Episode 7: Where Do We Go From Here? Crafting an Exit Plan

We are on episode 7 of the 31 Day Courier MBA series. This is the fifth and final episode in our section on Creating Your Business Plan. You can see a semi-transcript at DeliverOnYourBusiness.com. Here are show pages for previous episodes.

The Schedule: Episode Schedule for the 31 Day Courier MBA Series
Episode 1: Introducing the 31 Day Courier MBA - Mastering Your Business Attitude
Episode 2: Who Are You? Understanding the Independent Contractor relationship
Episode 3: Why Are You? Creating a Mission Statement
Episode 4: Where Are You? Understanding Your Market
Episode 5: Don't Put All Your Eggs In One Basket - The Importance of Diversification
Episode 6: Is it Enough? Creating an Hourly Goal For Your Delivery Business
Episode 7: Where do We Go From Here? Crafting an exit plan

We encourage you to visit our contact page to leave comments or questions, either by email or by clicking the microphone and leaving a voice mail. You can also comment on the episode pages on our site, linked above.

Part of planning for your business is understanding that it won't last forever. What do you do with that? Are you ready for that?

Have you started thinking about your next chapter? Have you considered what you future opportunities might be?

In this episode we encourage you to ask the question: What do I want to do next? What is your next opportunity? 

Go back to episode 3 and think about your why. Use that to help identify your passions

Use the opportunities you have of time in your car and the ability to listen to podcasts and audible - use the time to help prepare for that next chapter

Two thins can happen: The gig may change your you may change. Be ready for either and start planning for your next opportunity.

Transcript

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Hey there. Welcome to the Deliver on your business podcast where you are the boss. I'm Ron from EntreCourier.Com. Entre is from entrepreneur for somebody who is in business for themselves. And here's the deal, folks. If you're an independent contractor. You are operating a business, ready or not. So that makes you an Entre Courier. Welcome to the club. This podcast is here to help you think like a business owner to thrive in your business. So let's get started, shall we? Well, happy Sunday, Courier Nation. We have made it through the first week of the Courier MBA series. And just as significant, we are now on the last of six episodes that have to do with your business planning. We have covered the who. We've covered the why we've covered the where we've done a double dose of how much. And now it's time for us to say goodbye. Well, we say goodbye to the business planning portion, but it's also time to think about saying goodbye to your business. At some point, a business owner just has to say goodbye. There's a time when it's time to hang it up now, either the business isn't working, maybe it's run its course. Maybe life has take a different direction for you. Maybe something better comes along. But what do you do when it's time for that? And this is maybe the exit plan is maybe the most neglected part of the business plan for entrepreneurs. I think it's kind of hard for us here, especially if you're an accidental business owner. You never really plan to be a business owner. Makes it a little harder to think of something like an exit plan because this is very much an in the moment kind of thing. You just go, you do your work, everything goes all right. You keep doing your work, and maybe eventually something better comes along. Right. Why do we need to think about an exit plan? Well, I want to look at a couple of realities that we've talked about in some past episodes, but just realities in our industry. One is there are changes happening in our industry out in California. We've got legislation that if it passes as it looks right now, there's a good chance that delivery drivers could end up being made employees out in California. And what does that do? What does that do to your opportunities? If you're an employee out there, I'm going to bet you that there's a good chance that you can say goodbye to full time delivery. There's a good chance that it may just cost too much money for DoorDash and Grubhub and all these other companies to hire you on as an employee. And they might just decide, you know what? It's not worth it. We're going to close up shop. Either one of those could be a dramatic change for you if you're driving in California. And I would imagine that if that passes, there will be a ripple effect across the country. And will that make changes? So there's always that possibility that this independent contractor, gig, could go away. Are you willing to do this as an employee? Those are things that you have to think about. Now. Another thing that you've got to think about is it may not be enough. We talked about this yesterday. That was kind of the question was when you look at what you could earn, you've got to ask yourself, Is it enough? There's a point where maybe the potential isn't there to make it worth because of the fact that we've got to earn a lot more as an independent contractor to have a comparable income as an employee. So where is the point that is just too much. There's one other factor here and that is that there's a definite ceiling on what we can earn and that's all tied to basically, what we are doing is renting our time for money. And there's only so much time. And I don't expect that you're going to see them raising the rent on our time. Right? So maybe we're okay now, maybe we're making what we want to make right now. But, you know, this is a world in which you can only go so far and increasing your own efficiency, things like that. And there is probably going to be a time when there are no raises, there are no increases. What do you do then? It may be enough today, but it's going to be enough at the end of the year. Is it going to be enough in two years or five years? Here's the reality, folks. One, I think as humans we need to grow. And two, this may not last forever. What do we do with that? Where do we go with that? Where do we go from here? Alright. You can queue the Alan Parsons project right now if you're even familiar with that reference. I don't know. But anyway, why is it I keep wanting to break out in song on this, especially as badly as I sing. Here's the thing, folks. I believe that this gig work is going to do one or two things with you. One, it's going to realize that there are things that you miss about what you can get as an employee and may eventually drive you back into some kind of an employment situation. And that's okay if you go that route. The other thing that it can do is it can be a gateway drug into entrepreneurism. You love the freedom. You love that taste of running your own business, of doing things on your own terms. And maybe that makes you want to explore it more. And either one is cool. But I do think it is something that you need to start asking yourself, what do I do if and when things change? What do I do when this doesn't make sense anymore? That's an ongoing project. I'm sorry, that's an ongoing process, but you need to start thinking about that and start getting ideas and start planning on where do you go next in your life? What do we want to do when we grow up? What do we do here? I think your exit plan starts with getting a better feel for what you want to do in your life. Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? Let's put it this way, if you could do anything at all, if you could just choose any job at all, and you just knew that it was going to pay enough, and you could just snap your fingers and you had all the qualifications for doing it. If you could do anything at all, do you know what you would want to do? Ten years ago, I was asked that question, and I honestly didn't know. In fact, I got to the point where I was joking that my passion was to discover my passion. I just been doing life, and I had done the same kind of job I had done for almost 20 years, and I just realized I wanted something more, but I wasn't sure what it was. And basically what happens is I'm actually here because I did find that meaning that meaning, and I did find that purpose. And it's stuff that I figured out that, you know, stuff that's outside of this delivery work and everything like that. But I do this so that I can do those things that really give me meaning and really give me purpose. So ask yourself this question, what is your passion? I hope you had a chance to listen to episode three, because in that we talked about a mission statement. But the big thing we did there was we talked about understanding your why, getting to know why you're doing what you're doing and taking that deeper because we didn't want to just stop with okay, I need to make some money. It's like, why do you need to make that money? Well, I want to do a vacation. Why do you want to do the vacation? You drill into that every time you ask yourself why, you give yourself an answer, and then you ask why for that, go deeper and deeper, because that helps you start to get the heart of what you really want and what's really important to you. Go through that process, ask yourself why, and just keep asking deeper and deeper and pay real good attention to that, because that maybe helps inspire you. That maybe helps you get a feel for what is really important to you. And if something is really that important to you, what kind of things can you do with that? You know, you don't have to answer the question right away, because sometimes it is a process, and sometimes it takes a while. But you start asking yourself that question, and then it nags at you. And that's kind of what happened with me after a time, it worked itself through one place you can go. If you're really intrigued by this, go look up Dan Miller in 48 days to the work you love. I'm not putting any links down because I'm not doing this as an affiliate thing or anything like that. It's just that his information helped me out, and I think it can help you out. What he does is he's got some great material on just helping you evaluate the things that you're passionate about and then helping you figure out. How do I turn that into not just a job or a career, but a calling here's. What I would really encourage you to do, though, is you start thinking about that, and as you start getting an idea of the things that you really would like to go in your direction, take advantage of this opportunity, folks. You've got an incredible opportunity right here. Embrace it. Take advantage of it. And you're thinking, what opportunity? So what do we do all day? We drive around one of the beauties of doing delivery over ride share. In my mind is, you know what? I don't have to tailor my music or am I listening to my passengers? I get to listen to what I want to, and I spend so much time listening to podcasts, such audiobooks, and it's all stuff to kind of help me learn some of the things that I want to grow into. And this is a fantastic opportunity, people. You're being paid to be able to listen to, be able to learn, use this time and use it. Well, take advantage of that. Now you got your smartphone and there's so much you can do with that. Use that. Take advantage of it and listen to audio books on the things that you're passionate about. Or find podcast. I mean, there's a guy that's got a podcast on the business side of delivery work. I mean, there's podcasts about everything. Just search through stuff and take advantage of this time. Get a feel for where you want to go and start using those resources. Start teaching yourself, start learning, and start using this to motivate you because there is so much potential out there and you can grasp that. And you've got a fantastic opportunity to start working for that. I'll give you a couple of suggestions if you're interested, and especially if you're one of those that you kind of got the bug that this has become your gateway drug. You want to be on your own, you want to be able to take off, but you want to do more. First thing I would say, here's a couple of suggestions. There's a couple of guys, Gary Vee or Gary Vaynerchuk. if you just look for Gary Vee, you should be able to find him. Now, the guy can get explicit and most of you probably don't care. But I'll tell you what, the dude is real and he's passionate and you can learn so much from him, and he gives away much of his information. There are so many guys out there that they've got information, but they want to give you just enough to have you buy a program from them or something. And Gary is not that way. So listen to him. You can learn so much from that guy. There's a couple of others, too, that you can think about. There's Pat Flynn, and he's got his podcast called Smart, Passive Income, and he's branching out into a lot of different areas as well. He's got good information on different ways that you can earn money. And there's John Lee Dumas with Entrepreneurs on Fire. And so these are a couple, and there's so many out there. But listening. Start looking for the things that you would actually get interested in. Use some of these resources and start planning for what you can do. Folks, I love this delivery work. I really do. I love how easy it is. I love the interaction with the people, because it's just enough. You get to talk a little bit with the customers and with the restaurants and everything like that. But you don't have to have them in your face all the time, like if they're in your car with you, you know what I mean? But here's the thing. You know what? I see the same thing happening with us. If you look what Uber and Lyft have done, you got to know the same things coming with Grubhub Postmates and everything like that, the pay cuts that they've done recently. I'm pretty sure that's just the beginning. I think there's a lot that we can do that we can overcome it. I think that there are a lot of opportunities that we can still do quite well in spite of what they're doing. But at the same time, I don't think it's going to get better. You know what I mean? And it may get worse. And so there's a ceiling that you've got to think about. You've got to start thinking about. This isn't going to be it for us for the rest of our lives. This is a great gig for right now. But start looking ahead. Go back to episode three. Start digging into your why don't let yourself off easy. Dig in deep and find out what are you passionate enough and then start exploring ideas. You've got time. You've got opportunities to do something. With that time, you can learn. You can grow, you can prepare the so much that you can do. And the day is going to come when you can flap your wings and leave the nest. Gig work is a great incubator, but the day is coming that we will outgrow it when that day comes. What are you going to do? So that kind of wraps up our business plan section. I invite you to come back tomorrow because we're going to kick off the operations portion and we'll start digging into measuring your performance. Thank you for tuning in and joining us today. Come on over to the website and check us out. You can scroll through your previous posts there, look us up on Twitter, Facebook. You can even find us on LinkedIn, and all you got to do on those platforms is Search for Entre Courier. And you can look for our podcast on all of the main podcast channels. And you can always go to deliveronyourbusiness.Com. As I always do. I like to save this part for last because I want to make sure that I've earned the right to ask this question. So let me ask you if you found any of this useful. If there's anything helpful in the information I'm providing, please spread the word. There are all sorts of other drivers that right now they're digging around, maybe if anything, for information on Facebook, and that is such a negative place. There are some good resources out there, but if you think this is useful for them, spread the word. Share us on your social media. Tell other people that you know about us about this site. Let them know about the podcast, and leave a review on the podcast directories wherever you get your podcasts, because those reviews help us get found. If you can spread the news, we can help more people succeed as they claim their role as business owners. One last thing that I want to ask you, please go out there, take control of your business, go and be the boss.