00:22 Hey, welcome back to the show. Today we are so lucky to have with us Brook Borup because she's an amazing woman and she's gonna tell us why. Brook, tell us who you are and what do you do?

00:33 Todd, thanks for having me. Like you said, my name is Brook Borup, and like the sign says, my company is called My Clone Solution. And in business, it's really all about scaling so that you can duplicate yourself. And when you decide that you're ready to sell the business or figure out what your exit strategy is going to be, now you really have to duplicate yourself because you won't be in the business anymore. And your business is only worth what it is the business is worth. And if it's only worth what you have in your head, then that's not worth much to anyone else, right?

01:11 No, no, not, no matter how cool you are, it doesn't really add a lot of value to anybody else, you know, if you're the only one with the information, right?

01:21 Yep, absolutely. So that's my job.

01:24 So this is a really cool product because, and it's a really cool solution, because a lot of the people listening to the show are in that position where they've just launched or they're in, it doesn't have to be a just launch, but there are people who are trying to figure out, where do I get my next stage of growth? And a lot of that comes down to, I tell people all the time that, what are you growing, to what end are you trying to grow? Like, Where are you trying to get this business to and how long do you want to keep running this thing, right? What kind of questions are you helping people with when they come to you with exit strategy questions or what do I need to do to get the business ready to sell? Why all the information's in my head? How do I get it out there? What does that process look like and where do you start with people?

02:09 So I wish people were that specific when they came to me. Right? 

02:18 They're not.

02:19 So they're not. The majority of the time I get referred to my clients by business brokers or business coaches that are helping their clients either scale their business or get ready for exit. Right? Because they've already decided that there's a goal in the future. And so we take that goal and then from an operations standpoint, we start removing you from your business. Initially that starts with the download and then we get into how do we want to make the company run with the information that we now have. Right? So that's where we're headed. But the questions that people ask, like you had said, how do I get my business ready to, to scale or to exit? There are different facets of that. And if you are working on an exit strategy, no matter which exit strategy, oh my gosh, 

03:15 Strategy.

03:16 Strategy it is, you need to make sure that you have a full team of professionals. So of course you're gonna have a legal professional, you're gonna have a financial professional, maybe multiples, and then someone like me who is an operations professional. So I help get your business there but the finances and the legal stuff need to be taken care of by people in those professions.

03:43 That's awesome. And a lot of these people aren't thinking that way. They don't think about that stuff when they're running the day-to-day. I see a lot of people that they talk about their business nonstop, but they really don't have that vision of what the end of their business is gonna look like for them. How do you help them see that? Because, I mean, when they get referred to you by a broker, for example, how many of them have not even thought about what they want to get out of their exit or what do they even understand the multiples, how that thing works and things like that. What do you see?

04:20 If a business broker sends somebody to me, they have done zero preparation. Um, so they just, they just woke up one day, usually after some sort of a health scare or, um, you know, they've had a family member enter the business, you know, whatever, and they're like, okay, I want to retire. And so I need to know what's going to, what has to be done in order to sell to my employees or sell to my or who's gonna buy the business, right? Because I heard I can sell my business. And so usually that's the business broker gets them and like, whoa, you're like five to seven years away from this. I think you need to start with Brook. She'll at least get you so that you can take a two week vacation. And then we can start working on the finances.

05:11 That's so funny. Seriously though, seriously though, and for those listening, put in the comments below, are you able to take a two week vacation right now without worrying about everything falling apart? Because if you can't...

05:22 Yeah, so most people will be able to say they can take a two week vacation, but, um, and then, and the business will, you know, pay its bills, right? But can you take a month vacation and have your business grow? Can you take around the world trip for six months and actually have your business make more money than it did last year at the same time? That's, those are the questions that we're asking because your business is virtually, um, worth nothing. If you're business, if you are the only one that can do what it is that you're doing, and you haven't prepared a team or prepared the processes to hand over to someone else.

06:03 Right, thank you for saying that so gently, yes. So truthfully though, those of you that are listening, you've got to pay attention to this episode because Brook is gonna pour some information on you that I think is gonna really open your eyes to the fact that if you can't take that six month journey around the world and just check in periodically and things are not growing, you're probably not in a position to even exit ever. Like you really aren't. There's so much work that goes into setting up the foundation of a business that operates and that you're operating as opposed to a business that you're in the day to day running every facet of the business. Brook, what other red flag signs do you see? What are some things that you see when people are coming to you without an exit strategy, but are just trying to figure out why can't my business run without me?

06:59 Okay. So if somebody, if you haven't invested in some sort of a team or some sort of software, those are the first two things that we're looking at. If you don't know what products and services you sell. And I say that because there's a lot of them. Yes. 

07:19 Whoa, whoa, seriously?

07:20 Seriously. 

07:22 Oh my gosh.

07:23 So just a story. I had a woman come to me, and she was looking to start delegating and to really get a team in place. And as we were going through the list of her products and services, she thought she sold two things. We ended up with 19 service lines. Right? So this is when if you are scaling, like if you're just going gangbusters and all of a sudden, oh, we have a new product, oh, we have a new product, oh, we have a new product, 99% you have not thought out that product or how they relate to the other products in your business. So if that's not, if that has not been done, then we know that the financial metrics have not been put into place. So we even know if that service line is worth having.

08:15 Totally, totally. Now 100%, I mean, what did Steve Jobs do when he came back to Apple for the third time? It was like, okay, why do we have all these freaking products? Let's go to a music player, and let's go to a laptop and a desktop, right? I mean, that's what he simplified down to three things. How do you help them see this though? Because they're like this woman, bless her heart, with 19 products, trying to support that. How do you help them see that? There is a problem here. Nobody knows what you're doing. Because I deal with this too. So how do you help them see this?

08:52 It's it is really a long process especially with 19 products You know I worked with a gentleman that had one product he had one service that he provided there were variations of it But he had one and we got through his entire business SOP process in five hours. Right from marketing to loyalty we got through his entire funnel in five hours. And in ten hours later we had the entire thing automated where there were quite literally five touch points for any of his clients that came through his business. So he knew when we got done with that process that he needed to hire one person in addition to his admin to do essentially what would replace him. And then he knew at that point, based on his revenue, that if he had this person, they could quite literally work 40 hours a week and they could replace him 100%. He could go out and do more selling if he wanted to, or he could step away and just base on his referral business. His business, after that 15 hours worth of time, is now a package with a bow that he could take to his business broker and say, I'm ready to retire, find a purchaser.

10:11  captainscouncil.com

11:49 Right, right. So, Brook, that sounds refreshing. Let's talk about the bigger scale businesses because I know you work with people across the board and our audience is definitely, these are people who are not solopreneurs. These are people that have somewhat of a structure. They've got probably someone helping with marketing, probably someone helping with sales, at least half a dozen to a dozen people doing fulfillment they don't know where to go next. Like, where do you see the red flags there?

12:25 All right, so in there, if you are getting, from an operations standpoint, if you get consistent customer service requests, something's missing, right? If you're getting the exact same questions over and over and over again, something is missing. And usually that is in your funnel infrastructure, your software. Now, you could definitely find holes in your team. Maybe you're in a position where you're trying to scale, but you don't necessarily know what pieces are broken or what pieces that you could plug people or software into to make it more efficient. So that's where we start. Typically with a business of any size, I'm gonna come in and we're gonna start talking through each one of your service lines. And we're gonna talk starting with how do you market it, how do clients come into that service line on the top of the funnel, and then what happens in the sales process, and then what happens in your onboarding process, and then what happens in your loyalty or return phase, or upselling or downselling, or all those different pieces, because most people have not thought through that entire phase. And so their staff, the money that they're putting out for their team is not used efficiently because software could probably do most of the redundancies. And then your team can be used to grow you and put in other things in place that most of us have that list that's the I would love list, you know, the wish list that we never get to, right? 

14:15 Yeah, yeah, it's a good list.

14:16 And that doesn't matter what size your business is and how many staff members you have If you have a wish list of we would love to be able to do that, most likely you could do that with your current staff if you were optimized.

14:29 You're probably right. And I'm actually dealing with that right now in my organization. You know, we have been going through and trying to assess, you know, are the things that everybody's working on necessary? First of all, and of the things that they're working on, how aligned are they to our mission, right? And tell me what you think about that, because, you know, I feel like a lot of people think a mission statement, is a vision statement. And I'm a firm believer that a mission statement is, you know, if you went and dropped a green, Platoon of Green Berets behind a red line somewhere, and they had a, they didn't really know what the mission was. They just knew they were supposed to be the awesomest, best, baddest Green Berets ever. They would just get there and think, okay, what's the objective here? But a mission statement tells them, hey, we're gonna go take out this dictator and save all these children and making the world a better place. That's a mission. How do you help these people identify that and kind of build alignment in their organization?

15:38 So figuring out what your mission is, a lot of corporate, a lot of large corporate entities think mission is just money. Or money is the biggest factor, right? We know that because we need money to have all of this stuff function. But what if you can be a customer-centric process with a money mission?Right? We want our 10% growth, our 30% growth, our 100% growth this year. All of that is great, but you don't get to that those growth numbers without having both new income as well as cut expenses and ultimately the efficiency. Right? And this is where we can use software to make sure that your, the entire process is efficient and your team is efficient. Um, and you can get, you can, hit that mission more clearly, right? And all of this starts with having documented processes and updated documented processes because a lot of us will start with something and then have some great team members that come in, stuff gets changed, stuff gets updated, but then there isn't an audit of the whole process. So, you know, I've worked in, you know, big hospitality, that's where I come from, that's my background. And nobody communicates. Communication is the number one thing, place that we fail, 100%. Your sales team is not talking to your marketing team. You know, your marketing team is saying, hey, we need to know what people are Googling to get us. Right? I mean, the typical Google questions, so that we can do our SEO properly, so we can make sure we're targeting the right things in social and all of the things. And the sales team has no clue what that means, right? Because there's not a consistent terminology between those two people, or between those two teams. And so when marketing talks to sales, sales should be saying, like, this is the question we're getting over and over and over again, and there's no reason. Like everybody should already know this when we get on the phone with them. So let's hammer this to death, right? And the same thing when you're talking, when you're going from sales to onboarding or to client care. And that this was my biggest issue in the hospitality industry because salespeople would promise the world and then it would be dumped on the support team to figure out how in the heck to make the promises happen so that you don't get bad reviews because of a salesperson promising the world. Right? That's typical across the board.

18:42 Yes, yes, you are preaching my gospel. I mean, honestly, like silo, so the way I see it, and tell me how you see this differently, because the way I see it is, as a company launches, is very owner dependent, generally. And as the owner is like trying to get things going, they end up launching different things, they say different things in a sales pitch, they do things their own unique way, and then now all of a sudden they're launched, they're making money, they start to grow a little bit, but as soon as their reach is gone, they can't now operate the marketing, they can't now operate customer service, they can't do all the sales, they can't do product development. Those four silos, customer success would be another one. As they kind of pull out of those fingers one at a time, now all of a sudden the silos are left to no leadership, oftentimes. How...

19:33 Uh huh, and this is why we have a ton of leadership coaches in our world right now.

19:35 Yes, yes. And how do you align them though? What is your practical method of saying, hey, CEO, here's how you should be operating as a director, not as a manipulator of all these categories. How do you get them to align all these silos into one great mission for the company?

19:58 So luckily, I get to work with all of the people. So when I'm involved, I'm working with all of the silos to make sure that we're streamlining processes across the board. In this same conversation, you as the owner need to be developing your leadership skills. And because if you have left your company in silos, you are not the CEO that they are looking for and you need to put yourself in that position. So I am not a leadership coach. I am great at communication. I'm great at getting everybody to talk to everybody in their own language to make sure that, you know, we can get this project done and we can make sure the company is running smooth and efficient and that's where I love to live. If you as the owner are having that trouble, I have plenty of leadership coaches in my sphere. I'm happy to help you find one that matches both your personality type and the way that you need to be able to manage your team and your industry. You know, everywhere from the boot camp coach to the, you know, nice, what I call spiritually petting coaches, right? Because everybody's different.

21:20  I love it. Yeah, yeah, there's those too. Yeah, yeah, everyone's got different motivators and everyone's got different core values and everyone's got a different mission. Yeah. So, so do you...

21:28 Yep, absolutely. Yep. So yeah, so we just need to make sure that it all works, you know, and that you are communicating properly with your team and they are communicating your wishes and your goals and ultimately the mission to their team.

21:38 So back in this up to the start, where we started this conversation, Brook, you know, exit strategy and its importance and you know, as you see these founders and these operators that you're meeting with, start to really understand that in order for me to maximize my exit, I need this, this and this in place. How does that change their ability to function as a leader or as someone who's driving the show for their company?

22:08 So if they're already driving the show, being able to step back doesn't necessarily mean step back. Right, and everybody thinks that an exit strategy means I need to be out of my company and just let it go to nothing, or let it go to someone else without having any sort of hand in it. And it's actually, it's exactly the opposite. You need to set your team, your teammates, your departments, the entire company up for success so that when somebody does purchase it, then they know that they're purchasing something you can be extremely confident that it's not going to change now. It may change in the future and you have to be okay with that, but you're probably not gonna be around at that point, even though it's your baby today.

23:04 I love it. Brook, this has been such a fun conversation. I love conversations with people like you because too many founders forget that they're so excited about the launch, they don't think about the destination. They don't think about where the end is for them in that business. One of my first businesses is still in business today and I'm grateful for that. It's been around since 1999 and it's still operating, it's still in the same little town that I live in right now. And I love the fact that I can drive past there and see that it's still a thriving operational business, even after I left. If you can't think that way, if you can't move yourself that direction, you need to contact Brook. You need to understand that there are people out there who get the game, know how to build your company so that you can exit and...and it will still function. It will still operate. They'll still serve the people you initially set out to serve. Brook, what are some things that kind of to wrap us up here that you think are absolutely critical for people to be thinking about in exit planning exit strategy.

24:10 Number one, understand that exit doesn't mean death. People don't wanna think about the exit plan because they automatically think this is, when I have to retire or when I die. Now, we want, this is what we're doing in your business now is like an insurance policy. So that if that does happen to you, at least everything is covered and you've taken care of your team and your clients and all of the things, right? This means I wanna hire a CEO and I just wanna be on the board of directors, right? This means I want to take my company public, right? You don't have to always be in the driver's seat of everything. So if you are a true entrepreneur, your goal should always start your or when you start a company you should always start with the end in mind. What is it that you want to do? And exit strategy doesn't necessarily just mean selling. Most businesses will not sell just for just because you know whatever but it's it means ESOPs selling it to your employees right. What I call I mean I'm sure there's different words for all of these things I call the farmer succession, right, so when you're transferring assets from father to son or from mother to daughter or from owner to protege, there's so many different ways that you can exit your business. But ultimately, it's all the value of that business to you and to the person that would come after you and to your team and your clients and all of the people you affect on a daily basis is all based on that decision that you make to make sure that your business is sound. And that's what this is all about.

26:08 Right, right. I love it. Thank you so much. Honestly, thank you so much. And for those listening, don't make the mistakes that I did in my first exit. I was so rushed. It was so stupid. I mean, it was just eagerness to go try something new. And I thought, let's exit. Worst timing, worst terms, very dumb. Talk to somebody who knows what they're doing. You deserve more out of what you've built and you deserve to get true valuation for what you've put into it and chances are you're not living to its potential so Brook thank you so much for your advice. Thanks for the input and honestly those of you listening Please take a step back, re-listen to this if you need to but make sure that you're having in your game plan the exit strategy. Brook, is there anyone you'd like to give a shout out to who's kind of inspired you to go down this path today?

27:02 Oh man, I mean, I love my clients. I love the people that I work with and the business brokers that have taught me so many things. And that's where my knowledge comes from, right? I come from, I'm working in the trenches right alongside you. I'm building and scaling a business right alongside you. And that's, this is on the job training. And really, entrepreneurship is, that's all it is. On the job training with the knowledge that we've built over our lives. So I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to do that. And I definitely, if anybody decides to pick up the phone or visit us online and have a call with me, I have the resources for you. So if wherever you're at and wherever you wanna be, I'm happy to connect you with someone who can put you exactly where you need to be.

27:56 Brook, thank you so much. And for the rest of you, we'll catch you on the next episode of the Growth and Scaling Podcast. We'll see you then.