I was reminded of this client success story at a recent breakfast with one of my favorite fierce Advisors (you know who you are my friend!) He replayed this conversation he had with one of our client owners recently.
“Redbank came into our business in 2014 and asked ‘Where do you want to go?’ I gave them a business value figure I thought would make me happy and independent. Five years later we were there. Life was good. Then tragedy struck and I lost some key leaders. The fun drained right out of the business. I immediately began listening to offers to buy my business. I went all the way around the horn only to have the private equity firm try to drop the offer value at the last minute. I walked away after about 6 months of wasted energy. Redbank reiterated what they had told me a year prior; ‘This is a CEO problem.’ It’s not that I can’t run the business. I have for decades. It’s just that I don’t enjoy it anymore and the idea of doubling the business again in five years just seemed like work. Even though it would put millions in my pocket. I followed the Redbank advice again and now, just six months later, I have a new President, we’re making progress again and it’s actually fun to be looking at these challenges and how we’ll overcome them. Business is fun again. …and I’m playing more golf and making more money!”
We are just here to help you write the fun story your business life should be. You are the hero of this story and I think you may have forgotten that. Let us kibitz with you, remind you of that and help your team become the best versions of themselves (and you too!) You are the hero of all these stories, yours, ours and those of your team.
Why should you never sell? …because the fun is right around the corner again!
Call To Action
Ask yourself this question? Are we having fun yet? If you want to get back to when it was fun, call us. We make owning a business fun again!
BTW: if you make requests of your team to fix problems and they can’t or don’t make progress on them, try sitting down with them and doing their job for them for a little while. They may just need to be walked through the math. We call this dragoning. Any of our Advisors can explain the story behind sitting with the dragon. This is one of the Redbank Principles of Profitable Growth we use with clients all the time.
I hope you found something to apply to your business in this MBR. Let me know either way.
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