When to Bring in HR to Boost Your SME’s Value Before Exit with Charlotte Bate

Have you thought about when is the right time to introduce an HR professional to your leadership team of your SME business? And when you do introduce them, what are the value they’re going to bring? Where can they impact your business? How can they boost the culture? How can they boost the valuation of your business? In this episode, I’m talking to Charlotte Bate from MADHR and she fills in the blanks for us.

Welcome to the podcast that’s dedicated to helping business owners to prepare for exit I so that they can maximise value and then exit on their own terms. This is the Exit Insights podcast presented by succession plus. I’m Darryl Bates-Brownsword. And today we’re introducing a topic that we haven’t covered before. It’s an important topic. It’s one that we’re all familiar with in corporate and bigger businesses. But we’re going to explore introducing an HR function. When do we introduce an HR function? And so, I thought, why don’t I bring in an expert? And I’ve asked Charlotte Bate from MADHR to join us today. Charlotte, thanks and welcome to the show. 

Thank you so much for allowing me to come and share some insights.Hopefully.

Charlotte, you are absolutely gonna share some insights because you’re being very humble there because I’ve had conversations with you and your business partner several times now, and I’ve met a lot of HR experts over the times and HR consultants, contractors and service providers, professional service providers to the SME mid-market business world. But the reason I asked you guys to join me on the show is, well, you’re mad, the pair of you. And that’s reflected in your business name. And I’m sure you’ll tell me how you arrived at that. But what I liked is that you both had hands on commercial support and experience in running and being involved in business before you jumped into the HRDH consultancy side of things. And you’re just down to earth and you were no nonsense and you were not bureaucratic. And you are, well, you were able to explain things to me in a level of detail that I could understand, which is always really helpful. So why don’t we start with a bit about MADHR? Because people have come to listen to you today and not me, rant on about my background and love or hate of HR and my experience. Tell us about why MADHR and a little bit about your background, and then we’ll dig into the juicy stuff just so people know who they’re talking to. 

All right, thank you. So just to clarify, MADHR stands for make a difference HR and I will leave the listeners to determine at the end of this podcast as to the real reasons for the name. But really for where MADHR has come from is it’s about recognising the true value of HR within an organisation. So, you know, in order to make a difference to the clients and the business communities that we’re involved in and that we serve, it’s about really understanding what the strategic objectives are of the organisations and aligning all of the HR resource and initiatives in order to deliver against those business objectives. I think when people think about HR, it’s the, it’s looking at it through that very regulatory statutory policy procedure lens. It’s very transactional, it’s reactive. I’ve got a problem; HR needs to come and deal with it. But actually, that’s not where the value is for a business. That’s a cost to the business. And so, as I say at MADHR, we’re an outsourced HR consultancy. We support a whole range of organisations across lots of different industries and sectors of all different sizes. And for us, the starting point has always been, you know, what’s the plan for the business? Where do you want to go? Because if we don’t understand that, then we can’t help the business to achieve what they need to achieve and align all of their HR human resource initiatives and projects and people to achieving that.

So what you touched on is, let’s start on the strategic side, so we can’t add value as an HR provider. And NHR stands for human resource. Right. It’s come out of, I think historically out of the old personnel department, moved into human resource and some people I hear are calling it either talent or culture now, and focusing on how do we manage our talent, how do we recognise that? There’s a lot of rhetoric, I guess, out there talking about people are the most important asset in our business. And ideally in the best-case scenario, the Hrtaine department make sure that that is the case. That if our people are our most important asset, how do we look after them, how do we help them fit into our organisation, our business, and be the best that they can be in our business, and how do we make sure that we get the most out of them and that they get the most out of us. And there’s the cultural side of it, I guess the balance, the human element of it. And also, what you touched on is the legal element of the, well, sometimes someone’s not a fit or they’re not the right match for our business. Something’s changed, or for whatever reason, we need to let someone go. How do we do that? I guess fairly and maintain in the legal framework, how do we do that so that everyone’s treated the best way and as they should be treated. Is that a fair summary of what you’re talking about here? 

I think that absolutely, you know, there are elements of that, but again, it’s about so much more. Because when we are looking at how to get the best from our people and how to keep our people happy and managing our talent and retaining our talent, it’s also about helping to that talent to understand what it’s required to do and how that talent can deliver the ultimate organisational objectives. Because it’s not just about people coming to work to live their best lives. The reason why, you know, they come to work is actually, you know, to deliver a result, and that need to deliver a result. You know, if we’re not clear on where we’re heading, if we haven’t got everybody in the right seats in the boat and rowing at the same time, in the same direction, in the same way, and creating those efficiencies and clarity, then it’s just going to make the whole process harder. And if you think about it, you know, for any business, that level of performance that’s needed, it doesn’t have, it’s not linear, it doesn’t remain static. We have to constantly be innovating and moving forward and continually improving what it is that we’re doing and how we’re doing it in order to stay relevant, to be sustainable, to maintain profitability. You’ve got all of these different variables coming on. And so, when, again, historically, when you think about HR and performance management, it’s usually about performance managing people out of the business. Like you said, there’s a cultural misalignment or someone’s not doing what they need to do. Performance improvement, it should just be a norm within any business. Even if you’re delivering to the standard which is required right here and right now or for the next twelve months, how can we get more out of it? What next? How can we continually improve? And so, building that resilience and the culture within a business that strives to continually improve, to progress, that’s really where you get the value from HR, not just reacting and responding and focusing on those individuals that aren’t doing what we need them to do.

Yeah, so we can add value by helping. I’m gonna sound like the mechanical engineer that I am. One of the ways we can add value is by utilising our human resources in the best way possible. And the other way is keeping us out of jail when we don’t. Yeah, there we go. Maybe I should sound bite that piece as a nice short one. So, let’s imagine we’ve got an SME business right in the sweet spot of their, I don’t know, let’s say two and a half, 3-million-pound revenue. They’re a professional, or they add there’s some sort of service organisation. So, they’ve got people in their organisation and they’re providing some sort, sort of professional skill. It could be, it could be any, any sort of agency consultant, practice coaching. You deal with a million. But let’s imagine that sweet spot in a business of that size. There’s a whole lot of similarities in the way that they’re led. They’re often the founders are at the top, they’re the people who started the business, they’re running the business intuitively. They’ve got a lot, and they’ve got a lot of memory of how things are done and they’re at their size now where they’re going. I need to offload something off my desk. And one of the first things they want to offload is the things they don’t enjoy. And that could be, I don’t know, I won’t put words into your mouth, but imagine there’s a scenario of a business that you meet, and they say, charlotte, how can you help me? I need some help. What can you do? How can you help me make this business even better than it already is? Because it’s. It’s a well-run business. We just want to keep growing and scaling and providing the structure and the process that we need to keep scaling this business and maintaining control as we grow? 

There’s a lot in that question. So, I will help. I would try.

And we’ve got a half hour podcast.

I will try and keep it brief. But I think in the essence, the starting point is to understand what the reality is of that business. So, it’s about. Absolutely starting with that foundation and seeing where those potential risks are in those business. So, I’m not just talking from a compliance perspective. You know, if we look at the business owner as an example, one of the questions that we always ask is, so when you go on holiday, what does that look like? You know, are you able to go off and relax on a beach and switch off and, you know, be sipping your margaritas and that sort of thing? Or is it that you’re moving your workplace to another geographical location across the world because you are so involved in the business that actually it can’t operate when you’re not there. Part of the challenge with that is that the value will sit with you. And if you’re looking at your exit strategy or looking to grow, looking to scale your business, then that’s going to be incredibly problematic. What that’s also indicating is that structurally, what does that organisational design look like within the business? So, let’s look at the next tier of the leadership team because, you know, you’ve spoken and mentioned culture quite a lot and the culture are often developed by the business owner, by the leaders of that organisation. And so, if you’ve got a business owner that’s operating in that, chances are that the leadership and management team, the people in responsibility are going to be operating in the same way. So, when they go on holiday again, they’ve built the dependence rather than building the capability within the team in order that that business can continue. So, I think there’s a couple of elements there in that, you know, it’s looking at the organisational design, it’s, does it make sense? And again, you know, when going into a business and looking at, okay, so help me to understand this just in kind of very simple terms, how does everything work? And you would be amazed by how many organisations, you know, they don’t have a structural chart or if they do, then it’s out of date or it doesn’t quite make sense or, you know, back of a cigarette packet, just draw it out and it ends up looking a little bit like the mind logo of squiggles kind of everywhere and there’s dotted lines here and, oh, that person’s kind of responsible for that. But then that person kind of does this. And again, having that lack of clarity that speaks volumes. So, understanding what that starting point is really important. And I think also, you know, being able to have that very clear documentation in place. So, you know, what is it that you need to have in place? Compliant contracts of employment, you know, as a statutory requirement, you know, having robust contracts of employment that are not just demonstrating the statutory minimums but also, they’re providing commercial protection for the business. And again, you know, going into organisations, you’ve got Heinz, 57 varieties of contracts that have been offered at various times that have been picked up off the Internet or, you know, have come from being harvested from other organisations and kind of put together and borrowed with pride, should we say. But, you know, looking at the different terms that people are on and how they’ve come about, again, you know, I had a conversation and is going part of this process, it’s about being able to clearly map out where you are and the audit trail, the documentation, being able to see in black and white why things have happened and how they’ve happened is really important. What contracts are people on, does it reflect the role that they’ve actually got now? Or is that what they were issued with ten years ago when they came in at a very different position? Are the terms and conditions that are associated with that in terms of the notice periods and the post termination restrictions which are there to commercially protect the business, were those changed in light of the increased responsibility and limits of authority and the increased potential risk to the business when those changes happened? Often going into SME’s, there’s a lot of processes and agreements that are in place that aren’t documented. It’s just what we do and how we do it and what’s being agreed. And that can be incredibly problematic as well, because then you’re having to rely on individuals and recollections can be quite different in those sorts of circumstances.

The older they get, the more likely it is that those recollections will be drifting apart. 

Absolutely.

So, for anyone who’s starting to think about exiting their business, let’s be very clear. Having a clean set of employment contracts is something that buyers will be looking for as a risk management strategy. They’re looking for risks. You called them risks earlier. We touched on risks all the time on this podcast, and that is a very clear risk that business buyers will be looking for. What are your contracts? And, you know, as a base level, does everyone in the business have a contract? The next thing that they’re going to be looking for is, do we have an organisational chart that’s up to date, as you mentioned? And then do we have job descriptions that people are working for, working to up to date job descriptions that match and fit on the organisational chart. And they can see that there’s connection so that all of the tasks on the organisational chart are addressed. There’s nothing slipping through the net, because anything that’s on the organisational chart that isn’t identified in a job description ends up in the owner’s lap. And that’s why they run around chasing fires all the time, because when those things flare up, guess who looks after them. So, we need to have some sort of structure like that in place and that’s what buyers are going to be looking for. And that’s one of the things that you guys addressed, by the sounds of it, get that under control. 

Yeah, it is. And it’s also about having utilising the data that’s available within the organisation. And if the data isn’t available, then identifying what data needs to be available so that you can make data driven decisions. So, you know, for example, how are we measuring performance? How are we managing our recruitment activity? How are we demonstrating that we’ve got high performing, engaged, motivated, committed individuals, a stabilised workforce? Because again, you know, what those buyers are going to be looking for is stability, that they are taking a business that can continue. What is the capability within the business of those individuals? And from a leadership team perspective, you know, what’s the capability of the leadership team, but also what are we doing in terms of succession? And it’s not just using these terms and to talking about it. Having a very clear plan in black and white that is easy to understand and that it’s been shared across the business and that it’s known within the business is really important and it’s not good enough just to have that all kind of sat with the business owner, even if it’s in their mind or in some of the business plans that we’ve seen, if indeed there is a business plan, and don’t get me started on that from the HR perspective, because from the ones that I’ve seen, you’ve always got the financial plans in there. You’ve always got the kind of sales plan and the operational plan. And for the people aspect of it, it is usually the statement of we’re an equal opportunities employer and our people are our greatest asset. What does that mean? Where’s the evidence? It needs to be evidence based. We need to be able to speak, you know, to see it for ourselves. And one thing that, you know, one of my previous directors a long time ago always said to me, needs to be in black and white because what cannot speak cannot lie.

Yep. And as you say, evidence based. So how many, just a rough, you know, thought from experience and from you guys of the businesses that you go in and help, how many because you’ve touched on this, how many have some sort of active people management plan process in place where they monitor, not subjectively, but they monitor the performance and the activity of the people. And they have some sort of, I’m going to try and use very generic language, but have some sort of process where they’re addressing the performance. If it’s low or high and maybe rewarding it if it’s high and encouraging it. And if it’s. If it is, if one person is a super high performer, how do they identify what that person’s doing and then go going, hey, this person’s nailed the process. Let’s replicate it so we can train everyone to do that. How many businesses have some sort of active process where they’re growing and developing and nurturing their talent in the organisation? 

Not as many as I would hope to see. And from an economic perspective, that we need within the nation to deliver the performance that we need as well. And I think that, don’t get me wrong, across the businesses that we’ve seen, they’ve got a lot of, they’re doing a lot of great stuff and there are bits in place, but it’s not consistent.

It’s important to not forget that there’s a lot of entrepreneurs out there who are intuitively, they’re just great leaders. They inspire, they encourage, they coach, they nurture, they support, they develop their people. But it’s in their DNA. It’s not part of the structure of the business, it’s just part of who they are as a person and they make that happen, which is great while they’re in the business and they’re fit and well and they’ve got enough time to focus and manage all of this just part of their day-to-day activity of being in the business. What the business requires to de risk it for the new owners is what does that person do intuitively? How do we unpack it from their head and embed it in the process of the business, the DNA of the business, rather than the DNA of the founders. How do we extract it and make it happen? And so that it continues to happen when they are on holiday, as you suggest, drinking pina coladas on the beach or whatever it is they do on holiday. 

And that’s absolutely right. You know, the business needs to be able to continue and not be reliant on individuals, any individual, whether that be the business owner or key talent within the business. So, when we’re talking about talent management, again, it’s about, you know, how we can draw that for the benefit of the business. And we’re not just satiating individual needs and, you know, how are we, what are we doing to actively retain that knowledge transfer and share that knowledge across the business in terms of looking at the kind of processes that operational stability is so important. So, having those key standard operating procedures, how do we do things around here not being reliant on waiting for somebody to tell us this? And, you know, when I was doing some recruitment, for example, with, and it was a business development role, and quite rightly, they were saying, you know, so where’s the where? How do we know where we are with our clients. What, what’s the system that we use and how do we track what we’re doing and what we’ve done? And it was all, oh, well, you need to go and speak to this person because they’ve got all of the history because that’s their client and you need to go and speak to that person. And it was all of this that it’s. Well, let’s just think about the bus test. And it’s a phrase that we often use within our business. And using MADHR as an example, we are a compact and bijou business. There’s 15 of us. But actually, as a business we work with a huge number of clients. And the benefit of working with Mad is that you get the ability to access all of our team members with all of their skills and their experience and their specialisms and expertise and being able to draw on that. But a client doesn’t want to have to go and repeat and bring new team members up to date. They just want it to be really slick and whatever it is that they need to be delivered, to be delivered. So, what’s really important is that actually all of our consultants, all of our team members are consistently delivering what they need to deliver in the mad way, not in the way in which they’re living their best life and delivering how they need to, because how will someone else be able to pick up and enhance what it is that they’re doing? So having the systems and the infrastructure in place, which means that we are scalable, that we can see at any one time what’s going on with that client that we’ve got, you know, one version of the truth, which is absolutely important of the business and that we’ve got, and that we’re using technology to drive those efficiencies so that we are clearly mapping out our processes and procedures. So, you know, the bus test is there. We’re not reliant on any individual because that’s also really important as well in that to create happy teams, you know, there has to be that balance of. So, when people are on holiday sunning themselves, they shouldn’t be continuing to work, they should be having a break and the business should continue, but not just holding a maintenance position. That’s, you know, that we’re holding it until the person returns, that we can continue to operate effectively whether the person’s there or not.

Yeah, and what I’m hearing is what we want. And the lesson there is the business, and your clients are buying the MADHR process and methodology rather than the experience of the individuals that work for MADHR. 

I think it’s actually a combination of both.

You still need the talent and experience of the individuals, but they’re operating within a framework and it’s the framework that delivers the solution. Because if it were purely a production house and purely process driven, then we’d have droids running the processes and it would be soulless. So, there’s one extreme we don’t want to go to, and that just doesn’t work for the small to medium, mid-market businesses in the sectors that we’re working in. We still want talented individuals that have scope within their role to be able to apply and be creative and apply all of their experience. But they’re doing it within a framework of methodology that they’re operating within, which is the branded methodology or even IP of the business that they’re working for as part of. And one way to capture and leverage all of that talent is exploring things of some sort of employee ownership and employee share schemes, which will just really get those employees to be thinking and acting more like business owners, just to take it one step further. 

Yeah, I think that there’s, you know, there’s lots of ways to motivate the team members, lots of retention strategies that you can deploy to help to not only retain, but continually to motivate and develop the team and to create that culture which absolutely is 100% invested in, you know, delivering the business objectives and, you know, in terms of the employee ownership, absolutely. You know, I know that that is one particular avenue, but that whole distinction between being an employee and an owner is huge. And I know in talking to a lot of owners, that’s part of this frustration that, you know, why can’t my team see this? Why don’t they understand what it’s like to run a business and all of the different hats that you have to wear and what the commercial realities are? And why aren’t they more aware of the profit and how they can impact and influence profit in both a positive and a negative way, just in the bare basics? Why can’t they understand what they’re doing and the impact that that’s having on the business? Why would they have? Because it is two completely off, two completely different perceptions of the world.

I see that and agree totally. And my answer when they ask me that question is because you haven’t told them. 

Exactly right. Exactly right. But it’s not just a case of telling them that actually, it’s about showing them that. And it’s about, you know, working shoulder to shoulder with them. And I suppose this goes back to, you know, what is the role of the business owner? And often as business owners they have an area of specialism or a particular interest and then they think, oh, that’s a good idea, let’s start a business on that, particularly for the SME’s of the world. And then it kind of grows and it gains legs, and it gains momentum. And the business owner often is that spider in the middle of the web where everything kind of shoots off from it. But when you think about the role that’s needed in the different stages of the business, again, it’s that changing mindset which is really important from the business owner’s perspective, because it’s not about working in the business, it really is about working on the business and taking and allocating the time to do all of that stuff that we’ve just spoken about to help to get the best out of people, to help look at where those risks are within the business and to help to, you know, motivate and create and drive and inspire the leadership team to build that capability that is the focus. And to look for those opportunities and to be horizon scanning, not to continue to do what you’re doing in the normal day job. And then that’s the bit that you get to as and when you can or an evening job because that’s when it doesn’t happen.

True. So we’ve talked about a lot about what are some of the things, the behaviors, the structures, the frameworks, if you like, you can put in place as a business owner to take your business to the next level in terms of structure and best in class operating, shall we say, in terms of looking after your talent or your employees, the people that are helping you drive the business and build the business. Charlotte, I want to capture, before we wind up today, there’s a couple more questions I want to ask you and just go, hey, look, the first one is in terms of some of the protection things that an HR professional will provide a business, what’s the biggest mistake that you see in businesses where you need to come in and influence some change fairly quickly to address a risk? From that perspective, whether it be you’ve already talked about employment contracts matching the jobs that people are doing. Are there anything else that any holes you need to plug fairly quickly when you start that are common? 

I would say that one of the key areas are right to work checks and I’m just going to get that in there and it’s only one particular element. But I just want to make sure that everybody knows driving licenses are not proof of right to work. Small to medium sized businesses, you often know who you’re bringing on as team members, and I don’t know how many times. Oh yeah, well, we always get driving license and we take a copy of that every twelve months. It’s not proof of right to work. We know all of our team members and they’re all from the UK, not a right to work. So, I think for that’s just kind of one part really, of what to look at. But I think in going into a business, looking at that basic, if you’re about to build a house, you need solid foundations. So, from a compliance perspective, what is it that they have in place? Where are the inconsistencies? Look at, and we will be mapping out all of that to see what that starting point is. Where are the differences? Where are the variations? Where are the vulnerabilities? Are there any potential areas where we are discriminate, potentially discriminating against other people, that is treating people less favorably for whatever reason, and we may not be doing it knowledgeably or intentionally, but where are those, where are we treating certain work groups in one way and certain work groups within another? And this is a really important thing of understanding within a business. What are those unwritten rules, what are those unwritten agreements, and how are we capturing those and getting a rope around those so that it isn’t open to interpretation? Because it’s almost like that prenup, really, you need to get everything right in the first instance, because if something happens, that’s when it can get really messy. And it just takes so much longer to unpick and unravel.

Yeah. So the best way to have a common understanding about anything, any sort of agreement or operating framework, is to document it and make sure that you capture it. So that’s what you’re saying there about the working conditions, what I expect you to do, what I’m going to pay you for the scope of what your areas of responsibilities are, your, your scope for decision making, all of this is captured. Here’s the work performance, here’s. And even taking it to the next level, as you’ve already touched on this as well, I think, Charlotte, is processes, and the way we want you to do the work, if there’s processes that we want you to follow, have all of that documented and captured so that there’s no room for a different understanding. And that protects both sides, doesn’t it? 

Absolutely. It’s from the contracts of employment, from your policies and your procedures, and making sure also that they are legal and up to date with current legislation and we’ve seen a huge amount of change over the period. And with the change in government, we’re likely to see a number of changes moving forward. And so, it’s not just about what’s there is in isolation, it’s making sure that it’s all up to date as well.

Okay, brilliant. And the last thing I just want to explore and dig into, and I can imagine business owners are out there going, yeah, but what about, what do they have to consider if they’re thinking about selling their business? Well, like what happens to their employees. Is there a way that they can make sure their employees stay or as part of that risk management, is there any sort of legal things they need to consider making sure that they do things cleanly and fairly for the employees with ongoing employment or terms? What are just some of the risks or things that business owners need to be aware of if they’ve got employees in the business and they’re expecting those employees to transfer to the new owner or go with the business to the new owner? 

I think that one, it’s looking at your communication strategy. So planning is everything. So rather than updating after the event or trying to talk on the hoof, then actually what messages do we need to be communicating with whom at what different points? I think it’s also about the culture and building that internal resilience for change within a business. Because selling a business, it can cause a lot of anxiety within the business. It can cause people to feel quite insecure. And so, you know, if they’re not used to change, then this is quite significant. If you’ve got a business that’s quite agile, that’s used to change. Actually, you know, as I think you said at the start, it’s about making sure that the business, when you’re looking to sell and when you’re looking to buy, you’re buying a business, and you want it to continue with the change of ownership. So actually, if you can, if you’ve got a stable business and a stable workforce that is accountable for what they’re doing, that is continuing to deliver and it’s business as usual, then that will help to retain good key members, that will help them to stay part of that journey, because it’s not so fear, you know, it’s not fear of the future and what’s going to happen and am I going to lose my job? It can be really exciting, really exciting. And I know, you know, for another business that we’ve been working with, you know, they’ve been bought and acquired by a large global business and they are so excited because the level of investment, the opportunities to collaborate and the innovation and the investment that they’re now encouraging, they are so happy and they are really seeing the benefits of it, but they could have seen that as quite threatening to their position, but they’ve chosen to embrace it. So, the more that business owners can do upfront to help bring their people on the journey with them, to communicate, also to look at those retention strategies, to look at the clear succession plans, to look at how we can reward people to stay. Those are some of the elements that business owners can do.

Charlotte, it’s been great. We’ve covered what we need to consider bringing people on and how we bring people into the business, how we look after them through the business, how we exit people if we need to, and how we need to look after our people when we exit the business or if the business changes hands. So, we’ve covered, we’ve skimmed the surface of a lot of the things that business owners need to be thinking about as they develop their people or their talent strategy in the, in their business. Is there something key that you want to make sure that business owners, you know, what’s, is there a key message that you want business owners or listeners to take away from our conversation today? 

I think that the key takeaway is that it is never too early to start to plan and structure your business in the ways that we’ve described today, to give you options for the future. You know that question of, well, what does the future hold to a lot of SME owners? Actually, they don’t have the answer to that. They haven’t got anything concrete that in ten years’ time, this is what I want to do. Some of them do, some of them don’t. But what’s important is that you have the infrastructure, so you’ve got the organizational design, that you’re strengthening your leadership team, that you are documenting your processes to ensure that you’ve got operational, you know, structure and efficiency, that you’ve got the succession planning, that you’ve got the solid foundations in place, that you’ve got all of that in place to enable you to have options for the future, whether that be through an exit of selling your business, whether it be an MBO. And just as an example, I’ve worked with businesses where absolutely I’m going to exit this business through an MBO, and this is my leadership team. There had to be a reality check in this situation because there was no way that the leadership team A was ready and had the skills and capability to take over that business. But importantly, they didn’t have the ambition or desire. But the business owner was kind of holding all of this hope on the fact that that was going to happen, make, you know, whatever the how you’re structuring your business, everything that we’ve spoken about today, it’s not just about increasing the value of your business. It makes good business sense because no business should be reliant on any one individual.

And that’s the way I think you absolutely nailed it. We’re all about eliminating risks. Buyers, potential buyers, acquirers of our business want to be aware of the risks that exist in our business, especially from when they take it over, and they’ll value the business based on their perception of those risks. So, Charlotte Bate from MADHR making a difference. Thanks for sharing your exit insights with us today. 

Thanks, Darryl.

About Charlotte Bate