The Great Resignation: The 5 Best Strategies To Have You Thrive And Prosper (#74)

Welcome to the Sell My Business Podcast. I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg.

This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience.

Your liquidity event is the largest and most important financial transaction of your life.

But unfortunately, up to 90% of liquidity events fail. Think about all that time, money and effort wasted. Of the "successful" liquidity events, most business owners leave anywhere from 50% to over 100% of their deal value in the buyer's pocket and don't even know it.

I should know. I said no to a seven-figure offer and yes, to mastering the art and science of a liquidity event. Two years later, I said yes to a different buyer with a nine-figure offer.

Are you thinking about an exit or liquidity event?

If you believe that you either don't have the time or you'll prepare closer to your liquidity event, think again.

Don't become a statistic and make the fatal mistake of believing that the skills that built your business are the same ones for your liquidity event.

After all, how can you master something you've never done before?

Let the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and our nine-step roadmap of preparation help you capture the maximum value for your liquidity event.

At the end of this episode, take a moment to hear from business owners, just like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience.

Welcome to episode 74 of The Sell My Business Podcast.

It's our tradition, where every fifth episode, we do a deep dive on a particular topic. And the topic for episode 74 is an interesting one.

As a result of the pandemic, there's a revolution that's now taking place in the business world.

And this revolution is known as The Great Resignation.

Have you heard about The Great Resignation, and as important, what are you doing about it?

For most business owners their liquidity event is the single largest, most important financial transaction of their life. Yet up to 90% of liquidity events fail. And of the quote-unquote successful liquidity events, most business owners are leaving anywhere from 50% to over 100% of the deal value in their buyer's pocket. And they don't even know about this.

So, in this episode, we're going to do a deep dive on The Great Resignation, what it is, what you can do, and how you can succeed and prosper.

So, let's talk about The Great Resignation. What is this and what does this mean for your business?

The coronavirus pandemic created a perfect storm when two things happened. Number one at the start of the pandemic most employees were not at work. They were at home and we all had lots of time to think. And at the same time, the same employees were working remotely.

The combination of downtime. Where people are thinking about what is life all about? What should I be doing? Am I happy? Am I fulfilled?

Depending on the study anywhere from 40% to 60% of employees are thinking about quitting. And believe it or not, some of these employees don't even have their next job lined up. So, as a business owner, this has incredible implications for you. And there are two sides to the coin. On the one hand, employees that are quitting, not a great thing. It can hurt your EBITDA. It can hurt your client relations, many negative things that are going on there. But on the flip side, the other side of the coin, The Great Resignation is making talent available where it otherwise wouldn't.

And I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself, but we'll talk about that in the next four strategies, but let's finish rounding out what this whole great resignation is and what you need to know about it.

So, the takeaway is that employees are shifting away from living to work, and instead they're contemplating working to live. It's a subtle change, but it's a big change. And as a business owner, you need to know what these implications are and how you're going to deal with it. So, now that we've talked about what The Great Resignation is and what it means for your business, let's start going into some of the strategies of how you're going to protect yourself.

So, the first strategy is why flexible work arrangements, both keep and attract top talent. So, we've all seen that remote work continues to be an option. And in fact, it's my opinion that remote work is not going anywhere. I know that as business gets back to the new normal companies are calling back their employees.

At the same time though, some of those employees are choosing not to go back to work. There's a lot of hesitation. There's a lot of fear and even some resentment about the way things used to be in the workplace.

So, here's my thesis. In the positions that support remote work, which is primarily your knowledge workers, remote work will continue to be an option, whether you want that or not. And as a business owner, the only thing constant is change itself. So, if your opinion is that while remote work is nice, but not in my company, you may be thinking that, but the marketplace is speaking through action.

So, remote work isn't going anywhere. What should you be doing about this? Well, for starters, it's time to start thinking about how you can embrace and welcome remote work as a full-time option for both your existing employees. As well as the new employees that you're going to be hiring. Other things that you need to start thinking about. And in the past, we gave lip service to this, but now it's time to start putting our money literally where our mouths are. And that is within your business. It's time to begin instituting paid time off. Many companies will talk the talk, but the owners of the company and the leaders of the company secretly like the situation where employees continue to work and they didn't take time off.

And all that is fine and good, but it was a bit of a fool's game. Because studies continue to show that employees who take time off. They unplug from the workplace. They unplug from the business. They actually come back recharged and more productive. And if we take a step back for a moment, what is it that we really want?

Is our desired outcome having employees burnt out and not taking time off or instead is our desired outcome one where our employees are refreshed, they're recharged and they're productive? A bit of a rhetorical question. I know, but there's absolute truth to that. And so, what this means is that you need to start thinking about a culture within your business, where you begin to embrace boundaries for the work hours.

Whether it's remote work or being in the office that working past a certain time or on the weekend is frowned upon. And yes, it also means no more of those emails at 1:00 AM or 3:00 AM or midnight or these crazy hours. Because it has your employees feel like they should be checking their email all the time.

And so, your culture must really embrace that when the work hours are done, the work hours are really done. We don't want to see you in the office. We don't want to see you working remotely. We don't expect to have emails from you off-hours, and we certainly don't expect you to reply to any emails that are sent off-hours, but the culture really needs to embrace this. And as the owner of the business, the culture starts with you and it ends with you. And it's time to start leading by example.

So, flexible work arrangements is the way to go. If you want to both keep and attract top talent. But at the same time, what can you do to fend off The Great Resignation? And that's strategy number two in this. And what are you going to do to fend off The Great Resignation is supercharging your management team.

So, here's another rhetorical question for you. Does your business run without you? And all I'm looking for is a yes or no. I don't want any explanations. I don't want any yes, but, or no, but. A simple yes or no answer. And the reality is most businesses do not run without the business owner even if that business has a management team.

At Deep Wealth in our nine-step roadmap, where we help you prepare for your liquidity event. Our goal is focused on helping you to capture the maximum value in your liquidity event. And so having a business that runs without you does a number of important things. And I've talked about this at length in the articles and in other podcasts, but it's worth revisiting.

When your business really runs without you, it's a situation where you get to work on the business and not in the business. And when you think about it, when you began your business, you took your strengths and you leverage them. And when you think about this, when you began your business,

You leveraged your strengths. You found a painful problem that you were passionate to solve? And you took that problem. You're world-class at it in solving gifts. And you went from zero customers to customers that became raving fans. But over time because the business grew and perhaps you weren't bringing in enough people to help address that you stopped working on the business and you were working in the business.

And while that may be okay in the early days on a go-forward basis, it really is holding you back in terms of the results that you're able to achieve, in terms of your EBITDA, in terms of creating a market disruption, not good things. So, when you begin the process of having leaders in the workplace who are running the business without you.

You get your time back, you lose your golden handcuffs. You get to focus on where are you going to create the next market disruption? You can find those brilliant new ideas to solve those new painful problems. Because again, when you think about it from your client's perspective, you're only as good as what you've done today.

What you've done yesterday or in the weeks, months, or years before doesn't cut it. Having your business run without you begins to alleviate that situation. And at the same time, when you look at your liquidity event, in the nine-step roadmap and the deep wealth experience. Step number two. X-Factors that insanely increase the value of your business.

Well, one X-Factor is having your business run without you. And if you, do it really well with your management team, That X-Factor is also a Rembrandt. A Rembrandt is an area where you're world-class in and they, Rembrandt is something that your future buyer is going to take note of. And a Rembrandt is also something that your future buyer will pay a premium for.

So, you want your management team to be running the business, but here's the thing. The Great Resignation is showing that employees aren't leaving businesses. Instead, employees are leaving bosses.

So, what can you do with your leaders that are going to have your employees want to stay in the company? Well, for starters, begin to promote the right people within the business. And I know it's not always possible to promote from within. But when you can promote from within it shows that you're rewarding performance within the company.

People get excited, particularly your top performers that they now have a career track. And by the way, when you're not running the business, one of the career tracks is to become president or CEO of your business. So, it's a terrific retention tool. When you can show that you can promote from within. For your existing management team and any new management team members that you're going to be adding you definitely want to give them training for the tools that they need to be successful. And part of that training is doing a deep dive on your culture. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Your competition with all of their money can buy many, many things. Your competition can buy the same technology that you're using and yes, your competition can also with their capital hire away some of your top talent. But what your competition can't do because money doesn't buy this one thing. Your competition cannot copy your culture. So, when you have a rich, thriving, and vibrant culture, that is led by your management team. Your employees will follow suit.

So, you can fend off The Great Resignation by supercharging your management team. So, they have the skillsets and the tools that they can lead by example, that they can be a terrific boss and be an inspiration because again, remember, employees, are leaving bosses.

So, if we take us up back here, you've put flexible work arrangements in place to both keep and attract top talent. You're also fending off The Great Resignation by supercharging your management team. What's the next strategy that you can deploy that's going to make a difference and help you not just survive but thrive during The Great Resignation?

The next strategy also revolves around your culture. And this is the importance of connecting culture to your vision. So, it's one thing to have a culture. And if Ron is about it for most business owners, it's only paying lip service to the culture. But what you want to do is within your culture.

Again, you want to have your vision tied to that, and you want to have your culture thriving and vibrant and rich. Well, there are three things that you can do. The first thing that you can do is you can supercharge your culture, just like you did with your management team, but now with your employees. And you can supercharge it by what you pay.

Are you paying below what the industry average is? Are you at the industry average or are you above the industry average?

 If you want to supercharge your culture, do whatever you can to go above and beyond what's being paid as the industry average. I spoke about promotions in the previous strategy. Let's revisit that. Promotions are so meaningful to employees. This is one of the things that they're looking for. And one of the things that they're going to be deciding, am I going to say here, am I going to go elsewhere?

Remember employees are looking for a fulfilling life. Now not everyone's currency is going to be a promotion. And speaking of your employee's currency, it's really important that you tune in to one of my favorite radio stations. And in fact, it's the world's favorite radio station and it's called WII.FM the What's In It For Me. Radio station.

It's essential that both you and your management team know what the currency is for all of your employees and particularly your top performers. So, when the currency is a promotion or the currency is pay. Terrific. Now you can speak to that currency. If the currency of an employee is something else speak to that employee tune into their WII.FM and ensure that you can offer them what they're looking for if you want to retain them. And in addition to pay and promotions let's not forget bonuses. And in fact, bonuses tie into the second thing that you need to be doing when you're connecting culture to your vision. And that is to create Key Performance Indicators for your frontline employees all the way through to your CEO. And your Key Performance Indicators or KPIs, that's going to tie into what your vision is. When everyone knows what their KPI is, they can now measure how they're doing today versus how they did yesterday, last week, last month, last quarter, or over the past number of years.

And we begin to ask critical questions. Why did our KPI go up? If that's a good thing, what made it go up? How do I make that happen again? Or if it's a negative thing for a KPI to go down, well, why did it go down? What's the root cause of this? How can I change this? So, it's not going down and it starts going back up again.

So, when you tie your bonuses into your KPIs, you now gamifying the system in a positive way. People love to measure what they're doing, and it becomes a bit of a contest for themselves. How can I become better today than it was yesterday and they're being financially rewarded for that? And then the third thing that you're doing is your communicating your narrative and your vision is certainly part of your narrative in everything that you're doing. So, we're talking about all of your meetings, on your website, in your emails. If you have a newsletter to put it in the newsletter. When you're speaking to clients, you're communicating this narrative to anyone and everyone, and the narrative is consistent to what you're doing with your vision, to what you're doing with your culture. And you're motivating people, and you have that consistency. When everyone from your frontline employees, all the way to the CEO, when they have that same narrative, that's when the magic starts to happen. Your customers are cluing into this and they're understanding what your company is all about.

And at the same time, you're setting yourself apart from the competition. And by the way, your future buyer, which is step number three of our nine-step roadmap is looking for what your narrative is. Now in the art side of a liquidity event narrative is a huge component of that. Is your narrative, getting your future buyer excited about what you're doing today, but most importantly, what you're going to be doing tomorrow and beyond?

Because remember your future buyer knows what you did today and yesterday, your future buyer is having a liquidity event where they're looking to pay a premium based on what you're going to be doing tomorrow. So, the narrative, and by the way, your future buyer will ask your frontline employees about the narrative, your management team about your narrative, and all of your stakeholders including your clients, as well as your vendors about that narrative. And when your buyer hears that narrative, which is exciting, it's painting a picture of a better tomorrow. And it's also painting a picture of all the opportunities that you couldn't tackle that your future buyer can. This is where things get interesting.

Number one your deal now becomes sticky. Your future buyer wants to do the deal. And one of the things that we highly recommend in the Deep Wealth Experience is that you find an investment banker, who's an advocate instead of a transactional investment banker and that you run an auction.

When you have a number of different buyers in that auction, you have an exciting narrative. Everybody wants to have that deal because remember your future buyer can choose among countless opportunities that are there. You're not the only game in town. But an exciting narrative makes your deal sticky, memorable, and buyers now start to compete of who's going to pay the most to get that company.

An exciting narrative that ties into your vision also creates a greater deal certainty. And while you're added, it's increasing your enterprise value.

So, again, let's take a step back. There's this new phenomenon called The Great Resignation that is now on the scene that has resulted from the coronavirus.

And again, The Great Resignation is the result of employees having had the downtime to think about life, of what they want and what they don't want. What employees don't want and we're, and how we're hearing this loud and clear because 40 to 60% of your employees are looking to resign. They don't want long, terrible commutes. They don't want bosses that are uninspiring or even terrible bosses.

 Your employees are looking for fulfillment. Your employees are looking for a quality of life, which for many of them includes family time. So, what can you do to leverage The Great Resignation today so that you can prosper tomorrow?

One of the things that you can begin doing right away is embracing the notion that top talent now prefers to work for multiple companies. You heard that correctly. Some people call it the gig economy. Some people call these freelancers, I'm going to call them freelancers.

What you need to know is that freelancers do not want to work for one company. Freelancers want to do remote work and do the work for multiple companies. Now you may be asking, well, why would they want to do that? Why would somebody want to work for multiple companies? Some of these freelancers are what people call digital nomads.

As the name suggests, it's a person and in this case, it's world-class talent who loves to travel. This person doesn't want to stay in any one place. And it's completely possible that every week this person might be in a different country, a different location, or perhaps it's every month.

These talented people love the challenge of different businesses, different business problems, and how they're going to solve those problems. So, when you're thinking about The Great Resignation and how you want to do two things, number one, you want to keep your top talent and number two, you want to attract top talent. What you must start thinking about is a blended workforce of both full-time and freelance talent.

And there's no judgment here. One is not better than the other. Now if your culture hasn't embraced freelance talent before, or if freelance talent is looked down upon, this is the opportunity to begin to change your culture. And this is why culture is so critical to have that rich, vibrant, thriving culture, which also embraces the notion of freelance talent.

And again, as I mentioned earlier, what's your outcome? Is your outcome to ensure that everyone's working full-time for you? Or instead, is your outcome to ensure that you're absolutely hitting it out of the park, in the areas of the business that move the dial for your EBITDA, for your growth, and ultimately for your enterprise value, when it comes time to think about your liquidity event?

And this point ties nicely into the third one. And this third strategy is difficult for many business owners to accept. But again, let's look at the outcome of what we want.

So, what is this third thing that you must absolutely be doing so that you can leverage The Great Resignation today so that you can prosper tomorrow? The third thing that you must do is have an open mindset where some of your full-time employees are going to become freelancers. That's right. They're no longer going to work full-time for you. They are not even going to work in the office. They're going to be doing remote work and you're not going to be the only game in town they're going to be having other obligations.

Now, of course, you're going to be applying your KPIs to both your full-time employees, people who are in the office, as well as to your freelancers who are out of the office, as well as your employees who might be doing remote work as well. But assuming that the KPIs are not only being met but hopefully exceeded you're open that you may lose some of your full-time employees who do become freelancers. And again, you have to ask yourself if you have a top performing person, is something of something better than something of nothing? Well, at least in my books, it is. And when we take a step back and we look at this strategy of where we're recognizing that top talent now prefers working for multiple companies. That we understand that we need a blended workforce of both full-time and freelance talent. And that we're open that some of our full-time employees are going to become freelancers.

We're now, having the right kind of mindset and in fact, step number seven of the nine step roadmap in the Deep Wealth Experience is developing a winning mindset. And a winning mindset is number one, your ability to tune into WII.FM. The What's In it For Me. Radio station. For everyone that you're interacting with from your employees, your freelancers, your clients, your stakeholders, and even your future buyer.

But when you have the right mindset, you're now open to be more creative. And that creativity will help your business get to the next level. One of my favorite sayings is that resilience trumps resources. So, in other words, your ability to be creative, your ability to have clarity, which we help you develop in the nine-step roadmap. That all goes towards your resilience and resilience will get you better results than money.

A quick story for you. In my e-learning company, we bootstrapped that company. And I ran that company in what I like to call a cockroach startup.

So, as a cockroach startup, our loyalty was to the culture. It was to our vision. It was to our narrative but also figuring out how to do things quicker and less expensive than it would otherwise. And looking back on that experience all these years later, I can tell you that Embanet would not have been as nearly as successful as it became if we had access to capital upfront. In fact, what I found was that the resilience forced us to find solutions that weren't being done in the industry.

And those solutions led the way for us to create a market disruption and dominate. So, having the right mindset is absolutely critical because it does develop your resilience.

So, let's take a quick recap here. And what have we talked about?

There are five important things that were discussed in episode 74, The Great Resignation, what you need to know to succeed and prosper.

So, for starters, we defined The Great Resignation as something that came out of the coronavirus pandemic. And this is where a 40 to 60% of employees. Yes. Even your employees. Are thinking about quitting to find another kind of job opportunity which gives them fulfillment.

These employees want to leave because they're not being fulfilled. They're leaving terrible bosses. They don't like the long commute and to find greener pastures elsewhere. So, now that we know what the problem is. And as I like to say, 90% of the solution is understanding the root cause of the problem. And the root cause of the problem with The Great Resignation is that employees are lacking fulfillment.

They're missing family time. They don't want that commute. They don't want that terrible boss. They want to have a job that has them smiling and happy. So, that's the problem. And there are four powerful strategies that we talked about to help you, not just survive The Great Resignation, but to thrive.

And so, the first strategy that we talked about is implementing flexible work arrangements both for your existing employees, as well as to attract new top talent. And that flexibility includes remote work. Remote work is not going anywhere. It's here to stay. We also spoke about how your culture now embraces paid time off. Pay time off isn't an option is now mandatory. And we also spoke about how your culture must embrace hard cutoffs of when you're working and when you're not working. So, after work hours, evenings, weekends that now become taboo.

Perhaps earlier before the pandemic, this was welcomed and maybe you even rewarded on this, but with The Great Resignation, this is one quick way to have your employees leave. The next strategy that we spoke about was how you can fend off the great resignation by supercharging your management team.

And you're having your business run without you by world-class leaders. Because again, we know that employees don't leave businesses, they leave bosses. So, you're taking your leaders and you're promoting from within the company, because when you promote from within the company, it shows that you reward performance. And you're giving your management team and your leaders, the training that they need so that they can be effective and to also bolster your culture.

The next strategy that we spoke about is the importance of connecting culture to your vision. And you can supercharge your culture through pay and promotions and bonuses. And you also have KPIs where it's completely transparent in the company. Everyone from the CEO to the frontline employee. People know the KPIs and what's being measured. And again, what gets measured is what gets done.

And then you're taking all of your communications and having a consistent narrative woven in those communications. So, that includes the communications in your meetings, on your website, your emails, your newsletters, when you're speaking to clients and all of your stakeholders.

And then the last strategy that we spoke about is how to leverage The Great Resignation today so you can prosper tomorrow. And we spoke about how a segment of world-class talent wants to be doing remote work for multiple companies. And this means that you must embrace a blended workforce of both full-time people and freelance people. And you're not differentiating between the two. Everyone is treated equally, regardless of whether they're full-time or freelance. And by the way, your freelancers will certainly be doing remote work, but some of your full-time employees will also be doing remote work.

And speaking of freelancers, we spoke about how you must become open to having some of your full-time employees become freelancers for you.

So, there you have it. There is a huge revolution that's taking place today because of the coronavirus pandemic known as The Great Resignation. And it's up to you in terms of what you're going to do. You can't control what happens around you. But you do control how you respond to those things. So, you can either respond to The Great Resignation by doing nothing at all.

And we know the writing is on the wall for that approach. You're going to lose out on not only attracting top talent, but you're also going to lose out on some of your key employees who are world-class performers. Or alternatively rethink everything from your culture to your norms, to how things are being done.

So, that you can embrace The Great Resignation now ahead of your competition ahead of the marketplace and become a workplace that is sought after. Remember what the Internet, the world has shrunk. Everybody talks to everybody. And whether it's a Glassdoor review or discussion forums world-class talent know who the terrific companies are that they should be working for and the companies that they should be staying away from.

So, there you have it. As we begin to wrap up episode 74, we did a deep dive on The Great Resignation, what you need to know to succeed and prosper. And as I close out this episode, a heartfelt thank you to you. You've given me your time and part of your day to listen to this episode and all the other episodes on the Sell My Business Podcast.

Time is your currency. Nobody can manufacture more time. It's always easy to go out and make more money, but you can't manufacture more time. And so, I thank you for your time and your loyalty. And as I close out episode 74 as always, please stay healthy and safe.

[00:31:17] Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me.

[00:31:20] Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions.

[00:31:30] Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity

[00:31:35] Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

[00:31:41] Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix.

[00:31:57] Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So, it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately.

[00:32:19] Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended.

[00:32:29] Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

[00:32:42] Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even.

[00:33:01] Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

[00:33:28] Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever.

[00:33:46] Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table?

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

If you're not on my email list, you'll want to be. Sign up at www.deepwealth.com/podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode of the Sell My Business podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Reviews help me reach new listeners, grow the show and continue to create content that you'll enjoy.

As we close out this episode, a heartfelt thank you for your time. And as always, please stay healthy and safe.