A business owner once described his days to me as a computer with every tab open. Most of them he could handle. But one or two were genuinely important, and he couldn't get them done.
He didn't know how, or he couldn't get the right help, or he was waiting on somebody, or it was just outside his expertise. So that tab sat there, and he couldn't move to the next level until somebody finally took it off his plate. More often than not, that is exactly why people come to see me.
Picture a triangle. One line runs up toward winning, another runs down toward losing, and in the middle is a band where most of my clients begin: surviving. In simple terms, they're getting by. While they're profitable and doing okay, they're not really thriving.
I don't usually take on the people who are simply losing. The work begins somewhere between surviving and winning, and every step is meant to move the client up toward the winning line.
The other half of this is the lens. All of my experience comes into that lens, and I see a client's situation through it, which lets me see things most people can't. I'm looking at their business in a way that's different from anybody they've worked with before, because of my background. I have experience in exit planning, estate planning, managing money, financial advising, and everything that comes with it.
So how does someone climb toward winning? Through what I call incrementalism. Incrementalism is doing the right thing over and over, taking small steps. After you've done the right thing for a long time and you turn around to look behind you, you can finally see just how far we've come.
The same mechanism runs in reverse, too. It's how people drift into something like a drug addiction. You don't dive in. You experiment, then you're caught a little more, then a little more. It works both ways. But the success of what we do comes from working with clients on an ongoing basis to do the next right thing, again and again, across every subject that needs to be tackled.
The reason a surviving client gets stuck is something I call the ceiling of complexity. They hit the limit of what they can manage, something grows too complex along the way, and they don't know how to break through it. A profitable owner solves one set of problems and then grows straight into a new set he's never faced before. As I've written about why a confused mind is costing you a profitable exit, a confused owner is one staring at a tab he can't close.
Here is incrementalism done the right way. We took on a client whose partners were locked in a conflict they couldn't get past. We resolved it, then gave total control to one of the partners, who was a genuinely great business leader.
I convinced everybody to hand him 100 percent control on the promise he'd make them all rich, which is exactly what he did. When we first valued that company, it was worth roughly $15 million. We made a couple of acquisitions over the next few years, then sold it for more than $100 million, three and a half years later.
That is what the climb looks like with a number attached. The owner who arrived frozen, with one tab he couldn't close, doesn't stay on the survival line.
Step by step, the right thing done over and over, he moves up the line. Tab after tab is closed as the business thrives. He's standing on the winning line, looking back at how far he's come.
That readiness is its own reward, whether or not he ever decides to sell, because a company prepared to be seen through a buyer's eyes is simply a stronger company giving its owner every good option.
