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CEO Best Practices: How to Run Your Business Like You’re Going to Sell It

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Video transcript: hey there our business leaders it’s Brian from CEO mastery I wanted to share with you today some some concepts that I think will be helpful to you I’m always looking for ways to help you see your business and yourself differently because that’s where different actions and different results come from so one way to see your business is as something that you are preparing to sell whether you’re gonna sell it or not you may intend to keep it for the next 50 years that’s alright the idea is if you if you run it as though you’re going to sell it it’s going to cause you to run it exceptionally well I think of it a little bit like you know when you sell a used car and you’re selling it yourself you fix that thing up and it’s all shiny and clean and you know it’s in the best shape it’s been in in probably three years and you look at you know it’s kind of a cool car I wish I’d always had it like this I would have enjoyed it more so it’s the same kind of thing why not have your business be attractive to an outside buyer because so that you can enjoy it in that pristine condition right but we our standards for ourselves are lower so we don’t rise to that standard let’s rise to the standard of putting it on the market and attracting people to it okay so that’s a way to look at it raise your standards and the two things that you can do is one is get yourself out of the middle and two is generate sustain profitable growth and the reason those are important certainly the benefit is great but for buyers it’s important because buyers pay for profit I mean an asset is worth what it’ll earn a company is worth what it will earn if it can’t earn anything it’s not worth that much but you’re basically when you’re investing in a company you’re buying a stream of payments just like if you buy a Treasury bill it’s a stream of payments and so if those payments that profit is healthy and growing because revenues are growing and you can show that over the years and the buyer then you make the case hey it’s going to continue and the bar is like yeah believe that and partly because how well it’s running I’ll get that to that in a minute but if they’re projecting growing sales and profits they’re gonna give you more for your company as a result and how do you do that well you run your company more systematically more professionally like a bigger company not like a small entrepreneurial company where everything goes through the owner and the owner is doing all the jobs because that team is not quite an a team and the processes aren’t defined and and repeatable and there’s really no good strategy so you’re getting beat up on price all the time and the values are not clear and live so you got all kinds of you know undercurrents of disagreement and weird behavior in your company doesn’t have to be extreme but it’s not a rock-solid winning team culture you don’t have a rhythm of meetings and for those of you who are familiar with our big six boot camp this is basically what we cover in that so if you have good strategy good vision and values you do a lot of planning you have great people and you make them better you have great processes and you make them better and cross-trained people you have amazing information and then you have a rhythm of getting together kind of that plan dude check adjust cycle you’re just gonna run a better business it’s automatic you can’t not it’s like guaranteed it’s just guaranteed it’s like if you go out and run a mile every day or an extra mile every week you’re gonna be able to run 10 miles it’s just how it works so when you do that though what you’re doing is you’re removing yourself from the middle you’re creating a strategy so people know where the company is going and how it’s getting there you’re doing planning so everybody’s committing to something you’re getting good information so people can check against their plans they’re holding themselves accountable and you have an a-team you’re hiring great people you’re developing the weak ones or letting them go when you have all that working then the company doesn’t need you as much and if you do it in spades and you really do want to get out of the company and go trekking somewhere you can because it’s set up that way including having information to send you while you’re on a trek just so you can you know take a health reading of the business and know whether to zoom back and and bail the company out help the company out so that kind of company where you can extract the owner it runs independently like a well-oiled machine that is a valuable company to buyers and that is also a valuable company to you what a pleasure what a delight so just keep this in mind run your business like you’re going to sell it even if you’re not and by the way of course if things change you like trekking so much that you feel never come back if you have a health issue if somebody just flies in out of nowhere and offers you something for your business you’ll be ready you’ll have that well oiled machine you’ll have that history of growth so times change miles will be ready might as well have that used car all spiffed up and shiny and running like a top always and then it’s more fun to drive so anyway I hope these concepts help you it’s like putting on a different pair of glasses seeing your company a little bit differently and I hope that helps you see things differently make different choices take different action and get different and better results thank you and I’ll catch you soon bye

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