Podcast Episode 22 with Transcription – Rem Oculee

Rem Oculee: 

Welcome to the Exit Mindset Podcast. I’m Rem Oculee. 15 years ago when I was trying to sell one of my companies, I couldn’t get what I thought was the right price for it. I realized I had things set up the wrong way, even though the company was profitable. So I spent years researching and studying exit strategies to improve my company’s valuation. I discovered that the same process that improves valuation would improve business profitability and give me more free time. I’m here to show you what I have learned. You see, the best way to grow your business is to look at it from the perspective of someone who’s going to buy your company.

Once you start thinking that way, magic happens and you start seeing things you could not see before, but that’s not all. I also discovered the three principles that you must know to command a better price for your company. The three principles are first, the product. Second, infrastructure and third, the conversation you have with the consumer. Once you master these three principles, you will be on your way to increasing your profits, your company valuation, and get more work-life balance. So listen in and learn how you can do that. I will teach you through this podcast lessons from the trenches, and we will have a dialogue with some of the greatest minds on the planet.

Do you ever wonder that, despite the fact that you have a very, very good team, sometimes not getting the results you’re looking for? When you build a company, you usually want to scale it, want to create more and better infrastructure, and obviously, the product and the conversation with the consumer you want to have, all that needs to come into play in a profound way so you’d be able to exit the company when you want. But also, the same elements of the exit are going to play into your day to day, making the company more efficient. However, that efficiency isn’t showing up. You wonder you’ve got great people. They’re doing hard work, they’re loyal, and they want to contribute to that results, but it’s not happening. And here in this podcast, I’m going to tell you don’t confuse loyalty, willingness to work, and hard work with efficiency with the ability to create more work with less effort.

The problem with these things, a lot of people have the good intentions of doing these things, but what is needed and missing is the guidance. Which means that they doing their best, they’re working at it. And also in society, there’s a misconception that when people are working hard, that means they’re doing their job. It is your prerogative to understand that you need to clarify that to them and help them get out of that rut and get out of that situation. Because sometimes they’re not able to see the big picture and the way you’re seeing it. So they’re focused on tactical things that sometimes go down a rabbit hole. And what you want to make sure is that they’re focused on the things that the most yield. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen situations where people work very hard and getting nowhere.

And I step in and I look at it and go, okay, let’s examine where you’re going with this. And when we look at it, we find that most of those tasks, while they require a lot of effort there, quite frankly, aren’t going to get us anywhere. And when we have that discussion, and we look at the results that we want to achieve in the long-term, the conclusion of this conversation is maybe we shouldn’t be doing this. And I don’t think I have to convince anybody of that. I will tell you about 99% of the time the person sees it themselves. And they go, okay, well, what do I do? Where do I go? I have all these things I got to deal with. So what we start doing, we go to the highest achieving activity. The highest yielding activity, I call it. The activity that could yield the most for the smallest amount of effort, because you want the team, your team, to be focused on the things that create the most results.

Now, you and I know this is very basic, but it’s a very important basic point that it’s worth repeating and worth going after. And we will always need to be reminded the activities that we focus on must be the highest yielding. So when it comes to your team, you have to take it into layers. The first layer is that you’ve got to have a master objective, the main objective, where you’re trying to go. And then for each team member, there has to be an objective that lines up with that master objective, with the main objective, with a company objective, with the north star, call it what you want. When you start undertaking that process and you take each business unit that you have, and then drill down to each individual at some point, whether through you or through your managers, to get to the point where everybody is doing the highest yielding activity, you’re going to find you get massive explosion in your results.

You’re going to achieve even more revenues. You’re going to be able to have more satisfaction in the job that people are doing. Because you got to understand people that are good want to do the good job and they want to see the results. But because they’re focusing on the wrong thing, it’s actually a bit frustrating to them sometimes when they get the job done and they find there’s other things that needs to be done. And they might go item number eight, let’s say, and item number eight is not as yielding as item number seven. Who’s going to be able to help with the direction? You know the big picture and you got to be able to focus people, it’s important. So again, we go back to the same concept. You want to have an exit mindset, meaning you want to play your business as if you’re going to sell it tomorrow, but you’re not necessarily going to sell it tomorrow.

If you find the elements that will make your company more valuable, then not only you’re going to make more on the sale, but also it could be that the business becomes such a wonderful asset for yourself that you don’t want to sell it. It continues to produce results for everybody. However, would you say a buyer interested in your company would be looking for loyal, hardworking employees and the company that like it, and also getting the highest results? That’s something you can point out. That is something that could have monetary value. I give you an example. If you are the buyer of the company and I come to you and say to you, this company has got employees that are working, they’re very hard workers, they focused on whatever. And then at the day, the company is achieving some objectives. Versus showing company B, let’s say this case.

And I say, this company’s got a set of loyal employees, they love the company, they care about it, but on top of it, they have intense focus on the most important activity. And both companies make the same amount of money at the end of the day. Which one would you choose? My guarantee to you is that you going to choose the company B. That’s because company A, while it produces the same result, it’s not necessarily giving you the same process. It’s not giving you the stability. It’s also not giving you the clear direction a company needs to excel and thrive. This always brings to the point of a company has to have the right people. We talk about that a lot. During many of the podcasts. You cannot function well and create a viable company that moves well without good people. And your good people have to start from the top and down the chain of command until you get to the employee that is doing the job on the field.

You have to have the right people and many companies just focus on just the work. Give me the work. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care how much you care. I think that’s a mistake. And I think the company is going to be much more productive, you would have more advancements, you’d have more even fun, in addition to having a better viable company that could be prime for sale when you need to, and even a sale of a company like that would yield employees that already are happy, and they’re going to continue doing their work, maybe under new management or new ownership. Many cases, if the company is set up correctly by the way, the management doesn’t change. It’s just ownership changes. Because a lot of times, if somebody buys a business, they’re probably more interested in keeping the structure and improving on it in ways that are more enhancing than anything else.

But we’ve talked about all that again, and I always want to bring you back because you always want to frame your thinking in terms of this is not necessarily about the sale of the company. This is more about creating a better model. A better model is what counts. A better model that is scalable, that can give you maximum amount of revenue for the work you’re doing. There’s definitely a maximum amount of revenue you could achieve in any enterprise, unless you have to scale it up in a different way and make it bigger and allow it to grow even further. But what you want to do is get to that maximum level and make that run on automatic, and then see how much better you are off in terms of your time, in terms of your profits, in terms of your fun, in terms of the energy you have in the environment you’re dealing with and on and on and on.

Remember, if you think like a buyer of your company, even if you have no intent of selling your company, you are going to achieve much bigger results through everything you’re doing in there. Efficiency is key to optimal results. Efficiency is something you got to be thinking about all the time. All the great innovations in the world, all great companies are built on efficiency. If you remember, what is the opposite efficiency, wasteful. What is wasteful do? It takes away your resources and time, whether financial or people.

And the last thing you want to do is go into a path or a lane where your resources are being used in not in a very wise way, even if you’re profitable, even if you’re making money, even if it works. I mean, we’ve all been operations that worked very well, but we look at it and go, how the hell is that working? How is it moving? I mean, I get it, they’re working well in terms of results, but it looks like it would break down anytime. So make efficiency your top priority, understand always the value of loyal, hardworking employees, never, ever, ever dismiss that. It’s a key to your success.

Good people working efficiently on the highest yielding activity. Remember, action is everything. Use it or lose it. I’m Rem Oculee and I will see you on the next podcast.

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