[BTS SERIES] Guest Tom Bronson - Maximize Business Value! (#151)

This week on the Maximize Business Value Podcast, get ready for an insightful and engaging conversation as guest host Dave Casey sits down with MBV's own Tom Bronson in this must-watch episode of our BTS series. With Tom set to deliver his keynote speech at the highly anticipated Business Transitions Summit, don't miss this up-close look at what to expect — and a few of the secrets to maximizing your business value! Don't forget to grab your tickets today! Visit www.BusinessTransitionsSummit.com!

Tom Bronson is the founder and President of Mastery Partners, a company that helps business owners maximize business value, design exit strategy, and transition their business on their terms. Mastery utilizes proven techniques and strategies that dramatically improve business value that was developed during Tom’s career 100 business transactions as either a business buyer or seller. As a business owner himself, he has been in your situation a hundred times, and he knows what it takes to craft the right strategy. Bronson is passionate about helping business owners and has the experience to do it. Want to chat more or think Tom can help you?  Reach out at tom@masterypartners.com or check out his book, Maximize Business Value, Begin with The Exit in Mind (2020).

Mastery Partners, where our mission is to equip business owners to Maximize Business Value so they can transition their business on their terms.  Our mission was born from the lessons we’ve learned from over 100 business transactions, which fuels our desire to share our experiences and wisdom so you can succeed.

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/masterypartners
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-bronson/
Website: https://www.masterypartners.com/

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Tom Bronson is a serial entrepreneur and business owner. He is currently the founder and President of Mastery Partners, Mastery Mergers & Acquisitions, and the Business Transition Summit. All three companies empower business owners to maximize business value and serve business owners in different capacities to help them achieve their dream exit. As a business owner, Tom has been in your situation a hundred times and knows what it takes to craft the right strategy. Bronson is passionate about helping business owners and has the experience to do it. Tom has two books to help business owners on their journey to a dream exit: "Maximize Business Value Playbook," (2023), and "Maximize Business Value, Begin with the EXIT in Mind," (2020). Both are available on Amazon.
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Transcript

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Welcome to the Maximize Business Value Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Mastery Partners, where our mission is to equip business owners to maximize business value so they can transition their business on their terms. Our mission was born from the lessons we've learned from over 100 business transactions, which fuels our desire to share our experiences and wisdom so you can succeed. Now, here's your host, c e o of Mastery Partners, Tom Bronson. Hi, and welcome to Maximize Business Value Podcast for business leaders who are passionate about building long-term sustainable value in their businesses. My name's Dave Casey, and I'm a partner at Mastery Partners. Now this podcast is part of our series with speakers at the Business Transition Summit. You might just recognize me cuz I recorded a session not too long ago for the Summit Reco regarding my upcoming session on Key performance indicators. Now, the Business Transition Summit is taking place on May 2nd here in Irving, Texas, and is specifically for business owners to learn how to maximize the value of their business and begin preparing for a excellent transition. Registration is open now@businesstransitionssummit.com. There's two S's in the middle there, so make sure you do that. So in this episode, I'd like to welcome our guest, Tom Bronson, principal at Mastery Partners. You might be wondering why I'm sitting in the host chair today instead of him. Well, I'll be interviewing Tom about his upcoming afternoon keynote session at the Business Transition Summit on the topic of surprisingly maximizing business value. So, welcome, Mr. Tom Bronson. Thank you. Thank you. So this is, I guess, the second time you've hosted me on my own podcast, I think. Yeah, that's gotta feel really uncomfortable for you Actually. I love it. I'm actually thinking of naming you our permanent guest host. You'll be the, you'll be the Jay Leno to my Johnny Carson Host. Oh, I was gonna, well, I'm glad you didn't say Joe. Joan River. Oh, Joan, perfect. No, I, I have not thought about you as Joan Rivers, but now that is, now it's in your, that I will never forget. So tell us a little bit about Mastery Partners. Sure. Mastery Partners was formed five years ago as a consulting practice to really help business owners think about and design their ideal exit strategy. You know, it's based on the premise that number one, only 17% of attempted transactions make it to the closing table, which is a horrible statistic. And I, and I've done a hundred transactions myself as buyer or seller, and I've closed a hundred percent of them. And so, so that's the first premise. But the second premise is that every business on the planet will eventually transition. Yep. And, and it's my humble opinion that it's better to do it by design than by default. You know, default meaning, you know, something happens, illness, death, Say go out feet first, right? Yeah. Feet first. Right. And so, so, and, and then that by the way, just kicks the can down the road. That business is still gonna transition. And so, so we really enjoy working with business owners and helping them start thinking about and dreaming about that future ideal exit and then putting a plan in place to get them from where they are today to where they want to be. And that's what we do at Mastery Partners. Wow. It sounds so simple, but I suspect it's not. So yeah, We, we've put together some processes to make it a sort of a step-by-step process. But, you know, here's the interesting thing. It is, the design of the strategy is different for every business and, and our process that we use. We have a proprietary process that we used. It's our own intellectual property that we developed. And as you know, because you are one of our partners at Mastery Partners, it is unique for every client because Yeah, definitely every Business is unique and I, and I love that about what we do. Cool. So you're speaking at this, this session, maximize business value. So tell us a little about what, what happens in the session. So really it's gonna be, you know, the top 10 excerpts maybe from the book, you know, the Maximize Business Value playbook. You know, my, my first book Maximize Business Value, begin with the exit in Mind. And then the follow-up book that came out earlier this year is 65 specific things business owners can do to increase the value of your business. And what I, what we're gonna focus on in this session, I'm gonna pick the top, you know, 6, 8, 10 items out of this book, which by the way, if you have a copy of the book, you'll be able to guess which they are because they're the ones with the dollar signs on 'em. These are the money chapters. Right. Ah, and we're gonna, so If you're just scanning the book, those are the ones that hit Exactly. Yeah. You know, the book is designed to be a workbook. You know, you can go from back to front, front to back, you know, start in the middle, it doesn't matter. But definitely hit the money chapter. So we're gonna really focus on the most important things that are gonna have the biggest impact on value for the business so that business owners that attend this, this event, they're gonna go home with, okay, here are, here are 5, 6, 8 things that I can do tomorrow to improve the value of my business. And that's really what we wanna focus on. That's excellent. So, so I've gotta ask you, why are you so passionate about this topic? Because, because I've lived this for so long, right. You know, I, I have, I never really thought that I would have be a consultant to help folks. And I don't think of myself that way. Most of our clients call me their coach. Right. I'm so passionate about business owners. You know, I, I came from a line of business owners, you know, my father owned a business and, and my whole family are entrepreneurial and my wife is entrepreneurial. But I, there's just, there's something, a passion for me about helping entrepreneurs because it's hard, it's hard to begin Business. Yeah. It's a tough road. It's A tough road. And, and by the way, you know, there, there're not that many of us, right? I mean, there's only, if you count businesses that employ people, you know, there's only 6 million of us in the country Wow. You know, of of business owners and, and 6 million out of, you know, 360 million people. That's a very small slice. Yeah. Small, you count small slice. Yeah. Yeah. If you count entrepreneurs that, that are basically solopreneurs then, then there's only 30 million and still a very small number of Relative terms. You're right. Yeah. And so you alluded to this a little bit earlier, but what, what qualifies you as a speaker on this topic? Well, I've owned a hundred businesses in my career. I've done a hundred transactions and, and I have Made, that's a large number. Yeah. I have made every, in my opinion, I'm sure that they're gonna be mistakes that I stumble into in the future. But I feel like I've made every possible mistake when it comes to executing in my businesses and, and preparing them for transition. And so I'm, I am, I am uniquely qualified because when I say, Hey, you ought to do this, it's because I was doing the wrong thing. Yeah. You Know, you might be able to actually back that up. Here's a reason why you ought to do this. Yes, exactly. Or not do that. So Exactly. So, so I'm just, I'm, I'm passionate about that and I've lived this, I, you know, I've, one of the, one of the things I hear frequently from our clients, and and same for you because, you know, here you are helping folks doing the same thing that I do day in and day out. You know, they really appreciate the fact that we've been in their shoes. Yeah. We're, we didn't, we're not academics. We, we didn't just study this and we're applying theory. Yeah. This is not abstract. We've Lived all of this. Yeah. We've lived all of this. So Yeah. With the consequences. Sure. So, so this business transition summit, there are 16 concurrent sessions. And other than my session on key performance indicators, why would somebody want to attend your session? Well, here's the good news. Everybody gets to attend my session because I'm doing one of the keynotes. Ah, so Good to be king. Oh my God. Yeah. It's good to be the king. Yeah. You know, there, there are three keynotes and, and, and we've, we've not put them in the order of importance, but we put the, the best one in the middle, that's of course gonna be Damon John. Yeah. I'm excited to hear it now And yes, very much so. And I'm also excited to hear Ali Nasser, who wrote the Owner's Dilemma. Yeah. He's gonna be amazing. He's the morning keynote. And so what they did is they just saved the worst for last. And, and so, but I'll be, I'll be giving my keynote right before, in fact, one of what I think is gonna be maybe one of the highlights of the day, and that is the Tales from the 17% Club. Oh, right after my keynote, I'm gonna host a panel of business owners who have actually transitioned their business, and we're gonna talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Wow. And so, so That's invaluable. Yeah. Yeah. Walk straight from my keynote into that. So I'm pretty excited about That. Yeah. So your job is to get people out of the food coma after lunch and, and ready for, ready for that 17% club. And that's, that's incredible. That's super. Exactly. And then right after the 17% club, it's, it's a pretty exciting deal. We go straight into the afternoon reception, which is, I mean, heavy hors d'oeuvres, open bar, and lots of opportunity for business owners to network and mingle and talk with some of the speakers of the day, but more importantly, get to know one another because there's nothing like business owners who, who can just kinda, they, they find, you know, their compatriots, you know, they, yeah, Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a mark of a good, a good session or good seminar is, is the deal that you, the people that are there attending are the keys, you know? And, and it's great to hear all the speakers and you know, like, like reading a book. They're, if there's 16 sessions, you may have four or five that are just spot on what you need to hear at that moment in time. But that interaction with your peers, I think is top, not, that's, that's really what, where, where a lot of the value has derived. Yeah. It's really gonna be an exciting day. One last question for you. So, so this podcast is all about maximizing business value. I mean, we, it's pretty hard to not know that that's what it's about. So what's the one most important thing that you recommend business business owners do to build value in their business? You know, I'm gonna, I've answered this question before on the podcast, but I think I'm gonna probably give a little bit of a different answer. And it may be because I heard a speaker last night, and you, you know about this Deb Pern Yeah. Was just an amazing entrepreneur. And so I think maybe the most important thing business owners should do that, that many of them don't, is really understand the financials. Yeah. Understand the financials in your business, because, and that's one thing, by the way, that has 57 parts. There are so many clues that it gives you about the health of your business. You know, the things that need to, to change and the, the things that, that you need to perhaps do differently or the things that you're doing. Right. It's really getting in to understand your financials. And it, it's almost alarming to me, many of our clients, when we first engage with them, the financials is something that they look at, you know, once a year at tax time or Yeah. Once a quarter or whatever. But, you know, the financials are, it's, it's a history book. It tells you, it tells you the story Of, well, and, and it's, I liken it to, you know, when you go to the doctor, the doctor will ask you how you doing? How you feeling? Any aches and pains, you know, whatever. They examine you, you know, they do the, the top to bottom exam, okay. And they look at things, but the truth doesn't really come out until you get a blood test. Right. And, and they, and they run all those panels against your blood and that tells you what's really going on inside your body. And I liken that to the financials cuz a, a company can appear to be working great and everybody's happy and the sales are up and customer satisfaction's up. Everything's up until you look at the financials. You don't really know the health of that company. That's it. That's it. And there's so many pieces to, to understand the financials, but here's the beauty. Our, our clients, when they first engage with us, many of 'em, by the way, this is just a, an issue with, with most small businesses, they don't look at the financials because they don't like, they Understand, they don't like, they're scared. I mean, if you're not a finance person, if you're a salesperson, if you're an engineer, if you're a a creative artist kind of person, financials is the last thing on your list. I mean, you really are, you're intimidated by the fact you, you're a business owner, but you don't really understand that part of your business. Yeah. Well, but yeah, there's, But after working with us, you know, a year, you know, down the road, they look forward to that financial review. Right. Because it just tells 'em so much. Yeah, yeah. And they, and they do that on a monthly, you know, month in, month out. So that's, if I had to give the biggest piece of advice to a business owner, get intimate with your financials and really understand them. You don't understand, have to understand how to do them, but you have to understand how to interpret them, I think. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That's super advice. So here's a bonus question for you. What advice would you give your 18 year old Tom Bronson self? I can only imagine what you were like at 18. So yeah, So here's the, here's the, i I come at this now, the 59 year old Tom Bronson talking about the 18 year old. I know that the 18 year old Tom Bronson's not paying any attention. So I can just tell him anything. And, and so, but I would say learn patience faster. Yeah. You know, learn, learn to be patient and, and smile more. And, and, and I think patience goes a long way towards something that they hadn't even invented, I don't think, when I was 18 year old. And that is learn emotional intelligence. Yeah. Learn how to be emotionally intelligent and control your emotions. And you will go much further. But I know that, that my 18 year old self wouldn't pay any attention to that. No, No, no. And, And well, your hormone balance, you Wouldn't learn that for probably 20 more years. Well, super. Well, I, I, you know, I almost don't have to ask this, but I will. But how do our viewers and listeners get in touch with Tom Bronson? Well, so right where you get this podcast, just click comment and you can get in touch with me there, but also@masterypartners.com, there's a button there that you can schedule a call with me and Wow. So Direct interaction. I like that. Go do that. And my cell phone is right on the website, so I'm not gonna read it here cuz nobody will be able to write it down. But you go to my website, you'll get my cell phone call me. Oh my Gosh. That's almost too much access. Well Tom, thank you so much for being our guest today. I look forward to guests, you know, hosting you in the future too, cuz I'm, I'm, you know, this is, this is, this is more revealing than a lot of the other podcasts you that you do. So I really like that. Awesome. Well I really appreciate you doing this. This has been a lot of fun. Cool. So this is the Maximize Business Value podcast where we give practical advice to business owners how to build real sustainable value in their business. And eventually think about a transition. Make sure you tune in each week cuz we have, you know, a plethora of information similar to what we did today. Subscribe to the channel so that you don't miss a single episode. And so in tune next time, I'm Dave Casey reminding you to register for the Business Transition Summit at Business Transitions, business transitions summit.com. And so you too can maximize your business value. It's a mouthful, isn't It? It is. I mean, there's too many, there's too many s's in there, so That's right. Business Transitions Summit. Summit. Yes. Thanks. Thanks again. That was fun. Thank You for tuning into the Maximize Business Value podcast with Tom Bronson. This podcast is brought to you by Mastery Partners, where our mission is to equip business owners to maximize business value so they can transition on their terms, learn more on how to build long-term sustainable business value and get free value building tools by visiting our website, www.masterypartners.com. That's master with a y mastery partners.com. Check it out. That was perfect. I wouldn't make any changes on.