The Key to a Business that Thrives Without You—Insights from Brad Sugars

I tracked down the founder of Action Coach International, Brad Sugars, and had a conversation with him on the podcast. My goal was to tap into his experience and insights around what he’d learned from working with businesses and being an investor and acquirer and selling a number of businesses himself, as well as being a coach to some of the very popular businesses out there. So what did he discuss? What did he share? He shared his tips around why every business owner needs a plan for an exit. Whether you intend to sell or not, the value of building a business that can run without you to enable you to continue owning the business and make other investments. Have the business management driven strategies for maximising the valuation of your business and to grow through profitability and scalability and how to prepare for different types of buyers of your business, whether it be VC, venture capital or, you know, strategic buyers. And he also shared some tips for transitioning from that owner manager role to moving into the chairman style role and owning and running the business via remote control. This is a great conversation. I really enjoyed talking to Brad. I don’t know, maybe it’s because he’s a fellow Aussie who’s moved overseas and there were some similarities there, who knows? But key insights Plan your exit early. The sooner you start, the better off you are. Understand your buyers, get your business and prepare specifically for whoever’s buying your business and build a business that can run without you. These are the key things that if you want to get a successful exit, if you want to be one of the 20%, if you’re going to be exiting on your terms, these are the things you need to focus on. Great conversation, Brad Sugars. Hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to the podcast that’s dedicated to helping business owners to prepare for exit. So then you get to maximise the valuation and exit on your terms. This is the Exit Insights podcast presented by Succession Plus I’m Darryl Bates-Brownsword and today I’m talking to Brad Sugars and we’re going to be exploring about what are some of the assumptions we make as business owners when we start thinking about what happens next and life after our business. Welcome for, welcome to the show and thanks for joining me, Brad.

Hey Darryl, great to be with you.

Excellent. Now Brad, look I guess to frame it up and what listeners are going to get out of you if they, if they don’t know your name already. You’re probably the highest profile or at least in the top three of in the world of business coaches and helping business business owners build and develop their businesses so that they can you know, increase the valuation and build that lifestyle is, I guess.

Yeah, look, buddy, I’ve been, you know, for 31 years now, we’ve been coaching business people how to build a commercial profitable enterprise that works without you. That’s our definition of a business. Because commercial, meaning you know, the basics are in place. Profitable meaning you got decent marketing. Commercial profitable enterprise, meaning that it is actually a company. It’s not just a thing that pays you. There’s actual people in there and that works, meaning there’s systemisations because that adds to the value value and without you, meaning it’s run under management, which adds to the valuation. I think most people do forget, Darryl, that every business owner will have an exit. There is never a business owner that doesn’t have an exit. And I put that in front of people. Sometimes it scares the living daylights out of them and others it wakes them up. So hopefully today we’ll help some people get a great exit.

Yeah, perfect. Because there’s so many that I meet that say, look, I’m never going to exit this business. And I, you know, similar response. Well, you are. Whether you plan it or not, you’re going to leave the business one day and you want to make sure that what happens after that is exactly what you want to happen. You don’t want to leave it to chance. So I guess that that sort of leads us in, you know, you’ve spoken to. I wouldn’t dare to think how many business owners over the years, over 30 years.

In hundreds of thousands, buddy. So, yeah.

So let’s do some quick in the head stats, shall we? So we know that there’s a widely reported statistic out there that in the SME market, and what I’m thinking about the SME market is those that are running a business, like you were saying, it’s not a lifestyle business. So it’s probably doing more than a million in revenue, whether it’s pounds or dollars. And they’ve probably got more than 10 people in the business. It’s gone beyond that employer with 10 helpers stage. So that puts it into what I’d call an enterprise or a company, which means they start to have to figure out how to build a management team beyond themselves rather than just a couple of helpers. So in that sector of the market, we know that there’s like 80% that when they go to market to try and sell the business fail to get a deal. So based on your experience, what do you think are the assumptions or what’s going through the heads of those business owners? That they’re, they’re rocking up and you know, they’re arriving at the day and you know, they’re, they’re making some assumptions to think they will get a deal, but 80% don’t.

Yeah. What we have to go right back to the beginning of what is a business and what is it that you’re aiming to do? Gerber said it, gosh, I think I was 20 or 21. I had Michael Gerber come down to Australia and speak and, and he said, you know, the only reason to start a business is to sell it. I didn’t really get it at the time because I loved what I did. And I was thinking, you know, I’m never going to sell this. Why would I ever sell it? You know, what I didn’t realise is that the asset value of the business is what its real win is. The win isn’t the cash flow, the profitability, the salary you pay yourself. The win is the capital value of the asset. And if you don’t create an asset, and for it to be an asset, it’s got to be finished like this pair of glasses. You know, imagine I made this pair of glasses, but I didn’t finish it because I didn’t have the arms on it and I didn’t have one of the lenses. It’s not finished, so I’m not going to get any good money for it sort of thing. So what we’ve got to realise, day one is that our job is to finish the business. And when I coach business people, my first question to them is by what date will you be off the tools? Meaning if you’re a painter, what day will you stop painting? If you’re an accountant, what day will you stop doing the accounting and actually build the business? And then the second date is by what date will it run without you? When you can take a six month vacation and come back and it’s bigger than when you left sort of thing. And I want people to have in their head those two dates, usually a year to three years for the first date and three to seven years for the second date sort of thing. Because you’ve got to then work backwards from it. If you say, okay, I’m going to finish my business by 2030, let’s just pick that as a thing, right? And you say in 2030 it’s going to have this amount of sales, it’s going to have this amount of profitability, therefore it’s going to be worth this much. And then the next question, Darrel, is to whom? To whom is it going to be worth that much. And you’ve got to understand that when you’re selling a business, you’ve got to look at the types of buyers that you’re going to. Obviously the ideal type of buyer is a strategic buyer that is a public company because if it’s a public company there’s a strategic buy will pay the most for it. If it’s a venture capital fund, they’re probably next or a home office, they’re probably next on the list. But they’re going to want an earn out period, two to three years and they want to control it. And there’s messes that can come with that. We can go into those details and then you go down the scale to a single buyer or a single family or a person that sold another business wants to buy this one and so on. But what we want to suggest to most people is that you have some sort of an aim of 5 million plus EBITDA to put you into the category of venture capital funds, large organizations. 2 million EBITDA now will get you into some of the smaller venture cap funds. So heading for those sorts of numbers and if you’re saying to yourself, okay, I can’t see my business doing that. Yeah, but if you set the goal and say okay, I want to do 5 million EBITDA by 2030, how am I going to do that? Then you work towards it type thing and so it really comes back to it. But there’s companies that will buy you. They might buy you for geographic expansion, they might buy you for product line expansion, meaning they want to add your product to all of their existing customers or vice versa. They want to add their product or service to your existing customer base. One of my companies in Australia, commercial cleaning business, we were approached by a Japanese coffee company to buy us because they see we have all of these thousands of businesses we clean. They just put the coffee into those thousands of businesses and double the profitability of the company. It’s like that’s an interesting one. Might buy you because they want to buy your technology. They might buy you because they want to buy your people. You know, it’s hard to hire great people so it’s easier to buy companies. They might buy you because it’s cheaper to buy your entire business than it is to do marketing to get the thousands of customers you’ve got.

Yeah.

So you got to start thinking through all those things. When you say okay, if I’m going to finish this and it’s generally a three year project to sell a business, you Know, I don’t see many people selling a business faster than that other than through fire sales. Generally, it’s three yeses to get an actual yes. Three companies or three buyers will say, yes, we’re going to buy it. They’ll sign an LOI. You do not stop marketing, you do not stop talking to everyone else because until there is an actual cash in your bank account, it’s not sold. So I’ve had to learn that one the hard way a couple of times.

And most entrepreneurs or business owners should be able to relate to that because when they first started their business, hopefully they’ve learned that the sale of to the client is not complete until the cash is in the bank. It’s exactly the same.

But Darryl, none of us, in most cases, I say none in the vast majority of cases, we’ve none of us have actually sold a business before. So we don’t actually know how it. It will be. That last year of it will be the hardest year in your life, especially if you’re still the operational CEO of the business. Because if you’re still running the business, and I won’t say lying, but not telling the full story to your team because you’re keeping them in the dark about this buyer or some of them in the dark, or you’re keeping customers in the dark or someone doesn’t know you’re going ahead with this transaction, and third of all, you’re satisfying a buyer who wants to see everything and finish their due diligence and get to know everything about your company. It is the hardest year of your life. And to top it off, at the last minute, your whole brain and your heart is fighting against the sale because it’s like, well, what am I going to do after I’m done? You know, people won’t need me anymore. I’m not going to be the boss. I won’t have anywhere to go every day type thing. So first piece of advice I give everyone is, all right, what are you going to do when it’s sold? They look at me and they go, I don’t know. I work that out. Once it’s sold, nope, it will never sell unless you know where you’re going afterwards.

And so many say, well, I’m going to sip and drink pina coladas on the beach and I go, fantastic. And what are you going to do in the second week?

Yeah, I reckon most of us can get to about three months of doing nothing and then we start reorganising the cabinetry at home and by that time your spouse Is generally going, okay, please go and buy another business. Please, please, please go and do something.

Get out of my life. I need my space back.

You know, I love being a serial entrepreneur in that. All I do, Darryl, now is I find great companies that are in one location, I globally expand them and then sell them sort of thing. And so for me, serial entrepreneurship is not about the profitability. You run a business for one of two reasons, Darryl. For profits and from profits and cash flow or for capital value. If you’re running it for capital value, generally you’re turning all the profit back into the business, maybe lending money and investing money to grow it so you can get a capital value. If you’re running it for profitability, then you’re sort of not doing that. And I think you’ve got to decide at some point if you’re going to sell that. Okay, I need now a three year running it for capital value type equation.

Yeah. Bingo. One of the things we look at is, and encourage business owners to do is at that point point that’s, you know, if it’s three or five years, whatever it is, you got to make that mindset shift from revenue and profit growth to asset growth. And once you start looking at that, you know, you can see both sides of all the elements that will increase the valuation of your business. The profit, you know, the profitability is great and you want best practice profitability for your size and your industry. But also there’s a whole lot of opportunities that business owners miss around. It is actually possible to increase the multiple of your business valuation. As you were touching on earlier, let’s make your business attractive to a strategic buyer. Start thinking about how they’re going to view your business and start building something that they’re going to want to buy.

Yeah. If you look at who’s buying in your sector, who are the venture capital firms buying in your sector, who are the public companies buying in your sector? Because they’re always out. There’s companies buying, there’s people buying in your sector. Start to learn who they are, what they’re buying, what the shape of it is, all that sort of stuff. I remember years ago we had a menswear business and there was a bigly listed company that was in the clothing business. And if you got to 10 sites, they bought you. You know, if you were under 10 sites, they weren’t going to buy you. They wouldn’t touch anything with less than 10 sites, retail sites, so you had to know what you were doing. I remember a buddy of mine in the cars and pubs type thing. And there was again another big public company looking to buy them because there was a change in the law that allowed them to move into liquor sales and paying a 19 multiple. If you met these criteria. And he’s like, he would buy things for two and three multiples that were run down, put a few million dollars into it, fix it up, get it to the category that these guys would buy, and hey, presto, he’s got a 19 times. So it’s always a way to start with the end in mind, as Covey taught us with, okay, I’m going to build something that. And you don’t have to sell it, it just has to be able to be sold. Because if something does ever happen to you, your family needs to be able to make a transaction or your shareholders or your board needs to be able to make a transaction. And so you’ve got to make sure that this business can run without you. I currently have major interest in nine companies and work two days a week because I’m the chairman of those companies. I’m not the operational CEO. And I think that ultimately an operational CEO is probably the biggest thing you can do to increase the multiplier of the business. If the multiple for running it yourself is X, the multiple for running it under management is at least three to five times X. You know, it’s so much more valuable with a management team.

So, Brad, I’m wondering, given that you’ve done it a number of times yourself, have you got any tips that you can share for those owners who are listening to this now and just at that, you know, point where they’re going, I’ve got to get out of being that operational CEO. I’ve pulled myself off the tools. I’ve been the CEO, now I’m going to get myself into the chairman role. Have you got any tips for that transition?

You know, two ways to go about it. If the company is run down and I’m wanting to fix it, I bring in an outsider to change the culture of the organisation and do that big shift. If, however, the company’s running well and growing well, I’ll generally want to promote an insider. Now sometimes I don’t have that insider. So what we’ve got to do is actually recruit maybe a CEO or a CMO or, you know, a C level exec. Recruit someone with the knowledge in my head that I’m going to build this person into the CEO and it’ll take anywhere from six to 12 months to build them to CEO. Now I will say this though, Darryl the number one biggest killer for most businesses growth at that stage is the owner’s inability to let go.

To let go.

The emotional I’m the boss, I want to be the boss, I want to be in there every day, I like it sort of thing. And that inability to let go is what kills. As I was reading a book recently and they said, you know, the, the CEO’s number one skill is usually a company’s biggest let down area. You know, it’s like yeah, I remember that because I was, I love marketing. I think of myself as a marketer first in most business sides and, and I remember in companies where I wouldn’t employ a CMO because well, I can do that, you know, I’m a great marketer, I can do that and I wouldn’t dedicate myself to it so it would never get done properly type thing. But the same is true for that CEO role. If you are the CEO and the owner, you’re doing an awful job above, you know, because you’re lying to your owner yourself about oh yeah I did, I worked the hardest I could possibly work today. No one could ever work harder than me. And yes you did. Well done Brad. You’re amazing. You know, like you moment you move to chairman and this is why I see. What I love about business coaching, Darryl, is we coach business owners for an hour a week sort of thing. And what I’m trying to teach them to do is to be me. I’m trying to teach them to be able to run their business in an hour a week, an hour of coaching their CEO every week, you know, one hour meeting once a week. Coach your CEO and have them run the business sort of thing. I think it also goes back Jeff Smart wrote a book called who where he says you gotta document three pages to hire a CEO or hire anyone in a business. What’s their job? One full page documentation. How will you know they’re successful? One full page documentation. And what type of person do you want training? Have they had what background? What sort of companies have they worked for? 1 full page documentation. If you can write those three pages and fully document them, then you’ve got a good chance at finding the right person. But I also think you’ve got to be very clear on the factor that recruiting today is about. Getting your job in front of people that already have a job. You know, it’s, it’s not about the help wanted, it’s the person you want to come in and run your company is already running someone else’s company, you know, or They’ve already run their own business or that sort of thing. And it’s. It’s important to understand. I think one final thing I would say is if you’re doing 10 million a year now, don’t hire a CEO that’s only run a $10 million a year company. Hire someone that’s run a $50 million a year company because they know how to professionalise it, scale it, all of those sorts of things. But if you’re entrepreneurial, you’ve still got to. I see too many entrepreneurs hire non entrepreneurial CEOs and then they end up clashing sort of thing. Yeah, you can have a COO that’s not entrepreneurial or a CMO that’s not, but that if you’re entrepreneurial, bring in someone entrepreneurial. If you’re fairly staid and steady, then bring them in. But bring them in for six months at a C level and train them up.

Yeah. And what are your thoughts on culture? You know, you’ve talked a lot about the commercial attributes and the skills and the experience and the fact that you want them to already have built or run a business that’s already much bigger than yours. So they know what that looks like and what, what needs to be done. What about the cultural side of things? What are your views there?

Yeah, look, I personally believe that a CEO’s number one job is culture and a chairman in particular. My number one job is vision and culture as chairman of the company sort of thing, and is great people. And third is numbers, but the culture. And that’s why I like to bring them in for six months and let them assimilate into the culture rather than bringing their culture to organisation and causing a disruption. If the company is something I’m trying to turn around, then I want disruption at the CEO level. So I want to bring someone in that will change what’s going on. But if the company’s running well and just needs further scale, then I’ll bring someone in that has, you know, that abides by and loves our culture. See, we document our culture in our companies, Darrell. Like, if someone jumps on actioncoach.com they can see our 14 points of culture. It’s fully documented. This is who we are. This is why we do what we do. I think companies today struggle with documenting who they are and why they do what they do. And if you’re not clear on that, I wrote a book recently called Pulling Profits out of a Hat, and it’s about exponential growth. And one of the five core disciplines is that of mission if the company doesn’t have a clear mission, meaning, and the way you know you’re on mission is your people love what they do. They love coming to work and your customers love buying from you. They love the experience of being your customer type thing. And so that mission part of business today is part of any great scale company. Any company whose sole purpose is profitability is losing out on employing great people and keeping great people employing and having great customers and keeping great customers. There’s got to be a belief factor that’s greater than just profitability.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, it’s, it’s what brings meaning, what brings purpose. I, I’m interested to hear that you, you document your culture. There’s so many business owners that go, well, our culture is our culture. We don’t have any control, it’s just how people show up. Yeah, I have a similar response to what you just did when I, when I hear that and, and you’ve been able to distill it down and into 14 points. Beliefs, I guess, behaviors.

If I look at Zappos, they’ve got their five core values. You know, you look at these companies that create a culture and nurture and build a culture and that’s why you build rituals into a company. Rituals maintain the culture sort of thing, but collaboration and culture are built from within and you got to build systems for that that allow that to happen. So you know, when do certain meetings happen? When do certain celebrations happen? What awards are given out? And you know, I love awards that once they’re given to a team member, that team member is now in charge of picking the next person that gets the award type thing. And a lot of them should be culture based, not awards for like top salesperson or something, but awards that are culture oriented. We have one in our companies. We talk about above and below the point of power and above is ownership, accountability and responsibility. And below the point is blame, excuse and denial. So above owner, accountable, responsible spells or. So we have a little or and it says on an ownership, accountability, responsibility and the OR gets passed. When someone does a great job, they get given the OR and then it’s their turn to find someone within the next week that they give the oar to and they have to tell everyone why they gave them the oar and what it is about the culture. Discussing your points of culture at your weekly meetings is important. Pick one point of culture and discuss it type thing. Really.

Yeah. And you’ve just given a couple of great examples about how to reinforce the culture and make sure that it’s passed on and always at top of mind rather than just a reactive at cause type of thing. We have no control over our culture. So you’ve got to get on the front foot. And I think you mentioned earlier that that’s your role when you’re in the chairman’s role, that you’re looking after culture, you’re looking after vision and you’re managing the numbers and making sure that everything, all the targets are hit and the leadership team are on track. So one of the things that I’m really curious about, Brad, is, you know, we’ve talked about those big things of, you know, I guess how do you eliminate owner dependence and get off the tools and what are some of the tips that you’ve shared there? Given that you’ve mentioned it’s 30 plus years that you’ve owned and built and sold and run businesses, what are some of the things? I don’t know, maybe three tips, you know, now that you wish you knew 30 years ago. You may not have listened to them 30 years ago, but wonderful.

Yeah, look, I mean, 30 years ago when I first started out, I wore it as a badge of honor that I was the hardest working person in the building, that I turned up the earliest and opened the door and picked up the mail and I was the last one out and turned out the lights. And you know, I even bragged sometimes about sleeping on the couch in my office sort of thing. You know, it was like. And what I realised is that, you know, the hustle and grind type idea is literally the new stupid. I covered up all of the mistakes of the business by working two times, two times, three times, four times harder than I should have. You know, my. Because I worked so hard in the sales, it covered up the fact that I didn’t really have a sales system and a sales team. It was just me and that. And that brings you to the rule of one. If a business has a business based around one thing like piece of software or customer or one salesperson or, you know, if there’s one thing that it generally that business isn’t going to value out very well because it’s, you know, I was talking to someone the other day and they have, he’s the only salesperson in the organisation. I said, well, until you get two or three salespeople, you don’t actually have a sales system. You’ve just got some guy who’s grown up in this doing it really well, making sales type thing. And so you’ve got to get that if you want the business to run without you. Firstly, get just one division or one section to run without you. Start there, don’t try and do all of it at one time. Build one division and let that run without you sort of thing. And then build the next and the next and gradually it does it. Because as you build checklists and systems and video training and all of that stuff into your company, gradually it starts to work without you. And if one system saves you five minutes a week, then two systems saves you ten minutes a week and gradually you get to a point where, hey, I’m saving myself a full day and then you’re working on it more and that sort of thing. And I go back to the point I made earlier, the third thing would be had to learn to let go. I remember when I first tried to retire from running my company, I went, played golf, I played with my dad, he was the only other retired person I knew. And so three weeks of golf and I was literally playing six days a week. It drove myself nuts because I’m goal oriented. Like I had to get a single figure handicap and after three weeks I was down to a nine point something handicap. And I was like, yeah, this is amazing, this is great. And I looked around and like, yeah, yeah, no, this is not, this is not what I’m after. I want to go back to work. And of course, Darryl, I did it in the sanest way possible. I made sure I spent all of the money from in the company. It had a cash flow crisis and they needed me again. You know, it was very smart strategy from my perspective. All because I couldn’t let go. I didn’t want to not be the boss, I didn’t want to not be there type thing. So I had to learn to go and invest the money and manage real estate and then buy other companies and all that thing. So it kept me a level of sanity and busyness to not be fully retired. I guess I rehired myself.

You rehired yourself? What I found, Brad, and this is I guess a working hypothesis is that entrepreneurs are very vision oriented people. They see a need in a market or a problem that needs to be solved and then everyone is telling them that can’t be done and they’re going, yeah, well just get out of my way and I’ll make it happen type of thing. You can’t stop them once they get an idea in their head or a vision in mind. That applies to their exit as well, I’ve found is if they’ve got a vision and if you help them find a vision of what they’re going to move on to, it’s all no hold bars. You can’t stop them. They’ll move on, they’ll figure out how to make it. Whether it’s chairman of the golf club or they’re going to get involved in some sort of charity or whatever it is. Once they got that bit between their teeth of that new vision, then that enables them to let go or hand over or delegate or, you know, plan the transition out of their current situation. But if, as you were saying, if they don’t have that, they’ll go, they’ll end up feeling lost after a few weeks and they’ll find a reason to come back or make it work.

Yeah. Building a business. Let’s start with the thing I’ve built a business. You’ve got to build a business owner. And to build a business owner, you’ve got to recognise that there’s a distinction between being the owner of the business and being the CEO of the business. There’s a distinction between being the owner of the business and being a manager in your own business sort of thing. And so learning to become the owner of a business is a great thing that we can do. And it’s step by step and you train yourself to let go by letting go of different things along the way. Oftentimes I find most entrepreneurs will have two or three other business ideas in their head before they sell the current one. Now don’t make the mistake of moving on those two ideas and letting the current business fall by the wayside while you’re in the process of selling it. Stay focused on it, stay running it, be 100% focused until the deal clears type thing. That brings me back to the whole buyout over time sort of thing. A lot of times there will be a two, three year exit process in what you’re doing in business. And to say that I’ve seen it go wrong more than I’ve seen it go right would be correct. Now this is why you want great advisors around you when you do go to sell. Because how you word that control, how they get control of that business, because let’s imagine I said, okay, there’s a three year buyout and it’s based on profitability and blah blah, blah, blah, blah. No, it’s got to be in a set figure. It can’t. If it’s based on profitability and they have control, well, they can start charging everything to it. Profits plummet, a presto, you’re out type thing. What guarantees the buyout is the guarantee based on Your business or on their business, if they miss a payment, you get the whole business back. You know, all of those sorts of things. And if they, if you do get the business back, what if they’ve run it run in the ground? So we are 100% insistent that we have full control unless there is a set, fully agreed price buyout. It can be paid over time, but it’s not reliant on anything other than just time. You know that that is a really important thing. We also have defaults. We have defaults. We have all of those things built in because. And again, this is why you need a professional to help you when you’re exiting it. Just too many people think they can do this on their own. And the few points that you’ll give up, they will make you a lot more. By having someone work with you over two to three years to set it up to sell, you will make a lot more money on the sale than you would without them. And so don’t be stingy and not pay the few points, gang.

Yeah. And it’s worth remembering that for most businesses out there, and you touched on this earlier, they’re only ever going to sell one business and in all likelihood they’re selling it to someone who’s a much bigger business than them and have bought many businesses. So they know all the tips and they know all the tricks and they’ll work you over because at the end of the day, it’s for them, it’s not personal. They just want to get. They like your business, they’re really attracted to your business. They see the value. But once they’ve agreed they’ve seen the value, they just want to get it for as cheap as they can. Yeah.

And they’ll try and play the reduction price game. They’ll try and play all of that. Well, I mean, Darryl, when I buy companies, I do that stuff. I mean, holy heck, when I’m doing due diligence and I find things that reduce the value that are of significant impact, I go back to the seller and I say, listen, I’m sorry, but we can’t transact with this based on these points. And they said, but we, you know, because in their head they’ve already sold, you’re like, well, reduces the value because of these things.

It’s a risk.

And so when you’re buying a business, and I’ve had one that we bought where there was absolute fraud, I mean these guys literally created years of cash register rolls to show a different sales numbers than what they did like to the Tune of hundreds of thousands. It was worth them doing it, I guess. But you know, these sorts of things are very rare. Most people are very honest when they’re selling their business. And I’ve learned over the years when I’m buying it, I am 100% positive about it. I’m always looking for it because I’m also, when I’m buying Darryl, I’m looking for them to leave some money in and let me borrow some of their money to buy the business from them. So I’m very positive with people when I’m looking to buy. If you’ve got someone coming in that’s trying to down talk the business and say, oh, this is bad, we’re gonna have to fix that, we’re gonna have to do this, that person’s not really going to buy the business. In most cases, real buyers will come in and say, you know what, Darryl, you’ve done a great job. It’s phenomenal business. Of course there’s some things will change once we take it on, but you’ve built a phenomenal business. We’re very interested. We want to buy your company. If they’re not speaking those terms, they’re not going to buy in most cases, you know, so that’s why I always say get three yeses or three LOIs. You’ll get a contract. Usually a couple of them will fall over. And you know what? Generally the first one falls over. Not because the first one’s going to fall over, but because it’s the first time you’ve sold a business. You don’t really know what you’re doing. And you’ll say some stuff and they’ll go, why did you say that?

And again, there’s where an advisor. You want a good advisor’s with you who can go, well, look, I’ll handle the negotiations because I’m not emotively attached to it. Give me the parameters. And then it’s like bidding on a house at auction. Get clear, know what you’re doing and get it right. Get the right people involved. Yeah, for sure, Brad. Look, I really appreciate you sharing your tips with us. If I can ask you just one last question. Like, we’ve covered a lot of ground and the voice of experience has really shined through. But is there a key point? Is there one top tip, if you like that you want listeners to really take away from our conversation today.

Oh, dang, buddy, just go back to that first point. If you’re going to have an exit, so plan it. Plan your exit, you know, and you don’t have to leave, but just make it so you can. I think that’s the biggest thing. And get the help to build the thing because it’s really about how much profit and what multiple. If you can grow your profits and you can have a better multiplier, things do real well.

So yeah, make it exit. A bull is a new word I’ve made up. Brilliant. Brad Sugars, thanks for sharing your exit insights with us today.

Most welcome, Darryl. Look forward to chatting to you again sometime soon.

Cheers, mate. Bye.