Sam Penny (00:31)
Welcome to the very first built to sell a series built and created for business owners wanting to increase their valuation of their company. But also those who want to sell and also the flip side of built to buy, which is the webinar series designed for business buyers. We've got a lot to get through So let's jump straight in.
today's topic is remove yourself from the day to day. I'm Sam Penny. I'm the coach for the brave. And today we're diving into one of the biggest barriers to growth and valuation being trapped in the day to day operations of your own business. And before we jump in quick explanation about who I am. I've run companies for the last 25 years. I've bought, I've sold, I've grown from scratch.
I've created products, I've operated in quite a number of different industries, including medical devices, which have gone worldwide, ⁓ beauty, food distribution, e-commerce. I've done a lot of media. You can see here, sort of a little segment I did on Sky News for them. I've also delivered a TED talk, which was all about why everyone should buy from regional businesses across the planet.
I've also swum the English channel and I'm in fact the first person in the world who's ever attempted to swim it in winter. I know it's dumb. On top of this, I was once a civil engineer, I hold an MBA in marketing, finance and entrepreneurship. And I also did a masters of entrepreneurship at MIT over in Boston, the US. Now today we've got a lot to get through. First, what we're going to cover for how to remove yourself from the day to day is why does it matter?
So the first problem, what's the center of everything that's holding you back in business? Then we'll dive into the, pretty much the solution for this, the three phase roadmap to remove yourself strategically. And then we'll jump into some questions, live Q and A. So if you've got any questions along the way, pop them into the chat, jot them down and we'll answer those live.
We've got a lot to get through over the next 45 minutes before we dive into the Q &A. Also, at the end of this, there will be a, ⁓ I'll email out to everyone who's registered ⁓ a more in-depth ⁓ article about everything that we covered today. So let's jump in.
So if you've ever had that feeling that, you know, that the business might fall apart, if you take a break, then this session is absolutely for you. It's not about, you know, that's not freedom because it's not sellable. A company that is central to you is not sellable, but you can change that today. And let's start that today with what we're going to cover.
Now, if you're trying to sell your business or you want to sell your business in the next six months to six years, even if you're not intending to sell, buyers don't pay for businesses that rely on the founder. They're buying certainty. They want to buy systems. They want to buy sustainable profits. They don't want to buy you as a personality or your heroics.
So let's be honest, many owners, as many of you I'm sure are aware, you're the most overworked employee in the company. You've built the thing, but now it consumes absolutely all of your time, your energy, your future potential, and that ends today. And having run companies for 25 years, I know the mental strain, the emotional strain, you know, the pressure that applies to you every single day of running a company.
This is what we're going to cover today. This isn't just about working fewer hours. This is about building a business that's more valuable, it's more scalable and far more appealing to buyers or simply just more enjoyable to run. If the business needs you constantly, it owns you. It's not the other way around.
Now, here's a great example of why this is so important to remove you from the day to day. And if we're looking at the valuation of two companies, here's a real world example, right? Two businesses with the same bottom line profit, but one runs without the owner and the other doesn't. The result, one sells for two times earnings, the other for three and a half times earnings. You know, that's a 75 % difference in the sale price. So let's just say you're earning, let's
Make my math easy. Let's make it a hundred grand in net profit a year. If you're an owner operator in there, your valuation of that company, if you want to sell it is only going to be about $200,000. But if you are not crucial to the day to day runnings, if you had taken the steps to remove you from that day to day, a buyer will pay around three and a half times. So $350,000.
That's a big change from $200,000 to $350,000. You you're leaving a lot of money on the table by having you work in there. And when you're working in there, you're just working for a job. And seriously, you don't own a business to only have a job. So what we're going to do, we're going to shift from being an operator to an architect.
And your job isn't to turn the gears, it's to design the engine. And we need to let this machine run so that you can grow, lead, or even exit it. And I'll tell you what, as a business owner, this will make life so much better and so much more enjoyable.
All right, so this is, guess, the important part, the three-phase roadmap to remove yourself from the day-to-day. And there's three parts to removing yourself from the day-to-day. The first part is to delegate. Second part is to systemize. The third part is to empower. And this is how you scale yourself.
scale yourself out without the chaos. ⁓ Many business owners, they do want the freedom from the day to day. They do want to be able to go away for a week or a month's holiday, but they just know that everything's going to fall apart because they haven't delegated properly. They haven't systemized and they haven't empowered. Thinking back to ⁓ my medical device company, I sold that in 2010.
And I had my medical devices in a third of all Australian pharmacies. It ⁓ was a decent sized company. But the way that I had structured everything allowed me to be able to go out and do what I wanted to do. Whilst the company, even if I took a week off, even if I took a month off, ⁓ we had one baby during the time and particularly during the
busiest time of it where we're just really ramping up fast. I took a couple of weeks off and what happened? The place didn't fall apart. And that's because I built in this three-phase roadmap of delegation, systemization and empowerment.
All right, as many of you would probably understand, 80 % of the stress of your business comes from 20 % of your tasks. The first step is letting go of the low value work. Even if it's imperfect at first, you're not the best person for everything. And I always say, an entrepreneurship is a jack of all trades, an expert at none. You're not the expert salesperson. You're not the expert marketer. You're not the expert accountant, bookkeeper.
finance person, admin person, customer service person. But you're the person with the vision. You're the person who's on the mission to turn this company that you have into something fantastic, into something great, but also into something that works for you, not you working in it. And phase one of the three phase roadmap is delegation. And we need to start letting go.
letting go of those 20 % of your tasks that cause 80 % of your stress. And if you're in there, you know, working every single day, you know exactly, I'm sure, of the tasks that are causing you 80 % of your stress. So here's how we delegate like a pro. And I call this the DTTR framework. I think that's a...
a pretty average name, but if someone has something better, please let me know. So the first thing is that we wanted to find the task. So think of those tasks that you do, which cause you all the stress that you're not putting 100 % of your value into, you're not putting 100 % of everything in there.
And you know that it could be done so much better. The second part in delegating like a pro is that we want to train someone and nearly all tasks are repeatable and with the right standard operating procedures and training the person in the way to make this happen, we can have a
have that one person who's responsible for that task. And just imagine if we took something that caused you so much stress or you just hated to do and move that onto someone else and someone who's better at it than you, someone who can enjoy it more. And the third part of delegating like a pro is that we need to trust that person. We need to trust them to deliver.
And if we don't have trust in the person that we're delegating to, we're always going to be micromanaging. We're always going to be looking over their shoulder. We're always going to be coming down on them and rousing on them. We need to have trust that that is the right person for you to delegate that task to. Now, if you don't have trust in that person, it's not the right person either for that particular task or.
maybe not the right person in your organisation. And the last part of delegating like a pro is review. And we want to review how they're handling each of these tasks. We need to build in feedback loops, which we'll cover shortly. So this delegate like a pro, this creates a cycle of continuous improvement and not dependency. If we can define what the task is,
train a person, have trust in that person that they're going to perform the task appropriately, and also we've got a mechanism for a review there, this can all come back and feed back into it.
And remember, if you've got any questions, just pop it into the chat. ⁓ If it's something that's relevant for right now, I'll answer it. Now, moving on to phase two, and phase two is systemizing. Now, systems bring freedom. Systems aren't restrictive. They're actually liberating. They free you from those repetitive decision-making, and they give your team the clarity.
that they need to act without you. Now, so often we feel that our staff just do not know what they're meant to be doing or they're just not doing it right. And for so many daily tasks in a company, in an organisation, they're always repeatable. And if they are repeatable, we should have systems in place. We should have operating procedures in place because
when we've got those systems in place, not only does it give you freedom, but it also gives your staff freedom to be able to make the right decisions at the right time without your involvement. And that's what we're aiming for. We want to build a system that doesn't involve you.
What we're going to do when we're building these systems, first up, when we're building them, we want to focus on the core of the organization, the core of the business. And this is really the business engine. And this is where we start. Sales, fulfillment, service, and admin. We want to systemize how these work so they can function without your direct involvement. And every organization is different.
But these are the four basic fundamentals that drive a business. And if you're predominantly in a sales role as a business owner, you may look to offload some of the other things like fulfillment service or admin first, but there's tasks in every part of the business engine that can be delegated. So for example, ⁓
with an e-commerce company that I had which had nationwide distribution of a food item, it was actually cheese, I had about 20 staff working for me. I'm based here on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. I had two warehouses down in Geelong and that's where we did all of our fulfillment and customer service from. Up here on the Sunshine Coast, we managed the marketing and the admin.
And as a business owner, you have to have faith in the people, particularly on the customer service and the fulfillment side to be able to let go. And we set these warehouses up during COVID in the middle of 2020. And the warehouses operated down in Shillong for about two and a half years. It wasn't until about 12 months after we set them up that it was my first chance to actually go down
and see my warehouses and meet face to face, not via Zoom, all of my team. And I had complete faith in the people that were running it. We'd built all these operating procedures. We had systemized everything and also built in feedback loops, which allowed me to remove myself from that day to day. And...
That then allowed me to do some of the things that I love, which is the marketing, doing the media. I love getting on TV. I love getting on podcasts and radio and writing articles for newspapers. That sort of stuff really excites me. And as a business owner, I was still being involved in the company because look, I love running companies. I love being involved, but I know what I'm good at and I know what I'm crap at.
And so, I always ensured that I delegated out the parts that I knew that there were going to be people much better than me. And so effectively, I became, you know, I guess the media front, the PR pig, ⁓ if you want to call it that, on the front end, because that's what I was good at. But, you know, things like the fulfillment. It's not my cup of tea.
It's the part that causes me a lot of stress. Customer service causes me a lot of stress. know, constantly handling those customer inquiries or, you where's my order? Those kinds of things. But when you outsource that, well, not outsourcing, but when you delegate that to other staff members and you build in the right delegation profile with feedback loops and standard operating procedures and...
You know, making things work, ⁓ whereas a business owner, you can monitor these and you just know that everything's starting to work better without you. And I certainly know that when I jumped into customer service as an example, I wasn't the best at it. And I think that that often came across and my customer service team got to the point of just telling me to Sam, can you just get out of it?
and just let us do our job because we're so much better at it than you. Right, now phase three, empowerment. Now, once tasks have been delegated and the systems are in place, the next step is empowerment. So you're building thinkers, not just doers, and we need to let our staff make decisions within a structure.
So you can see here on the screen, we've defined what the tasks are. And once they know what the tasks are, they've been delegated to them, we trust them, we've got feedback loops, they can then start to make decisions within that realm. And they can then take ownership. They feel empowered and they then start to contribute to the strategy of the company.
We want to build a team that thinks. We don't want a team of robots that just do not think. We want them to be involved. And when they understand the task, they feel like you trust them, and they also feel empowered with that, they will then start to make decisions to make the processes work better, to perform the task better.
And all of a sudden, once we've got this empowerment within an organization, within your team, within your business, absolute magic happens. And so what we're wanting to do is, you know, we're creating this feedback loop. It's, it's rhythms of accountability. And, you know, we can do, you know, maintain a rhythm within the organization through things like weekly team check-ins, you know, in, ⁓
Past companies have tried various different forms and it all depends on what kind of leader you are as the business owner, but also the personality of your organization and the staff. In the past, I've run daily meetings, which have been a five minute to 10 minute stand up, know, quick check-ins. What do you got on today? Have you got any roadblocks? How'd you go yesterday?
And they've been really good when we've got a team of only about five ⁓ reporting to me. But then each of the teams obviously can do it with ⁓ their direct reports. Weekly team check-ins, they work really well, making them a little bit longer, say half an hour. I also like to do monthly meetings of an hour to two hours with the team, because that really then just starts to align us with where we're wanting to go in that
quarter and what are the functions that we need to achieve within that month? What are our goals that we want to achieve? And by having this regular meeting routine really does start to build a rhythm within your organization. Now scorecards and KPIs, they're also vital because it gives feedback to your team. They need to know if they're performing, firstly, how you want.
And also the right team, the right people will always want to improve on their KPIs. They always want to have an overachievement and that's what we want to create. These people, they feel empowered. They feel that they've got your trust. You're not micromanaging them. And they're also then in a position where they can make better decisions without you. And if we can build in these KPIs, then the
the conversations at your monthly catch-ups or your quarterly sessions is we exceeded our KPIs, can we go even bigger? And when you've got an organization that's starting to operate like that, because they've got this constant feedback loop and they just feel empowered, they're going to feel so much more rewarded in their role, but also they want to achieve not just for you, not just for the organization, but also for themselves.
And on the monthly reviews, these monthly reviews are vital because this keeps you in control without micromanaging. Now we don't need to be looking at KPIs every single day if we've got trust in our team and if we feel, if they feel empowered. But being able to at a glance, look at school cars, look at KPIs.
and sit down with the team on that monthly basis for an hour or two really does keep your finger on the pulse on that emotional level. The data shows in the scorecards in the KPIs, but we can really get more of that emotional feeling of actually how is everything going in the monthly meetings.
And the vision, you know, to be honest, the vision is the self-running business. This is the dream. This is where the business runs with or without you. ⁓ Once that grows, you know, one that grows while you focus on your strategy, your legacy, or even, you know, if you just want to take a simple break, this is where we want to be. And if you look at companies that sell, you know, like what we showed earlier with the
the valuation. If a buyer comes in to buy a company that is owner dependent, you're not going to get much money for it. But also, know, what buyer wants to buy a business where as soon as that owner walks out the door, you know, effectively they lose half the business. And you see that quite often in service based companies. You know, let's just say, for example, hairdressers, ⁓
And I know this because I used to own a chain of seven hair salons. It's crazy. know. But with those kinds of organizations, when I bought, I bought ⁓ one or two hair salons and the owner left, so too did some of the clientele. And that's not the kind of business that we want to buy. We want to buy one where the owner leaves day one.
And then nothing happens. That's perfect. And you know then that you've got a self-running business.
So just a quick recap on this three phase system. Phase one was to delegate, phase two to systemize, phase three to empower. You don't need to vanish overnight. What you need to do is to move intentionally week by week and away from doing and more into leading. Now, I've been guilty of it over the last 25 years of
micromanaging of being in there day to day of doing, you know, trying to be everything to everybody. But the best business owner is the one that leads, the one who has the vision, the one who sets the goals for the next quarter, the next year, you know, the next three years, but even, you know, where do we want to be? What do we want to achieve this month? What do we want to achieve this week? What are our tasks?
that we want to undertake today that are really going to shift the needle. And the leadership of the business owner and true leadership is able to build a machine that runs by itself. And so if we can delegate. So remember, if we go back to, let me go back to the delegation component.
We want to delegate like a pro. So the first step is define the task. Then we want to train the person that's going to be performing that task and train them in a way that you want it done. The third part is trust, placing trust in that person. And we can't delegate something if we just don't trust that they're going to do it right.
Fourth part is obviously review. You've been performing this task, let's have a review of that. And that's where the scorecards and the KPIs ⁓ come to the fore.
And yeah, the transformation of removing yourself as a business owner before you're in every meeting, you're fixing absolutely every fire. And afterwards, a transformation of removing yourself from the day to day, your team is confident. Your systems handle the load and you finally have leverage. So, you know, have a quick think about it. What does your after?
look like if you were to remove yourself from the day to day. And we can't scale a business if you're in there as that vital person for the day to day. And we can't have a great vision and clarity when you're stuck in there, like in this before video of just in there. It's really oppressive, for lack of a better word, for the business owner.
And it's vital, but you know what? You can actually achieve removing yourself from the day to day in as short as 90 days with the right structure in place. So I want you to have a think what's the one thing you could delegate this week. And yeah, I'd love, love to hear, pop it in the comments, pop it in the chat. What's one thing you think you could delegate this week?
If you define the task, if you built the systems, you put trust in the person that you're going to delegate that to, you systemized everything and you also empowered.
three phases to exit you from and we start with tasks. The role of getting you to remove from the day to day is just this. Identify all the tasks that you do day to day and start to delegate the tasks one by one. You have to build the systems in place. You've got to systemize everything so that your staff really understand
what they have to do, what's expected of them, but also so that they can then start to make decisions without your involvement. And just imagine your teams holding meetings with customers, with suppliers, all those kinds of things, who are also making the right decisions and decisions the same as what you would do, because you've delegated right, you've systemized right, but also you've empowered them.
They feel empowered. They feel like they're not being micromanaged because they know the way that you want to do it.
So I've got here in the chat, what's one thing you could delegate this week? Delegate all meetings? Yeah, you could delegate all meetings. What's the one task you're still holding on to that someone else could do? Even if it's just at 80%, write it down. And that's your first move towards freedom.
Now...
I'd like to move on to the Q &A section because I'd love to hear what questions you have, what's blocking you from stepping back, and where are you stuck? And I'd love to unpack this together because I think it's just vital that that's what we do.
⁓ If you're on a desktop, should be able to see the link that have just popped up there. 30 minute discovery call. If you want to reach out to me and book a 30 minute discovery call, by all means, I'd love to ⁓ see where you're at, see where I can assist because I've run companies for 25 years and being a business owner isn't just about...
trying to have income, we're trying to have freedom, we're trying to provide for our families. And to be honest, being a business owner is the hardest job in the world. It's the job that consumes you 24 seven. You've got your family to consider, you've got yourself to consider, but also you've got your staff to consider. Their livelihood is dependent on you.
but your freedom is also dependent on you. Your emotional wellbeing is dependent on you. Your financial wellbeing is dependent on you and your happiness with your family, being able to take a break when you want is all dependent on you. And so this is where we need to basically remove ourselves from the day to day. All right, so I've got... ⁓
⁓ Brent has said, my bottleneck, let's bring it up on the screen, my bottleneck in landscaping, gardening, maintenance is fulfillment. I hear you Brent, you're a service-based company. Every single day, if you're on the tools, you're stuck. You can't go out and build your business, bring in more clients.
And I'm sure that there's a lot of people who could do the same job as what you're doing day to day. And even, you know, even if they only do it at 80 % or even you find the right people and they do it, you know, 10 % better than you, absolutely brilliant. But what is it that your company is known for? What can really bring you to the fore and make people really want to know, you know,
This is what Brent's known for. And you know, Brent, if you can just pop it in there, like what is your company known for? I certainly know that some of my bottlenecks in the past is that I love getting involved in tech. love the tech part. I love learning for myself and understanding everything, but I often, you know, and I'm sure as all business owners, we go down the rabbit hole too much. That
Yeah, we really do start to get ⁓ too deep in it and then all of a sudden you realize that you've just wasted a whole day. ⁓ Comment here, can I have the recording of this session? Most certainly. ⁓ So all these sessions are going to be ⁓ uploaded onto all your social media. Also onto my website, 90dayswithsam.com.
⁓ Afterwards, I've got a really great article, which is much more of a framework for what we've been through here today to really ⁓ give you more of a framework to make it easier for you to go through this. Brent, thank you.
We're known to deliver premium lawn mowing services. Now, Brent, as you know, if you're in there doing the lawn mowing yourself, how can you spread the word of being known for this? And, you know, having owned seven hair salons in the past, I know that, you know, not that I'm a hairdresser, but, you know, what is it...
that makes you premium? it the customer service? Is it the job that you do? Is it how you deal with your clients? Is it that you just turn up without them asking and you just get the job down without them noticing? What are those premium things that really drive that? And if you're having to do that day to day, you can't be everything to everybody. Another question here.
running a, oh, okay, running a mechanic shop and John runs mechanic shop. For some reason, I can't bring that up on the screen. Wants to sell his business in the next two years, but finds himself stuck under a car every day. John, I understand exactly what you're talking about. You know, particularly those service companies and like Brent's.
You know, we know we're good mechanics or, you know, we're good at landscaping or we're good at these things and we feel that nobody can do it better. But also at the same time, John, you know, we often feel that we can't delegate because someone else is going to do it better than us. And if that's the case, then we're always going to be stuck as that owner operator. We always need to ensure that. We start to.
delegate task after task after task and start with the ones that cause you the most stress and Each day you'll have less of a less stress You'll have less tasks to do and you remove yourself from a lot of that sort of stuff now if you want to drive your business if you want to you know be able to service more cars in a day or expand the business
and you're an owner operator, you're not able to scale. You're not able to go out and have those important meetings. You're not able to go and train your team. like we said, delegate, systemize, and empower. That's really key.
Now... ⁓
Also, if you want help implementing any of this, you can scan that on the screen right now. Also, I'll pop this back up again, the 30 minute discovery call, that link there will take you through to my calendar. Book a 30 minute session and let's have a chat. I've worked over the last 25 years with people for...
across so many different industries, know, business is business. There's the core fundamentals, sales, customer service, admin, finance, marketing, business. You you've got different products to sell, different services to sell, but at the end of the day, you're still a business owner. You're still an entrepreneur. You're still wanting to have the freedom that you thought
a small business or a medium sized business should give you. Or if you're wanting to sell this, I certainly, you know, we really want to be in that position. Now scan that I see that already a couple of people have booked in their meetings. Fantastic. Thank you very much. Look, I'm here to help. I love small business and I have learned so much over my last 25 years.
of buying businesses, of selling businesses, scaling businesses. It brings me a lot of personal satisfaction when I get to work with other business owners. ⁓ This is fantastic. Now, the Built to Sell series, this is all part of a series which is providing huge amount of information and help to business owners.
Now the next session that I'm running is on the 5th of June. It's called systemized to maximize. It follows on obviously from each of these. If you head onto 90dayswithsam.com, you'll see the entire webinar series that I've got rolled out through to the end of the year, built to sell, built to buy. If you want to understand the buyer side of this whole process,
And what to buy is actually look for. I'm running another stream, which is called Built to Buy. ⁓ It runs at 12.30 on the same day ⁓ of these Built to Sell webinars.
when you start to understand what's a buyer looking for, you're in a much better position to really understand how this is all going to work.
Yeah.
Another comment from Brent, the key areas are branded uniforms, vehicles and trailers, professional website, customer service, technicians communicating, communicating to the client by giving ETAs, delivering premium work. There's so many things there that as a business owner, you can't, you really can't show, you know, you can't manage all of those things.
It's so important to be able to remove yourself. And, you know, a lot of these things can be automated as well. You know, giving clients ETAs can be automated these days. Building a professional website is so easy and quick to do these days, but also pretty cheap. But, you know, because of what you're doing, building in the functionality of being able to
book in and building that recurring revenue. that's what, you know, particularly in your business, that's what buyers love, recurring revenue. When they just know what's going to be turning, you know, what money's coming in week to week, month to month, year to year. And in the e-commerce world, that's called lifetime, the lifetime value of a customer.
So we want to build this monthly recurring revenue, which, know, Brent, as you know, is a big part of that service based business. And particularly with, with what you do, turning up every single fortnight, week, month, or however often you service them. Um, that's what we call the monthly recurring revenue. But then what we want to do is build the lifetime value of a customer.
And the beauty of the recurring revenue and increasing the lifetime value of a customer is that it's a lot cheaper to market to a customer when they keep coming back week after week after week. But that's where your customer service comes in. That's where all your systems come into place. So building the website, getting some advertising up, all those kinds of things, that's only for the new customers. And that can be pretty expensive.
But if you're not servicing your existing customers on that recurring revenue cycle, you're leaving a lot of money on the table. And I see it quite often with a lot of companies that, you know, don't even send out an email to their existing database, you know, to people who have experienced their product or their service and have this level of trust in there.
They just don't go out to the existing clientele. Having run several businesses that are built on recurring revenue, I email people two, three, four times a week. And people can choose whether they want to read it or not. But so many business owners feel scared of emailing their customer base, even just once a month.
It's crazy. yeah, sorry, this is sort of me going down a bit of a rabbit hole. But look, think that really, I hope this helps on
providing a little bit of clarity on how to remove yourself from the day to day. Remember, after this, I'll email you out a bit more of an article that I've written, which gives more of a framework in this. And by all means, click that link, 30 minute discovery call, book in a meeting with me. Let's have a chat. If I can help, absolutely fantastic. Even just a little bit of guidance.
This kind of thing is achievable in 90 days. We can remove most business owners from the business in 90 days and give you that freedom, the financial freedom, the emotional freedom, and also increase the valuation of your company over this time. All right. Well, thank you very much. I hope that was helpful. If you want to hang around till the 1230 session and how to spot
an owner dependent business and see it from the buyer's side. It's extremely valuable to see the picture from both sides. Until then, my name is Sam Penny. I'm a coach for the brave. Make sure you jump onto my website, sampenny.com or even 90dayswithsam.com. There's a link for the 30 minute discovery call. Book it in. free. I love to meet business owners.
And I'll see you in a fortnight for our next session, which is to systemize and maximize. See you then.