Start with the End in Mind – Lessons from 7 Business Exits
What does it really take to build a business that’s ready for exit?
In this episode of the Exit Insights podcast, host Darryl Bates-Brownsword sits down with Chris Everard – serial entrepreneur and Business Architect at Fabric Business Solutions – to unpack the secrets behind successfully selling seven businesses.
Chris’s story begins like many others: frustrated in his job, tired of poor leadership, and confident he could do it better. He took the leap, started his own company, and never looked back. But it’s what he learned along the way that will be invaluable to any business owner looking to prepare for succession or sale.
Highlights from the Episode:
???? 1. Start with the End in Mind
Chris didn’t start this way, but once he realised the power of planning for the end from the beginning, everything changed. Whether you’re planning to sell in 18 months or 5 years, your daily decisions should be shaped by your ultimate goal.
???? 2. Build a Business That Doesn’t Need You
A key part of Chris’s exit success was making himself operationally redundant. Buyers want to see a business that can run without the founder – it lowers risk and increases valuation.
???? 3. Get the Boring Stuff Right
From financial records to employment contracts, it’s the ‘dull’ details that make due diligence smoother. Chris learned the hard way: if it’s not in order, it can delay – or derail – a deal.
???? 4. Accountability is Your Growth Engine
Drawing from his time as a professional rugby coach, Chris brought a peer-driven accountability culture into the workplace. The result? Higher performance, stronger trust, and faster growth.
???? Show Notes & Tools Mentioned:
- Management Buyouts (MBOs): A practical route for exit if your team is ready to lead.
- Auto-enrolment compliance: Used as a business opportunity during regulatory changes.
- Peer accountability frameworks: Borrowed from elite sports teams.
- Governance essentials: Contracts, shareholder agreements, and more.
- Financial readiness: Cash flow, forecasting, and clean books.
???? Listen to the full episode now to learn how to shape your business for a successful exit and ensure you’re one of the 20% who sell on their terms.
Transcript
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (00:46)
Welcome to the podcast that is dedicated to helping business owners maximize evaluation of their business, giving you options to decide what you’re going to do next. I’m Darryl Bates Brownsword, and this is the Exit Insights podcast. Today I’m joined by Chris Everard. Chris is now currently a business architect with Fabric Business Solutions. But the reason I asked Chris to join the podcast is because he’s got a fascinating background. Chris, thanks for joining me today.
Chris Everard (00:52)
This is a plan I think.
Is it?
Okay, good morning Darrell, it’s a pleasure.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (01:16)
Yeah, thanks. Chris, in in our pre chats,
shall we say, what I come to learn is for such a young fellow what you’ve you’ve built seven odd businesses, you only started in 1990, you built seven odd businesses, sold most of them. And and the first one you sold was what in 2009 or something. so you’ve been a pretty busy boy the last 10 years or so.
Chris Everard (01:26)
Ha.
Yeah,
the first was 2005. So yeah, it has been a fascinating period. yeah, 20 years it time flies. Sometimes it feels like five years. Sometimes it feels like 50 years. It all depends what’s going on. But yeah, I’ve learned a lot. And yeah, happy to share whatever I can to help other people on their journey.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (01:49)
when he is.
Time flies.
Brilliant, Chris. So why don’t we start with just a little bit of a background around who Chris is, your background and how you got started in the first business and what that first business was. Because what I’m really interested in is in learning how you decided to get into the business. What was your reason why? What compelled you to go, hey, look, I think I’ll start this business. Then how you grew it. just what I want to do is tap into your
Chris Everard (02:30)
Okay, so
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (02:35)
experience and learnings along the way and how you adapted from those learnings, grew the business, then exited. And then the string of businesses after that, what did you apply and what did you do differently? That’s the general theme, but that’s not intended as one big question upfront. just give the audience a bit of a roadmap of where we want to head with this conversation.
Chris Everard (02:53)
Okay. No, good.
Okay, great. Yeah. So just a bit of background about me. I’m 64 years old. I’ve been married to my beautiful wife for 40 years. We’ve celebrated our anniversary this August just gone. We’ve got two fantastic children and four wonderful grandchildren. We live in a tiny village in South Leicestershire.
what got me into business? Well, to tell the truth, I became a pretty rotten employee. ⁓ I was always asking questions, coming up with challenges and I just got this feeling when I was late twenties, early thirties that I could, I could, I could do it better.
I’d sort of suffered a couple of bad bosses and you learn a hell of a lot from bad bosses. You really do.
Yeah, the timing couldn’t have been worse. We got a young family, we got a big mortgage, all the rest of it. And I thought, right, let’s give it a go. Let’s cash in the chips and roll the dice and see where it takes us. So that was my first business. And that was in point of sale design and display.
working with ending up working with with a lot of premium retailers, S &O, and next Casio people like that.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (04:28)
So what made you think that given the amount of cashflow you needed to live day to day, what was going through, what led you to the decision to think, hey, look, I can start this business. It’s going to take a bit of cash to get up and running, I imagine. I’m to start this business and I’ll be able to generate enough revenue off the bat to pay my bills. Did you have contacts? Did you have, what happened?
Chris Everard (04:35)
you
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I worked for a couple of point of sale point of purchase businesses before when I experienced the bad bosses and I had my little black book of contacts and I did some prelim work. I spoke to a few key contacts.
explaining to them what I was thinking of doing and just checking out whether they would back me if I went solo. And God bless three of them. They all said yes. And I was able to ⁓ transfer my company from being an employee to being a business owner and carry on.
doing a reasonable amount of business with those three key contacts. And that then grew into more and more, I was the sales.
⁓ function in the business and that grew. The funding actually came from my parents, they let me, ⁓ back in the day, £5,000. It seems a trivially amount now, but at the time it was what kept food on the table and the lights on at home. So ⁓ I paid them back and ⁓ carried on from there.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (06:21)
Beautiful. So you had a background in the industry. ⁓ Bad bosses led you to the point of going, hey, look, I don’t want to work here. It’s not satisfying. Was there an element, Chris, of thinking, you know, with that background of the bosses that you could do a better job of ⁓ providing a service or solution for clients?
Chris Everard (06:41)
Yeah, yeah, it
was exactly that, Daryl. I was successful in the sales role in both businesses and I kind of learned that.
Success is ⁓ quite a personal thing. What I regard as success wasn’t always regarded as success by my employers. And I’d got into the second role with my black book and I knew I could deliver results ⁓ and agreed ⁓ what I thought was a reasonable compensation scheme.
And basically I was lied to, the compensation scheme never paid off, the bonuses were never paid, it was always tomorrow. And that was the trigger point. When I lost trust and respect for the people that I was working for, that is the final thing that prompted me to say, I’ve had enough of this, I’m gonna do it myself.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (07:44)
Okay, so you got up and running, got some money from your parents who lent you some money. That got you up and running, you paid them back. Tell us how the business grew and the journey before you exited and before we unpack what went through that.
Chris Everard (08:00)
Yeah,
yeah. So to start with, it was myself and a business partner. I handled sales, he handled operations, and we soon realized that the growth trajectory we were on was unsustainable with just two of us. So we started hiring some key positions, design and development, and then admin support.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (08:08)
Yeah.
Chris Everard (08:25)
And we had one of, was a Friday afternoon, there was a knock, literally a knock on the door. And this young lady said, I’ve just finished college and I’m looking for a job. My name’s Julie. And I thought, fair play, fair play for knocking on doors. So I said, come on in, Julie, let’s get a cup of tea and find out a bit more about you. Julie then went on to be my, my FD or FCO as it is now in, four of my businesses. And she was.
and is still the, what’s the word, the source of sense. She understands in far greater detail than I do the numbers. And that taught me to get people around me that enabled me to do what I love doing, which was selling and servicing clients and build a team that could run the business effectively.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (09:23)
So, okay, so Julie, bit of initiative, went banging on doors, ⁓ right place, right time, met you. She went on, now she just finished college already with finance qualifications or?
Chris Everard (09:26)
Yes.
Yeah.
No, just done a
very, I think a one year, this is a long time ago, Darrell, but a year or two year sort of evening class in business administration. And this is in the day when email and internet were just arriving. ⁓ We corresponded using fax machines and good old fashioned snail mail.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (09:44)
Okay.
Chris Everard (09:56)
And Julie came in and became our girl Friday. She did all the administration, she smartened everything up, she got in processes and systems and she started doing the petty cash, the reconciliation. And I remember just chatting with her over a cup of tea. What’s next, Julie? She said, I love the account site. Can I sign up to an AAT course? And I said, yes, of course.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (10:03)
Right.
Chris Everard (10:25)
give me the details and that was the start of the journey and she flew through those qualifications and became financial controller and then she ran the whole financial side of the businesses. Yeah, she’s a lady. Still in touch, not working with her at the moment. She’s sort gone into a consultancy role ⁓ but we talk frequently. If I’ve got a problem, I’ll give Julie a ring.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (10:36)
I’d love someone with a bit of drive.
Brilliant.
All righty. So the business kept growing. And I think to the point of 2005, you said you sold it. How big and sort of what magnitude, how big was it then?
Chris Everard (10:58)
Yes, yes, so I… Sorry.
⁓ it was turning over about 20, well, it was 22.8 mil. I know exactly what it was. And I had one of those moments. I got invited to, I don’t know, a breakfast seminar by some local accountants. And it was probably a budget review, their thoughts and feelings of the current budget. And at the end, one of the presenters mentioned an MBO and I’d heard of an MBO, but it
And I just had one of those things. I built this management team that were quite good. And I thought, let’s explore this. the guy came in, explained the processes, and I just thought, yeah, this is what I want to do. So.
He made it very clear what an MBO, the framework and structure of an MBO should look like. it took a two year period, two to three years to build the management team, to build the order book, to tidy up the cash flow, to get the systems, the processes, the governance, everything clean, and then go out and talk to funders. And it was a fascinating journey. And the management team bought it from me in 2005.
and went on to great success without me, which I think is a great legacy for the foundations of what I did.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (12:29)
Yeah.
So for those listening and not familiar, the MBO is a process where you ⁓ construct some finance which allows the current management team, those who are basically driving and managing and running the business day to day, allows them to, because they’re a known entity, purchase the business from you, right?
Chris Everard (12:37)
I
That’s right, correct. Yeah, absolutely. So we were banking with one of the high street banks and they, this is back in the day when high street banks were far more involved in businesses. We won’t go down that, that kind of words. And we approached them first and they did their assessment, their due diligence, the obvious questions, but
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (13:08)
That’s a red herring.
Chris Everard (13:19)
Through the help of this accountancy company, we’d constructed a pretty robust MBO process and ticked 95 % of the funding boxes. And it was the last bit, actually, the funding was quite straightforward because we’d done all the work beforehand to get the business into a shape that was attractive to funders. And that was a key lesson for me. Going forwards from there is sort of start with the end in mind.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (13:49)
So, you know, from the bank’s perspective, it was a really low, low risk to lend the guys the money because they knew the guys already had a track record of running this exact business. They had a case study. They knew the order book. ⁓ The guys had been in the business for, you know, I guess a while by the sounds of it. They were all everything was very familiar, minimal change to the business, except the ownership by the sounds of it.
Chris Everard (14:08)
Yes.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (14:17)
What role were you in in the business at the time, Chris? How much were you involved?
Chris Everard (14:21)
Okay,
yeah, so one of the key things I had to do because I was still very, very involved in the client side, the sales side of the business was to recruit ⁓ a sales director who was better than me at what they did. ⁓ And it took me the best part of a year to find this person and got them on board.
And they, with some help from me, grew the business substantially to a level where I was happy that the return for myself and family was going to be significant enough to sell it.
And during that process, I went through the handover of the clients that I was dealing with, handed over to the new sales director and he did a great job. They loved it. And that was it. So in the last sort of six months, my role was largely redundant. I was obviously going to work. I still owned the business. I still had plenty to do, but my key function was not in the operational side of the business. was far more in the strategic
strategic side of the business. So working on the business rather than in the business, tidying up everything, all the loose ends for the MBO.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (15:42)
Brilliant. So it comes to the point where you’re going, okay, you’ve had conversations with the management team, ⁓ propose to them that, you know, if they want to buy the business, that’s an opportunity. They’ve embraced the idea, run with it by the sounds of it. How did you agree evaluation?
Chris Everard (15:57)
Yeah.
Very straightforward, Daryl. We got an independent accountancy firm, sort of mid-tier based in the Midlands. ⁓ Had an open meeting with them. One of their partners came over. We explained what we were doing and asked them to value the business. So it was an open, very honest conversation. ⁓
and the management team and myself were on the same page with this. The value was the value. And we just agreed the mechanism of how to value the business. And that was it. took, I think there
business for a couple of days, maybe slightly longer, but not much more. They asked for all the normal files and financial records and forecasts, which we supplied. done all the work prepared quite diligently for this episode in the sale, this key moment. And they came up with evaluation that…
I think probably favoured the management teams more than me, but I was comfortable with it. We’re not talking a great disparity. Yeah, I think they got a good deal, but so did I. So that’s the basis of a good deal and both parties are satisfied.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (17:22)
Brilliant. And was there any, once the deal was done,
was there any ongoing commitment required by yourself?
Chris Everard (17:29)
Yes, I had some unsecured loan notes and I was as part of the ⁓ security that the bank wanted that I attended regular board meetings. They started monthly, then they went to bi-monthly, then they went to three monthly and ⁓ in the end I requested release from the funders from the bank and they were quite happy.
for me to step fully away because the performance of the business was absolutely fine. They were getting their repayments and they could see the numbers coming through and they were very relaxed about my involvement. And in all honesty, I attended the meetings but I had no real contribution. I understood the industry, I understood the market, I understood the clients, so was able to give some advice and some opinion, but I wasn’t there to make any decisions.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (18:26)
So Chris, this all took a period of time. You’ve come out the other end of that, and I know it’s quite a few years ago now. Thinking back, what did you learn throughout that, let’s call it the exit process? What did you learn about that, that by the end of it, you were thinking back and going, hey, I wish I knew this at the beginning. I wish I’d done something different.
Chris Everard (18:48)
How long have we
got, Daryl? So in essence, what I learned really was that, yeah, hindsight’s a gift and a curse at the same time. Had I started the business with the end in mind, I’d have done quite a few things differently. But that sort of exit period that to, it was about two years, eight months, really focused the mind on,
right people, right seats, with the right competencies and capabilities, and with a clear focus on the direction of the business, the purpose of the business, with a real clarity around the numbers, what they mean, how they’re communicated, how they’re gathered, what is the data that makes the difference.
Then we spoke about brand, what’s our value in the marketplace? Who do we serve? How big is that marketplace? What are they looking for? What can we do to make those relationships with our key clients and our supply chain? It’s a vertical thing. You’re looking up at the clients and down at your supply chain. What can we change? What can we improve?
to make those relationships really sticky so that you’re working in partnership rather than a supplier-client relationship. And then we looked at governance. Are all the contracts in place? Is our paperwork correct? Delivery notes, invoices, statement of accounts, employee contracts.
shareholders agreement, articles of association, all that dull boring stuff that I have found in latter years so many people ignore but actually if there’s one thing that’s going to catch you out it’s the detail.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (20:52)
Mm.
Sure. And as entrepreneurs and business owners, they’re generally forward looking people. They think in six, 12 months ahead of the business often these boring details are just slowing them down and ⁓ they’re easily neglected because they don’t stop the business ⁓ when it’s ⁓ running as normal business as usual case. All those details are only going to be helpful when something exceptional happens.
Chris Everard (21:22)
No, it doesn’t.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (21:28)
Whether it’s client issues, supplier issues, legal issue of some form. That’s when it pays to have all of that. And it’s just like insurance. It’s risk management ⁓ of ⁓ making sure everything is prepared should it need to be. And it’s just boring as anything for a business owner.
Chris Everard (21:30)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓
Yeah, it is. It’s not what I
get out of bed in the morning to do, I promise you that. But I have found over the years with the businesses I’ve started and sold that I’ve either gone, thank God I got that bit right, or bloody hell.
I should have paid attention. I should have sorted that out when I knew it was an issue and I just swept it under the carpet and what a surprise. It’s come up and bit me on the bum. So it’s diligence. It’s, yeah, being…
relentless in the detail, making sure it’s right. And What you have to accept is that things change. Employment law is one of the fastest changing things that affects employers and obviously employees as well. And with this current government, there’s a whole new raft of stuff. And it’s so important to get that bit right because ⁓
my experience is during the running of a business the most likely piece of legislation to trip you up will be employment law.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (22:56)
Yeah. So as you move forward, you’ve extracted the learnings, I guess. Well, can you pinpoint, is there one big learning that you took out of that whole experience of building, starting, growing and exiting that first business that you’ve consciously gone, hey, let me apply this. need to make sure I do this in all the next businesses.
Chris Everard (23:15)
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah,
the learning sort of the light bulb moment happened in the third business and I’d been interim MD for 18 months in a financial services company and auto enrollment was coming around the corner and I thought this is an opportunity as a business owner
it was a thing. was a massive piece of legislation and its financial services, which means it’s complex and hard to understand with lots of three letter acronyms in it. And it’s going to be a burden for people. So I bought the large majority share in quite a small employee benefits company.
I took the learnings from the MBO – start with the end in mind. I do not want to spend any great amount of time within employee benefits, within auto enrollment and within financial services. It’s a fascinating market, it’s a fascinating industry, but it doesn’t float my boat. So I spoke to the team, virtually when I took over and I said, “Right, this…
…we are going to create this business to sell in 18 months to two years time. And I’m happy to sell to you and I’m happy to sell to the trade.” Don’t mind, but this is what we’re going to do.
and they bought in straight away. They wanted to do that. They just had an influx of cash from me to buy their business. So they had a taste of it and we worked really hard and we were bloody good. And we created this auto enrollment package for small to medium sized businesses, which they bought into. was a great solution. And we were really finicky around the detail because the legislation around auto enrollment was.
pretty overwhelming at times, but we delivered it. And in the end, I sold it back to them. I sold my majority share back to the original owners and they got funding like that. They used a little bit of private equity, a little bit of personal funding and…
from memory 5/10% bank funding as well. So it was a mixed package, but we achieved it. And that taught me, start with the end in mind. So the next business, that’s exactly what I did. ⁓
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (25:54)
So 18 month project effectively that you had in mind, were you conscious, did you have a specific plan in place of going, here’s all the boxes I need to tick in the 18 months?
Chris Everard (26:08)
Yeah, so I needed to make sure the first thing was that I was not important, that my role and function in the business, I became really operationally redundant in six months. That was it. So I was able to work on, not in the business from a strategic point of view, developing quite high level relationships with suppliers and large medium sized businesses to allow the team to step in.
and to deliver the auto-enrollment solutions. So that was one of the key things and then it’s the due diligence around the numbers, making sure your numbers are stacking up because what a buyer wants or funding a buy-in or a buy-out is certainty. They want to know
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (27:03)
Yeah.
Chris Everard (27:03)
the level of risk and when will they get their money back and what’s their rate of return. So if you can clearly demonstrate that you as the owner have very little
to do with the success of the business, the actual numbers, then that’s a key step forward. And then they go back to governance, all the contracts, the ticking all the boxes for the necessary legislation, shareholders agreement, et cetera, cetera, cross options, buy outs, good leave or bad leave, all that sort of stuff. Get that sorted out, that boring bit, but don’t just park it in a drawer.
Put a note in your diary every month, spend half an hour going through certain aspects of it, reaching out to experts to ensure that what you’ve got is relevant and contemporary and will withstand enemy fire. Then you look at your people, making sure they’re on track, a clear goal, a common message.
⁓ and clarity on direction. Where are we going? Why? How? And when? You put all those things in the mix and you chuck in a good dose of fun along the way, celebrate success, a bit of socializing, some good times and everybody succeeds.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (28:30)
Yeah. So am I taking Chris, the focus points that you had moving forward and what you learned from the first one is let me get all the boring stuff under control. If I get all of the admin sorted, all of the record keeping sorted, ⁓ the regular reporting to keep, ensure that we’re moving in the way we want to and just having all those governance and financial records in place. That’s something you focused on.
Chris Everard (28:32)
Thanks.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (28:58)
at the same time ensuring that you didn’t have any functional roles in the business. You were very much the person pulling the levers, calling the direction, but you didn’t have any operational ⁓ role. Is that?
Chris Everard (29:12)
No, that’s
well summarized. I suppose my operational role really came down to accountability that when people said they were going to do something within a meeting, whether it be a board meeting or an operational meeting or a staff meeting, whatever, that it was done and that people understood the consequences of them doing it and doing it well. Because consequences have a…
quite frankly a negative connotation, but actually there are so many positive consequences of doing a really good job on time with the right outcomes. So celebrate the success, but actually have quite a narrow tolerance gap around people not delivering against their agreed objectives. And that makes me sound like a hard hatchet man, but
It’s so important that you hire slow and fire quick. I think that was Jim Collins many moons ago. And you’ve got to get the team right. ⁓
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (30:15)
Yeah.
Chris Everard (30:21)
Yeah, relationships, friendships, and all the rest of it are massively important in our life. But if you start something with an end in mind, and you know that sometimes what got you here, another Jim Collins, won’t get you there, then you have to be rigorous and relentless in the quality of the people around you. ⁓
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (30:44)
I want to pick up on the point and I think you almost just slipped it in. But with all the businesses that I’ve seen, the business owners, you’ve I don’t think this has done enough. So if you grew the business and you’ve got in and you’ve got out, it’s that focus on accountability. So it sounds like you called yourself the not a hatchet man. But if you if you were relentless on going, my job is
Chris Everard (31:07)
you
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (31:12)
project manager, you like, or accountability manager, we have a have a team meeting, you said you’re going to do this, this and this by next week, great. ⁓ Come next week, you’re and you’re gone report back to me, I’ve got a record of what you said you were going to do. Right, tell me how you went. And and you really keep people accountable to what they said they were going to do. That’s going to get traction. That’s what’s going to drive a business to scale and grow. Whereas most just go.
Chris Everard (31:20)
Yeah.
So,
thank
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (31:39)
Yeah, well, you know, got busy and I started and, you know, and the whole slopey shoulders things comes into play and we go, yeah, no worries. But it sounds like you really focused on that and brought home the consequences, both positive and negative, but focusing on the positive by the sounds of it to keep things moving, to achieve the objectives and the tasks and the goals is am I understanding correctly?
Chris Everard (31:49)
Yeah.
Thank
Yeah, absolutely right.
recruitment process or maybe within the first hundred days of a member of staff joining a business, I would talk to them about this and it was a learning I took. On the selling of one of the businesses, I fulfilled ⁓ an ambition of mine to become a professional rugby union coach and I worked with one of the teams in the area, quite a big team and
The head coach at the time, an Australian guy, similar to yourself, Daryl, was very key on accountability and I thought, that’s interesting. And I watched these players, these team members work together.
And I realized that the power of peer pressure, of peer group influence and control was a fantastic force, similar to gravity in one of the most compelling reasons that we do something. So I took that
that idea from the rugby training pitch and I started introducing it early, very early into the businesses that I started and I started to build teams within the business that held each other to account. So I did have to step in occasionally.
But actually, through the expectations of their peers, people wanted to deliver against their commitments. And that- Yeah, they do. We all do. It’s a human desire. And you tap into that and you make the consequences positive, very clear. This is how we’re going to celebrate. We’re going to go.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (33:46)
Yeah, they do.
Chris Everard (33:58)
We’re going to go to Paris for the weekend or we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that, you we’re going to have a three days holiday, whatever it might be, put the reward at the end of it, make everybody clear exactly what’s expected of everybody and what the outcomes are and you’ll achieve this. The negative side, if you don’t, this is the consequence.
And people buy in, if they’re the right people in the right seats doing the right job at the right time for the right reasons, they buy into it and they get it.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (34:30)
Yeah. And in sporting terms, if you get it all right, your accountability, you win games, you win the grand final. If you don’t do what you say you’re going to do and you’re interfering in other people’s roles or positions in the football team, you create chaos. You’re tripping over each other. It’s unorganized and you’ll get relegated. ⁓ I think there’s so many good correlations with sport and business. ⁓
Chris Everard (34:36)
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. There is, yeah. It’s one
of the things that I use a lot when I’m talking to business owners. ⁓ You know, how’s your team doing? Tell me about the culture, the spirit. How inter-reliant are they? How much do they trust and respect each other? How good are they at fierce conversations? Because conflict, again, like consequences, often has a negative connotation.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (35:03)
culture.
pretty.
Chris Everard (35:17)
But all the greatest teams have a good level of conflict where people feel able to talk to one another and clearly outline what they believe should be done, how it should be done, who should be doing it, and when it should be done by. And that level of conflict sparks great debate and it focuses on solutions. It doesn’t focus on the issue, it focuses on the solution.
which is paramount if you’re going to grow a business, shape it for sale and exit to the maximum value for all stakeholders, is focus on the solutions.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (35:57)
Yeah, it’s, I don’t think there’s anything quite as powerful as a team that keeps each other accountable by doing what they say they were going to do and have those robust conversations. Cause when they have those conversations, they’re not, they’re not pulling down the person. They’re picking apart and exploring the idea to see how robust the idea is to make a better one or,
Chris Everard (36:11)
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (36:24)
all be satisfied that this is the best damn idea that we’ve got. Let’s all buy in a line to the idea and drive that idea forward and then keep us accountable to that. ⁓ It’s hard to find a more powerful potent strategy for keeping a business on a sustainable growth.
Chris Everard (36:29)
Absolutely.
⁓ I
certainly haven’t found anything better and you couple accountability with control so this starts with self-control so if you know if you find yourself in a meeting or in a conversation
becoming agitated, allowing the red mister to send that you may be going to raise your voice or use language that is totally inappropriate to the workplace or become threatening in some way, then you’ve lost control. And that’s one thing I do not tolerate is when people start to look. Yeah, you’ve got to be able to remain adult, have adult conversations, stand up for yourself, but remain in
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (37:14)
respect.
Chris Everard (37:23)
control. And then if you’re in control, you can then control what’s going on around you.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (37:30)
Yeah, and influence. Chris, look, I’ve loved this conversation. I’ve learned so much. ⁓ I’m just wondering how you’d pull it all together if you were to give any thoughts or share ideas with business owners out there who are perhaps feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment going, where do I take my business from here? ⁓ Do I sell it? Do I take it through the next stage of growth? Do I invest in it? Do I acquire something? They’re just feeling overwhelmed with everything.
Chris Everard (37:35)
Thanks for watching.
Okay.
Thank
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (37:59)
What would you say to them now?
Chris Everard (38:01)
I would say be very clear, very clear as you can be on what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it. So let’s say you’re running a business, I’ll pick some numbers out, let’s say you’re turning over 25 million, you’ve got a EBITDA, your net margin’s strong, you’ve got a good forecast, so your business has a value, okay? So if you choose to sell it, and there are a number of ways of selling it,
won’t get lost in that little forest of stuff. When, why and for how much you take that value
that monetary sum and you do some simple analysis on what difference it’s going to make to your life, the life of your family, the other shareholders and stakeholders and you make the decision. nobody’s got a gun to your head. You can change your decision, but unless you make a decision, you’re just going to circle around everything and you’re going to get stuck in a loop that gets harder and harder to get out of. So make the
In three years time I’m going to sell the business for 10 million pounds and this is how I’m going to do it, this is why I’m going to do it and this is who’s going to help me.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (39:23)
Stay focused on the purpose and the direction is what I’m hearing. Brilliant.
Chris Everard (39:25)
Stay focused. yeah, be sure of it.
Yeah, be sure of your own personal brand and the brand of your business This is where we go and don’t be ashamed of it Growing your business and selling your business some people like to keep it secret Like like it’s a sin man alive. It’s one of the greatest things on earth
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (39:45)
Chris, really appreciate you sharing your thoughts with us today and ⁓ thanks for sharing your insights.
Chris Everard (39:51)
Love it. Thanks very much indeed and good luck everybody. You can do it.