Proven Strategies To Maximize The Value Of Your Business - Built To Sell

The most successful exits, and when I mean successful, I mean people who exit their company and look back without regret, they look back with fond memories as opposed to regret. Those business owners, when we survey them, have more pull factors than push factors. So what I mean by that pull factor is something you're going to as opposed to leaving. You know, most of us, you know, get frustrated with business from time to time. It's like employees or red tape or government. And you get frustrated. You're like, you know what? I'm out. The successful exits are folks who have those frustrations, but, but they have more pull factors, meaning they're going to something. I mean, and a very tactical thing folks can do that'll get them ready to go to market and make sure they punch above their weight is do pre diligence. Pre diligence is basically pulling all that material together before you take your company to market.

Discussing the art of selling your business. We're pleased to be joined today by John Warrilow, the founder of the software platform the value Builder, best selling author of the books titled Built to Sell, and most recently the art of selling your business. John, it's a pleasure to have you. Welcome to wealth without Bay Street.

Thanks for having me, guys.

Really excited to hear about your new book. Take it away inspired you to write it.

Yeah, I mean, look, I do this podcast called Built to Sell Radio. I've done something like 300 interviews now with entrepreneurs who sell their companies. Every week we talk to entrepreneur and say, how did you do it? What were the mistakes? Meg, what would you do over again if you had it do over again? What I learned was that there were like a couple of entrepreneurs, like a handful, a cohort that seemed to punch well above their weight. They, they were getting multiples for their companies that were far in excess of what would be the typical valuation of a business in their industry. And so I, I just sat down to try to figure out, like, what are they doing that others aren't? What do they know that others don't? And so tried to codify that and, and put it into a book, into a bit of a field guide for entrepreneurs to punch above their weight when it comes to selling. Because when you sell, there's this thing called a 5 to 20 rule, which means that the natural acquirer for your business is likely to be 5 to 20 times the size of your business. And so it's like a David and Goliath battle, right? The entrepreneur is outmatched, they're outgunned, they've got less money than the other side. And so you kind of need a bit of a cheat sheet, so to speak, to make sure you can get a fair deal when you go to sell your company.

And what do you see are some things that entrepreneurs are missing in this journey of preparation to sell a company? What are some of the most common things that you see entrepreneurs miss along the way?

I mean, there's so much two things come to mind. Number one, the most successful exits. And when I mean successful, I mean people who exit their company and look back without regret, they look back with fond memories as opposed to regret. Those business owners, when we survey them, have more pull factors than push factors. So what I mean by a pull factor is something you're going to as opposed to leaving. Most of us get frustrated with business from time to time. It's like employees or red tape or government. And you get frustrated. You're like, you know what, I'm out. The successful exit are folks who have those frustrations, but they have more pull factors, meaning they're going to something. I interviewed a guy on the show called Sean Oshman. He had an IT company and he wanted to live on a boat. Like he had this sort of vision that he was going to live on a sailboat by the age of 40. So 39th birthday comes around, he's still in Denver, toiling away in his IT company.

Not much sailing around Denver area.

Exactly. Landlocked Denver. And he's like, all right, I got to pull the trigger. So he goes, he sells his company for two to three times, what's called SDE or seller's discretionary earnings, effectively an expression of profit. And I interviewed him about this exit and he was happy. He's a clam. He had bought a sailboat, he was sailing around the high seas. And I was candid with him. I said two to three times is not like a spectacular exit. It's a pretty average exit for a small to mid sized business. But he was thrilled. He was like a happy clam. And the answer, of course, is that he had something he was excited to go do. And that takes a lot of the pressure off, giving every last sort of nickel for your company. So, I mean, a practical thing is to make sure that you're more pull and push. Yeah. And that's a big one. I mean, and a very tactical thing folks can do that'll get them ready to go to market and make sure they punch above their weight is do pre diligence. And so pre diligence is where effectively you do due diligence which is what you do when you sell your company after you accept a letter of intent, before the check hits your bank account, you do due diligence. Pre diligence is basically pulling all that material together before you take your company to market. And I learned this one from a guy named Michael Houlihan who sold a company called Barefoot Wines. Barefoot is very famous in the US they got distribution through Trader Joe's, so very huge winery. And Houlihan said he wanted to sell the company to Ian J. Gallo. I think they are, at the time, the biggest winemaker in the United States. And he said, I knew I had one shot at selling to them. So he put together his pre diligence package. And in his case, it was physical, like all these binders of their marketing contracts, their salespeople, et cetera. And he goes to Ian J. Gallo, and he said, you know what? There's two things that a pre diligence package does. Number one, it makes sure that your deal doesn't get derailed because you've got all the material at hand. But the second thing is hidden, and people don't understand this. He said, the second thing. The second reason to do pre diligence is because you show up to an acquirer ready for the dance. They know you've got these pre diligence packages complete, and they draw the conclusion pretty quickly that you're for sale and that you're likely to go to their biggest competitor if they don't buy the company. And that's what you need is competitive tension. And so Ian J. Gallo said, okay, if we don't buy it, I don't want our number one competitor to buy it. And so Ian J. Gallo bought. And Houlihan says, if we hadn't done the pre diligence, we would have just looked like any other schlep that was kind of knocking on their door and not really serious. But that's the reason I think pre diligence is such an important step in the process.

And what do you find most of these entrepreneurs are looking for? Is it the. In my experience with entrepreneurs that I know who have sold companies, they were looking for the freedom. It wasn't necessarily the check. I mean, the value was there, of course, but it was the freedom. Because, you know, an entrepreneur is continually taking something from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. There's no shortage of ideas, no shortage of things to go and create. And so has that been your experience as well in dealing with these entrepreneurs that they're seeking the freedom.

Very much so. Especially right now, we're recording this in the throes of this pandemic. And it's been tough for a lot of business owners, in particular service companies, but for all business owners of every stripe, it has been very difficult. And so I think we're seeing, at least we're seeing at Value Builder, we're seeing the change in dynamics. People are now much more likely to be selling their business to a third party, much less likely to be transitioning to their family members, number one. Number two, they're much more sooner. They're bringing their sell by date up by about 20%. So it's having an impact. And I think you hit on the nail on the head when you talk about freedom. We talk about this thing called the freedom point. It's the point at which you have enough wealth to fund the lifestyle that you aspire for for the rest of your life. And people say, well, how would I calculate that? Basically, you figure out how much income you want and you multiply it by 33. And people have heard of 3% withdrawal rate or 4% withdrawal. 33 implies a 3% withdrawal rate. That's safer than a 4%. So you multiply by 33. And when your company, the sale of it after tax and proceeds, after all that, if that's enough wealth for you to live comfortably, you've reached the freedom point. And it's at that point, I think it's worth pulling up and saying, am I willing to risk that financial freedom? And in return for the next trophy, right. The next milestone of revenue, go to 5 to 10 million in revenue, or 30 employees to 60 employees. And I think it's okay to want to do all those things, but as long as you're doing it with your eyes wide open, with a view that what you're risking from going to 30 to 60 employees or 5 to 10 million is you're risking financial independence because you're like the poker player all in at the poker table. If you're 60, 80, 90% of your wealth is in your company, then it's an illiquid asset.

That's right.

And there is a point at which it might make sense to take some of the chips off the table, and you could do that through a private equity recapitalization, as an example, and just basically have that rung on Maslow's hierarchy of needs that you will never fall off of. Right. Because you've created that liquid wealth. Whereas for a lot of business owners, we've talked a ton where they had a great business going in leaving 2019, they're riding high, but 50, 60, 70% of the wealth is in their business. And then 2020 happens and they all of a sudden realize, gosh, I wish I had gotten liquid before this all went down. So it's a long way of answering your question. But yes, I think freedom is a very important aspirational driver for a lot of entrepreneurs.

It sounds like that ties into the push pull discussion that you identified earlier too, because when you're at that point, you're doing that rough calculation, trying to get that gauge and estimate, you have to also have that kind of internal heart to heart discussion with yourself. Am I pushed to continue growing, to go from 10 to 15 and beyond, or do I want to go and do the sailboat thing and make that shift in that transition? And so I think that's really important, how you identified that early on, that push pull discussion and how it translates to recognizing that freedom point.

And I would add to that too, and say that the entrepreneur, for our listeners who are entrepreneurs, you're running established businesses, they're growing, they're in profit, and you're thinking in your mind's eye, okay, at some point I'm going to exit this business, whether it's by sale, whether it's by, unfortunately, heaven forbid, if you got sick or you couldn't be involved in the business any longer, is really be clear about what you want. Be very, very clear about what you want. And is it freedom? Is it freedom of time, purpose, money, relationship? What is it that is compelling you to go in that direction? Because so many people who have never been down that entrepreneurial path, they really believe, for the most part, the stigma is that it's all about the money. Oh, you're only building this thing to build it, to get ready to sell it. And it's all about the money. And speaking from firsthand experience, as an entrepreneur who's been on my journey for the past two decades, that is not the motivation. It really isn't. The money's a tool. The money's a tool for the entrepreneur to achieve the creation and achieve the ambition and achieve the, you know, whatever that milestone is that they're seeking, but it really, truly isn't the motivator. You could give an ambitious entrepreneur, a true, true entrepreneur, you could give them that challenge to say, look, if you're earning a million, you know that that was the toughest to earn. Your next million is going to be easier. The one after that's going to be easier. They're not going to be motivated by that, at least for the most part, not the entrepreneurs that I have the privilege to interact with. And so for folks who are listening, John has an amazing, first of all, an amazing platform that we're going to talk a little bit more about. But really pay close attention to the advice that he's giving you because it really truly is important to do that pre diligence and to be well prepared for when that day comes. And if all your wealth is tied up inside of your business, you have an opportunity to change that and to do something a little bit differently. And so it's great. John, we really appreciate you sharing all of that.

Interviewing 300 entrepreneurs who sold businesses gives you a special kind of insight, I.

Would think, in part because, you know, the deals that we look at are companies that sell for generally between one and say 20 or 30 million dollars.

Okay.

They are life changing deals for the entrepreneurs, make no mistake. But they're not going to show up in any media. You're going to pick up the Globe Mail and say, oh, there's a big exit. It doesn't happen yet. For the entrepreneur it is life changing in all the positive ways. And so what I've had a front row seat at for the last five years is being able to interview these folks about deals that are usually shrouded in a non disclosure agreement. People might do a press release with very big deals. And so we talk about some of the stuff underneath that and it's been a great privilege to sort of hear those firsthand stories. Both successes as well as regrets. So it's been fun.

Well, and for our listeners who find themselves thinking this sounds really interesting or entrepreneurs, then you definitely want to get your hands on a copy of John's latest book the Art of Selling your Business. And while you're at it, pick up a copy of of his other book titled Built to Sell. John, can you take a moment and just walk us through, maybe take us back in time to 2011 to built to Sell and walk us through. What's the message that you want the reader to take away from that book?

Yeah, it's actually the third. The Art of Selling. Your business is sort of the third in a trilogy. So Built to Sell was about how do you create a business that would be valuable that someone would want to buy. And I did a book in 2015 called the Automatic Customer which is about how do you accelerate the value of that business through recurring revenue. And now this latest book, the Art of Selling youg Business is really about how do you harvest that value? In other words, how do you sell with a premium offer? So build to sell was really about creating something that can thrive without you. Because for you to create a transferable asset, it has to be able to succeed without the entrepreneur. And that is a really challenging thing for a lot of entrepreneurs to get their head around. In particular, when we've been socialized and educated to think that the most important statement in our portfolio is our profit and loss statement. We are taught that the P and L is the most important statement, maybe followed by the cash flow and the balance sheet. But the profit and loss statement is, so you have an entrepreneur and they're saying we hit 2 million in revenue, we're going to hit 3 million next year, or we had 300,000 EBITDA, we're going to go for $500,000. That's their, their goal post. And what I like to encourage entrepreneurs to do is reframe totally the way they think about their job as an entrepreneur. And if they're a parent, I use the following analogy. I say imagine you have an adolescent in your basement, a 15 or 16 year old kid, and your job is to get that kid out of the house, is to get that kid so they can succeed without you, right? To get him or her through high school, get him into a good college, get him his first job. And then finally, so they could, you could finally sort of look back as parents, smile and know that your kid's going to be fine, your kid's going to be happy, well adjusted, able to go on their own. And that's the job of an entrepreneur, is to figure out how do you get that business to a point where it can actually have a life of its own. And then, and only then is it worth something to somebody else. And that's a huge departure for a lot of entrepreneurs because again, we are always chasing the profit and loss statement, which gives us a nice, maybe a nice ego boost, a little bit of cash in the bank to buy the next car. But once you've got the car in the house and all that jazz, there's very little that money will get you excited to chase. As you say, Jason, it's so true. But man, if you build a business that can live in the world without you, it is an enormously rewarding feeling. Just as it is for parents to see their kids go on and be successful. It's incredibly rewarding. Much more than another zero on the profit and loss statement.

I couldn't agree with you more.

So basically, get Your teenager out of the house, in this case, your business is a teenager. Make it in such a way where you don't ever want your teenager to move back into the house.

That's exactly right.

I've found personally that when you begin to shift your focus away from, of course it's important that money being the lifeblood of, you know, if you're sustaining the business or rapidly growing or of course money's important. But if you're shifting your focus to the value you're creating, the service that you're providing, most importantly your customer's journey and how you're optimizing that, that's one element of it, in my view. But the other is all the people that support making that happen. And if you're shifting your energy, as I've found myself doing in helping lift other people up and helping to develop them, it's a fulfillment that is indescribable. When you see people in your organization who are having breakthroughs, the only way they're going to know they're making or be able to identify a mistake is to go and make it when you see them doing that. Because the inclination of the entrepreneurs to say, I want to keep things moving so quickly and rapidly and smoothly that if I ever see somebody running straight ahead toward a brick wall, I'm going to tackle them at the hips and say, no, no, no, I'm going to let you run headfirst into that brick wall because I want to help you grow and learn. And so the passion moves away from the financial ambition to developing people. And it's just completely changed the way that I think, the way that I show up and how I continue to. I get to focus on my unique ability, but I get to let other people do the good work. That's what helps you create that self managing organization where if a potential buyer steps up one day and says, well, hey John, if you're not part of the package, I'm not interested. Well, versus John, things are running pretty darn good without you around. I know we can make this business even better. Let me take out my checkbook. It's got great process, great systems, great technology, all those things that are important for a business to be able to carry on without the entrepreneur being present.

Yeah. And if you don't do that, you can still sell your company, but a big portion of your proceeds will be at risk in what's called an earn out. And of course, an earn out is where there's a goal in the future that you need to achieve as A division of your acquirer. And you can sound quite reasonable when you get that pitch from an acquirer saying we think. But in reality it can be a real struggle for a lot of entrepreneurs because as entrepreneurs, of course we are motivated to be free and liberated and we like the shiny ball and all good things. But working for a big company is almost the opposite of how we're wired. An earn out almost by definition, because of the 5 to 20 rule we talked about earlier, is almost by definition working for a big company. I'm reminded of a guy interviewed on the podcast. His name is Rod Drury. So he started Xero. If you know Xero, they're like a huge cloud based unicorn billion dollar company in a QuickBooks rival and accounting package. So Rod Jury got the money to start Xero by selling a company called Aftermail. And Aftermail was a business that he built up and sold it for $35 million, which of course is a life changing number for anybody. If you unpack it as Rod and I did on the show, it was 15 million in cash and another 20 in an earn out. Now Rod was a pretty young guy when he sold his business. So what does a young guy do when he gets $15 million? He kind of picks himself out the floor, right. And has a party and probably sleeps it off. And weeks go by when he realizes that his earnout is tied to goals. And the goals are not like a three year goal. They're quarterly goals you got to hit every quarter in order to unlock a new piece of budget to go hit the second gate, the third gate. So you miss like a ski race or you miss the first gate, you can't make up for it. And soon into the earn out, Rod realized like the gig is up. I'm not, I'm never going to hit any of these goals. And he left and in so doing walked away from, you know, 20 million bucks. And it's not, it, it's not an uncommon story. It's a very common story. And so just back to your point, Jason, about if you don't build a business that thrives without you, the self managing business, to use your term, you're going to be likely handed an earn out deal. And that second tranche or third tranche is always at risk.

Oh, it reminds me of the scene in the Godfather with Al Pacino when he says, just when I thought it was out, they pulled me back in.

They sent you back in. Yeah, yeah.

This is such a good, such a great conversation, John. And for our listeners, again, the book that John just most recently released the art selling your business. Be sure to get your hands on a copy. You'll be glad you did. And we'll include the links to John's two other books as well. You may want to just, you know, make it easy, pick it up, order all three at the same time and get the trilogy.

It's like Lord of the Rings, but for your business.

Exactly, Exactly. Can we trademark that, Richard?

I'm sure it's possible. I don't think anybody's got it. And what was really cool, John, I noticed earlier on in our conversation, you talked about all these interviews, and one thing you said that led to the impetus of creating this most recent release, this book for you, was in those stories, you recognized there was this small contingent. It was kind of like the Pareto principle within your interviews of these business exits, where 20% or maybe even the top 10% of these people had just had this epic ability to make the exit so much dynamically bigger or better than what was anticipated with the structure of their business. So I'm really curious when that comes up for you in the interview. It happens naturally, I guess, and then all of a sudden, there's a signal, and you're just like, wow, they did this and this and this. You're seeing that progression happen. Can you walk us through the process of you discovering that in the interview and how you see that and recognize it in these entrepreneurial stories?

Well, it's easy to spot in the sense that the value they're getting are oftentimes multiples of revenue. Like, it's. You know, I'm reminded of one story, a woman named Stephanie Breedlove. So she builds a payroll company for parents who have nannies to pay, right? So most payroll companies, they work on, like, they want to work through payroll for Royal bank or for Ford or whatever. This. This company is set up just for. For nannies, for parents who have a nanny to pay. So one person. So it's kind of a unique thing. She built it up $9 million of annual revenue, about 10,000 customers. And she looks out in the landscape and says, okay, who's going to find this business attractive? And of course, there's lots of private equity groups and so forth. But she says there's this one company, care.com and they would have a strategic reason to buy our business because they have 7 million subscribers. And she reasoned, well, hold on a second. Care.com is like the Angie's list of care providers, right? You plug in your postal code and it'll say, okay, these are the babysitters you can hire. And they've been five star rated by the parents who've hired them. And so Care has 7 million subscribers. So Stephanie Breedlove approached them and said, look, if 1% of your 7 million subscribers buy my payroll service, that's 70,000 customers. Like my little payroll company, $9 million revenue, that we have 10,000 customers. So 71%. Now, let's just dream for a second. Let's imagine 2% of your 7 million buy my payroll service. Anyways, long story short, she sold her $9 million business for $54 million. It's just unbelievable. It's almost nonsensical. But what it is is the definition of a strategic sale. When your company is worth much more in someone else's hands than it would be. That's the definition of a strategic acquisition. And that's what CARE did. And she got $54 million for a $9 million company.

Oh, that is such an awesome story. And that ties to the philosophy that we fully embrace and that's kind of woven into the way that we do things in operating in your unique ability, where if you say, look, if there's an opportunity to collaborate, I'll just give you a bit of insight of what I'm talking about. So when you. One thing that Dan Sullivan, founder, strategic coach, great business coach, who had said quite some time ago, he said, look, when you begin to think collaboratively versus thinking competitively, collaboration opportunities begin to show up everywhere. And if you understand that you can take the business from 10x to 100x where you're really changing the game, but you don't possess the unique ability to or capability to do that and go into the marketplace and seek out who already possesses that unique capability that's necessary to get it to 100x and find a way to collaborate or find a potential exit where that potential collaborator says, look, we'd rather just write the check and pick you up, you've got unique capability that we don't have. Let's combine it together and revenues and profits and everything go up and it's, man, what a great story. What a great story. And talk to us a little bit about the platform, the software platform, the value builder. Give us some insight into what that is.

Yeah, it's a simple software that entrepreneurs use to improve the value of their company, usually leading up to an exit, but not always. Our average customer, when they join us, we put them through a diagnostic questionnaire and the average business score is about 59 out of a possible 100. And those businesses traded about 3.5 times pre tax profit. We take them through a process. There's 12 unique modules we go through with them. Those that get and graduate the program with a score of 90 or greater. So from a 59 to a 90, these are our best performers. Those businesses are getting 7.1 times pre tax profit or more than double the business when they start. So it also triples the likelihood. A 90 plus scoring business triples the likelihood that you're going to receive an inbound offer. And one of the, you know, to take it back to what we were talking about earlier, one of the kind of secrets to punching above your weight when you sell is to have multiple offers right to be courted. And we know if you get your value builder score up to 90 or better, you are much more likely to receive inbound offers, about three times more likely than the average business. And we license the system. Our business model is we. When I say we, I'm using the royal we. It's not me or even our employees. We license our system to professional advisors. So we have about a thousand advisors around the world who license the value builder system so that they can do value building coaching with their clients. So we license it to business coaches, consultants, financial advisors, M and A professionals, business brokers and accountants. And, and they use it to really start a conversation with a business owner about the value of their company.

Wow, that is fantastic. And where do our listeners get more information about that? Well, we're going to include the link, we're going to point you in the right direction and we wholeheartedly encourage you to explore that because it's pretty clear motivator that if you achieve that 90 plus value builder score, that the multiple that you can likely expect is not only in the form of offers, but it's a multiple of money as well.

And so, you know, I'm so glad you raised that, Jason, because for me, I get really excited when I talk about this because I've started and exited four companies my last business and I always thought of business coaching. And you're a big strategic coach fan, I can tell by your reference to Dan. You know, I used to think coaching is a little bit like an expense as opposed to an investment, something maybe, you know, like whatever. It's not, it's not, I don't need it was my sort of theory. And my last company, this goes back to 2006, I decided that I was going to sell it and I all of a sudden felt kind of out of my depth I had a management team, but I didn't want anybody on the management team to know just quite yet that I wanted to sell. And yet I needed a lot of help. I decided to hire a coach and I spent at least six figures, like $100,000 over a two year period, at least. I don't know the exact number off top of my head, but it was a lot of money over a two year period to get that business ready to sell. And I successfully sold it to a publicly traded New York Stock Exchange listed company and it was a success. And I'm happy with the investment because to your point, the investment in coaching, it went from an expense to an investment. I saw a return to the tune of our multiple of EBITDA that we were going to get for the business immediately. Right. Like I could see if I get this done, I'm going to have a much more significant exit. And so for advisors, accountants, coaches, consultants who are thinking about, well, do I want to really advise my clients on building value leading up to an exit? Man, I think it's a huge opportunity just because it opens a new wallet, right? Like it cracks open in the mind of the business owner, a new wallet. It's not just expense anymore. It's like I'm going to see an investment. So I feel very passionately about this being a really important topic for professional advisors to be talking to their clients about.

Oh, that's fantastic. Agree.

I think it's interesting you said it's a little simple software that we built that basically helps businesses double their exit just a little and attract offers out of thin air to buy the business. It's just a little simple software, very nonchalant.

Well, I say simple because, you know, some of this stuff is very like, it sounds very complicated. Oftentimes advisors, they use a lot of acronyms, they throw out a lot of big words to sound smart. And we just try to avoid all that. Right. We try to simplify it and hopefully not dumb it down, but simplify it to a point where it's like understandable. Right? Because entrepreneurs, it's funny, today I believe, guys, as we record this, I could be wrong. It might be yesterday. I think it's today is the anniversary of Sully landing the plane on the Hudson River. Do you guys remember that?

Sure do.

Yep.

And those pictures of the, you know, the people standing on the wing and the Hudson, I mean it just goes. Sully was like the most decorated pilot of his generation, right? Like he was 65 years old when he landed that plane. But prior to that he'd been flying for 40 years. He was an instructor, a safety inspector. I mean, he was. You couldn't find a more experienced pilot. But he had never landed a plane on the Hudson River.

Right.

40 years of flying never landed a plane on the Hudson River. And for a lot of entrepreneurs, that's exactly the situation there. They've been running their company for 30 years. They could dance backwards and tell you all about the widget they sell, how to hire people, how to run a management meeting, how to fire people. But exiting it's not something that they do every day.

That's a brilliant analogy.

It's important to get it right.

Think about this, John. If you were to do a search on Amazon for the number of book titles that talk about how to start a business and compare that with the number of book titles that talk about how to sell it, it's going to be a very stark contrast between those two numbers.

Well, in particular, because people who write books are smart. Just 4% of business owners ever crest a million dollars in revenue.

Wow.

Just 4%. So 96% of business owners never hit the million dollar threshold. So if you were writing a book and you wanted to make money off writing books, which is not my motivation, but if that was your motivation, you certainly wouldn't write a book about how to sell a company because it's only the all stars. It's only the kind of top, top, top folks who ever get a business to a million dollars in revenue, let alone three or five. And those are the best of the best. And so anyways, they have every right to be very deeply proud of the companies they built because they are in a rarefied air. However, this is one topic that they just don't have an opportunity to practice and the stakes couldn't be higher.

Oh yeah, you're spot on, Richard.

You also mentioned that the, you know, the family transition, which was almost a past generations world of bringing, it's still a lot of that goes on these days. But it sounds like in your interviews what you're discovering now over the last, say, decade of doing this type of work, John, is that that's almost going the way of the dodo bird. Less and less businesses are looking to figure a way to transition it, or perhaps the next generation is just less interested in receiving what's been built and they want to go out and forge their own path in some other format. So I found that very curious that you identified that earlier in the call.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you're right. 30 years ago, 50 years ago. 100 years ago, you'd have Joe Smith and Sons, right. And Joe was transitioning the business of the Suns. But nowadays, I think our latest data at Value Builder is less than 14%. Business owners that have gone through our system plan to transition their business to their kids and that compares to roughly 66,0 60% of business owners who want to sell to a third party. So, yeah, it has changed pretty dramatically. Nowadays, the family transition is much less common.

Wow. Very interesting.

Well, there you have it. Go ahead, Rick.

Ton of Value with us today, John, we appreciate it greatly. I have no doubt our listeners are going to be equally very enthused to hear this information and to start digging into the materials. Now, not all heroes, of course, wear capes. And you may not think of yourself as a hero per se, but every time you're out there helping a business sell their business machine that they spend a lifetime working on creating for a multiple greater than was possible previously to you getting into the equation, your system being a part of that, you're really benefiting people. You're making their life easier or better in some way. Your books are living text to denominate that. So the real question we would have for you, John, as we think about ending our interview today is who do you want to be a hero to?

Oh, my kids. My kids for sure. I mean, they're the most important thing in my world. And so, yeah, I would love to, to import some of the life lessons, not necessarily business lessons, although we do talk business from top to top, but the life lessons that I've been good enough to learn from. And so that's the most honest answer. And then on a professional context, it's really entrepreneurs with revenues between 1 and $20 million where they know everything there is to know about their business, but less about the sale of it. And so those are the people professionally that I love to, to help out if I can.

John, it was a pleasure. And our hope is if you're agreeable, we'd love to have you back as a guest on our show and for all of our listeners. Again, throughout the program, you found yourself thinking, this is something that really resonates with me. I really want to explore it further. We've included all of the links to get your hands on the resource materials, but absolutely get your hands on a copy of John's new book, the Art of selling your Business. And we look forward to your comments. And while you're here, be sure to click through the next video that's showing up in the playlist and continue enjoying this great content, and we hope you get as much value out of it as we did in creating it for you. So, John, thanks so much again for joining us and our listeners. This is another episode of Wealth Without Bay Street. We want to wish everyone a fantastic rest of your day.