Answers to the Big Questions
Hey there you tycoons,
Welcome to the Better Business Brief, where I share takeaways from:
- running a business I’m building to sell for millions
- my consulting with business owners building to sell for millions
- tips and tricks you can use to do the same
Do you ever lie awake at night, unable to get to sleep, because you’re facing questions that are really hard to answer but are equally important to answer?
These questions come up all the time unfortunately, but today I’m going to answer a couple of them -
So today, in less than 5 minutes, I’ll give you:
😱 The Story of How I Almost Lost it All
🤝 The 3 C’s of Retaining Employees
🧾 How to ACTUALLY Know What Your Business is Worth
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How do you hold on to your most essential employees?
I once almost lost the employee that was running my entire business.
He was our Chief Operations Officer in my last business, and he was fantastic at his job. This would’ve been completely catastrophic.
He called me up one day to tell me he was quitting, and it felt like it came out of nowhere.
Blindsided, I did the only thing I could. I tried to save it. I talked to him for hours, trying to get to the root of it and figure out why he wanted to leave and what I could do to fix it.
Ultimately, I got him to stay on. But it wasn’t easy.
The issue was that we’d waited to be doing the things we should’ve been doing to keep him around all along.
The lesson I learned from this was the 3 C’s of Engagement. These have become my North Star for when I want to make sure to keep a key employee around or help a client do so:
- Consistency: You can’t set it and forget it. If you have an employee who reports to you, you should be meeting with them once per week at minimum to make sure things are running smooth. Not just texting here and there, but actually meeting. Each of these meetings allows you to address problems with solutions and give both positive and less positive feedback to help them out or to recognize them for doing a great job.
- Caring: You need to take a vested interest in what their goals are. Why are they there? What do they want out of the job? Who do they want to be when they grow up? The more you get invested in their goals with them, the more tied to the results you’re all driving towards they will be.
- Cultivating: You can’t JUST get invested in their goals with them though. You need to continually support them in reaching them. If a salesperson wants to make a certain amount of sales, it’s your job to give them the resources to get there. If an operations manager wants to make a certain salary and is essential to the business, you should try to pave the way for the business to be able to afford to pay them that.
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Those are the three things I wish I knew before I almost lost him. Those are the things that we were lacking in, and that we needed to step up on. If you follow these 3 C’s in a real way, your employees won’t want to leave and will continually work hard for you and even give you more effort than you expect from them.
When I did convince him to stay on, he came back refreshed and happy to have been recognized and taken care of. Eventually, the reason we were able to sell this business was because it came with him in it.
MAKE THEIR GOALS YOUR GOALS.
I get a lot of people asking me about what their business is worth all the time.
While there isn’t a simple answer to this, I wanted to at least shed some light on how this works...
When a business is being valued, there are two key elements to it:
- The Base (What your business is making in profit every year)
- The Multiple (What the standard multiplier is in your industry for a business with similar internal setup)
These two get multiplied to get your value. Like this...
(Base * Multiplier = Business Value)
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At the end of the day, your value ends up being what someone is willing to pay for it, but the best way I direct people to find out a rough idea is a by finding out their base and their multiple, and then scoring themselves to find where in their industry range they fall.
Now this is more of an art than a science, because everyone’s view of a business is at least a little subjective. But I’ve developed a calculator that can help you at least get close to knowing the value of your business at any given time. It helps you find what it should be valued at but also where it might be lacking and needs improvement: Get it here.
ONE QUICK PLUG FOR ANY OF MY LOCAL ORLANDO PEOPLE:
I'll be speaking at an event for entrepreneurs here in town on March 27th about the two traps I've faced in entrepreneurship, how I've overcome them, and how you can too. Check it out and RSVP here...
We face monumental questions all the time as entrepreneurs. The answers to these are never simple, but you can at least start there.
Be great. Keeping growing and aspiring. And as always: I hope you got something from this.
If you did, share it with a friend who may too, as this is the best way for me to grow it and make this better.
They can even sign up here :)
Happy value-building to all of you!
See you next time for Better Business Brief,
-Brody
If you are growing your business to sell, let’s talk. Grab some time here and we’ll make sure your plan is on track.
