Double to Sell: The Cash Rich Exit Strategy
Hello, Self Made Nation! Want to know what those of us in the Self Made Nation rarely do? Take an actual break – I’m talking no phones, no internet, no work. How do I know this?
Because here I am, about half-way through a two-week break – my first real holiday of the year – and here I also am, making sure I get this blog post written and published for you all.
It’s all good. When you love your work, it’s not really work, is it? Anyhow, back to “this year.” Remember back on December 31st, 2019? We were all eagerly awaiting this dawn of a new year – a new decade!
And I was busy prepping Double to Sell, scheduled for May in Ottawa. What was to be Canada's premier, invitation-only workshop for business owners was perhaps my biggest and boldest endeavour yet.
And then BOOM. Corona virus, eventually to be known as Covid-19, hit us all metaphorically upside our collective heads!
Pivot Becomes the Most Overused Word in the English Language
I kid, I kid, but yeah. It definitely did become the “term du jour” – and rightly so! We have experienced a TON of change over the past almost five months or so.
COVID-19 has been incredibly disruptive to our lives, threatening our health - physical, emotional, and mental - and effectively shutting down our economy, full-stop.
While cities and provinces across Canada are stumbling through various stages of re-openings – and mostly doing pretty well so far – it behooves us to remember that Covid-19 is still out there, and we still won’t see a vaccine any time soon.
And it HAS been the time to pivot. To embrace action by grabbing the bull by the horns and recognising that these obstacles can just as easily be seen as opportunities.
From ‘In Real Life’ to Virtual: Our New Normal
Us humans are a creative bunch. We’ve reinvented ourselves and our way of life countless times over the millennia, and look at us now? Doing it again.
Double to Sell, Canada's premier, invitation-only workshop for business owners - is BACK! This time, virtually, which has actually opened up the space availability (up to 50 spaces available), so look at that – bonus points!
I often hear how business owners have the bulk of their net worth wrapped up in their businesses – and to unleash that wealth – they’re looking to sell. In fact, upwards of 75% of business owners plan to sell in the next ten years!
Is that you? Are you ready to sell?
Just like trying to sell a home – does your business have great curb appeal, but maybe needs some structural upgrades and a bit of maintenance?
There’s no time like NOW to get started on that housekeeping.
Cameron Herold: The CEO Whisperer
This new Double to Sell event is your opportunity to craft your cash-rich exit strategy - VIRTUALLY, of course - with Cameron Herold and a roundtable of your peers.
For those of you who might not be familiar with him, he is one of THE MOST SUCCESSFUL entrepreneurs out there.
At Double to Sell (D2S), he’ll be sharing some of his extraordinary brain power, gleaned from decades if record company growth:
- How to get more done, faster and with fewer people.
- How to scale a company to get that revenue growth and profit growth.
- How to free up time for the entrepreneur and do so with very simple systems.
On this week’s “I’m a Millionaire. So Now What?” (EP 135) I revisited Cameron’s episode that aired in February, right before Covid-19 dropped the hammer on us all. He’s such an entrepreneurial guru – and was the inspiration behind me curating D2S in the first place.
Here’s a bit of what he had to say – and a bit of what he’ll be expanding on at our virtual event this November.
On Cheat Sheets
“So, I was always the dumb kid in high school. I was the kid in high school who got the 62% grade point or 62% average. Really struggled with the normal school system. I was always the kid who had to find the cheat sheets because I had too much going on. I was running a fraternity and running a business, and I was on the university ski team and partying like crazy. I had too many things happening that I couldn’t spend time studying and learning it all, so I had to figure out the short cuts. And then in business, I had to figure out the short cuts too because I was trying to run a really fast-growing company. I was 28 years old, and I hired 220 people in four months from out of the gate. That’s not a normal thing to be able to do that, so what I wanted to do is then give those systems to others because I felt bad that they were trying so hard when they didn’t have to.”
On Vivid Visions
“In the business world, the vivid vision is the entrepreneur leaning out three years into the future, describing their company in such vivid detail about how the employees are engaged and how the customers are engaged and what customers are saying about you, what the media is writing about you, what your meetings are like. You describe operations, IT, marketing, et cetera, and it becomes a four-or-five-page written document that describes your company three years in the future. So literally, leaning out to December 31th 2022 describing your entire company, what it looks like, acts like and feels like. And then you get a professional writer to polish it and make it pop off the page, and you add some design elements to it.”
On the ‘Simple’ of Business
“The basic idea with my book Double Double was how to double your revenue and profit in three years or less. I look at every company having three inputs. We only have our people, our time and money. Time is that finite resource just every day kind of clicking by. It’s expiring inventory. We only have a certain number of people, and what ROI are we going to get off of them? And then we only have our money that we’re putting in. We can put it into investing or marketing or overhead or systems. What’s the highest ROI off those things? I often see entrepreneurs like a fly trying to get out the window. They’re going to bang their head on the window. They’re going to keep banging their head on the window. They’re going to work hard, work hard, work hard. But there’s a door. Just turn, go with the door. It’s right here. If they would just take the short cut, they’d be so much better ahead. And they never seem to take to take those short cuts. They seem to try to think that business is complicated, and business is actually quite simple.”
Of course, there’s LOTS more from Cameron on the podcast. If you can, take the time to listen to the entire episode (EP 135).
And I hope to see you at Double to Sell, this November.
And if you’re an entrepreneur looking to exit, or you’re at the helm of a thriving business or startup, I would love to talk with you about your stories! You can drop me a line here.
Plus, if you are craving like-minded conversation with growth-oriented business owners, consider joining me and eight other business owners, investors and entrepreneurs for our next two editions of Elevated Conversations are coming up in September – watch this space for more details!
“I’m a Millionaire. So Now What?” is brought to you by Double to Sell - Canada's Premier Invitation-ONLY workshop for business owners wanting a cash-rich exit in 10 years or less. For more information, or to register, please visit the “Double to Sell” website.