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It's Not Rocket Science! Five Questions Over CoffeeHelping business owners explode their business growth Author: The Complete Approach
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Five Questions Over Coffee with Len Bruskiewitz (ep. 118)
Thursday, 6 March, 2025
Who is Len?Len Bruskiewitz is a seasoned advisor specializing in strategic exit planning for small to mid-sized business owners. With a focus on businesses generating between $1 million and $15 million in revenue, Len understands the critical importance of having a written exit plan. He is passionate about helping entrepreneurs navigate the complexities of succession planning, especially given that approximately 60% of business owners lack a formal plan. Len emphasizes the necessity of being proactive, as waiting until a traumatic event or a sudden desire to exit can often be too late. Through his expertise, he guides his clients to ensure a smooth and profitable transition when they decide to leave their businesses.Key Takeaways00:00 Founders can't scale businesses without delegating decisions.05:00 Failure to document and lack of guidance.09:04 Evaluates current business value and improvement areas.11:19 Found "why" through "The E Myth Revisited."15:53 Dependence on one entity risks business stability.17:30 Daily practices essential for business innovation, diversification.20:43 Subscribe for guest updates and podcast replays._________________________________________________________________________________________________Subscribe to our newsletter and get details of when we are doing these interviews live at https://TCA.fyi/newsletterFind out more about being a guest at : link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/beaguestSubscribe to the podcast at https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/podcastHelp us get this podcast in front of as many people as possible. Leave a nice five-star review at apple podcasts : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/apple-podcasts and on YouTube : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/Itsnotrocketscienceatyt!Here's how you can bring your business to THE next level:If you are a business owner currently turning over £/$10K - £/$50K per month and want to grow to £/$100K - £/$500k per month download my free resource on everything you need to grow your business on a single page :It's a detailed breakdown of how you can grow your business to 7-figures in a smart and sustainable way————————————————————————————————————————————-TranscriptNote, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)SUMMARY KEYWORDSBusiness coach, certified exit planning adviser, business owners, exit plan, business life, retirement, traumatic event, crisis, business challenge, independence, salable company, scaling, founder, decision-making, documentation, systems, automation, business valuation, free advice, business valuation calculator, industry, revenue, profits, readiness, business innovation, Michael Gerber, The E Myth Revisited, recurring revenue, customer base, business buyer, business value, strategic buyer.SPEAKERSLen Bruskiewitz, Stuart WebbStuart Webb [00:00:31]:Hi, and welcome back to It's Not Rocket Science, 5 questions over coffee. Delighted this afternoon to be joined by Len, Len Bruskewitz. I'm gonna get that wrong. Aren't I, Len? But, thatLen Bruskiewitz [00:00:43]:was a good That was a pretty good run. Pretty good run at it.Stuart Webb [00:00:48]:Len is a business coach, and he's a certified exit planning adviser. That's a conversation I'm really interested in having because so many business owners don't think about their exit nearly early enough in their business life. You start a business and then you suddenly realize, there's a crisis in life or there's a time to think about retirement. And then you ask the question, well, how long is it gonna take you to get out of this business? It's nearly always longer than you think. You need to start thinking about this much earlier in your business life.Len Bruskiewitz [00:01:15]:So I think this is going to be a really excellent conversation. And I'm really delighted thatStuart Webb [00:01:15]:Len has made a few minutes in his day to join us to have this discussion. So welcome to It's Not Rocket Science 5 Questions Over Coffee, Len.Len Bruskiewitz [00:01:29]:Great. Thank you, Stuart. I'm I'm, I'm really happy to be here and and, looking forward to sharing some information with, with your viewers and listeners.Stuart Webb [00:01:38]:So I may have sort of cited, already to sort of tee you up on who the person is that you help, but let's just let's just let's just fully understand exactly sort of what the business owner is that you help, how you how you sort of how they should be identifying themselves.Len Bruskiewitz [00:01:55]:Yeah. You you absolutely hit it. You know, if if I think about who my ideal client is, it's a business owner, probably 1 to $15,000,000 in revenue. And the the challenge that they're facing is what you hit upon. About 60% of business owners don't have any kind of written exit plan. And that's a big challenge because as you said, once a traumatic event happens, you know, a death, divorce, disability, it's too late. And it's also too late when you say, I wanna be out of this business in a year. Right? That's it's too late.Len Bruskiewitz [00:02:36]:You need you need some time. Right? And and so that's the biggest challenge I see. Right? But if you think about when when I start working with a client, the biggest challenge that that I have is helping them get independence from their business. Right? You know, if it's the case where every decision runs through them, everything to run the businesses up in their head, nobody else can can do anything, that ends up leading to a company that's worth next to nothing, unfortunately. So that's, yeah, that's the biggest challenge. Once I start working with somebody is to get them to back away, from the day to day and and, you know, let make the company salable.Stuart Webb [00:03:22]:Yes. Interesting interesting line. You've you've used a couple of real key terms because I deal with businesses who are sort of really scaling, and they have the same image. You have the same problems. You know? You have a founder who's there making every decision, and you cannot scale a business if the only person in the business that can make a decision is the founder. And when they go on holiday, they don't make a decision. In fact, so many of them don't even bother to go on holiday because they know it's a problem. So you've just started me into the sort of the second bit of this discussion, which is, so what are the things they've tried to do themselves before they sort of suddenly come across somebody like you that sort of changes all of that?Len Bruskiewitz [00:04:01]:Yeah. I think I think there are a couple things they they think they do or or, make an effort at.Stuart Webb [00:04:07]:Up, please.Len Bruskiewitz [00:04:09]:One of the first ones is they think they've communicated well, to their family, to their employees, and in in in essence, they haven't. Right? I'll I'll just use an example of some data around succession. Right? So the idea of of a older generation with the idea to pass along the business to a younger generation. Data says about 50% of the older generation think that the younger generation is going to take over. In reality, that only happens about 25% of the time. So you've got a big gap there. And what does that do to? It's because the 2 parties haven't communicated well enough and it's the same to employees. Right? Am I going to sell this business? Am I going to sell it to you, the employees or the management? So communication is definitely one of the biggest things that they do.Len Bruskiewitz [00:05:00]:The other is just waiting too long. You've hinted at it before. You know, they know they need to document everything that's going on in their business, but, you know, it's just easier because I know it in my head, I, you know, I'll just do it and then something happens and and it's really a a can be a pretty traumatic experience. The final thing is that, they try things but they don't have any kind of sounding board. Right? Running a business is pretty lonely, and, they just don't have the the background and what it takes to get to get a business ready because for most business owners, this is their one and only time that they are transitioning out of a business. So they just don't know what they need to do and they're, you know, there shouldn't steps you need to take. And so that's a big piece of what they think they've tried but haven't really done all that well.Stuart Webb [00:05:53]:Then you you hit about something very interesting there, which is documentation. And and once again, in my work, I spend an awful lot of my time working with people with documentation and systems to automate things largely because once again, it makes a business scalable, but it also ensures these businesses don't run into those repeated errors, which so often the full cause business valuations to crash. But but I read, and I I don't know whether or not this is your experience, but a business is is often 2 to 3 times more valuable if it's just got simple documentation which tells other people how to run the business so that somebody else can step in and start running it fairly immediately. And I don't have to go through the pain of trying to work out how on earth everything works around here.Len Bruskiewitz [00:06:36]:I completely agree with that data. And if you think about the the things if you if you think about the other side, what what absolutely crushes the value of a company? It's that lack of independence, lack of documentation, and bad accounting. Right? Those three things, are are the killers. But but I agree with you. Documentation feels like such an important thing for many reasons. You know, exit aside, just making the business run better, but but there isn't that rigor. I think it's always a, I mean to do this, but the status quo is just easier to, to maintain.Stuart Webb [00:07:16]:And it's it's true, isn't it, that you, you know, you find yourself fighting fires everywhere. And and then when somebody turns around and says, we should write down what happens is, well, we're never gonna get into that problem again, so why should we? So, you know, it becomes just one of those self fulfilling prophecies, doesn't it?Len Bruskiewitz [00:07:33]:It absolutely does. So, you know, this is a I think this is a human problem. Right? I I mean, everybody deals with this in their personal life, in their business life. It's hard to take the time even though, you know, the data will tell you that 5 minutes here is going to save you, you know, 50 minutes down the road or 500 minutes, whatever the multiple is.Stuart Webb [00:07:56]:Brilliant. Brilliant. Len, now this is where we get to the the really valuable thing for people who are watching or listening or, coming back to this recording, and that is I think you have got a very valuable piece of free advice that you can you can have. And I I think I've put on screen here the place where to you go in order to to get that piece of free advice. It's greater heights coaching dot com. That's greater heights coaching dot com. That that'll be in the notes. But tell us, what will we find at greater heights coaching dot com?Len Bruskiewitz [00:08:27]:Well, that's my personal website. So you'll find a fair bit of information about the exit planning process, about some of the options that are out there for people. But what I process, about some of the options that are out there for people. But what I really like everybody to check out is I've got a free business valuation calculator. There's a link up at the top right of the site. It takes about 15 minutes and what it does is gives you a basic idea of what your business is worth today. That's based on your industry, your location, your revenue and your profits today. And then it asks you a set of questions that really get to how ready is your business.Len Bruskiewitz [00:09:04]:And so what it does is it comes out with a valuation of what your business is worth today. And then based on your answers to those kind of readiness questions, it gives you an idea of how much more value is missing, and the basic areas that you need to work on in order to, you know, to close that gap between what your business is worth today and what it really could be. So it's a, you know, it's not gonna answer every question for you. But in 15 minutes, it gives you a pretty good feel for what the areas are that you could really improve upon to increase the value, should you cut to that point where you wanna turn around and sell your business down the road.Stuart Webb [00:09:45]:Great great piece of, great piece of of work, and I sincerely hope people go and take advantage of it because, you know, knowing the first step to knowing where you have to go is having some sort of map. And, a simple document like that, which just points out where things are missing, is the first step to a really good map.Len Bruskiewitz [00:10:04]:Yeah. And it's simple. Like I said, it's this isn't a this isn't a a challenging thing. It's 15 minutes, and you get some really great, really great feedback there.Stuart Webb [00:10:15]:Brilliant. So, Len, what what what was it in your in your in your past history? What was it that sort of brought you to this? Was there a particular experience or a program, a book, which sort of started you thinking about how do businesses or business owners exit from their business as well?Len Bruskiewitz [00:10:33]:Yeah. I think I I'm gonna bring up 2 points, not to cheat on the question here. The the first was an experience. I started out doing kind of generic business coaching. Right? I was helping small business owners. And one of my first clients was a 72 year old woman who had run her business with her husband for over 50 years. And, he unfortunately passed away. And as much as she was involved in the business, she really didn't have a good feel for what was going to happen to it.Len Bruskiewitz [00:11:01]:You know? She's 72. She said, hey. I need a plan here. So, when we first started talking, she said, Len, I can't sleep at night because I don't know what's going to happen to my business. We sat down. We worked through options. We came up with a plan. She's implementing that plan now, and she said, Len, I can sleep at night now.Len Bruskiewitz [00:11:19]:So to me, that was a huge, you know, kind of I think I found my why. So that was the first event. And then the the piece of of literature around that was a book by by Michael Gerber called The E Myth Revisited, which I think is just an unbelievable way. He he does a great job of laying out why most businesses aren't successful, and the hint is we've already talked about it. The the business owner is too much in the business, in the weeds of running everything and not stepping back and looking at the big picture. But to me, that book is really excellent at laying out the things that, you know, that a business owner needs to do. And that's really, you know, keep innovating, document everything. Have we talked about that before? And really understand what your metrics and business drivers are.Len Bruskiewitz [00:12:18]:Those are kind of the 3 key pieces to take you from, you know, a a single business to something that can scale.Stuart Webb [00:12:27]:I love it. Okay. We've had a really interesting discussion, but I I sense there is a question that you think I should have asked, which I haven't asked yet. This is my get away from the get away from it and not do too much work on these things, questions. So then there's a there's a question that you're thinking I should have asked by now. So come on. Tell me, what is the question you want me to ask? And then, obviously, you know the answer to the question that you've just posed.Len Bruskiewitz [00:12:53]:Yeah. I think a lot of people who are who are, watching this, listening to it are saying, well, how does the business get valued? So I think that's the question I would like you to ask me and and let me take a run at it. So this is really you know, it it's a bit of a loaded question because businesses are valued depending on a number of factors. So one of the factors is, you know, ultimately who the buyer is. So there are buyers that are going to ultimately pay less for a business that might be your children, right, or your employees. Or it may be somebody who just wants to kinda run come in and run the business. They're they're gonna probably pay a little bit higher. The highest, value payers are those who this business is strategic to them.Len Bruskiewitz [00:13:39]:So they can take what you're doing and leverage it with what they're doing. Right? Maybe it's an opportunity for them to sell additional things, your product to their customers or their product to your customers, whatever. So that usually yields the highest value. So so that's a big it depends answer on who the buyer is. But I wanna go one level below that and say, how is value driven regardless of who they are.Stuart Webb [00:14:03]:Great question. Great question.Len Bruskiewitz [00:14:05]:Yeah. And so this is this is one that I think will surprise some people. Only about 20% of the value of a company is are the things that you can see externally. So what's the status of the market? What's the company's kind of position within that market? Only about 20% of the value is driven that way. Fully 80% of the value of a company is driven by what are called the intangibles. Right? And these are we I I think about this in 4 big categories. Right? So we call them the 4 c's. They're different kinds of capital.Len Bruskiewitz [00:14:41]:The first one is the structural capital. So are your processes documented? Do you have metrics in place that you understand? Right? So those that's one big piece. And again, that's that translates really well to somebody else who wants to buy the business. The second one is the customer capital. So do you have recurring revenue? Is all of your revenue dependent on 1 or 2 customers? That's a huge risk if it is. Right? So how dependable is your future revenue? How dispersed is it amongst different customers? That's customer capital. The third one is social. This is really what's the culture of your company.Len Bruskiewitz [00:15:20]:Is there owner independence or not? Right? And the final one is the human capital. So do you have a great team? Is there some know how within your company that nobody else has? That again, if you do, that's a huge value adder. If you don't, that doesn't add a ton of value. So I think about those those intangible things that are built into your company that are only visible from the inside, really. And that's what drives the vast majority of the the value in a business.Stuart Webb [00:15:53]:Do you know it's, it's interesting you you've you've made 2 comments, in the last couple of minutes, which I think, is not well enough understood. Maybe I'll just expand that to 3, having said that then. But let's say, the power of 1 is something which I worry about a lot with with businesses. They are often dependent upon 1 business, 1 customer, 1 supplier, 1 route to market. I was in a position like that with one of my businesses where I had one very large customer and when they canceled that contract, you can imagine the devastation that had upon the business. It it meant basically restarting from scratch trying to build a customer base. We had relied upon this customer for a very, very long time, and they just seem to be reliable until eventually it was one day, yeah, we're canceling. We're no longer needing 35, 40, 50%.Stuart Webb [00:16:44]:I think it was something about 75% of my workforce. We're all dedicated to this one customer. That can be a huge risk. But it's equally, you know, one person in your business who knows everything. You know, that can be the founder, but it can also be one key person that's been there from day 1, and you're there thinking to yourself, Joe's always been hugely reliable. They're never gonna leave, and then they do, and everything suddenly falls apart. So the power of 1 is hugely important. And the other thing that I think you just basically alluded to, which I think is really important, you know, you need to keep innovating.Stuart Webb [00:17:19]:If you haven't got a team that are empowered and ready to innovate, you're stymieing your own growth and causing yourself more issues than you can think of.Len Bruskiewitz [00:17:30]:I completely agree. And and what's what's important to to realize is that these are all daily things. Right? This isn't something you do in an annual planning process. This is these are things you have to live every day. And, you know, not not to steal too much thunder from my valuation calculator, but some of the questions some of the things you just brought up are questions. You know, are you innovating? Do you are you getting ideas throughout your organization? Are you reliant on only 1 or 2 customers? And and I think this also gets back, Stuart, to, you know, that timeline we talked about early on. Right? So if you're trying to innovate and if you're trying to to diversify your customer base, You can't do that in 30 days. Right? So my timeline when I when I talk to clients is, you know, a minimum of 2 years, and it's really 3 to 5 years, before your business is ready.Len Bruskiewitz [00:18:25]:And then once it's ready, now it's maintenance mode. But the reason I say that is if in in many transactions, it just once you, agree to sell your company, it's 9 months to a year before that Yeah.Stuart Webb [00:18:39]:That's the that's the you know? Yeah.Len Bruskiewitz [00:18:41]:Right? So if you take 1 year, then now, okay, that's a year out. Now you've gotta get ready. If you've got, you know, some accounting maybe that's not so pleasant, you know, that takes another couple years to work its way through. Documenting all your processes. Right? Leveraging, you know, figuring out what you're really good at and going for that. It all takes time. So can you sell a company in less than 3 to 5 years? Yes. You can.Len Bruskiewitz [00:19:07]:But it's probably not gonna be for the value that you want because some of these things just have to happen and they take time.Stuart Webb [00:19:15]:And I think you've hit upon a couple of good things as well then, which is, you know, doing these things means that when somebody knocks on the door, that strategic customer that sort of, you know, you've been working with that says, you could be a really key part of my organization. I'd like to buy you. If you then turn around it's a bit like, you know, oh, I've got an opportunity. I now need to put together the document, the sales document. If if it's not there ready to go, you spend the next I don't know how long putting together your sales document, and then the opportunity is gone. So be ready at every time by putting these processes, these thinking, this stuff in place from day 1.Len Bruskiewitz [00:19:49]:Exactly right. You know, you you hit upon the exact, example I give. Somebody could walks in the door, and it does happen. Somebody walks in the door and says, hey. I wanna buy this business. If you say, hang on. Come back in 18 months when I'm ready. They're not coming back.Len Bruskiewitz [00:20:08]:SoStuart Webb [00:20:08]:Yeah. Agree. Agree. Len, it's been absolutely brilliant having this, conversation with you. We we could obviously talk far too long and probably would if we didn't bring it to a whole and bore quite a lot of people. But I think the important thing is we've left them with just enough information to think to themselves. I think I better go and have a look at greaterheightscoaching.com and see what, the valuation of my business could be. And I'm also gonna put in a plug for, my own newsletter, where I talk about the sort of brilliant people like Len, who are coming up on this podcast in in a few days.Stuart Webb [00:20:43]:Normally, it comes out on a Tuesday morning about that Tuesday's guest. And if you wanna go to link.thecompleteapproach.co.ukforward slash newsletter, link. Thecompleteapproach.co.ukforward slash newsletter. You can get, that newsletter delivered to your inbox just twice a week. Once with the who's coming up and you can immediately get on and ask questions of people like Len when they're here live. And then also hear them when we replay them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all the other usual Pod places. Len, thank you so much for coming and spending some time with us. Really appreciate the effort you put in and I think if people haven't by now realize selling your business is not gonna happen if in the next 5 minutes.Stuart Webb [00:21:28]:You really have to prepare and think about it in the most strategic way, then, then they've they've not been listening properly. So I thank you for coming on to tell us about it.Len Bruskiewitz [00:21:36]:Thank you. I appreciate the time. 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