Podcast Episode 12 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, deck 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, once in a while, wonder if you’re in a rut? You can’t even figure it out. It just feels like another day at the office, another day at the company. The problem with a rut that is just that, a rut you can’t even see. And that is a matter of self-definition. So, you as a business owner and a leader should be able to identify when that happens and when it does, you need to take action. Because nothing could kill a company or could kill morale more than just a status quo or again, a rut. So, let’s talk about how you can use the Exit Mindset to keep things fresh, to reset or what I call to rebase again. And I’m going to tell you exactly what I mean by that, rebasing. So, the Exit Mindset predicates on the concept that you reframe your entire thinking as if somebody is about to buy your company and trying to figure out if your product, your infrastructure and your conversation with the consumer is something that is truly purchasable, truly valued by a buyer of your company.

And it shouldn’t be from your perspective, it should be from the perspective of the buyer of the company. And here is where you need to think of your business as a journey, a journey with an ultimate destination, with many cities in between. Each city, I call a base. So, let’s say you’re traveling to the ultimate city, and down that path, there are multiple cities in between each of the number of roads. So, you travel and travel and then you get to the first city. And after the exhausting time you, you went through trying to get there, you want to relax for a little bit, settle, resupply, before you moved down the road again. So, you do that for a little bit, and then you get comfortable. And when you’re done with all that, probably it is the time to go on the road again and do it over again and just get to the next city, until you get to ultimate destination.

So in your business journey, you also are facing the same thing. You’re moving from one place to the next, from one advancement to the next. So, think of each milestone as like a city that you have to reach. Let’s take a situation where you might have to achieve a certain outcome you want in your company. And you hit certain revenue targets, your product is selling. People are excited, things are moving. And then as this goes on and on, at some point you realize things just are starting to kind of get dull. And when that happens, it’s time to shake things up and get to the next base. And to do that, you have to embark on a road towards that direction. But what does that road look like, and what is the direction? That’s up to you to determine.

You got to assess where you are. You got to assess your location. You got to assess your situation, your company, your business, and your employees and everything that’s going on around you and decide how you go to the next thing. So, how do you know when it’s time to move and rebase and go to the next level? What are the signs that you would need to see that will help you go in that direction and go down the road? Here’s a couple of ideas for you. Maybe your numbers are down, maybe your numbers are exactly the same, by the way, that’s just as bad sometimes. Another key point here you got to look at carefully is the enthusiasm among the crew that is working for you. Is it there? Is it not there? Does it feel like they’re walking in like it’s another day and the day looks boring? If they’re just walking in to do a job, probably starting to get stale, probably that base you’re on right now needs to move. You need to go to another base.

In other words, you need to rebase. Which means you got to get on the road, pack up, and start a new direction to the next level. And your biggest indicator, that really is more intuitive than it’s scientific because of all the things that I mentioned right now could be occurring, but it’s not necessarily indicative of anything. I mean, we had it over the years, have the same thing. And by the way, this is something that I do on a regular basis in my companies. So, if I am noticing that it’s dull, something is not moving. All of a sudden, I look and I find that this isn’t making sense anymore. We’re doing things that are just robotic. I’ve noticed that we’re doing things that are more repetitive. I noticed that I’m doing things that are not getting us anywhere. And I go, okay, maybe it’s time to change things; to stir things around.

And that’s when the process kicks in. So, I usually dive into the numbers. I dive into certain procedures. I dive into our product. I dive into our infrastructure. I look at how we’re dealing with the consumer, and I find that. And then I step back and I look, and I go, does this sound right from somebody else on the outside, trying to purchase the company? And sometimes the answer to some of these things are, yes, that looks good. But I’ll look at other things and I go, wow, that is really horrible. And you have to be honest with yourself. One of the biggest things and biggest mistakes that people make is that they are not honest with themselves. You gotta be able to find the problems and look at them objectively, because if you don’t, you will end up deluding yourself. And there’s no killer in business than deluding oneself, especially in a position of leadership.

For example, in your infrastructure procedures, examine your command and control structures. Are you executing and are people executing on the most important things that move the troops in the right direction? Are your people moving other people in the right way? Are they moving their subordinates? Are they, are they moving their projects in a manner consistent with the overall objective? And to be able to have all that done by you and everybody else in a cohesive synergistic manner is key to this. And that’s, again, some of these things that we do all the time. We always examined that, is everybody on the same page? Are we all moving in the right direction? Are the teams trying to work together in a way that is conducive to finding the optimal most important thing out there? We all know about the theory of the rocks versus stones versus sand. Where if you got to move the rocks, the idea behind is that if you get a vase, you can only put, let’s say three big rocks in it, and you could put about maybe 50 stones in it.

But you could put probably about a hundred thousand grains of sand in it at the same time. So, if you notice there’s only three big rocks and this whole idea is that what you need to move is your big rocks is key. And in every company, you’re going to find a lot of times people are moving actually the sands, not even the stones and the stones are sort of important, but not very, very important. They kind of move the dial, but not that much, not as much as big rocks. And you want to do that, you want to focus on the rocks. And rebasing, essentially all it does, it takes you away and takes the company away from focus on the stones and the sand and take you to the point where you’re focusing on the rocks.

And you go back to the most elementary things that could give you that distinction, whether what you’re doing is going in the right direction or not. Example, you might look at one particular metric that you have, and you find that, or a KPI and examine it. And lots of times you see by tweaking, modifying it, by engaging it, you’re going to be able to focus more on that rock you’re looking for. You will find that rebasing will inject a lot of fresh thinking and a lot of fresh ideas and a lot of good attitudes within your company. And also, you’re gonna find that a lot of the growth that will occur in your company is going to be based on that idea of rebasing again. By going down the road and reengaging the things that you have in the Exit Mindset and finding out what are the ones that are going to a difference and going to create those rocks for you.

What I usually do is elicit team feedback on what is lacking sometimes. Sometimes I’m going on my own and thinking about it and going, what is not moving the dial sometimes? Or why isn’t the dial not moving in that direction or that direction in a while? Or why aren’t we getting those results? Again, it’s a process of questioning. Remember, questions are the answer. You got to ask questions, and sometimes you got to ask critical questions until you get the answer that makes sense. Because your brain will know when it’s making sense, even though the brain has a tendency sometimes to think that any answer you give makes sense. If you reexamined the answer you just gave yourself, you’re going to find sometimes that, well no, that does not make sense. And eventually you’ll get to the right one. So there’s a lot of value in the idea of rebasing.

It’s really rejuvenation. It’s refreshing your company. It’s rethinking your ideas, it’s examining your objective. And once you start that process, it will be like being on a tough road that is hard, and you’re going to get a lot of pain going through it. But the nature of growing companies is to a degree is about pain. To get to the point where you’re having fun. The team will have more fun, and they’re going to be more excited when they get there. And everybody’s excited when you get, when they usually get to the destination. But any journey that’s worth it, has got to involve a little bit of a pain. You gotta be able to withstand the pressures that come in with people complaining, for example, about the things that are going to be difficult. You’re going to get that by the way. And that’s not because people are bad or anything like that.

It’s just the nature of the game. People not necessarily going to understand what you’re trying to do, and you gotta be able to go past that, stand firm, hold your ground, and continue powering forward. And you’re gonna find, once you get the results, everybody will understand and they’re going to be very happy with it. And in fact, they’re going to use it very, very well. But the key is that somebody has to have the conviction, it’s got to be you. So, the idea behind this is that start with the concept of rebasing. Think of the things in your company today that are probably stagnant or needs to change. Think of new approaches, involve your team, start getting the process going. And my assurance is to you, that if you try the process two or three times over the year, you’re going to find that you’re gonna be in places you couldn’t even imagine. And that will ultimately, if you’re using the Exit Mindset, will contribute to your company valuation in a significant way that will create happiness. That will create comfort for the people that work for the company, that will give the company more revenues and profit, and ultimately more value for your company. Remember, action is everything. If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. I’m Rem Oculee, and I’ll see you on the next podcast.

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