Today our team spent four hours in our EOS quarterly offsite session. I was surprised how the same actions we are taking to grow our practice also help us de-risk the business. Not surprisingly, de-risking is one of the main things we preach when you begin exit planning.
Here are 3 key ways we are preparing for growth, and how each initiative is simultaneously helping us mitigate risk.
Reduce Owner Dependency To grow our practice, we identified a few key initiatives today to reduce dependency on myself and my dad: “Delegate to Genius”, which is to invite others inside and outside the team to take things off of our plate that they like and are better at doing than we are. Develop systems and processes for the 3rd generation of support. Mark and I have handed several processed off to team members. But now these team members are needing to do the same. We know that if we can free them up and successfully delegate from them to others, these processes can continue to run efficiently and benefit our clients. Develop strong leadership team. This was perhaps the main benefit of our time together today, strengthening the team and further improving our ability to collaborate.
Diversify Customer Base: We’ve seen companies hit rough patches because their one big client hit a rough patch of their own. We don’t want that to be us. And we don’t want our service to one single client to derail us from serving all others. So, we spent time investigating ways we can better serve existing clients, better serve their key connections, strengthen relationships with referral sources, and develop new avenues of growth. The goal here is to have a business with great client relationships that are sticky, but to have no single massive client on whose future our own depends.
Succession Planning: “The roofer’s roof always leaks, and the cobbler’s children have no shoes.” As a former roofer, this saying hits closer to home. And as a practice that focuses on helping entrepreneurs successfully transition, we know we’d be foolish not to treat our own practice as seriously. So, the growth initiative today was to help us as advisors see what things we can let go of and where that newly liberated time should be invested. The main reason I was excited to let things go from my plate is so that I could focus on the top 3 things that I love doing that bring value to our clients and their friends, and result in increased business. This is how succession planning is setting us up for growth.
How Our Growth Planning Can Help Exit Planning
All of these things we did today in our EOS meeting were for the purpose of growth. We want to build a business that increasingly serves our clients and their friends.
But show me a business that is less owner-dependent, more diversified in its customer base, and has a system to constantly update its succession plans, and I’ll show you a business that is more ready to sell if/when they choose.
Any opinions are those of Timothy Weddle and not necessarily those of Raymond James. The foregoing information has been obtained from sources considered to be reliable, but we do not guarantee that it is accurate or complete, it is not a statement of all available data necessary for making an investment decision, and it does not constitute a recommendation.
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