're going to talk to you again real soon. Thank you.

Thank you, gentlemen. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you, John. Thank you, Joe.