Podcast Episode 24 with Transcription – 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, the 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 say to yourself, “Why aren’t things working out so quickly? Why does it take so much time? Is it really going to be over?” Well, the title of this episode today is Nothing Happens in One Day. In this episode you’ll have the tools that you need to dig in for the long haul and you will feel much more confident about the outcome of your business once you do all these things. So there’s all sorts of theory out there about whether you should set goals or don’t set goals. Goals should be written, goals should be repeated, goals should be chanted, you name it. There’s always a way that somebody invented how you should put your goals together. But of course the most common one of them all is write your goals down. But even that by itself is an art. And the reason I say it’s an art, because everybody’s got some sort of a template or general things that people say they should be thinking about and it ignores the reality of your own circumstances.

The biggest thing about goals is that if you are really, really trying to do things and enthusiastic, you’re going to set some goals that are pretty lofty [inaudible 00:02:33] pretty quickly. And that’s okay, there’s no problem with that. The big thing you got to realize is that sometimes it just doesn’t work out the way you want it, and just takes a little bit longer. So the key to this is that you got to be patient. And patience by self is an art, especially when inundated every day with all sorts of issues that you got to deal with when it comes to your business and your company.

So you’ve already thought about your product, you have an exit mindset, you’ve thought about your infrastructure, you have your conversations set up correctly. And you’re moving forward, but you’re just not getting there. So I’m going to teach you a strategy that you could use to actually help you move forward and move a little bit quicker than the normal.

So the normal way of doing this is that you wake up every day and look at what’s around in your company and try to figure out how it could move it forward and see if you could do better. But what if, you take your numbers, set them up in front of you, and create a master KPI that you look at and try to see how close are you to that master KPI. Most likely you’re not close to it. And for most companies, they’re not. So if you are not close to it, that’s a good thing. If you are, probably that’s a bad thing. I’m going to tell you why. Because that means you’re not planning on growing. You’re just happy and satisfied. And guess what the worst thing in the business world is? Satisfaction. I’ve seen many companies go from greatness to mediocrity simply because they were too comfortable. They just had achieved their goal and never bothered setting a new one.

So ultimately you should be always in the business of a higher goal from where you are. But having said that, if you set that goal and look at it, your daily routine should be, it’s to look at your numbers on some sort of a spreadsheet or some sort of a planning board that you have and trying to figure out why aren’t you at that master KPI that you are planning on getting to. 90% of the time, you’re going to find issues that you have neglected, you’re going to find problems you haven’t addressed, and you’re going to find things that you could be doing that will get you closer to it. That these things would have not have happened had you not had master KPI related to what you have every day.

There’s one more ingredient that I must mention to you which is called annoyance. So if you look at the master KPI and you’ll look at your current number and go, “Yeah, I don’t like it, but okay,” you’re not getting anywhere. But if you’re truly uncomfortable, and annoyed, unhappy with it, that’s where creativity comes in. And you’re going to find that you’re going to be doing things that are going to get you to solve some of the problems that are not getting you there. For example, let’s say you have a KPI of X amount of revenues for the month, and when you look at it, you find that you’re only generating one 10th of that KPI. Well now, you go, “Why am I not getting there?”

You start asking questions. Those questions has to be asked in a profound way with you and your team looking at them and going, “Why?” Somebody might come back and say, “Well look, our infrastructure right now doesn’t accommodate us getting three or four times the revenues we need to do because simply we have a problem with shipping. Our shipping department can’t ship as much.” That’s just fictional, coming up with that. But let’s say that’s the problem. “Okay,” you go, “That’s one problem. What’s what’s the other problem?” “Well, also our product, we’ve got people that are taking them without any returns. So we’re not able to double up or triple our revenues in here because not many people are buying it, we’re getting some bad name here and there.”

Let’s just take those two problems, and I can guarantee you many businesses can go to 5, 6, 7, 8 problems. So, if we take those two problems right now, then you start going, “Okay, well, what do we need to do here?” “Well, our shipping department needs to be expanded because we can only ship so many units.” “Oh, okay.” Well now, you start working on that solution because that particular problem is preventing you from getting to that 10X number, 10 times the number you want. Right now you are at 1/10/ so you start fixing that problem. As you fix that problem, you’re going to find it will create some impact.

Then you go to the second problem. And you might do it simultaneously but you might go sequentially depending on what you’re doing. So, you might go to your product and address one issue, “Why is it doing this?” Well, maybe for that reason, that reason, that reason, you get three or four reasons. “Well, can we fix that?” And through discussions because you really are unhappy about the way it is, you’re going to start coming up with solutions.

And if you do that over and over again, over multiple parts of your operation, doing it every day, in my opinion, should be a daily thing, the solutions will compound and multiply by exponential a month. And that’s where growth comes in. If I tell you I’m going to give you one thing that you could do that will explode your company with an exit mindset, it would be that. Because that 10X number we’re talking about could be your exit number, could be the number I want to have, so that when a buyer comes in and says, “This is the kind of revenues that I have, here’s my product, here’s my infrastructure, here’s what I got. And not to mention that this number itself could represent serious opportunities to you and to the people around you.

Remember, you don’t operate in a vacuum. It’s not about one person or one entity, it’s about everybody. It’s about you, it’s about your company, it’s about the people that work in it, it’s about the community, it’s about the entire world. So you got to take that approach that everybody is in this, it’s not just you. The most important thing about this exercise and the goal of it is, is not to take it casually or just do this in a monotonous way, I find that many times people just look at numbers or KPIs and they treat them just like a utterance of words that is meaningless. And if you start doing that or people around you start doing that, forget it. You’re just going to walk in every day, do the same thing over and over again, and they’re going to pay attention to it.

The key to this is profound assessment of where you are where you need to be. And if you do that in a very sincere, proactive way, I promise you will change everything. I don’t want to make the podcast too long because I want to leave you with that one point only, that if you do that, you assess your company and you assess your KPI, and you start asking questions, and start finding out what the problems are and start fixing them, you’re going to get somewhere. Don’t try and dig into every little problem but don’t take just one problem. Try and see if you can get a multiple number of issues that you haven’t had and see if you could fix all, at the same time or a one at a time. My guess is most likely one at a time. And you probably have to learn how to assign some of these tasks to different people so they could fix them for you or you fix them yourself.

Ultimately, leadership boils down on you, you need to know that. And people are relying on you. So you got to be able to take the initiative and start looking at the exit mindset as the path to take to make sure that your company thrives, the people that are in it thrive, and that one day, if you decide to sell the company, you’d have the right valuation for it.

If you have any questions on that, feel free to email me at askrem@exitmindset.com. Remember, action is everything. Use it or lose it

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