Welcome to the Serve No Master Podcast! This podcast is aimed at helping you find ways to create new revenue streams or make money online without dealing with an underpaid or underappreciated job. Our host is best-selling author, Jonathan Green.
Today's guest is Jan Cavelle is an author, writer and speaker that advocates for business flexibility and adaptability. She believes that external factors constantly change and businesses need to be ready to change with them.
In this episode, Jan Cavelle speaks about the challenges of going from one to 10 million in business. Cavelle shares her expertise on building a strong team, creating a positive work environment, avoiding common mistakes, and valuing assets.The discussion also covers the importance of having a B plan and making a company sellable, as well as the value of understanding and communicating with your customers.
Notable Quotes
- "I put strategy at number one always, and the people challenge is my number two, because finding the right people is the game changer.'" - [Jan Cavelle]
- "Leadership has changed. It's all about enabling your team to have a good time at work and to develop and to let go. They've got to get rid of a micromanaging. You'll lose people faster with micromanaging than I think virtually anything else." - [Jan Cavelle]
- "Risk Management in Entrepreneurship: Your reputation I guess is another one. It's very important that you've got a good reputation with your customers." - [Jan Cavelle]
- "Yeah, there's a lot of business advice, is, oh, find your passion and turn it into a business. And yeah, the problem is it skips the second step of confirm it's a good idea, because not every passion can be a business." - [Jonathan Green]
- Valuations and Exit Strategies: I think valuations are something where people don't understand which assets are most important in their company, and so they don't build those out... they don't realize a customer database is a massive value, especially for larger and larger companies... people make mistakes that make it hard for them to exit or really hurt the value when they try to exit." - [Jonathan Green]
Connect with Jan Cavelle
● Website: www.jancavelle.co.uk
Connect with Jonathan Green
Welcome to the Serve No Master Podcast! This podcast is aimed at helping you find ways to create new revenue streams or make money online without dealing with an underpaid or underappreciated job. Our host is best-selling author, Jonathan Green.
Today's guest is Jan Cavelle is an author, writer and speaker that advocates for business flexibility and adaptability. She believes that external factors constantly change and businesses need to be ready to change with them.
In this episode, Jan Cavelle speaks about the challenges of going from one to 10 million in business. Cavelle shares her expertise on building a strong team, creating a positive work environment, avoiding common mistakes, and valuing assets.The discussion also covers the importance of having a B plan and making a company sellable, as well as the value of understanding and communicating with your customers.
Notable Quotes
- "I put strategy at number one always, and the people challenge is my number two, because finding the right people is the game changer.'" - [Jan Cavelle]
- "Leadership has changed. It's all about enabling your team to have a good time at work and to develop and to let go. They've got to get rid of a micromanaging. You'll lose people faster with micromanaging than I think virtually anything else." - [Jan Cavelle]
- "Risk Management in Entrepreneurship: Your reputation I guess is another one. It's very important that you've got a good reputation with your customers." - [Jan Cavelle]
- "Yeah, there's a lot of business advice, is, oh, find your passion and turn it into a business. And yeah, the problem is it skips the second step of confirm it's a good idea, because not every passion can be a business." - [Jonathan Green]
- Valuations and Exit Strategies: I think valuations are something where people don't understand which assets are most important in their company, and so they don't build those out... they don't realize a customer database is a massive value, especially for larger and larger companies... people make mistakes that make it hard for them to exit or really hurt the value when they try to exit." - [Jonathan Green]
Connect with Jan Cavelle
● Website: www.jancavelle.co.uk
Connect with Jonathan Green
Jonathan Green: Going from zero to one with Jan Cavell on today's episode.
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Announcer: Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated it? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now, then you've come to the right place. Welcome to Serve no master podcast where you'll learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host.
Jonathan Green: Now, I'm very interested in your area of expertise because I think it's something that people often get interested in too early, that before they've hit their first million, they're going, how do I go from one to ten? And so they're taking this advice. This happened to a friend of mine. She hired one of those day consultants for $20,000 and said it was the worst money she ever spent because it was way too early in her business career.
Jan Cavelle: I was going to say I'm wincing already. I've heard so many horror stories of exorbitantly expensive coaches and consultants ruining people's lives. It's got to be a really horrendous point. Now there's got to be something done upon regulation. That's possibly another story. But yeah, it doesn't surprise me what you've just told me. I think you're right and I agree with you in many ways with a couple of provisos because I think you absolutely can't set things in stone. Firstly, because life changes. What you want out of it changes lots of other things. External factors change. So whatever you're going to do with your business needs to be flexible. But in the same way, if you might want to scale up, there's lots of things you can do slightly more sensibly from day one, as I find out the hard way, because I didn't do them. But if you do them right, then you've got a better option of doing that later if you want to. So I think that's the distinction.
Jonathan Green: Yeah, I think that you're right. There are some core foundational principles. But my very first business partner, way back in 2010, was convinced our business was going to hit 910 figures. And so he did all sorts of crazy things. Like he made us use a bank that was in neither of our cities. So when he had to go bank, he had to go 6 hours. If I want to go to the bank, I had to go 8 hours to a different branch. Because he was convinced it was the best one for scaling. He set up the entire business in a state neither of us lived in for all of these tax reasons. And to hide all sorts of really complicated structures. I think in England, it's what people set up. Maybe they're in the aisle of man before they've made any money. And so we spent tens of thousands of dollars on all of these complicated legal structures and like, multiple LLC barriers. And I was like, this is too early for this.
Jan Cavelle: This is yes, much too we haven't.
Jonathan Green: Made a dollar yet. Right? It was completely and that's what I'm talking about is sometimes people are so worried about the problem you had at a million that you don't have at 10,000. When I think of scaling for me, I often think there's a huge difference between going, I have ten customers I want to get to 15, and I have zero customers I want to get to one. It's really hard and it's very different process to get that first customer to figure out at all. And there's so many businesses and people I talk to when they talk about scaling, they aren't at that first baseline of they have a steady flow of customers or they have a steady flow of sales, but they're already thinking about jumping to that next level. And I think that's where people start to invest in the wrong type of coaching. I think there is some coaching that maybe it's designed for people that are past a million and that's why it's priced that way. And if you're only making $100,000, oh boy, is it way too soon. And it can be financially crippling.
Jan Cavelle: Absolutely. Don't do it. Don't do it. I'll stick my neck on the block. Yeah, you're not ready to do it and it's pointless money, as you rightly say. But yeah, in general, you're absolutely right. I think the sort of thing I had in mind was more structures and getting the right people who had the capability to grow all those sort of things, but not quite as outlandish as setting up tax dodges and things for later on.
Jonathan Green: Well, let's talk about that. What are the right things someone should do when they're starting their first business? Let's say they have a budget of less than $5,000 to get started. What are the right places to invest? Because I've seen so many really strange things like $50,000 on patents before, you know, if anyone wants the product. So we know the wrong things. What are the right things someone should do from day one?
Jan Cavelle: I think you need to spend a large amount of your time, at least, even if you end up doing it yourself, and you don't want to spend any money in researching what the customers want. Because it amazes me that I've spoke to so many lovely entrepreneurs, very experienced ones, that admit that they've got so carried away by what they do, they've forgotten to pin down what the customer pain points are, what the customer really wants. That's going to be the foundation, that's going to be the game changer. That's going to tell you whether you've got a business that will grow at all, even to the one customer. To me, it's all about nailing that research, even if it's not completely the end result. You've got something that's kind of a pay your way in business before you spend too much money on anything else.
Jonathan Green: A lot of people who are starting out, they're either one end of the spectrum, where they go, my customer is everybody, or my customer is every woman, right? And like, I had a friend, she invented a new type of bra and I was like, who's your customer? Every woman. And it's so broad. Or they try and really narrow down or they say, I don't know who my customer is yet. And they're kind of throwing darts at the board hoping that their customer will appear out of the mists. What's the right way, from your perspective and your level of experience, to figure out what customers want and define those first customers to get your foundation?
Jan Cavelle: I love throwing dots at board. I think it's such a great description. I think it's a question of I mean, depending on what sort of scale you're talking about. But if you're talking about starting either on your own or with two or three of you really quite small, I think the answer is to work out where your customer is and talk to them endlessly, be it on social media or which is you can cover a lot of ground now on the internet forums, you name it. There is no substitute for talking to those customers. And you can slowly evolve getting your questions, albeit even hidden questions, but just your chat lines more pointed and you know, to find out whether that would work. And and if you're worried lots of people are worried about giving away what they're going to do. And you don't have to give people the whole story. You can define which bra strap they like without going into the whole thing or whatever. You can pick and choose. But it's defining all that and finding out everything about them so that you've got a complete picture of everything from how they speak to where they live to what sort of age groups they are to what else they like to the style of talking conversation with your customers and the way they like being communicated with and what's going to resonate with them has become so crucial in this really crowded marketplace that we have now.
Jonathan Green: We talk about how people get it wrong or why they get it wrong. Because I've seen sometimes people go down a rabbit hole and sometimes it's for years and years, they're convinced that they have a brilliant idea. People just haven't realized it yet, that they're like holding a torch in the darkness. And I've had some bad ideas in my career too, quite a few, I'll be honest too. I've had a bad idea. And I'm like, no, I think this will work. And even whether people are like, no, it definitely won't. And then it didn't. I was like, oh, I wish I'd listened earlier. That's kind of one of the growing pains that I went through. But I think that that's really important. How can someone notice if they're starting to veer off the path? If they're starting to have an idea that's not a good one, how can they detect that?
Jan Cavelle: Well, I think this advance I give to that is I remember several years ago doing a sales session for a group of entrepreneurs locally. This lady said, can you help me, please? I'm struggling with sales and, you know, I've got fantastic product. And I said, that's great, you know, and she told me what it was. I said, okay, well, you know, how many sales have you got? And she said, Well, I haven't got any. I said, how long have you been going trying to sell this? She said, A year now. I think the penny should have really dropped by then that she was setting up all these meetings, but nobody was saying, if that's not a sales problem, that's a real product problem, they are not interested. So I think a lot of it is simply measuring, right? And measuring each and every stage. Are you getting people chatting about it? Are you getting inquiries about it? Are you getting whatever your next call of action is? And are you getting the sales? And then are you getting good feedback? And that's the only way you can really pin it down. But if you're not getting any of those things, you've got some major issue.
Jonathan Green: Yeah, I always say I love a hard no and a hard yes. The worst thing is when you have a project and it's selling poorly, but not so poorly enough that you're sure you need to abandon it, right. If you're doing like a 30%, you're like, oh, it's right on the cusp of quitting. So you keep trying and saying, oh, maybe I need to tweak the messaging and you can get I'd much prefer a hard no. No sales in a year. That's a definite no. One wants it, but people often she wouldn't have it.
Jan Cavelle: She wouldn't have it.
Jonathan Green: She was in love.
Jan Cavelle: She was going to go on and I was talking nonsense.
Jonathan Green: Was she in love with the product?
Jan Cavelle: She was. She was passionate about your product and for that extent, good on her. But it doesn't mean that it's a viable business.
Jonathan Green: Yeah, there's a lot of business advice, is, oh, find your passion and turn it into a business. And yeah, the problem is it skips the second step of confirm it's a good idea, because not every passion can be a business. Now, 20 years ago, I used to say there's no way you can make a career out of video games. Technology has changed. Now there's people doing playing video games and you watch it not my age, but younger people watch it, and that's a career. Didn't used to exist, but back then I was like, yeah, it's a hobby, but no one's making money at it. Even the people that were really my age that were great at made no money. They were in it too early. So there's this thing, and this happens a lot. I work with a lot of authors, and the first thing I say is, never get your cover designed by a friend or a family member. Every single time someone says, oh, my daughter drew the picture, or my friend drew the picture, I know the book is not going to sell 100%. Every single client I've ever worked with, every person I've ever coached, should always say, I even remember there was a conversation amongst my students. One lady said, I broke the rules and let my daughter draw the COVID And I'm already kind of falling in love with it. And I looked at the COVID and I said, well, this book I can sell. This cover is atrocious, but we form an emotional attachment that's too strong to the product, especially for inventors. It's more common, I think, for inventors than anything else, but we're convinced we have a good idea. How can you balance you've worked with a lot of people. Balance the yeah, you want to love your business, but you don't want to love it too much. Like, you don't want to go too far to where it blinds you.
Jan Cavelle: Yeah, I think you're right. It's inventors, and some views come up with that sole idea that they're so convinced. I think you've just got to prod them into thinking of asking more questions. Refining is okay. That product may I mean, she was making for example, if we go back to my lady, she was making some appointments, so there must have been just a nugget there that was worth persevering with. But she needed to listen to the feedback and alter it and actually find out what was appealing and what wasn't. You can refine, I think, sometimes, not.
Jonathan Green: Always, it reminds me of when someone's in a bad relationship and you try to tell them, which is the worst thing you can do, the worst thing you can say is like, I think you're with the wrong girl. That's a friendship ender. And I feel like it's the same way for some people about parts of their business and parts of their inventions, and it really hard. I've been through those phases, too. I'd like to think that I'm at a phase now where I'm a little better about it. I have had projects that were at that point where it was like, I wish it had done a little worse. So I knew to abandon earlier, but it happens to everyone. But it's so hard to communicate with people. But let's talk about more your area of expertise, which is going from one to 10 million right which is really everyone's dream, right? You think a million is amazing until you realize that's gross and you look@your.net and you're like, that's gross. So how can people what are the kind of things you teach people when they're thinking about jumping from a million to 10 million? What are the biggest hurdles that they face? Because I can tell you, for me, going from 100,000 to a million, the biggest challenge is systems. It's systems and organization, because you can go from zero to 100,000 by yourself. But when you're starting to bring on staff and you go, oh, what do you want me to do, run my social media? Do you have any instructions? No, just do it. That's when you hit the wall. That's happened to me. But the next phase I'm very interested in, of going from one to ten, what are some of the things where people get stuck and what do you teach them?
Jan Cavelle: Well, I would certainly have systems on the list and that's sort of going back to our initial conversation when I was thinking, should you do things ready? Because those systems, the earlier you put men, the easier life is. But apart from systems for a second, I would say that strategizing it all out really carefully. I'm not talking about huge cumbersome business plan that you do once and never look at, but simply planning your key moments, your key targets, financial needs and everything, so you have a really clear plan of where you're going. You can break down these sort of quarterly and monthly later, because it will change. But I think having that flat out plan is crucial for a variety of reasons, because most of all you have to think in advance at that stage. It's not like the first one to ten. Everything needs to be planned for next quarter, next six months or whatever. If you're looking for high quality staff, which you will need by that stage top level to join you on the journey, they're not going to rock in from your local sort of job central equivalent there on two on a Monday morning. You're going to have maybe six months finding them. And it's the same with financing, you're going to need to have the money available when you need it, not ring the bank on the day. Everything needs to be a different sort of planning layout. So I think I put strategy at number one always, and the people challenge is my number two, because finding the right people is the game changer. If you've got right people with you, the journey becomes a pleasure and fairly easy. If you haven't got right people, you're going to get stuck and you're going to go nowhere.
Jonathan Green: Yeah, I think that those are for me, definitely systems and staff. The challenge with staff, I think now is that people don't join companies with the plans of staying there for ten or 20 years like they used to and every single business book that I get recommended is always of that mindset of like oh, how to deal with your 20 and 30 year employees. Whereas when I hire someone still when I hire people in their 20s, even if they're happy with their job, I know people, they'll leave just because they want another adventure. Even they're happy with the job and the salary because there's a real change in the market. Now I know there are some people that stay with jobs long term but there is a lot of people hopping around and so very little education or theory covers that. When you read a book by an executive, a big company they just talk about their lifetime employees and that's a lot of the mindset, the strategy. Whereas with people in their twenty s you often get a six month timeline. So when people are planning out their staffing and strategies, what are some of the things that people do wrong and what are the, some of the things that they can really do right with building their team?
Jan Cavelle: Well I think first you want to get top level people right? Because it's different if you're a group of co founders but if you're a solo entrepreneur you're going to need at least a couple of right hand and a left hand key person who's going to grow with you and who's going to grow their teams as well because you can't do it all. And they will bring hopefully skill sets that you won't have. So if you have a right hand and a left hand you should be more than three times as strong as you were to start with. And those people are a different matter. Those people take time to find and they'll need incentivizing and that's quite possibly with equity but that's a whole different issue. Underneath that I agree with you completely. People are jumping everywhere on jobs. They're not going to stay with you. You can improve how long they stay with you. Now what would I recommend for that? I think firstly you've got to absolutely jump a mindset of what they get a wage, what more do they want? Which a lot of people still have. And I hear it, which is terrible, it ain't going to work anymore. Leadership has changed. It's all about enabling your team to have a good time at work and to develop and to let go. They've got to get rid of a micromanaging. You'll lose people faster with micromanaging than I think virtually anything else. It's just such a killer to your business, to the people, to creativity. People want to work in the way they want to be enabled and encouraged to work. And their own goals, not the company goals. What about their goals? Find out. Help them get there. That's how to keep them longer.
Jonathan Green: There's this whole concept now that people, some people message me, they're so worried about slow quitting, which is where an employee does exactly what you paid them for. And I find it interesting that people are worried about them. That's what I expect. I've never thought, oh, an employee should do a few extra hours because they're on salary. I've always been like, I pay you for 40, do 40. But I know a lot of companies for a long time. It's that old saying of, oh, if you don't come in on Saturday, don't bother coming in on Sunday. I feel like slow quitting is a response to abusive employees. Like, there's certain red flags. I know that if you're getting hired and they start to talk about how they're like a family there, that means they're going to expect you to work overtime. That's like the biggest red flag I know about when you're job.
Jan Cavelle: Right.
Jonathan Green: So there's this love it. I do think there's a lot of dishonesty between the companies have been getting away with for a long time because they had the advantage in the marketplace. There were more employees than jobs. And so they would say things like, oh, you have to like, as soon as you go salary, you start to get unpaid overtime. I remember that I've gotten promotions when I worked in corporate, like, hey, you're getting a promotion. And I was like, that's great. What's the bump of salary? No, just that you get a flag on your desk or you get a title promotion. It's an unpaid promotion, which is my favorite kind. You do extra work and now people will look up to you more, right? And I was like, oh, that's like when a photographer says they're going to take pictures of me, but I'm not going to get paid. But it's like to help me build my reputation. I felt the same way of someone being tricked or taken advantage of. So having been an employee myself, I see large companies do this a lot. They play a lot of these games. And then it creates this mindset of the employees trying to get as much as they can before the relationship breaks because they're expecting an exit. And I didn't understand this in my early 20s when I saw people doing this, where as soon as they got the health insurance, they get a ton of surgery and never come back. And now I realize, oh, it's actually pretty smart. They were smarter than me. So there is this almost like a conflict between most workers and their employer where they're just trying to get the maximum. As an employer, I get this. I'm trying to get as much value as I can from someone working their hours and they're trying to do as little work as they can or as low stress, right. And I've certainly had workers shave hours or overstate how long they worked on a project. Those things always happen. They're inevitable. And that's part of because my entire team is remote. But for people who are trying to scale and grow, what are some of the things they can do? Especially because a lot of people have a limited budget. I can tell you that I had a great employee and someone offered her ten times more than I was paying her. A big company came in and did a big old poach and I couldn't compete with that like a ten X. If they doubled her salary, maybe I could have competed. They offered her ten times more money. I was like, yeah, you got to take that job. I'm not going to stop someone that's like, she deserves it. But that happens. I've had a lot of employees get poached with massive jumps in salaries I can't keep up with because I train my employees to a really high level and they're growing so fast. But what do you do if you can't compete at the highest level, especially as you're growing company, right? You can't offer someone a six figure salary when your company is a six figure profit company.
Jan Cavelle: No? Well, I think the first thing you do is go back to your systems and have that job so systemized that it's not quite such bad panic when it happens. But apart from that, you're right. I think you have to recognize the fact that you're not going to be able to compete and there is a chance that even your best, most loyal people will go and just not take it personally and adapt to that. And also I think which is a corporate habit, but I think it's a good one that you can apply is to always have somebody nominated to take over a job all the way through. So if you've got your four key managers or whatever, you've got somebody in training in mind who stands in from on holidays or whatever. So there's not the jolt of what are we going to do quite so badly with the key people? There's a bit of risk aversion tactics help.
Jonathan Green: I know you're also an expert in companies doing exits and a lot of companies in early stages, they kind of go through this phase of like the no, this is my dream job or they think, I'll pass this on to my kids, then they find other kids don't want it. And I know that most companies that try to put themselves up for sale never get bought. So what can someone do early on to figure out if they even have an exitable business model? And how can they put some systems in place in case they need to sell the company or just becomes time to where they get the maximum value?
Jan Cavelle: It's weird, isn't it? It's the only asset that we have that we put half a ton of money in and never consider how we're going to sell it, quite often not how we're going to profit from it, leave alone how we're going to sell it. It's a strange, strange reluctance that people have to view it as you say, sometimes it's because it's going to be a family thing and isn't. Sometimes it's that I'm never going to part with it. It's my baby mindset or whatever. But as I was saying earlier, life changes and I think we can just continue to drum in the message things might change. This is a huge investment. Have a B plan and part of that B plan is making your company sellable. So if you choose overnight to have enough you can always walk away and have that choice. Supposing you get ill, you have that choice. But what does that mean making a company sellable? It means again, systems, I'm floating your systems now. But it does. Systems means that the company can function without key people. It means having the right bottom line. So that obviously the more you get, the more the company is worth, the more you're going to get having a realistic expectation. People fall terribly badly into this trap. They think that that company is going to be worth a fortune and obviously they're going to be paid a fortune. They think they're going to get it all on the day of sale. Whereas realistically, most sales are stage payments and the second or third stage may never happen for one reason or another. So you're not going to walk away necessarily with your multimillion on day one of sale. But how do you know all this stuff? As I say, why have an asset put all that effort into it and have no idea how to sell it? It's not that complex. There are loads of books, loads of courses. You can at least get a general idea of what would happen in advance. Maybe try and buy a little one yourself. So you go through the process and you start understanding how heads of terms work and things like that. So that actually if you do decide all of a sudden to get rid, you know what to do, it's not frightening and you're not such a gift to all people who are going to be very sharp on hunt of businesses, which they are.
Jonathan Green: I find that a lot of people attach an emotional value to their business. Like they say, like how much did money did you put in the company? $10,000. But a million dollars of sweat equity and it's like, well that sweat equity is actually worth zero. Like how you feel about the company is worth exactly zero to the next person because they're only going to look at it extremely analytically. I know this when I bought a company that we looked at and they had cooked the books to high heaven but I could tell because I knew the books better than them and I was like, oh, there's a huge opportunity here because they don't know what they're doing. And so even with their fake numbers I knew the real numbers. I go, oh, I can really and we were really. Profitable really quickly. My wife and I ran a hotel for a couple of years because we knew how many rooms there were and what they were charging per night. I could figure out the real numbers, like a simple math. But it is very interesting how often people, when you say, what's your company worth? I love when they have those television shows where they're doing acquisitions. They go, How'd you come up with your valuation? Oh, friend told me.
Jan Cavelle: Yeah, that's favorite, isn't it? Yes.
Jonathan Green: Or like an accountant, I went on a date once, because I know that evaluation is very mathematical. It's not emotional. And I see a lot of people, they do their valuations based on the gross, rather, and they're negative, like they're losing money, but they say, we made a million dollars. No, you lost 100,000 per year. But they do these valuation. I think valuations are something where people don't understand which assets are most important in their company, and so they don't build those out. And I know the most important, like the most important asset in a franchise is the book. So the more your business is systems and organs, you can hand someone an instruction manual. It's worth a lot more than if you go, well, here's kind of what I do. And they need you there, because then you're stuck working there for years, because you have to teach them your systems. And I talk to a lot of people that they don't realize a customer database is a massive value, especially for larger and larger companies. It's like, no, the most important thing you have, if you don't keep the list of your customers or your email leads and all of that stuff, it's not worth anything. And I know that a name and email is worth more than email, and a name and email and phone number is worth more. Name, email, phone number, and mailing address is worth a lot more than you're a real company, because real companies mail stuff to their customers. But it's amazing to me how people don't even know that from the beginning. So they're not keeping records, they're not keeping the right assets. And sometimes they transition, abandon their old data. But what are some other things people do wrong when they're starting out to make their business unexitable? Like, I've made a mistake in that my face has become so much my brand. I know that if I want to exit, it's going to be a one or two year transition to switch to a new face. I tried really hard when it came my brand and didn't make it my name. I made it served a master instead of Jonathan for the possibility of an exit. But I still know it's just I write every book. My face is everywhere. That there will be a transition period to where then a new person becomes the new Jonathan Green. Just like the Dread Pirate Roberts, like a new person takes on the name. But what are some other mistakes people make that make it hard for them to exit or really hurt the value when they try to exit?
Jan Cavelle: Firstly, I couldn't agree with you more about the name because I've made the mistake too. Having gone a very slow burn of self employed, progressing into entrepreneurship, I was working for myself. So I kept on working as Jan Cavell and kept on having businesses as Jan Cavell. And now I'm an author and I'm still Jan Cavell and I can't get away at all from it. It's very difficult when for some reason or another you've got a personal brand. I agree. But doable there are businesses that have sold very successfully despite it being refined as name? But I think just what other mistakes can you avoid making? You've got systems, you've got, as you say, books, the emails, the customers, your supply chain, if that's likely to break down, that's a fairly obvious one. People are going to see that. And your supply chain is risk as a risk. I mean if you're buying some sort of widget from China or something that isn't available anywhere else and therefore could dry up, that's a very high risk that a lot of people won't want to take on. So apart from supply chains and customers, your reputation I guess is another one. It's very important that you've got a good reputation with your customers. You can have a vast email list, but if all your records on Google and with your customers reporting say that your business absolutely stinks, then that's going to devalue your business quite a lot. So there's so many things that play in. You are creating something with an image, with a brand which also has a value to it in itself that can be worth a lot more than your business. And that again needs the right reputation. Websites, IP, all those things depends on sector to some extent. Patents depending on sector.
Jonathan Green: I feel like people worry about brand too early. Often I've met people who are doing an exit and they have a company doing hundred thousand dollars a year. They're like, well, my biggest asset is the brand. I'm like, no, no one's heard of you. You're not a brand, right? Until, until people have heard of you. Like pretty significantly. Like, I have a customer base that's pretty solid. But if every single person who heard of me didn't hear me anymore, there's still enough market left, I could start over. It's not like McDonald's where everyone's heard them, or Coke where everyone's heard of them, or Harvard everyone's heard of them. So I think that especially recently, a lot of people talk about personal branding way too soon and they see it as a value. And it's not really a value until it's like something people have heard of loads, right? It's usually like a large company that then goes out of business. The only thing left is their name. But I think that people really worry about it so early in the game. Like I've changed company names three or four times over the last twelve years. I've been the same one for about seven years now, but when I was starting out my own name was the company. For a while I tried some other things, but it doesn't matter. I think people worry about that a little bit too early. I know later on as you get bigger it can be a real asset or if you have a reputation in your industry, but most of the time people jump on it a little bit too early because it sounds cool. And designing logos is fun and choosing your brand colors is fun and your special paper is fun. But how often as soon as your company is acquired do they change the name or change the logo? Kentucky Fried Chicken becomes KFC. Right? They change the branding, they change some of the secret recipes. So all the things that we think are really valuable are often the things that get changed the quickest. So if someone's starting out and they're trying to learn more from you and they want to learn more about how can they start out from a right place. I know you're working on a new book, so I'd love to hear about that.
Jan Cavelle: I am, you're absolutely right. And the last one, as you know, was called Scale for Success and the next one is going to be Start for Success. So very much on point to your question, really. So yeah, I'm hoping I think more it's become so much more fashionable to want a fast growth business from the start, hasn't it? Ten years ago we were sort of doing maybe grow type businesses apart from maybe the old person and possibly 20 years ago the old person in Silicon Valley, but now it strikes me that sort of 75% of people at least who start want to have a gross business, not just a little tiny business, if not more. So yeah, it's written from that point of view. Yeah.
Jonathan Green: I think that's really interesting because sometimes when you grow too fast it can really lead to problems down the line because you don't have the infrastructure to maintain it. And I've seen that where it seems really exciting until suddenly you're so far over the ledge. So that's cool that you're able to help people there. And where can people find out more about the book and find out more about your projects online?
Jan Cavelle: Well, you will be able to go to my website which is just jamcovell Co UK. So if you can pick up my name from a show notes and then just put Co UK nice and easy to remember after it, you will find me and we will be seeping out a little bit of information about new book in the next two or three weeks. So yeah, so sign up for the newsletter and you'll get to hear first. It's out in January.
Jonathan Green: That sounds amazing. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you spending some time with me today.
Jan Cavelle: It's my pleasure. I sorry. Enjoyed it.
Jonathan Green: Thanks for listening to today's episode. Making that first dollar online doesn't have to be daunting. I've got you covered. Get my free guide on how to make your first right now@servemaster.com. One k.
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