The Site Shed

Succession planning and how to prep your kids or an employee to take over | ft. Tom Howard | Ep.434

• Matt Jones - Trade based business enthusiast • Episode 434

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Thinking about passing down your business? Not so fast! In this episode, we break down the real challenges of business succession planning. Should you hand over your trade business to your kids or employees? What are the biggest mistakes owners make? And how do you set up a business that thrives long after you step away? We cover strategies, real-life success stories, and hard truths every business owner needs to hear.

Watch the video version of this podcast at https://youtu.be/z_142odU-Y0


Discussion Points: 

00:00 – Episode Highlight

02:00 – Why Most Family Businesses Fail by the 3rd Generation

05:30 – The Key to Training Future Leaders in Your Business

09:45 – Should You Hire Externally or Promote From Within?

14:00 – Real-Life Success Stories of Business Succession

18:30 – Biggest Mistakes Owners Make in Transitioning Leadership

23:15 – How to Create an Exit Strategy That Works


Resources:

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hey it's Matt Jones here if you wanna check out the video version of this podcast click on the first link in the description then they go in and say work in every spot in the company before they're allowed to work in the position that they were hired for and it makes all of their team understand the whole business from beginning to end including being a delivery person being working in the warehouse being on the manufacturing floor everything all the way through and say know all the spots and understand the business what I'm more curious about is scenarios where people are super go hiring for high level management without them going through the business without them without them understanding the details of how that business operates the truth of the matter is if you're the smartest guy in all of Australia you'd have a billion dollar Australian company by now and you don't so guess what there's other people are smarter than you and it's up to you to figure out who they are Tom Howard welcome back to the sideshed hey Matt how's it going it's good man this has been uh this is our third recording uh third recording yeah the right yeah 1 2 no fourth is our fourth okay I'll take your word for it I can't remember yeah my great have you back um thanks so much for sharing your time and wisdom with us once again yeah for you listeners and viewers out there that are tuning in for the first time um Tom has is is joining us all the way from the US uh Tom uh do you wanna give me the background as to as far as what you do now just for the listeners and how you got yeah I buy and sell heating air Christian companies I have about uh seven or eight of them right now um and I've sold some of the past grow some my largest one has about 300 employees um we cleared 100 million in revenue last year and we put about 16 million last year to the bottom line we're targeting 140 million revenue this year at that US dollars and 30 million to the bottom line well it's a double I didn't like yeah yeah I mean last year we were acquiring and bolting on but we have about a 40% growth rate on average for the past 10 years per year and so we expect to go from 100 this year to 1 40 without acquisition so we're pretty excited for that good no acquisitions to to fuel that growth this year yeah we believe we can hit 1 40 without an acquisition okay um and uh I own other ones I have shares in Brody Panel they're about 60 million revenue and a couple others then Service Titan the software asked me to come work with them and represent the contract with their company about 5 years ago I said I would as long as I get to continue to on my ergoshire and plumbing shops and he said okay um so anyone that's on service and I'm locked out of your data I can't see anyone's data um but I represent you and um things like that a service site and so that's my full time jobs working service site Isaac you're just overachiever really aren't you thanks man and I will say this too I've um I listened to the your podcast with you you and your sister and it's awesome haha so good love those conversations yeah um that's Howard deals.com right yeah Howard deals.com uh her last name is Howard yeah my sister she's been married a couple times so she she just goes by her middle name Catherine Elizabeth yeah so just drops off the last name so people don't know but yeah we're both Howards good um so anyway in episode 1 um well we'd plan to record the second episode episode 1 but then we just got talking and ended up down this rabbit hole which essentially was talking about how you went from took a business from one and a half million to well what then was 100 million and what now is 140 million in only 12 years we're we're trying to go to one 40 this year yeah right the second episode we're talking about the process for buying and selling and how long does it take um and then we jumped down to the fifth episode which was uh had a create pay incentive plans to drive performance towards a sale and now we're doing the full Star Wars thing here we're going back to Episode 3 we can talk about our succession planning and how to prep your kids or employee to take over and should you even have them take it over yeah and that will leave one more episode on the on the chart which will be uh how to grow your business for potential sale uh to retain profit or to retain profit so um that'll pretty much wrap this series up which I'm sure you're gutted about no yeah that's that's rough ha ha ha anyway I know I do appreciate time and if you guys out there um this is a bit of a timely comment depending on when you when you're watching or listening this but there is gonna be a service Titan event coming up in Sydney in April 2,025 Thomas coming out with his sister and a bunch of other um amazing business um gurus like with the likes of Ellen Raw who's actually I'm recording with her on Thursday actually Tom um so she's gonna come on as well and um Rio who is the trainer from Next Star um yeah there's an Irish service titan yeah Aaron Gaynor who owns Eco Plumbers they're about 70 million revenue US dollars in Jail Street I mean he's very profitable great leaders that are going to come out and be talking to um in Australia so you don't have to fly all the way to the US to go to conference yeah amazing um I think as well like the allure and the reason why I'm so excited for this event is it's just like even when I talk to you like the scale of what you guys are doing over there is just it it it's really great to create that vision and that you know just help people understand as far as what is actually happening other in other places and what potentially is possible you know um it's it's really it's really mind blowing when you guys are all talking about your hundred million dollar businesses and there's you know guys over here sort of scrapping for you know five million dollar businesses like it's it it's yeah and the crazy thing is this about 10 15 years ago um if you were a 20 million dollar business in the US you were huge right and now 10 or 15 years later because of advancements mostly in technology and other things we have a lot more tools that we can use right our disposal and so now 20 million is kind of like a middle market company private equity won't even look at it uh they'll they'll look at your 20 million dollar company they wanna acquire you but they're the private equity companies are hitting 100 million 200 million a billion we have a few customers service site and that are over two billion well what what one yeah 2.4 billion that that particular company didn't exist seven years ago what point four billion yeah so it's it's coming to Australia and I think Australian companies should know that is that no this opportunity is gonna be there and the people that are intentional about it you know you start thinking about how am I gonna structure my company how am I gonna use technology to my benefit that kind of stuff and what do I wanna do do I wanna sell to private equity if so how does that work that's why we're doing this um podcasts Ross section together or maybe I wanna do some succession planning maybe I wanna give it to my um daughter or son and let them run it and um maybe they wanna sell in the future um but we can talk about that today I've heard you talk in the past about the um no don't don't start without a finish line in sight yeah I say never get into it never enter a company without an exit strategy yeah so yeah that I I mean you see these horror stories don't you have like you know people uh like kids of business owners or whatever succeeding their parents and just running it into the ground um yeah and and and and even the same with you know the whole concept around you know getting getting rich without becoming rich like not actually going through the school of hard knocks and building the business so I'm really keen to care about you know how your framework in relation to this and and one thing I do ask you have you done this have you done the succession planning with team members yeah well obviously not your kids cause they're little bit yeah my my oldest kid is 14 years old my youngest is 5 um I'll talk about a few things first of all my philosophy is different than most I um most most businesses the failure by third generations is the highest failure rate and you're like 99% all businesses are out by third generation it's over 99% um and they say and there's consultants my mother worked for company cards are called Sargento and they had to hire third party consultant to come in and work with the third generation to make sure they made it past that third generation Mark because it's such a hump and sergeant is a very um sophisticated and strong company now but they spent a lot of time being very intentional about what they did and hang on a few of those things but when I look at it the reason that they typically see that failed by third generations the first generation kills themselves to get it off the ground they're just you're going through the school hard knocks there's just no way to start a company from scratch and just not have it hard the second generation typically saw how hard their parents worked so sometimes they don't have to go through the school hard knocks but they saw how hard it was for their parents so at least they have some understanding of what it took to get there and they respect that the third generation generally didn't even see the first generation working so they have no concept of what it took and how hard it was to get there and everything else and now it's third generation so without that appreciation it typically falls apart and so when I talk to people I said look first of all the best thing I want for my kids and this is not for everyone but my personal philosophy is is I want them to have a work ethic and I want them to be strong I believe that hard times make hard people and soft times make soft people and so if you give your kids everything and make it super easy for them super soft guess what they're probably gonna be soft when the storm comes they're not ready and the whole thing's gonna fall down um so with my kids is I've told them hey don't expect anything you're probably not gonna get anything if you really wanna work hard and and try to earn a spot at the company you're welcome to but I'm not giving you anything yeah um and they know that from day one and so they're thinking of other things and the reality is I don't know if they um will want to be in it so I've I've consulted for a lot of companies that have been growing and working with their kids and everything else and um I've seen several of my have heard her horror stories but I've seen just as many success stories no one goes online though and says hey I just wanna let you know I'm super successful my kid did great yeah um they only post if it's some horror story right so you only see these these nasty things um there's some great ones that like Hoffman Brothers out of Saint Louis I had nothing to do with their growth or anything but Chris Hoffman his brother they I know Chris really well um their dad ran the thing to I think 10 million in revenue um and they're way over 100 million revenue today only a few years later and him and his brother were just very hard working uh Chris was in the military went to business school got you know got his act together and just really drove hard and had a great work ethic um and then you see the other ones with the parents just turned over um so what I've seen be successful is and this is with any employee I have definitely given equity to employees I've had employees grow up and the thing is I just saw a picture today my sister sent it to me of a guy who started out at my company as a warehouse worker sweeping the floors and he started doing deliveries and then he kept growing in the company the company was small then we only had about 12 employees um he was riding his bike bicycle to work he was 24 years old um today he's the general manager of my largest location became the general manager about a month and a half ago he went from that he swept floors to being a um helping out on installs and becoming assistant install manager then he became the install manager then install manager for six or seven years got really good at it got really strong um we taught him financials as best we could lean management everything else he read books we did um book groups at the company where we all read the same book at the same time so we kept developing and he's in his early 30s now and his last thing I said look you'll be the drum manager but I want you to go to get a higher level financial training so he's at currently enrolled in Stanford in their Executive Education program which Stanford is one of the top business universities in the US and um it's it's expensive to send them there um and they their executive education programs only a few weeks long but it really drives into you um and I invested not to get them there I think when you're having your kids get there one is that they need to understand that this shouldn't be given to them and that you're okay with selling someone else in many cases you would do better to give their kids the money if you wanna give your kids something I personally don't I'm gonna give almost all my money away they can I don't wanna raise a generation of slackers but if if you're gonna give your kids money um fine but you probably better off giving your kids money they give you a business that they can't run so you gotta look at it I mean talk to your kids ask them do you want to be in this business yes or no they don't wanna be in it don't give it to them that you're gonna screw over all your employees if you do that I am a mentor of mine once once said um never never deny your children the majesty of struggle yeah you know like it's so yeah it's so true and and then I've got an alcoholic of mine who very cleverly he's got a he's got a global empire and he said so he said to his children both of them he goes you guys can maybe have this business one day provided that you build a successful business on your own without my involvement yeah and if you can show me that you know how to run one then there's a possibility of this might go to you otherwise it's not there's no chance yeah I remember my mother telling me about Surgeento that Cheese company they're a multi multi billion dollar um cheese manufacturer in the US oh yeah and um what cheese like cheese yeah yeah okay they yeah shredded cheese that they're a premium brand of um uh natural cheeses that they have in like Walmart and all the big um stores in the US and the Lugentine was the founder and he said look the only thing that being this family gets you is an entry level spot in the company where everything else that you have to earn and so there's a lot of family members working out that company but all different levels and then they have a standard to get to the executive team what you have to hit for everyone whether you're in the family or not and you have to meet all those standards or you don't get into the executive team you know so you have to have a master's degree you have to uh part of the deal was you got to go work for another company for a certain amount of years and you had to bring um something else to the table when you came there's a whole lot of stuff and so um one of his sons made it but a lot of his other kids do not and he's okay with that um and the company is held on and you know now when I see the TV commercials I see him and his son both on the commercial and he's he's a lot older now but it makes me smile because I realize that's what they put in um and I think we have to do that with every person in your company is hold them to the same standard I have personally I fired my wife I fired my business partner's wife he fired his kids you know it we did that because that was what it took to make sure that the company progressed because we have hundreds of employees that were responsible for and all their families and all their families livelihood if you're going giving a job to somebody that's not qualified because they're your family members you're doing your entire company to service and you really shouldn't be running company they're putting their trust in you by coming to work for you and you're letting them down by doing that so it's that's a it's a tough thing to tough to swallow sometimes tell me something about so the the the gentleman that you were talking about for the now the now general manager you're saying he basically was promoted from within from being a floor sweeper to where he is today yeah and I've seen these scenarios uh before many times where you do promote within and there's like there's longevity in that position they understand all the different aspects and moving parts of the business which means they really do have a firm understanding of like what what's involved throughout all the different tiers to run the business and make it work which is obviously the ultimate outcome right like having someone understands all those things what I'm more curious about is a scenarios where people are certainly go hiring for high level management without them going through the business without them without them understanding the details you know of of how that business operates yeah so what I would do is this um Frito Lay for instance is a large manufacturer of a lot of things in the US but chips is the one that we well what you guys would call crisps um and chips are what I my French fries are my favorite thing in the world but these are like bags of Doritos and those kind of things in the US multi multi billion dollar operation and when they hire a senior level manager in order to come into the company they have I think it's like a six month program if I remember right um and they have to work in every level of the company even when they're hiring a higher level manager that person has to go be a delivery person for about a month then they go in and say work in every spot in the company before they're allowed to work in the position that they were hired for and it makes all of their team understand the whole business from beginning to end including being the delivery person being working in the warehouse being on the manufacturing floor you know everything all the way through and say know all the spots and understand the business I highly recommend it my companies um if I typically recommend they go on a ride along most of the senior level people I'm bringing in have been in the industry for saying no most about the industries our industry is pretty specific you know plumbing and air conditioning but at least if they don't want to go on ride alongs I'm not even hiring them in the first place anyway because they think they're too good to do that stuff um I'm more than happy to go out and set an example and do what needs to be done when I have to roll up my sleeves I've been in the trenches before I've been knee deep in MUD trying to figure out where this water leak is you know multiple times I've you know we're doing plumbing stuff for shoot I don't know air conditioning crawling and addicts and installing air conditioners and everything else I'm it's fine and I want a leadership team that's willing to do those things and so even if I hire a top level I want them to go through all that so it's but here's the thing my biggest thing with with when I'm consulting for people that have kids that they wanna turn over to and I did a podcast with a father and his son asking a question the other day and I said first of all dad do you know that your son wants to work in the business yes or no and and they had to have a real clear conversation about that and it came out yes the son does and so then I told him like what are you willing to do to get to this point dad you've got to be willing to say hey look like this isn't gonna work out in the sunset here I'm gonna do this and this and this and he got really excited and started pushing and um I think that has to be intentional from the beginning and then set out like everything else you have with any other employee in the company is hey here's your progression plan throughout the company here's how to achieve where you wanna go and you should be doing this with all your employees right like if you're a technician how do you become a senior tech how do you get to those higher level wages so they know what is expected of them and then what are the skills you have to learn to get to that point and then as a parent you need to pull back when they're ready to get to that point you need to pull back just like with any one of your employees my general manager my CEO of Lee's he oversees five locations now and he answers to me but I get out of his way when I have a different idea than he has and he wants to put something forward his idea goes and that's it and then I check the numbers and if he's not hitting his numbers then I can come back and say hey you need to improve you might wanna use my ideas because I think my ideas would have worked and if he doesn't and he still fails then I remove him as the CEO that's it you give him the standards let him make the decisions if not then they can constantly point at you and say oh well you you said I had to do this and that's why it's not working and then it goes this finger pointing game no you let them make their decisions and you hold them to those standards if they're not hitting the standards you remove them from that position that's that's it just going back into family something you just said then um when you're bringing team members into the business and you're offering a succession pay I know our our levy talk has spoken to me about this on the podcast many times um yeah it's a guru when it comes to all all charts and that kind of thing and he said that's always part of their on boarding oh well talk about succession business look Al and his brothers took it over from their father and so on and so forth so and now now Al's brother's kids run the business so that's third generation and um at in New York and apparently apparently they're doing pretty good um but anyway uh the he always talks about using the org chart right from the beginning stage even in recruitment to help people understand the career path uh of where they could potentially end up and is that kind of what you're talking about when you're bringing people in like helping them understand what the progression looks like from where they're at to where they might possibly become or where you'd like them to end up yeah and well and some people will come in and I always start with what do you wanna do where do you see yourself in five years where you see yourself in 10 cause sometimes they just wanna be a great tech right and there's nothing wrong with that you really want technicians that you know tradies that just wanna be in the truck forever great good let's let's sit down and look at what you want to do and what does that look like in our company and so when they're sitting there interviewing this is what you could make if you're a great technician stay in there you'll have others that say hey I wanna be in leadership one day Justin talk to me about that you know he's he's the new um GM and and Fresno that start out sweeping the warehouse floors and that that location did 54 million in revenue US dollars last year since like 75 Ozzy well um it's uh and he's gonna be the general manager and he's in his early 30s but he's been there for gosh since 2,011 so it's been 14 years now and he worked his way up and worked his way up um anyway when we sat down with him I could show him the or chart and show where that is now also one of the things that's great in our company is we we made an or chart and put it on the wall in our company and what we wanted to do is we need we knew we needed people to be able to move around on it so it can't be just printed um and when you got 300 employees it becomes a pretty big work chart sure so this is kind of a hack that I highly recommend um we went and put up two pieces of plywood 4 foot by 8 foot sheets of plywood I'm glad you guys in Australia still sometimes use feet and uh I can use that um well we we like to mix it up so we'll say things like um you mix it up even more than we do 6.4 plywood at 25 mil thick yeah yeah yeah it's like or as well as a plumber it was always going cut me 350 mil of 6 inch yeah when we when we talk about haha episode always just always still like this I'm sure don't look up American Fall we talk about 4 yards and when we talk about swimming that's always in meters I mean I don't know why but we like for some reason we use metric and standard in different spots at different times we don't do it where it's like 6 by 4 plywood you know it's 6 mil like I mean that that that's kind of crazy you're using both for what they um but um yeah so anyway um they're 4 foot by 8 foot sheets of plywood and then we screw them to the wall and then we um cause we were gonna we we had this idea we wanna do um like this magnetic board and we printed off name tags and on the back of the name tags we just um put a a magnet and then we could put that on the board and then we can move them around on the board and then we could put magnetic strips for the lines to make your chart and anyway the promise to get a custom large whiteboard was gonna be you know$10,000 or something crazy so we put up two pieces of plywood on the wall skirts the wall then we put two pieces of sheet metal to cover the plywood so just basically 8 foot by 8 foot square on the wall of a sheet metal and then we had a truck wrap company come in we paid them $250 and they wrap the the sheet metal with this custom wrap that has our logo on it and it looks really clean and everything nice and it's mostly white but it has you know our logo on it and some details on the bottom of our colors and then you can just put magnets all over so it looks like a custom printed whiteboard but you're in it for less than I don't know three or four hundred bucks including labor so it's uh it was pretty cool the um you got a all 300 team members on it um yeah on that one we're running out of space for 300 we at 150 we had 150 on there for sure um we we got a um laser what do you call it name tag printer the laser name tag printer like 15 bucks so that was more expensive than the whole board but we use it to print all their name tags for the field and everything else too and we can do it again now we just need more plywitted more you know she acquired some businesses and things and what effect does that have on the business when the employees are looking at that well it's one the employees get excited about like looking at you know who they report you and whatever but more importantly just as importantly is that when we're doing capacity planning for the summer we can the install manager can walk to the board and say gosh I've got eight crews because you can see you know eight sets of two under him reporting up to him and then well what if you know just plumbing have some people that I could pull over to make a crew or how many people would have to hire and you start moving people around on the board and you know start looking at what that's gonna look like I I can't tell you how many times I've walked over that board now and how effective it is to visualize your entire company and um which put in a court area in the in the office so that everyone can see it and uh it really helped people um not only know where they could go in the company but also manage the company effectively sure so um and when you're bringing your team members on board or when you're having one on ones with team members do you do you leverage that or Charlock do you say look this is where I want you to be or this is where you can work yes initially I mean when I have people that are up and coming when I was running it I don't know what the CEO does now but our plumbing manager at one time was a plumber who and I talked to him ahead of time and said look this is where I need you to be I you know we're weak in the plumbing management department right now I need you to step up I need you this is where you got to be I'm gonna give you six months I'm gonna send you to school and training whatever else and get you up there um and and they know and they know what that looks like at that point we also talk about compensation changes and incentive changes in those things as well and also what you need to know um a lot of times a plumber is not gonna be you know really driven by average ticket um clothes rate the kind of stuff that we need even you know call booking rate apply manager should know what their call booking rate is in the point department so that you can go if our call booking rate slow hey are we not offering things properly what's going on yeah we need to have input there and what offers could we doing to try to you know get that call booking right up to make sure there's enough calls on the board to hit our goals so then how does all this play into succession in the space of actually offloading the business someone eventually like what does that actually look like all of those things you need to be going through all of this stuff with your kid you can't you know it's like giving the kid keys to a Ferrari when they're 14 years old and getting frustrated when they wreck it you know if you just hand it to them and let it go and then get shocked when it breaks down like what did you think was gonna happen so you need to be going through all this stuff you need to be treating them as you would another employee and go okay this is where you need to be this is what you need to do this is how you gotta progress this is what I expect out of you and then by the way leave all of that crap off of the discussion when you're sitting around dinner for I don't know Australia Day or whatever it is that you're that you're happy about that stuff stays at the office and then you don't discuss that and and I mean if you want to discuss positive things at home fine but at home you don't badger them and beat on them about you know their performance at the office and that kind of stuff yeah and you shouldn't be doing that to your other employees anyway you shouldn't be badgering beating him anyway I'm just hold standards and be clear and don't let your emotions get you too much at your office yeah I um yeah and I hope that you just make sure that you understand that success is not giving your kids a bunch of money success is making your kids successful and happy and sometimes they might not be happy in your business and you need to figure that out first if you're not gonna be happy in your business then don't expect them to go to business and don't do them the disservice of trying to push them to get into it I mean I feel like part of the problem as well probably is that like a lot of these businesses that have you know um but I pass this business on to my kid like they don't have in place the systems on the the structures in the reporting and you know the frameworks and the all charts and all the stuff that we're talking about here you know so they're kind of handballing them something but doesn't have all that stuff so when it falls over it's not really a surprise yeah half the time they're handing him a Ferrari that you know is missing some spark plugs and right wheels and everything else and they don't then they're surprised when it doesn't run yeah um so it's um yeah I think in anything and I I said this about when you're selling business I say it all the time when you're selling business you should run it as if you're gonna own it for another 10 years and so don't treat it differently in that kind of stuff um run hard push hard to grow and that way if the deal doesn't go through you're fine you can keep running with it same thing with your kids run it as if you're gonna own it for another 10 years and that way when you hand it off to them it's still still good to go I I've also seen a couple scenarios where it's gone the other way where the the parent has said also one example made my team who had a um took over sidewriting business from his parent from his dad and at that point his dad was very heavily like in the residential space and Tim was like we're really gonna move in a commercial and you know all the stuff that his dad wouldn't you know no we're not doing that we're sticking with accounts sort of good out blah blah and anyway and and then one of and then eventually his dad said look I'm gonna bring in a um I gotta bring in an advisor to look into the business to the team and Tim said don't do that it's a waste of money and he doesn't know we're doing it so he brought this advisor in and the advisor went through and analyze the business and he said I'll be honest with you uh you gotta get rid of your dad and I don't know if that was my Pete the dad because he's like uh maybe he just bought himself his retirement but um yeah I I can't tell you how many times that's happened I I'll tell you this though is it okay to swear on your podcast a little bit fuck it we're trying okay yeah so I can't tell you how many times I've gotten off of a speech on stage and talking about running my companies and they say how can you run six or seven or eight companies and work full time at Service Titan and this and that you must I said well I've got people that you know manage my companies and I hold them accountable but that doesn't take a lot of time um so my time will be focused on service titan growing that helping with growing technology and I said oh gosh you must have great people um I can't I can't do that all my people are shitheads hmm and I'm like well I know what's wrong with your company and they're like what is it I'm like well I've got great news for you um there's only one shithead at your company and if you figure out who that is then you're halfway there to the song and the reality is if you think all your people are shitheads you're the shithead that's it it's almost all people want to do well um they're all they're so even if your people stole from you it's because they have their best interest in mind just align their interest with your interest and then guess what they're probably gonna push forward now granted someone stealing real time or just dishonest that's it but like most your employees are not stealing from you or wouldn't do it if they're in a good spot so like give them the right incentive and drive and everything else now they're still stealing from you after that then get rid of them but hey give them an incentive they they act in their best interest just like you do don't get pissed when they act in their best interest and say you're paying them hourly rate and they take four hours on a job when it should take two guess what that's in their best interest to take four in fact it's in their best interest to take six or eight and you set up the plan that way so that's why your employees act that way you did it it's you you're the shithead figure out a way that they make more money when they work harder and then they'll work harder and you do all this stuff and like you get things in line so their incentives are lined up and everything else same thing with your kids look if you hit this performance metric in the company I'm gonna give you X percent more of the company over time I don't give you 100% right now if you hit your targets I'm gonna give you 10% this year you hit your targets next year and you know 20% you hit your targets the year after that I'm gonna go I'm gonna add another 30% so you're gonna be at you know 60% in three years and that way they're you're stepping into it and you're taking you're pulling back and you're letting them run and um you've got to quit believing that you're the smartest person in the room the truth of the matter is if you're the smartest guy in all of Australia you'd have a billion dollar Australian company by now and you don't so guess what there's other people are smarter than you and it's up to you to figure out who they are and so if you let them run you will find my employees come up with ideas all the time that are way smarter than things I could have done but if I constantly jumped on top of them and told them what to do they wouldn't have brought those ideas to me yeah it's surprising when you try to awesome well maybe this is great let's um let's wrap this one up um yeah if you guys uh hopefully if you guys out there if that's on your radar or if you've ever thought about you know one day you know handing your business off to team members or or or the family uh is certainly a process is there places to learn this do you think um Tom or like I like to think there is I just don't know I wouldn't know even know where to send it you know what tell you what go to Howard Deals com I'll record a step by step process on and just put it on that website on the acquisition guide okay um but I'll I'll do it cause I'm thinking about right now I'm like you know what there's not that I know of there's not really something out there so I'll do it all that stuff on that site is free so Howard Deals com and I'll just I'll record step by step guide and put it on there and while you're over there guys go let's go subscribe to the listen to the podcast like this amazing uh episodes there um so definitely check that out mate thanks for your time really appreciate it you're a busy man um we will check back in another date and if you guys out there for any questions or have we haven't answered anything as always let us know we'll endeavour get them answered for you um there will be some information coming out soon in relation to the upcoming event um for the Service Titan gig over in Sydney um stay tuned for that and otherwise I will check your upcoming podcast thanks Tommy awesome thank you New Zealand based home renovation company 6,593% row US Sydney based solar company 2,700% row US Hunter region based bathroom renovation company 5,616% row US Melbourne based building company 13,182% fraternal ad spending Adelaide based solar company 2,881% fraternal ad spending guys the list goes on and on if you were a trade based business and you work with projects like roofing solar bathroom renovations kitchen renovations anything like that head across to tradie.wiki forward slash pod for podcast trading dot wiki forward slash pod for podcast a book in a conversation it is game changing

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Matt Jones

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