Most business owners begin their journey because they’re great at something: consulting, engineering, baking, designing, fixing, selling. The story is the same across industries – technical mastery leads to an entrepreneurial leap.
But as Michael Gerber famously pointed out, this “entrepreneurial seizure” often results in people creating jobs for themselves, not businesses.
In the final episode of the Intangible Assets series on Exit Insights, host Darryl Bates-Brownsword and regular co-host Kevin Harrington unpack why scalability is the culmination of all intangible assets – and why it matters, even for owners who say, “But I don’t want to scale.”
The Truth About Scalability
Many business owners hear the word “scale” and imagine sprawling locations, huge teams, and rapid expansion. But that’s only one version.
A scalable business simply means a business that could grow without being limited by you, the owner.
Scalability is about leverage:
- Leveraging systems instead of people
- Leveraging processes instead of habits
- Leveraging strategy instead of firefighting
- Leveraging assets instead of owner effort
A scalable business is one that runs smoothly, predictably, and profitably – with or without the founder in the room.
And that’s the real purpose of all intangible assets.
Revisiting the Six Intangible Assets
Darryl and Kevin revisit the six episodes leading up to this one – each covering a critical intangible asset that contributes to scalability:
- Revenue Quality
Predictable, stable, contracted, subscription-based, or recurring revenue increases both confidence and value. - People & Culture
How long do people stay? How well do they know your clients? How much does culture influence performance and retention? - Processes
Consistency reduces risk. Repeatability creates reliability. Systems provide the foundation for growth. - Product & IP
What exactly are people buying? If your business is built on your personal expertise, it’s not scalable. - Routes to Market
Channels change. Markets evolve. Scalable businesses diversify how they reach customers. - Positioning
In a noisy world, differentiation wins. A strong market position allows you to grow without competing on price.
Once these assets are in place, scale becomes a natural by-product.
Why Owners Struggle to Scale
Kevin highlights a core issue: most owners are 70% technician, 20% manager, and only 10% entrepreneur.
That 10% – the entrepreneurial part – is what drives working on the business. But it’s also the part that gets squeezed out when daily technical work demands attention.
Owners revert to what they know, because working on the business:
- Doesn’t have immediate results
- Feels less comfortable
- Requires discipline
- Demands strategic thinking
- Can feel overwhelming
Many owners confess that while they know they need to work on the business, they simply “don’t know where to start.” That’s completely normal – and fixable.
The Mindset Shift: From Technician to Entrepreneur
At some point, every owner must choose who they want to be:
- The technician doing the work
- Or the entrepreneur building the asset
Darryl explains that transformational moments often come when owners realise they’re stuck:
“I get an immediate payoff when I solve technical problems. But when I work on the business, I don’t see the results for six or twelve months.”
This is the struggle: Short-term comfort vs. long-term value.
The owners who succeed are the ones willing to make the shift – even though it’s uncomfortable at first.
Why Scaling Matters Even If You Don’t Want to Grow
Kevin challenges the common objection, “I don’t want to scale my business.”
Fair enough – but the market might force your hand.
Competitors evolve. Technology disrupts. Customer expectations shift. Costs rise. Without some form of growth, a business eventually falls behind.
But more importantly, scalability creates freedom.
Even if you never open a second location or double in size, a scalable business gives you:
- Choice about your role
- Flexibility in how you spend your time
- Freedom to take holidays, rest, or pursue new interests
- Options around succession, exit, or leadership transition
- A valuable asset rather than a job you happen to own
Scalability isn’t about growth. Scalability is about options.
Your Business Is an Asset – Treat It Like One
One of the biggest takeaways from the episode is this:
Your business is just one asset in your personal portfolio. And it’s often the highest-risk asset you own.
If it’s going to justify that level of risk, it needs to be one of your highest-performing assets. That won’t happen by accident. It requires intention, structure, development, and the building of intangible assets.
The Path Forward
Scaling begins long before a business grows.
It starts with:
- Reducing owner dependence
- Strengthening intangible assets
- Building systems
- Developing people
- Clarifying strategy
- Creating room for the owner to think, not just do
And often – it starts with a conversation. As Kevin says: “Transformation rarely happens alone. Sometimes all it takes is a coffee and a chat.”
Transcript
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (00:43)
Welcome to the podcast that’s dedicated to helping business owners prepare their business so they have many options. This is the Exit Insight podcast. I’m Darryl Bates-Brownsword and I’m joined today by Kevin Harrington. Good morning, Kevin. How are you today?
Kevin Harrington (00:57)
Very well, thank you.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (01:10)
Good to hear. Now today, This is our last in the series that we’ve been running over the last few weeks on intangible assets. And how do we build the intangible assets in our business
to give us a business that creates freedom, creates options, creates realisable value and gives us choices. So what do we mean with intangible assets? In the simplest form, we’re talking about the assets that provide this value, but they don’t appear on your balance sheet. So they’re often overlooked or they’re often hidden. They’re not overlooked by savvy buyers and they’re definitely not overlooked by savvy business owners.
because the savvy business owners are working on these things consciously, even though they don’t show up in the accounts. So they’ve created their own way to measure and monitor and report on these things. Kevin, so the last one is scale. Is your business scalable? So why do we want to have a business that’s scalable? How do we get a business that’s scalable? Where do we start? Well, the starting point is the six previous intangible assets that we’ve been talking about.
what Let’s go through what they were. The first one was revenue. What does our revenue look like? What is our the makeup of our revenue? How predictable is the revenue? How reliable are those predictions of the revenue over the next coming years? Is it all contracted? Am I working with clients that are on subscription or am I doing lots of one-off sales? Next one is the people. What’s the people and culture like in our business?
How often, How long do people stay with us? Have I got high recruitment costs? Have I got culture costs associated? How conscious am I about the culture? How well do my people know the clients and how well do they influence client retention? After people, I’ve got process. We talked about your business operations. Every time your people need to perform a task, are they doing it the same way?
Are they efficient and effective in doing it the same way or do they start from scratch every time and risk ⁓ getting things wrong, risk human mistakes? How well have you structured your business so that it runs like a Swiss watch and it’s consistent, repeatable, reliable? Next one, after process and streamlined operations and consistent operations is IP in your product. What are people buying from you? Are they buying your time?
Are they buying your service? Are they buying a solution? Are they buying a tangible product? What is it they’re buying from you? Do you have any IP connected with that product or solution that makes your business more attractive that customers need to come to you? Clients need to come to you because you’re the only source of that solution or that product. What’s your product strategy? What does that look like? After we’ve got product, we then go, what are our roots to market?
What are our distribution channels? How do I access the people who have the problem that I solve? And then what’s our position in the market? What’s different? What do you want to be known for in the market? What’s different about your solution compared to all of your competitors? How do you stand out from your competitors? It’s a crazy world out there. There is so much thing occupying and getting in people’s minds.
It’s the person who owns the space in our customers’ minds that wins. And we know that people can only remember seven plus or minus two bits of information for any topic or any category. So we need to make sure that when we don’t just sound like everyone else, we’re not a commodity and customers know what’s different about us. And that’s not, we’ve got great people. Our product is really good. Our service is really good. It’s got to be something that actually differentiates us because all those things are given.
We’ve got our position. And then after that, if we have all of those things in place, we’re pretty much on the way to having a scalable business. I love, Kevin, I love what Michael Gerber called, you know, the way he referred to this concept that we’re talking about today. He called it a building a franchise prototype and having a business that you can basically, you know, plug and play replicas and duplicate all over the place. What are your thoughts on that one?
Kevin Harrington (05:30)
Yeah, well, it’s interesting you mentioned Gerber. He started off by saying that there’s a sort of fallacy that most small businesses are started by true entrepreneurs. That’s what people think. But instead, Gerber argues that approximately, this is, I don’t know how he worked this one out, but approximately 99.9 % of people who go into business themselves are actually technicians.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (05:34)
you
Yep.
Kevin Harrington (05:56)
their kind of skill professions from electricians to accountants to consultants, whatever. And I think the phrase he uses, they’re suffering from entrepreneurial seizure.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (06:06)
That’s right. Yeah, exactly.
Kevin Harrington (06:08)
Yeah, so then they think that they make this fatal assumption that expertise in their technical craft automatically translate in their ability to run a successful business. That’s where you
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (06:21)
Yeah, I’m a hairdresser.
So I should start a hairdressing business, I think was the one to use. I know as a pie shop in one of the books, but you know, I’m a great baker, therefore I should start my own pie shop. And that makes me an entrepreneur. And it means they’re a good technician. And now they’ve got to run all do all the other tasks required to running a business. And I think if I remember, and I’ve been a while since I’ve read the book, that he almost argues that if you are a
baker or a hairdresser or whatever, that’s the best reason not to own one of those businesses.
Kevin Harrington (06:56)
And yeah,
the point he made was that the reality is that starting a business creates a job for that owner of the business. So you start your hairdressing salon, you’ve created a place where you can go and be a hairdresser rather than an actual business. Because technical skills and business running skills are actually fundamentally different competencies. So when does that get us?
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (07:13)
Okay.
Kevin Harrington (07:25)
You were talking about the kind of end game in Gerber’s thinking, which is the ability to replicate, duplicate and scale things using McDonald’s as the example. I most of the people that listen to our podcast are SME owners and leaders that are ⁓ all around the world, but most of are in the kind B2B areas and services and products to businesses. Most of our audience is that.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (07:53)
Yep.
Kevin Harrington (07:54)
Everyone understands the McDonald’s description. So forgive us for using that, but the reality is when another McDonald’s opens up, you know exactly what you’re gonna get. And the experience is the same pretty much the world over. Now that requires, does it require the original founder of the business to be in each of those franchise outlets? It doesn’t. In fact, quite the opposite.
What it’s about doing is saying that the owner works on the business rather than in the business. And they’ve created something through the intangible assets you described earlier about people, process, products and so on that can be replicated reliably anywhere it goes. And then you can create scale. Now my challenge here, and we’ve talked about this before, Darryl, my challenge around this is that people sometimes say, oh, I don’t need to grow my business or…
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (08:33)
you
Kevin Harrington (08:53)
I’m growing fast enough and so on. I would argue that there’s only two ways a business is traveling. It’s either up or it’s down. If it’s down, you’ve got a crisis to sort out and sometimes if it’s downward trajectory, your choices are very, very limited. But we should be aiming for our businesses to grow. Even if we are the person that started off just being the hairdressing salon.
You know, the rent’s going to go up on the building, salaries are going to go up, electricity is going to go up in price and so forth. So probably we need to look at ways of growing our revenues and our profitability just to keep that thing going. So we need to look at growth. We need to look at scaling in some way. But we’re talking to SMEs in the UK and around the world. And for them, it’s about how do we dramatically change our size? Let’s start talking double digit growth. How do you get double digit growth?
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (09:38)
Okay.
Kevin Harrington (09:50)
Well, you’re probably not gonna do it from the building you’re in now. You’re probably not gonna do it with just the team you’ve got now. You’re gonna need to do a variety of things, but that scale becomes really interesting. It creates an energy that makes the business even more fun. All the rest of those intangible assets feeds off that growing business. It creates an environment that customers sense these positive, and it makes the business more attractive to outsiders to consider working with, partnering, supplying, buying.
or whatever. So scales are very interesting last component in the intangible assets.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (10:26)
It’s yeah, look, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve covered a lot of ground there and I’m not sure where to start, but I think, yeah, you started with a nice little reminder that, that all those other intangible assets that we’ve been talking about are pretty much the definition of what to do when you’re working on your business. And the reason I mentioned that is that a lot of people when I’ve worked with businesses, when I, you know, if I’ve been working with them in the smaller end, sometimes they’re going, look,
Darryl, yeah, I am a good technician. I know what I’m doing. And I remember one, he specifically said to me, said, yeah, it’s taking up my time. I know what to do here. If anyone comes to me with a problem, I’ve got the answer. I’ve got so much experience. I’ve been doing it for years. I know exactly the answer. I know how to solve the problem. I’m the best in the business at doing this technical work. And he said, I’m comfortable. I know I need to work on the business and I know it’ll help grow. But he said,
I don’t know where to start. He said, I’m embarrassed to admit, like I’ve been running the business 25 years, but I don’t know where to start. I don’t know how to work on the business. know what I have to do, but I don’t know how to do it. And whenever I sit down and start to work on positioning, for example, I get lost. And then someone comes in and knocks on my office door and asks for help with a technical problem. And I mean, I know how to solve that again. And I’m happy. can do that. I feel comfortable. I don’t feel pushed out of my comfort zone.
So he said, can you show me what I have to do? How do I do it? Because I know that by working on it now, I’m working six to 12 months ahead of my business and I don’t feel the payoff today like I do when I solve the technical problems. When I solve the technical issues, I get an immediate revenue hit because it’s fixed and the money comes in the door. When I’m working on the business in these things, it’s groundwork and I don’t see the immediate value.
But I know, I believe that in six or 12 months time, when that starts to pay off, it’ll pay off consistently, repeatedly, and I won’t have to solve that again. And he says, it’s just this dilemma I’m stuck in at the moment. How do I get, I just don’t have enough time to work on the business. And it’s a common problem that a lot of owners have, especially when they’re feeling inefficient working on their business. They can steal half a day a week and do it, but if they’re not feeling that they’ve made some ground,
They get demoralized and stuck and lost very quickly and they revert to their old patterns of behavior and getting lost. So I just thought it was worth sharing that the working on your business. Yeah, it takes discipline and it’s hard work and get someone to support you through it. Now you work on all of these things and they do like it is from one to one. We work on the revenue and then the people and the systems. There’s a logical sequential order to working on them.
to the point where you get to that last one, scale, that we’ve been talking about, it’s almost as if you get all of those other things in place, the position, the product and IP solutions and a product strategy and what have you, and the process ⁓ methodology, the systems thinking in your business. You get all those things in place, and the natural outcome is that you’ve got a business that is scalable should you want to do it.
Now the benefit of that is you’ve now got choices because you’ve worked on all of these things and it’s not a quick fix. We’re talking two or three years to get all these things in place, maybe even longer. But if you work on all of those things, you’ve now got a business that’s scalable. You’re not required in the business. You’re no longer the technical expert because you’ve set up all the structures that doesn’t require you to be in there. And you’ve now also eliminated owner dependence on the business.
And when the business doesn’t require you to be there to generate revenue and profit and growth, you’ve now got that freedom you’re looking for. The business is no longer sucking the life out of you and you’re working all weekend to catch up. You’ve got time to spend with your family. You’ve got time. The business is more profitable. You can extract more out of the business. You’ve got a business. You’ve got a new career effectively. You’re no longer career bored by doing the same thing for 25 years. You’ve got
You’ve now been working and developing these new skills of working on the business. You now have a different focus. A lot of business owners I see are reenergized and they’ve got these options. And when they’ve got the options, they feel like they’ve got choices. They don’t have to feel that they go down this. There’s only one way out. I’ve just got to get out of the business to save my life, to get my life back. ⁓ It’s the only escape I’ve got. I’ve now got choices. I’m on the front foot.
And it’s rewarding and enlightening and liberating and to have that freedom and to see the joy on the faces of the owners when they realize that and they can see that is just an amazing feeling.
Kevin Harrington (15:28)
Yeah, absolutely. going back to the this kind of technician versus entrepreneur bit, I mean, it’s typically accepted that most small business owners, ⁓ SME owners are typically 70 % technician, 20 % manager, 10 % entrepreneur. That fits in with your 10 % a week thing, half a day a week that you talked about for the entrepreneur piece. And it’s so easy to revert to being the technician because
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (15:46)
Yeah.
Kevin Harrington (15:58)
that’s in the present, it? It’s the immediacy of it that’s attractive. And what you’re talking about there is that you have to get past that where the owner’s doing everything to ending up in a mature business where it’s not dependent on that earner. And it’s about transforming yourself as the owner. Rather than transforming the business, this scale bit starts off with transforming yourself.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (16:12)
Yeah.
Yep.
Kevin Harrington (16:26)
A mindset change around having that kind of management discipline and building vision and purpose, looking beyond the things that are transactional and immediate. And if you don’t make that fundamental shift, most small businesses either kind of plateau in their adolescence or collapse under their own weight, kind of trapping owners in the very job they thought that they were escaping.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (16:54)
Exactly, and it is that entrepreneurial seizure. think, yeah, those numbers that you talk about, and I know they’re just empirical numbers that felt about right. They’re probably a reflection of the, you know, the, the workforce and the businesses that I’ve and business owners that I’ve met over the time, a lot of them just fell into it or just thought that they could do it better. And they are technicians who’ve gone to run a business. And
You compare that to businesses that are entrepreneur led. Entrepreneurs have that vision, they have that different energy, they create that ⁓ energy around them. They pull people with them because they inspire people to want to follow them rather than just come and do a job. They don’t just employ people, they inspire, they inject enthusiasm, passion just follows them around. ⁓
And it’s that energy that gets things done, whether it’s efficient or not in the early days, it’s that energy that is alignment to a vision and a culture and what we’re to build and achieve together that pulls people along, which is just different to, we’re going to do a business like this and we just show up to work and we’re effectively self-employed, as I think you mentioned early on. if we know what the difference is, then we can recreate it.
what we’ve experienced and seen with business owners. And it’s a skill, but it’s a learned skill and you can put this in place and you can, you don’t have to be an entrepreneur to build intangible assets. You just have to follow the process and follow the path that’s been created by all these people, successful people who have built businesses over the years. It’s a known formula, frankly, and all we need to do is copy it. Now it’s really easy to say, to just…
Yes, just copy the formula. But we’re working with people. But if we know the formula and we can encourage them and coach them and guide them and show them how, how it’s been done in the past, then we can build momentum in your business and get people there.
Kevin Harrington (19:00)
Yes, you’re dead right, Darryl. And I think there’s a big difference between the technician and the entrepreneur in business in that the technician is largely looking at their own workplace and their factory, their studio, whatever it might be. That’s where they’re making a difference. If the entrepreneur is not looking anywhere near there, they’re looking over the horizon. They’re looking at markets that we haven’t considered. They’re looking at things outside the business. They’re talking to outsiders.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (19:16)
Yep.
Kevin Harrington (19:30)
And that’s a bit confusing and scary at first, because it just goes all over the place. And how do you filter that worldwide opportunity into something tangible? It’s a completely different start point. But technicians that started their own business have proved that they’ve got that dedication to work hard. They’ve proved that they will keep on working at it and fighting for their business to be successful. So they’ve got the energy, they’ve got the intellect probably.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (19:35)
Yes.
Kevin Harrington (19:59)
And as you said, it requires a bit of assistance sometimes to start focusing elsewhere. And it’s so much easier to carry on doing your own job. And actually, if you want to structure your leadership team, the thing you’re really good at is the one that you need someone to replace you on straight away. So that you can free yourself up from that to give yourself the time to look at the marketplace and the opportunities to scale, probably for everyone’s benefit, including your own.
It benefits the customers, benefits suppliers, it benefits your staff, all sorts of people. And it just creates an energy which is very exciting.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (20:37)
Yes, it does. So, Kevin, we’ve talked about what we need to do to create a business that’s scalable. How do you respond when you’re working with a business owner and they go, but I don’t wanna scale my business. Like I’ve got a nice little boutique operation here or my business is that I might not use the word boutique, but I’ve got a business here.
I’m happy with this. I’ll grow it, but I don’t want to scale it. I don’t want other locations. How do you respond when they say that to you about ⁓ creating a business that’s scalable?
Kevin Harrington (21:12)
People’s situations are unique to those individuals, aren’t they? And I don’t think it’s one size fits all. I some people are never gonna scale their business. There’s a most wonderful millinery business in Reading where I live. They scaled the business recently. Her daughter joined her. They make hats, they make beautiful hats. And between my wife and myself, we’ve bought probably about seven hats from them now.
And they’re great little business, there’s no point in talking to them about scaling at all. No point about it. I think a lot of people that say, don’t need to scale my business, don’t understand though the risks of not doing it. And the reality is the world is gonna, for many of those businesses, is gonna take them over and they’re gonna get drowned by what’s going on around them. Competition is doing something that’s new. There’s new technology that’s taking over things.
startups that are going to start eating your own, eating your food you’re trying to create. yeah, mean, AI is the big one everyone talks about, but by a long way, it’s not the only thing. You know, people diversifying their businesses down the road are going to start taking your customers. And so you’ve got to be outward looking, you’ve got to be looking at what’s going on and what’s needed and satisfy those demands. And that is part of scaling. But
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (22:16)
AI. ⁓
Yeah.
Kevin Harrington (22:39)
In the previous Intangible Asset podcast we’ve done for Exit Insights, we’ve talked about what is the product, how you’re to change that and vary it to market. We’ve talked about the channels, the routes to market. It is most unlikely that people are going to run a business for 10, 20, 30 years and the processes, the products and the channels are all going to remain the same.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (23:04)
Yes. And, and as you were talking there and you mentioned the, the, the, the millinery, the hat place, the, the reminded me of like, just because you own a company doesn’t mean you own a business. Like it’s, it’s quite, you know, a lot of people are just self-employed and they’re quite happy to be self-employed. And they’ve got a couple of helpers with them, nine, 10, 20 helpers, but they are self-employed and the business revolves around them and their knowledge and their expertise. And they’ve just got all of these helpers. Nothing wrong with that.
if that’s what you want to do. But just be aware that when it comes to you need to make a transition, your options are limited. And that’s all we’re talking about here is creating options, ⁓ creating career transitions and succession options and ⁓ giving you the freedom that you’re looking for. Some people are more than happy working in the business and taking a margin off it. And some people are going, look, I’m ready for that next level.
I want to create a scalable business. I get that even if there’s benefit to me by having the business to being scalable, even if I don’t scale it. Having it scalable means that it gives me that freedom. It gives me that flexibility. It gives me the choices, the options. I’ve worked on the business. I can now just focus on working on the strategic topic of the business. The business doesn’t require me at an operational level.
I can be a chairman or a chairperson in the business where I coach and guide the people. As the founder of the business, as the shareholder, people look to me to get a guide, a take on the culture and how things are done. And they look to me for vision along with the strategy of where and why we’re running the business. And that’s what they’re looking for from me. They want the lead, the guide, they want the inspiration.
But I don’t need to be in the business. So I think there’s some things to consider. Just be the source of the vision and the culture and coach, don’t play.
Kevin Harrington (25:03)
Hmm.
Yes, and as I said earlier, everyone’s different, but there is a commonality amongst most SME business owners that they do have some level of ambition at the end of their business life. And so you know, how are they going to retire? What’s going to be the pot of money they got? That’s the asset value of the business, perhaps. So that was probably quite a nice thing to grow, isn’t it? Perhaps they want to leave a legacy for
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (25:16)
Yep.
Absolutely.
Kevin Harrington (25:41)
Their family, some good causes or whatever. Perhaps they’ve got an ambition to one day sell the business and start a completely different trajectory in their life or another business. So the thing is, if people start to consider what their end game is going to be with their business, it starts to create an imperative to consider how you’re going to get there and scale become something that is fundamentally important.
It is that point where you pivot from being the thing that your business is entirely dependent upon. You’re better than all your salespeople because all the relationships with the key customers are with you. Your suppliers, you’ve got all those key relationships. That is not scalable. Let’s start building those businesses so that they are less dependent on you as the owner. So you can do other things. You can grow the asset value. You increase your choices and all those things that you’ll want to do.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (26:19)
you
Kevin Harrington (26:41)
in five, ten, fifteen years time, whatever it might be, you stand a significant chance of doing.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (26:47)
Brilliant. So the takeaway message that we want you to hear from after listening to this series on intangible assets is we want to encourage you to think of your business as an asset. It is an asset in your portfolio as the shareholder. So we look at the business as just one of your assets in your portfolio because we revolve the whole focus around you, the founder, the shareholder, the key person who started the business. We don’t want you to be the key person in the business. So business is just one of your assets. We need to manage your portfolio of assets and your business is just one of them. It’s possibly the highest risk asset in your business. So you really want it to be the highest performing asset in your business.
Now that won’t happen by chance. That’s why we encourage you to go, well, start looking at the intangible assets in your business and how you can build them and grow them. And it’s by working on these that will open up the options that are available to you in how you transition from phase to phase or chapter to chapter in your personal business, ownership, life, family, career. ⁓ When it does come to transitions, we need to have a number of things that are ready. The business needs to be ready for you to step into that chairman role. The numbers need to be all working and working for everyone. If you’re going to step back into a succession place,
And you need to be ready for those changes as well. So this is it’s not just about the business. It’s about you and your satisfaction, your career, what energizes you, ⁓ especially if your career board after doing the same thing for so long. How do we energize and create new options and new career for you within the same ownership structure, potentially, if that’s achievable or desirable for you? So it’s all about creating options, creating freedom, creating flexibility, and you being in control and on the front foot when it comes to the transition points in your business and other assets.
Kevin Harrington (28:58)
I’d just finish up by saying because it sounds like you’ve concluded things rather nicely there. You and I both like cups of coffee. If people want to have a cup of coffee and talk more about this topic and how it relates to them, give us a shout. It’s very uncommon for someone to suddenly get moved from that kind of technician tradecraft mindset into the entrepreneurial piece. And sometimes helps needed.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (29:07)
Thank
Yes.
Kevin Harrington (29:24)
That’s what happens. It happens in sport, happens in business, it happens everywhere. that help starts with a cup of coffee and a chat. Give us a shout.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (29:34)
Yeah. And yeah, look, it really is. You need to have got your business to a certain stage and it’s probably a two mil or five mil in revenue plus where we can really add value and make a difference to you. But we’ll talk to a smaller business and we’re more than happy to have a cup of coffee and share some insights if we can and help you get to the next phase. ⁓ Regardless of where you are, it all helps. And the amount of people we appreciate, the listeners, the people who’ve been following the podcast for a while and the feedback we get. So look, we’re more than happy to ⁓ reach out and all for you to reach out. And if you want got any questions, we’re here for you.
Kevin Harrington (30:12)
Perfect. That’s good. And we’ve completed intangible assets. Wow. How about…
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (30:17)
We have, so ⁓ stay tuned. I think the next one after this, we’ll get probably ⁓ someone who’s been through their business, that journey, ⁓ created the intangible assets in their business. And I’ll be talking to another business owner who’s been through the journey and looking for what’s next and found it. So stay tuned for the next episode of Exit Insights. And look, we love all the subscribers. So if you found this valuable, do please subscribe.
Kevin Harrington (30:46)
Thanks, Darryl. Look forward to our next podcast together. Cheers.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (30:49)
Thanks, Kevin. Cheers.