Your Business Exit Strategy Starts Now - Episode 61 Simon Bedard - CEO and Founder The Exit Advisory Group

Every asset is eventually sold (or transferred in an Estate) and your business is typically a major part of your asset portfolio.

So it therefore makes sense to have a mindset to treat your business just like any other asset. What’s its purpose and why are you doing what you do?

That’s not an uncommon approach from Management Consultants but it’s a very different approach to what you’d expect to find from a Business Broker. But as you’ll hear, Simon Bedard’s financial management background makes perfect sense that he thinks this way.

Simon has over 20 years experience in the in the finance, energy and technology sectors and having worked as an investment banker in Institutional Banking and Global Markets, and holds an MBA through RMIT University, 

The Exit Advisory Group helps business owners migrate their way through the question of “What’s my business worth when I eventually sell?”

That’s not an unusual question for a business broker to ask, but the unique position that Simon takes is that “If you have a Vision, we have a way to get you there”

Simon Bedard 

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/business-sales-sydney/

Exit Advisory Group  

Website: https://exitadvisory.com.au/

LinkedIn Company Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exitadvisorygroup/

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/exitadvisorygroup/

Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/exitadvisorygroup/

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ16bg2expmwNDbcHyjWCxw

Buy Grow Sell  

Website: https://buygrowsell.com/

LinkedIn Company Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/buy-grow-sell-biz/

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/buygrowsellbiz

Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/buygrowsellbiz/

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-lrfSVRd4deO0kDj0ort3A

Book a call with Simon and donte $50 to https://www.kiva.org/

Stephen Sandor CEO Inspiring Business
Inspiring Business website - www.inspiringbusiness.net

Book an Exploration Call here - https://inspiringbusiness.net/exploration-call-booking/

The Scale to Success System - https://inspiringbusiness.net/deep-dive-program/

Stephen Sandor LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-sandor/

Inspiring Business LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/inspiring-business

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/inspiringbusinessaustralia

Transcript

Simon Bedard: 0:00

Don't, don't wait till you want to get outta the business and retire to start thinking about exiting the management piece, because look, fundamentally, if you can build yourself out of the day-to-day operations, typically speaking, in a lot of cases, your business will actually run better. Hate to say it, but there's usually people out there who are better at our jobs than us um, but often it ends up running a lot more profitably and it's just a lot more enjoyable and, you know, it's just a different mindset um, so yeah, look, and then you can always think about the asset thing later and get an investment advisor to talk to you about, you know, your asset allocations and all that sort of stuff but it's, um, but yeah, it's an interesting, it's an interesting sort of scenario to think about.

Steve Sandor: 0:40

Welcome to the Inspiring business Podcast where we hope to inspire you, the business owner, and provide you with knowledge and information you need to create a business that is scalable and ultimately independent of your daily involvement. I hope the information you're about to hear helps you navigate towards your success. This is a slightly different start to this podcast because my guest today is Simon Bedard, who is the founder and CEO of the Exit Advisory Group, and we hit the record button before we actually intended to start the podcast but the conversation that we had was so insightful from Simon that I decided to keep it in as basically the start of the podcast. I hope you enjoy.

Simon Bedard: 1:26

So yeah, I'm the same, but, um, but you know, to that point we were just chatting about, about pivoting, you know, and you know, people get all funny about that, overuse of words but you know, when we went through all that covid period, and I was talking to people about this concept of pivot And I, I knew a couple of people and a couple of clients and more, or prospective clients even that, that we were chatting to, who were talking about having to pivot or having to change their business and, and I was saying like, there's a difference between completely overhauling what you do and, and what a pivot is, right? Mm-hmm. And, and I said, I was explaining my perspective only, and it's only a perspective, it's not, you know, right, wrong, or whatever. I was just saying, in, in my head, when I think of a pivot in the physical sense of a pivot, I'm standing still and I keep my heel stationary on the ground and it doesn't move I slightly change my direction. I'm still grounded on the same spot, in the same place, but just I'm changing my perspective slightly and mm-hmm. um, you know, you're repurposing things slightly and all the rest of it, so, you know, if you want to do a big, uh, strategic review and determine if you need to make an, an enormous overhaul of you, well that's a very, very different process mm-hmm. and takes by the way, you better allow yourself in my head and look, it's different for everybody, but just as a bit of a rule. You better allow yourself three years to get a return on that massive overhaul because exactly first year is you kind of working it out, second year you're implementing it and third year you're starting to get a return on it. So it's, you know, it's, by then I said, COVID will be gone and you'll be going shit. Was that the right decision?

Steve Sandor: 3:09

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that basing decisions on fear rather than, uh, on, on strategy and going, okay, well, you know, we, I know there was a, there was a company in Tweed called, Uh huh. And they made gin, right? Right. Yep. And then they just re pivoted. Well, they pivot, pivoted their operations, but they didn't, they didn't all of a sudden, you know, start manufacturing furniture. Yeah. Um, they, they basically started making, um, disinfectants or, or you know, that, so it was the same process, but we're just a different product.

Simon Bedard: 3:43

It raises the question, you know, here, here we are, post Covid. Um, you know, I'm not gonna make any big economic predictions here, but you know, a lot of people are talking recession, a lot of people are talking downturns, et cetera, et cetera, and, and frankly, you know, put, put covid and its unusual circumstances aside in the normal cyclical kind of range of things we're probably due for a, a, a downturn, right? Yep. Um, But it does, it does sort of drive the question of, as a business owner, how do you approach that stuff? Are you thinking about it? Are you planning for it? Um, you know, once again, I mean, I covid I know what we did in Covid, it, it came outta the blue. It was unexpected. It was not something we, we could plan for. May, maybe in the future we will plan better or at least long-term planning. You might think about it more, but in, I know with Covid, for us, There was so much uncertainty that as a team we sat down and said, okay, well bit of scenario planning, right? Like what's the worst case scenario? The worst case scenario is all of our clients walk today or tomorrow or whatever. Um, and we don't pick up any clients for at least six months, maybe 12. Um, and so the fundamental question was, well, obviously that hurts, but can we survive that? Mm-hmm. and if you can survive that. And that was our decision was well, okay, well that'll suck, but you know, we'll get through it. You know? So once that decision had actually been made, or we had all agreed on that fundamental principle, all the stress and the worry kind of went away mm-hmm. um, you know, and we sort of went, okay, well what do we want to do with our time? Then, you know, okay, well, we'll keep working the projects we've got, you know, what else should we be doing in this environment to, um, oh, help us survive, but hopefully do better than surviving. Right? I mean, I won't say thrive. Certainly there were businesses that absolutely thrived and boomed during Covid because of the nature of their business, but um, but yeah, look, how do we, how do we make the most of what's in front of us? Right? Um, so yeah, it was interesting. It was interesting sort of period. Yeah, just, I, I don't know. I I How did you, how did you find that period and the sort of clients you were working with and,

Steve Sandor: 5:56

well, the interesting thing was that I, I had, um, COVID forced me to create inspiring business. Mm. Because I was intending to continue doing the work that I was doing in Papua New Guinea. Mm. Um, and, uh, you know, would do that sort of work. Well travel, um, you know, I didn't, didn't want to be traveling. Uh, so I actually had that 12 months of. What am I gonna do? Uh, you know, and I was fortunate enough that I could manage, um, 12 months without a, without anything and I just really wasn't sure what it was that I, what was the problem that I was going to solve um, and, and given that it was really difficult to ac to acquire new clients, and I had no position in the marketplace as a, you know, as an advisor or, business consultant. Yeah. Um, so I just used that time to create, you know, a presence. Yep, yep. That's why, and I set up the podcast, um, you know, did a lot of networking, uh, with people to, to build up the network that I'd lost over for being in PNG for 10 years. Right? Yeah. So use that opportunity. Yeah. Um, but it's, you raise a really interesting point because this current sort of tsunami that potentially is coming our way, it's, it's then the mindset, you know, so there were people who, when Covid hit it was like, you know, bunker down, hunker down, you know, stop spending money, let's you know, let's get rid of people, um, let you know, let's minimize the expenses, the traditional approach to this problem. Whereas, um, other people in Theo Verta, who is the MD of the Usher Group and Theo was saying that they made the decision to keep all of their staff, cuz they're, they're, they're a painting and electrical contracting group. So they're very much at the finishing end of, of major projects and they do, you know, they do large projects like large commercial, um, uh, construction work. And he just, he made the decision that he was gonna keep all his people and he, he, you know, was saying, That hurt financially. Yeah. But what it did was it created a loyalty amongst the people that was there from a commercial point of view. he was able to keep the people who had built up in a 10, 15 years of network that were his asset. Right. And even didn't lose them to a competitor and then when it was time to, you know, kick off again, he or he didn't have to go through the, the recruiting process. Yeah, absolutely. And I like really clever, like, yeah. But, but what he'd done for years before is he'd put reserves aside for the unknown. Right. He didn't know what the unknown was and that's why it's called unknown and I think, I think it's the mindset now. It's like, you know, what's the opportunity? So you know, okay, things are going to get tough, interest rates are gonna go up. Um, you know, markets are going to shift. People are moving away from, uh, you know, the traditional working environment. You know, people are wanting more to be remote related. It's got its own problems around psychological safety and how do you support somebody remotely. You know, all of those things, which is a new brave new world. Right. Um, and so, but there are opportunities there, and I know that I had a, a client who was a Facebook, um, consultant when Covid hit, they were going, you know, they were going gangbusters. Yeah. And then Covid hit, and boy did they go gangbuster. right? Because that was, they, they actually took the opportunity to then find people who, who were doing the traditional marketing and, and then went into, well, we need to, you know, what's left? There's online. And then they took advantage of that, and the people who took advantage of that opportunity also made money. Right? Absolutely. So I think it's, it's finding the opportunity now, you know, and that takes a little bit of creativity and my, you know, my advice to people is slow down. You know, stop.

Simon Bedard: 10:25

It's an interesting point. It's, it reminds me of the old Henry Ford quote, right? Like, and I'll, and I'll, I'm paraphrasing cause I don't wanna say that this is verbatim from Henry, but, uh, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. Yeah. And, and I think there's a little bit of that when we went into Covid, um, you know, you mentioned about people presuming doom and gloom. So what do they do? They cut marketing spend and they cut stuff and they cut, cut, cut, cut. And the funny thing is, if you cut all your marketing budget and you stop advertising, guess what your leads actually do. Stop. Yeah. And your ma you know, you, your marketing stops working. And so, you know, there's a little bit of that. And don't, don't get me wrong, I'm a big believer that we're all small boats in a big ocean, and you've gotta be aware of your macro environment, but at the end of the day, be careful of your mindset and be careful of what you tell yourself because, you know, it'll probably come true um, yep, absolutely. But, but you know, just to finish off on that point too, Steve, like you, you mentioned your, um, I think you said the Usher group. Um, a concept of just not letting people go. I think too many business owners fall into the trap of knee jerk reaction what's right in front of me right now? Oh my goodness. You know, lead conversions dropped off a little bit. Pipe's a little bit weak. We've got too many stuff. Oh man. I better cut some stuff. I better cut this. I better cut that. Um, yes, you saved a few dollars in the short term, but has it cost you more in the medium? Um, and I've got a number of clients who, you know, they've talked about, they've been around 50 years, they've seen numerous economic cycles come and go and they said, you know, for our manufacturing, They said, frankly, even during the year, there are times where the projects come off a little bit and it's quite a bit quieter. Mm-hmm. and they said, they said, frankly, we, we carry them through that period, it's completely inefficient at the time. Exactly. But, It is hard to find good people and even if you find a new good person, it takes them 12 months to be really effective. Yep. So what is the cost to you during that period? Um, with or with that different approach and, and, and I think that's something business owners need to really ask themselves.

Steve Sandor: 12:33

I, I did a, some work in p and g, we did a study of um, uh, I think it was about 2020 companies and the cost and, and there's been a lot of HR studies in this space. It was just something that we did. Um, and we tried to, um, quantify the cost of new staff member and it ranged between 35% of annual full-time, annual salary, right or benefit. And it was somewhere between 35% and 230 odd percent and the more senior they were, the more, the more costly they were. Yeah. Because you know, you've got, you've got all of the intellectual property that they take with them. Um, they've got the um, you know, the cost of the acquisition of a new person because typically they haven't got the succession planning in place to replace that person. They haven't done that work. Right. So better to do that sort of work and train people to be able to take someone's place. Yeah. Because when they do go, um, there's not as much, uh, cost involved in that. So that was one lesson. You know, people can take and, and, and the other is that then they're not effective for at least, you know, a month if they're just going from one role to another role, like for an external company to, to the internal company or an um, employee they're about a month to three month of not effective. And then you've got all the people, the management time of getting that person up to speed. So it's not just, it's not just the individual cost, it's all of the infrastructure that goes to billing and then if you get that wrong, You've gotta rin and repeat, you know, it's like what?

Simon Bedard: 14:22

Not to mention the drama of, you know, potentially exiting somebody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And which is, which is disruptive and particularly more so in smaller businesses. So, um, you know, it's interesting, you know, talk about the cost of a senior person leaving, right and having worked in corporates and, and run different divisions and whatnot, so I've seen that end of it, and I've run my own small businesses. Obviously helped lots of small clients, but I think in a, in a, there's the carry on effect, right? Like the, somebody's hired to do a job, that person exits. Often it's unexpected because they don't go on broadcast. I'm thinking of leaving in six months, but they leave and so the, there's a, an efficiency loss there of that person doing that role, but then there's the flow on effects as well, right? Like if you're in a large organization, and I've seen this every single time, that somebody in a very senior position leaves, there's always a bunch of people that go with them and, and, and it's obvious and it's normal and it's expected. You know, large organizations, they do have their politics. They do have their little cliques, they do have their different supporters and people often go, I am employed by the company, but really I work for that person and if, and if she leaves, I want to go with her and so, you know, there's that kind of mentality in large. In smaller firms, perhaps sometimes less likely, maybe that the staff will leave because, you know, often it's maybe a little more connected to the owner than that individual but, but what happens is often sometimes clients leave. Mm-hmm. Cause in smaller businesses, senior people have a massive influence over the client base. Mm-hmm. So either way, there's a flow on effect to all of this sort of stuff. And, you know, hey, I've coming around to, you know, we've all heard this saying before, but it's, it's, it's much easier to actually keep people than it is to find new people and replace them and get them back up to speed. So, um, yeah. Gosh, I don't know. Certainly from my perspective, running Exit Advisory and, you know, other teams that I've run, it's, to me it always comes back to culture um, it always comes back to what is the kind of work environment that we want to be in um, you know, I, I sat down with my wife in 2015, actually. I was, I'd left my last corporate role, we were taking a year off. We were traveling around Asia with the kids, and I literally, I read a book, you know, cause I had the idea for Exit Advisory, I had a bunch of other ideas, but this book was called I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What It Was. Fantastic book um, for anybody who's wondering, you know, what's my next, you know, stage in life um, but I went through this exercise of designing my perfect work. Right, and designing my perfect environment and designing what do I do with my time? Because I think that's something that not enough business owners ask themselves as well is, how am I spending my time, do I enjoy doing that stuff? Um, and so once I'd gone through and designed in our heads what we thought was the right environment and all that sort of stuff, and what we would like, I didn't know exactly at the time that it would be Exit Advisor we would be helping doing this stuff, but it was, I knew we'd be helping people. I knew it. You know, helping business owners that was, that's, you know, they, they're my people, right? Um, but then of course it was, well, what kind of environment do we want for everyone else in the team? Because as we often say in our company, amongst all the other advisors who are all corporate escape, sometimes you have to work in an environment to know what you don't want for the rest of your life. And, and we just didn't want the kind of politics and all the other crap that can sometimes come with a big firm, and don't get me wrong, it's not all bad. There's lots of good things, but. How do you hire people? Who are the kind of people? Who are your people? Do you share these values? Because business is doing this and goes in all these different directions and the only thing that is can be truly constant through all of that is actually that you share common values, right? And that is ultimately what will then drive your culture. And that is ultimately what will drive whether people want to stay with you. Um, don't get me wrong, if you underpay people and don't look after people and know the rest of them, they will leave but that's also part of your culture. So, you know, we, we believe in a culture of rewarding people and making sure that they're valued and, you know, I, I want people to come to work and actually enjoy it. Like, sure, you might do stuff that you actually go, oh shit, that particular task is not very fun and I, that's the part of my job I don't like. But geeze, the other 80% I love So, um, yeah, I think, I think, you know, it's an interesting conversation when you start thinking about teams and efficiencies and profitability even and. And that good old thing of what, what am I doing with my time and do I enjoy doing it?

Steve Sandor: 19:04

Yeah. Listener Um, we hadn't started the podcast, um, but that was the podcast, So the voice that you've been listening to is Simon Bedard, who is the CEO and founder of the Exit Group. Well, you've already know that because he, he's mentioned that Simon spent 20 years in finance, energy and technology sectors, and having worked as an investment banker, In institutional banking, global markets, and has an MBA, uh, from M R M I T, as you could tell from the conversation he's a very thoughtful and, uh, intelligent person and unique skillset in the area of the business advisory group. So Simon, um, that was a 20 minute introduction, podcast. So thank you very much for, for joining us. I don't think we need to, I think we can wrap it up now, right? Well,

Simon Bedard: 19:59

we did laugh at the beginning. We better start recording cuz sometimes the initial chat is interesting. Exactly. You know. Well, and, and in fairness, uh, to anyone, I have, I have met Steve a couple of times and we have spoken in the past and I very much enjoyed Steve's company. So it was easy to have a chat

Steve Sandor: 20:14

Yeah. Yeah. So, um, we'll just, we'll circle back to the conversation cause I think it's a really important one um, but maybe, uh, if you could just give the listener, um, uh, you've already given him some sort of insight, but just a, you know, a quick snapshot of your history, um, how you ended. Um, if you can fill in some of the blanks that, um, that you opened up the, you know, close the loop, love to, so to speak. Love.

Simon Bedard: 20:37

Yeah. Um, so look, I, I'll give you the abridge version, but I, I spent the first half of my life in, in the investment world. Um, you, you know, when you work in institutional banking, there's lots of divisions, but I work in the investment space, so people wanna put a dollar in and get$2 out some at some point in the future. What actually needs to happen in the middle there for people to get the kind of returns they want. And, um, and of course, you know, not everything always works out too, right? That's the nature of risk and investing. But, uh, it really, I think, set the scene for me in being value focused. Um, now I finished up a ComBank in when the GFC hit, um, started, ended up going out and starting my own business with my wife um, we were building up a practice in the environmental space, but we ended up buying into another business. We all built it up a bit, sold out, um, back in corporate a little bit for a while. Ran a division here for a large US multinational um, before kind of, after doing that for a few years, we both went, we really needed to do our own thing again um, you know, back back to my previous comment, you know, sometimes working, sometimes you work in an environment, you go, okay, actually don't necessarily know exactly what I want to do, but I know what I don't want to do. And so, um, look, I did my m MBA during that period and I've done lots of other courses in postgraduate studies but, um, having been in business myself and having been through the cycle of buying in and selling, I've realized I've done this kind of full cycle, right? Startup, you know, buying, growing, selling back to the beginning of the cycle and going, what do I wanna do now? And you know, I think some people jump onto that cycle and go around the merry-go-round a few times others, you know, it's a one time deal. Um, my wife and I at the time said, look, let's not do more startups cuz they're freaking hard, right? Like, let's, let's just go and buy something that's already running and it has clients and yes, you've gotta pay upfront, but look, you end up paying anyway, right? Like you do a startup, typically it takes years to get it going properly so you, you know, you're still spending money, it's just over a different period of time. Um, but we went on an 18 month journey of looking at businesses to buy and, um, look. We found some, but we never executed on a deal, and probably what was the big learning through that was I, I interacted with a lot of business brokers and having come outta banking, the level of compliance and regulatory sort of, well, the regulatory environment was so strict and tight. So for me to talk to you, Steve, about investing in something, I have to have all these qualifications. I don't have to be answering all this stuff all the time. And then I, I met some brokers in this period where I just felt they lacked the qualifications, experience, knowledge, all the sort of things that I thought would've been integral to be managing that business owners' transaction. Especially given that for some business owners, their is actually their largest asset.. Often worth more than their home and, and I'll give you an example. Like I've got clients who've said to me after having done a little exercise with us, Jesus, Simon, my, um, my, my business is probably 80% of my net worth. Now, any investment advisor with only half a brain would tell you that diversification's really, really important and so when I saw business owners perhaps not being represented to the standard that I believe they deserved, and it was potentially most of their net. It actually freaked me out. Like I couldn't believe that this was actually happening. Um, and so, and don't get me wrong, I don't wanna tie it wrong with the same brush there was, you know, there were some good brokers that I met, but I, it's where the idea for exit advisory came from. And so I literally, I literally said to my wife one day, she walked in and I, I said, look, you know, if you're willing to do another startup, I think I've found a, a, a sector that, you know, If we just apply our existing knowledge and skills and whatever else, you know, I think we can have a really, really impact, big impact and, you know, really challenge this industry. And, uh, and she said, we're not doing anymore. Startups, don't be an idiot. And walked out And so I went, oh, okay. And went to the back of the brain and uh, look, you know, probably over 12 months the idea kind of fermented and I did a lot more research. That, that's really the nexus for what is exit advisory group. And you know, really, if I can summarize our, our, what we do, it's, it's really two things. One, we do business sales and acquisitions. Mostly selling though. So you're a business owner, you want to sell your company for whatever reason. Sometimes you're not selling the whole thing. Sometimes you might be selling part of it. You might be bringing in management shares, whatever. There's a whole bunch of different ways you can be managing a transac. Um, we do the entire a z of that transaction, you know, current with strategy, value the business, find buyers, negotiate it all the way through, including introducing other advisors like lawyers. Um, the second half of our bus, uh, our business is the advisory side of things and the easiest way for me to describe the advisory is that it's a little bit like Google Maps. Alright? Like everyone knows Google Maps. You pull out your phone, you open the app, and there's two fundamental things that are gonna happen straight away. One, it tells you where you are, right? Two, you punch in where you want to go, and then Google usually gives you two or three different routes on how to get there. So our business, when you start to sort of engage our advisory team, where you are today is your business valuation, but it's more than just a number it's, you know, not just where you are, but why are you there? Why? What's, what's driving value? What's dragging value down? What are the risk factors in your. Like, and if you want to get out of where you are today and change your environment, what needs to change around that? Um, so where are you today? Is your valuation of benchmark and assessment? Where you want to be is very much an exit plan and, and a lot of people cringe at exit plan because they go, oh, I'm not thinking exit. I'm thinking growing. I'm growing, I'm growing and, and that's cool. But to those people, I would say, don't forget that we all exit our business one day, whether we like it or not. So, Rather than thinking, my, this is my business, this is my baby, it's my everything, start looking at your business like it's an asset because that's what it is. It's an asset and that asset is there to help deliver you the life you want, not the other way around. So, so with an exit plan, it's very much about saying, what would you like from this asset? Financially time wise, you know, what's your legacy? Where do you want to be? What's important to you, the human behind this business, you know, let's unleash some of that stuff and start to put some sort of bones around this idea of, well, if I am gonna exit one day, which you are, what would be ideal from an exit? And, and by the way, you won't necessarily come up with just one option. It might be two or three good options on how to exit one day, 10 years down the. But the point being, I guess, is we now know where you are today. We now know what a good exit would look like, and then we could come up with multiple strategies on how to move you from point A to point B. And, and by the way, just like Google, right, you know, it gives you those options. Typically, there's always the fastest route. And it always usually says, but you know, pay attention, if you take this route, you have to pay the tolls, right? So you got, you wanna get there faster. Typically, you've gotta invest in that process a little bit more upfront. Otherwise you can take the scenic route, which by the way, you'll still spend about the same money, but it, it just takes longer and you spend it over a longer period of time. So, um, So, yeah, look, that's us. That, that was a lot longer than two minutes, Steve. I apologize. But yeah, hopefully that's clear.

Steve Sandor: 28:06

No, no, it gives, well, it, it, it actually very much aligns with, uh, you, you know, the, the story that I'm, uh, talking to my clients about and the listener, you know, I, I say, Get your business ready for sale so you don't have to sell it and that way you can retire into your business and people go, oh, I don't wanna retire. Right. No, you're missing the point. The point is that your business is a major asset of yours, and if you were to sell it currently, um, the valuation is predominantly based on. Right. And so if you can take yourself out of that equation and create a business that doesn't necessarily rely solely on you, where, where you are, you're not the hub of the business, you're just in a really important spoke, then the valuation is worth a lot more. And that's the, you know, I'm here and this is my valuation. Now what do I want to get out of it? Do I want to improve? Do I want to grow? Do I want more time? Uh, all of those things. Um, and then eventually, yes, you do have not have to, but eventually you sell. Yeah. Now whether you sell. To an external party or whether you sell internally to a management buyout or to family members, whatever but you know, you have a choice at some point in time where you, where you exit the exit, the business. So, yeah, I, I really on, you know, really on board with that. I think we. I mean, the conversation that we had before we started the podcast, which is a part of the podcast, um, you know, that I, I think we're very much on, in line with that. I'd just like, Simon, I'd really like you. You had a point. Did you wanna, did you wanna say something?

Simon Bedard: 29:45

Yeah, well, I just, I was just gonna say one little thing to, to add on to what you're saying there and it's, you know, I agree with Steve. It's, we're aligned. You know, it's probably why we get along so well. We, you know, share those kind of vision and values. But it's, um, I'll say one thing for business owners. Who are on their journey. Now, when you do consider exiting, and it may not be for a very long time, but there's basically two exits that happen. One, you exit the management roles of within your business, and two, you exit the ownership of your business. Now, and I think what you were kind of alluding to there, Steve, is that you may actually maintain ownership of that business, but just over time you exit the management and the day-to-day operational matters. Um, and, and maybe you sit as chairman or you know, you, you still keep your eye over the business you know, you, you're involved enough to feel involved and have a sense of purpose, but you're not doing a lot of the doing anymore and you know, I'm sure you are the same, but I've had plenty of clients who've just. Love that role. Um, you know, they, they get to kind of come to the office every now and again. They're kind of the, almost the statesman, you know, they get to go around and have the nice conversations without having to go, have you done your KPIs and blah, blah, blah, Um, so, so there's two fundamental sort of exits there and I think, you know, I'm sure you'll agree with me, Steve, here, Don't, don't wait till you want to get outta the business and retire to start thinking about exiting the management piece, because look, fundamentally, if you can build yourself out of the day-to-day operations, typically speaking, in a lot of cases, your business will actually run better. Hate to say it, but there's usually people out there who are better at our jobs than us um, but often it ends up running a lot more profitably and it's just a lot more enjoyable and, you know, it's just a different mindset um, so yeah, look, and then you can always think about the asset thing later and get an investment advisor to talk to you about, you know, your asset allocations and all that sort of stuff but it's, um, but yeah, it's an interesting, it's an interesting sort of scenario to think about.

Steve Sandor: 31:50

I often use the example of, you know, you're running a 5 million, 10 million business, you're the managing director of that division um, and you're a part of a larger group, maybe a, you know, 50 to a hundred million business, and I'm your boss, right? Yeah. And so you represent somewhere between five and 10% of my total portfolio, right? You just happen to be one of those. And if we're having a conversation at the end of the year, and we're talking about your activity and you are telling me, you know, that you were, um, writing the copy for the website or that you were approving, You know, disbursements of, uh, you know, a couple of hundred bucks, um, you know, that you had, you know, you were talking, you had 15 direct reports. I, I, we'd have a very difficult conversation, That's not what I'm paying you to do. Right. And so the challenge with business owners is that they, they, they don't have that accountability other than to the bank manager typically life partner, you know, the person who they come home to on a daily basis and explain why they are succeeding or not succeeding and, and very few other, very few other people. So yeah, very much in line with that. Um, Simon, I, I wanted to, cuz we always talk about our how, how great we are, right? and our successes. I think the lessons are, uh, I think there are better lessons learned from our mistakes. Yeah. Um, and boy, have I made some in my career? I, um, what would be, so given that you've started, uh, like we can go back into the corporate career Yeah. And there's obviously some lessons there, but in terms of starting your business, um, you know, 2015 you got into this, what, what are, what are some of. You know, the one or two mistakes that you made that enabled you to, to have the success that you currently have? Right. Because I, my my saying is, mistakes are only decisions Yep. That are made with not enough information, more information, different decision, not better, just different. Right. So can you sort of reflect back on one or two of those that enabled you to be in the situation where you're at?

Simon Bedard: 34:10

Yeah, for sure. I mean, look, I. It's a funny thing. I business is a human construct, right? um, take out humans. There's no business going on, the animal world just keeps going and doing a thing, right? So, so we create this artificial environment and therefore, I, I believe that every business problem is just a human problem, right? It's a people problem fundamentally, and sometimes you are the problem, right? So, um, I, I would say that most of my, my issues relate to me turning on blind spots to, to my own characteristics. Um, that, you know, I go and, and, and look, I know myself well enough to, it's not a surprise, but I go, oh shit, I did that again. I just did it blindly. I, I just walked into that again. Like it's, it's just a blind spot for me and um, and similarly, um, some of my harshest most expensive lessons have come from trusting other people where I shouldn't have um, and, and of course the big question then becomes, well, how hell do you know who to trust? Well, you know, I think that that very much circles right back to what we were talking about at the beginning of this podcast is, is values and, and culture and, um, You know, does it feel right? You know, anyone who's a, a fan of Simon Sinek, um, you know, if you haven't seen Simon Sinek or you, you're going, who the hell is Simon Sinek? Please go, go Google Simon Sinek and, um, he has a great Ted talk about leadership and, you know, his golden circles and stuff like that um, I want to know that I'm working with people who share the why, because if you have that at your core, everything else, the how and the what you, you can work out. Alright, smart people sit in a room, come up with 20 different ideas on how to solve problem um, but as long as we all agree that, that we are there for the same reasons, then you know, you, you can sort of trust that you are going to be able to come up with the right outcomes. So look, I mean, I, I've, I've been screwed over. I've been screwed over massively for huge amounts of money. I've, um, gone and made decisions myself around even hiring people where, and this is an important one, I think, where I've had a real kind of need that I wanted to do you know, this is the what I wanted to get done and rather than, um, going back to core principles and saying, let's make sure we hire on values and when I just, I went to hire and I went to plug the hole. And even though intuitively, somewhere subconsciously during that process, I've, I've overlooked things that probably were quite obvious at the time, but because I was not, I was focusing on the wrong thing and so I've ended up hiring the wrong people that in the end I've gone, you know, that was pretty obvious in the end and in my haste, you know, back to your point, Steve, about slow down, um, in my haste to get something done, I've made the wrong decisions um, and so, you know, fortunately, none of those decisions have been fatal um, You know, I've certainly had seven figure losses in the past um, which, you know, that hurts That hurts a lot, especially when you're looking forward at your forecasts and you get the bill for your kids' school fees and then you get the, whatever, you know, you go, oh man, that, that, that was all meant to be taken care of. So, um, so yeah, look, I think if I could, I could summarize it. I think it's know yourself. Self-awareness, right? A little bit of emotional intelligence goes a hell of a long way. Know your strengths, know your weaknesses. Um, you know, I, I insist, and, and as a team, we insist that when we are going into important meetings that you don't do it on your own um, because we all have our blind spots. And you and I, you know, I had to get this description. I was on a call yesterday talking to somebody and said, you know, if, if I held up my hand, like and I asked you to describe what you are seeing, you'll probably say, and, and for if this is only audio for some people, I'm holding up a fist with my fingers facing Steve. He might, he might describe, oh, you've got four fingers your thumbs over the finger. I can see your fingernails. You haven't cut'em this week. Uh, you might, you might say a whole bunch of stuff. Now, me, I'm talking to you and I'm looking at the same fist. My description of that fist is gonna be very, very different. It's the same thing, but geez, what a different, different kind of angle or outlook or, you know, I think if you know yourself well enough, you know what you're really good at, but you know what you're not good at and geez, get some good people around you that you do trust, that you share some values with that will see things in a different way, they will be honest with you. And quite frankly, even if you get a little bit carried away in one of your strengths, they go, Hey, Simon, love you mate. But geez, you know, can we just step back a moment because there's stuff you might not be seeing, you know, so. You gotta, you gotta make sure you can actually handle that conversation too, because if you let your ego get in the way, you probably won't have those people around for very long. And they're important.

Steve Sandor: 39:27

And I think the last comment there around the ego, um, that's the most difficult thing for people to get their head around. Yeah. Um, because they feel as though, And, and if you, if you go through the progression of a small business, right? Yeah. So they start off because they think they can do it better. Yep. You know, they leave somewhere. They're an electrician, they're an architect, they're an engineer, whatever it's, they, they think they can do it better. Then they start building and they get success, right? Because they're pretty good at what they do, they're usually good at business development and they understand numbers, right so they, they grow their business. And so that self importance then becomes, you know, that's the ego. Um, and you know, here in Australia we are very good at knocking the tall poppy off. I think unfairly, I think, you know, we, we could probably not go the of America, but I, I think we could celebrate people's success without envy. Yeah. You know, and go, man, that was a great success that you, that you had. And I think, you know, um, giving people acc accolades, But it's when hubris comes in from that person when they start believing their own bullshit, you know, it's like, oh, I, I am great. You know? Well, yeah, you, you are good, right? I know. Great. Well, let's see. Given that that's a, that's a challenge for businesses and again, you know, if the value of the business is you as the owner, then the business is worth less. What would be one or two things that, you know, you talk about self-awareness. So what are some of the things that you focus on when you, you know, when you get to that, that point, and I know you've got a lot of self-awareness, but how did you get to that point and what are some of the triggers that you get when you go, oh, okay, maybe I'm, maybe I'm being a bit of a dick here.

Simon Bedard: 41:16

Yeah, it's a good, it's a good question um, where does self-awareness come from? I, I think it's an experience thing um, I also think it's a little bit of an education thing. Um, you know, I, I. During my, um, did my mba, there's a whole thing around leadership that we did, and I was always really fascinated with a guy named Daniel Goldman, who is kind of the godfather of, of emotional intelligence, right. And I, I think he might have even coined the phrase, but, um, I guess I've always been really curious about what makes things work. And I'm fascinated with what drives human behavior um, another, another little, um, video for people to watch here is, um, Google Dan Pink and in fact, Google RS Animate Dan Pink. And you're gonna come up with a, a video, which I'll probably get the exact wording wrong here, but it's something along the lines of, um, the interesting truth about what drives human behavior or it's something like, So he's doing a TED talk and somebody's doing the drawing that's why I like the R s A animate because being a visual person, I like seeing the picture evolve in front of me um, and Dan talks a lot about what drives people and drives behavior and, um, he t touches on three core things, He talks about money at first, and he talks about money is absolutely important and it is a motivator, but only to a point because money and the prospect of lots of money can actually freak people out and cause poorer performance. But he said the key to it is you need to pay people enough that money is now off the table as an issue and once it's off the table as an issue, people sort of stop stressing about stuff like that and they put their energy and focus into the things that they should be doing and being the best at what they can be. And he said, so once you've removed money as an issue, there's three things. One, Is what he called autonomy. People wanna be self-directed. They want to be able to do things in their own way um, nobody wants to be micromanaged. Alright. Two was what he called mastery, which is the ability to constantly improve and get better at something. You know, why do people spend hours and hours playing the guitar? Well, like music is nice, but they could get music anywhere. But it's cool when you play something and you get better at it, right? Um, there's no monetary gain at it, doing all that. Well, not for most people, but um, The ability to evolve and get better and I is something that is a real driver of human beings. Uh, and the third thing that he mentions is, is what we were talking about before, which is purpose. You know, p people want to feel like they're working on something that is bigger than themselves, that they're contributing to the, to the whole of something that's got, and that's just a bit special, you know and, and, and I think we all, it's almost one of those overused analogies that, that we all know of. We all want scenarios where one plus one equals three or more right. Um, and, and really what we're saying there is we want to contribute to something special um, so I think, you know, that's, you talked about, you know, coming back to the point of self-awareness and coming back to this, like I, I've always been fascinated with people like Dan Pink and Daniel Goldman and all this sort of stuff, because it was not only teaching me about the world, but I was then learning about myself and somewhere probably in my thirties, I had had enough failures in my life to realize that I didn't have to present myself as the perfect success all the time. That I was okay with my own failures and my own personality misgivings and all that sort of stuff. Um, and so once I think you kind of get to that point, you are open to it, you start seeing it more. It's like the person who just bought a Volvo. You've never seen yellow Volvos anywhere. You bought a yellow Volvo. Now you see'em everywhere. Well, guess what? If you're actually open to acknowledging your own issues, then you start seeing them all the time. Um, and so, um, and, and if I, if I can elaborate on that way a, a little bit further, I, I think anybody listening to this who has kids, um, you know, I think, I think one of the first things I learned with my, my own kids. I have two boys who are 13 and 15 now. Was me apologizing to my own kids when they were very, very young because I was going, oh, actually that was a pretty shit response and I shouldn't have got angry there and I shouldn't have spoken to them like that. And how the hell would they have known what, you know? And so the ability to be the ability and then the willingness to be constantly saying, sorry, uh, became a thing in my life, um, and so yeah, look, I think that drives awareness around your own particular personality traits and um, you know, one, try to be aware of it yourself, two, make sure you've got people around you who know you well enough and, and frankly care about you well enough, love you enough to be able to say, hand on the shoulder. Hey Simon, you know what, like we might be venturing into that space again, you know, can we talk about this and, and be open to doing is doing that right? Yeah.

Steve Sandor: 46:29

Fantastic. Fantastic stuff. Um, Simon, unfortunately, um, We are out of time. Geez. I hope time we, we could, I, I'm sure we could go for another hour. Right? And let's, let's do that again. Right. Let, let's, let's program something in, in a couple of months time where we can maybe, uh, you know, the subject can be, you know, where are we at in the economic times and Yeah. And you know what? What, what's the state of the nation, uh, in terms of businesses so we can, we can focus in a little bit on that. Love to, love to do that with you. Yeah. Cool. So how would people get in contact with you?

Simon Bedard: 47:09

Um, look, the best thing for people to do is ping, ping me a connection on LinkedIn um, you know, I'm easily found on there. Simon Badard, b e d a r d. Um, of course you can go to, um, by the way, if you do ping me a connection on LinkedIn, Say that you heard me on this podcast cuz I get a lot of connection requests people don't even put a comment and I. I find it odd. I'm like, why? Why is this person randomly reaching out to me and you know, it's not always obvious. So, um, please send me a connection. I'm happy to connect with people, but just say, I heard you on this podcast. I love to connect. Cool. Um, the other thing is, of course you can go to exitadvisory.com.au um, you can see a lot more about us and our team there. Um, you know what, I, I was fine. Um, Steve is that people sometimes have a lot of questions and they, they don't really want to reach out and be put through some big sales process. Um, I, I spent a lot of my time just on quick calls with people, um, just helping you explore a couple of concepts, probably like what you do. Um, sometimes people just kind of need to get their nose in the right direction and start so they can start moving um, so I'm very happy to do that sort of stuff um, in, in fact, if you. Permit me. Um, I was on a podcast with Aspect Legal recently, and I, we put up a little offer to people that if they wanted to do a one hour discovery session around exit planning, we were, I was happy to volunteer my time, so not charge you, but we ask people to make a 50 buck contribution um, and we've got a link for this, by the way, but a 50 buck contribution that goes to Kiva. Is one of the, the, um, charities that we support where they actually allow, they actually facilitate micro loans to business owners in poor countries where frankly, 200 US dollars can mean the difference between them having a business and not um, and so we've done hundreds of loans, um, to through Kiva to to business owners like that. And so if anyone wants on a one hour discovery session and you're happy to chuck 50 bucks down to go to Kiva as a good cause, I'm happy to share my time with you and answer any questions you might have.

Steve Sandor: 49:05

That's a very cool idea. I might r and d that one rip off and duplicate.

Simon Bedard: 49:11

Absolutely. It's one of my favorite causes. It's one of the ones that the team, as a team, we decided we wanted to support. So yeah, it's cool. Great.

Steve Sandor: 49:19

We'll, we'll put all those in the show notes, um, so that, uh, you know, if anybody's interested in that, please, uh, take advantage of that. Simon. Just got, one last question. I asked this of all of my guests and what are you curious about?

Simon Bedard: 49:33

Oh, what am I not curious about? Um, look, I, I think I probably sort of said already, my, I have a fascination around human behavior, so that that is something that constantly drives me outside of business. I am, I'm fascinated space, the universe. I, I, whenever, whenever I'm having issues and problems and getting frustrated with stuff, I do like to look up and just go, oh, that's right. Like we're all just dust you know, like, really how big of my problems, you know? So, um, I think all of that's fascinating. It's, it, it gives good perspective.

Steve Sandor: 50:06

Great. Um, the stars. So looking into the stars,

Simon Bedard: 50:12

Absolutely, absolutely. The whole universe. How does it work? Right? Yeah. I don't know. I'm one of these people who thinks that we can't be alone because this true, statistically speaking, it, it just, it would seem virtually impossible that we're the only animal creature that's been able to have a little bit of, uh, self-reflection and insight and, you know what I mean? It's, uh, So, yeah. Anyway, I'm, I'm, I'm fascinated by that. Sometimes I think I was born maybe a thousand years too early, but, uh, who knows?

Steve Sandor: 50:39

Or, or, or, or you were born a thousand years early, you just come back. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there you go, Um, Simon, thanks so much. Really do appreciate you being, our guest on the Inspiring Business Podcast.

Simon Bedard: 50:50

Thanks for having me, Steve. It's been a pleasure.

Steve Sandor: 50:52

Well, I hope you really enjoyed the conversation I had with Simon Bedard. We really did get into some nitty gritty around the mindset of business owners and how they might go about, creating a business that is in fact scalable and ultimately independent of their daily involvement, which is the intention of the podcast to provide you with practical information that you can take away and use on a daily basis. As you know, I work with business owners who are frustrated with their business and they'd like to spend more time focusing on what generates the revenue and spending time doing the things that they love so that they can spend time with the ones that they love. The Scale to Success Solution is a guided process that helps the business owner to create process systems and people that will enable them to have control of the business, but in a less controlling manner. You've often heard me speak about this throughout my comments in previous podcasts, so if you are interested in discussing how that might work for. there are links to have an exploration call with me and I'm sure we can work through your business and find solutions for you. My name's Steve Sandor and I'm your host on the Inspiring Business Podcast. Really do appreciate you taking the time to listen to this, really what I think is valuable information, and I'll speak to you next week.