https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7oUcAfof34

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 in this video i'm going to talk to you
about how to structure the business in order to sell it and why you
should do that independent of whether or not you're planning on selling
it in the future so hi my name is alex mozi i have a portfolio companies
that does just under 100 million a year in revenue we own three outright
we have five that we have minority positions in and i have absolutely
nothing to sell you and the reason i make this channel is because lots
of people are broke and i don't want you to be one of them if you have a
business right now and you're trying to scale it you're trying to grow
it there's usually one of two outcomes right either this is a is
something that you're super passionate about um or this is an
opportunity that you're passionate about because of the you know upside
potential of making lots of money there's tons of people who really you
know build software companies they're not like super passionate about
like data management but they're really good at it and they think
there's an opportunity to make money it doesn't really matter to me
whatever way you do it is fine but what happens is over the trajectory
of the careers of the entrepreneur you know we develop in skill sets we
level level up you know first we're doing that we're managing that we're
leading then we're casting the vision and you move your way up in the
company as the company grows underneath of you as you scale right the
thing is is that at some point you know i think the entrepreneurial
journey is always trying to find the

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 most leverage for our skills like
what's the best vehicle for the skills that we have to capitalize on the
opportunity marketplace right and that's the entire market not just
within the context of your business but if you were building the company
at some point and this i think one of the hardest transitions that i've
had to go through and it took me a very long time to do this was
transitioning from ceo to owner and you've heard me talk about this
before but i'm gonna say it again because i think it's so important
independent of whether i plan on keeping the businesses or selling the
businesses learning how to structure the business so that it could sell
someday was one of the most valuable things that i've done as an
entrepreneur and i remember when i started out as like i'm never going
to sell this company i'm never going to sell this company like i'm going
to keep these things for life and that may or may not be true but as
i've gotten older i will tell you this i do like having optionality and
by structuring the company in such a way that i could sell it which i'm
going to get to what's what some of those things are in a second it
actually enabled me to have more freedom which was the ultimate goal of
the business and so the biggest hardship that i've probably enforced on
myself was starting another

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 business while i had a business which
is probably one of the questions i get most frequently from
entrepreneurs was like well you say i should be focusing on stuff but
you have all these businesses and the answer is yes and part of that is
because i made mistakes and i'm hopefully hoping that you don't have to
make the same ones that i did coming up which is i was ceo of one
company and then started a second company because i wasn't doing
anything in my first company or wasn't going to plan on doing anything
in my second company i was like i can be ceo of both terrible mistake it
cost me dearly in time and stress and all the other things that go along
with that but being ceo is a full-time role and so unless you are truly
the owner of a company and not the ceo then that company still needs you
and it means it's a not sellable or sellable for much less because it's
still dependent on you as the owner and i remember i used to poo poo
this when i was you know earlier on in starting my career i was like i
would hear guru say like and maybe it's because i didn't know how to do
it but they were like you know if business can't run without you it's
not a real business well i don't think it's not a real business i'd
think that you are not an owner if it cannot run without you or you're
an owner but you're also a ceo

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 of the company and so for me
understanding the difference between ceo and owner was really important
because only i didn't even have any examples of that right it was only
when i started looking at the investor word the wealth world that i
understand the difference between those two things and so as an easy
example like if you look at warren buffett he doesn't run c's candy he
owns these candies right he doesn't run geico he owns geico and he
doesn't own you know ben bridges jewelers or whatever it is like he owns
it he doesn't run it and so if you think about that within the context
of you know your businesses is like is there a way that this business
could not only maintain but also grow without my involvement whatsoever
so that i could function the same way i do in the stock market as
somebody who's in it who owns equity in this company that it grows
without me now let me explain how my role works now because i have been
able to structure my life so that i actually treat all portfolio
companies the same so despite the fact that i have 100 ownership in
three of them and i have you know minority stakes in the other five i
still structure my engagements with them the same way

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 so i'm still meeting quarterly with
those those companies and their leadership teams and i have you know
meetings as needed with them throughout and one of the important pieces
is that i am nose-in hands out so you can write that one down like niho
and i got that from a mentor of mine no zen hands out which means that
when we have a meeting or we have a you know a long talk or we want to
talk about something strategic i don't walk away from meeting with with
with homework i don't walk away with to do's all right and that is a
purposeful effort by design because if i had to walk with to do's from
all these companies then i would i would never be able to get anything
done right and so i go into there as a strategic advisor i'm there to
offer my experience but i'm not there to lead the meeting i'm there to
bounce ideas off of and the way to make that transition is that you have
to build it without intention so as i've now built businesses later in
my career compared to earlier my career my earlier businesses i built
independency on myself because i had those interpersonal needs and i
also didn't know any better but hopefully if you're watching this you
can know better and so this is one of the downsides of

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 having a personality-based brand
compared to a business that's faceless that's really just a brand in and
of itself that's outside of the entrepreneur or owner who started it
right sees candies it's not about warren buffett geico is not about
warren buffett they have a gecko right and that's the the mascot and so
as i've transitioned through this i can tell you that now finally i
would say i'm in a position where i actually am an owner and it's
awesome it's great these companies pump out cash flow and i can allocate
that cash flow accordingly and you know buy percentage of other
companies i can get real estate all these other things but it comes from
literally being able to do that which means that i either have to bring
someone up to operate as ceo so right now your business does not have a
ceo and you say that you are passive in it i would probably challenge
you on that and say that's not true right the company has to be able to
grow and innovate without you if it can do that then it passes my test
of ownership right and so i i like to have a certain amount of
involvement which i just said like quarterly and you know touch points
and things like that but beyond those things the business must be able
to operate and grow on its

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 own and a test that i have is that in a
six month period after i leave and i put someone else in charge does the
company grow during that period of time not only maintain but grow in
both top lane and profit unless there was you know some reason they
wanted to make some sort of capital investment or whatever but for the
most part you can use your own common sense there but that is my litmus
test it's six months so if i put someone new in and i give them six
months does the company grow without my involvement switching to this
communication cadence and i think one of the hardest and most
significant things that you can do to really remove yourself from that
is if you have any sort of central communication for the company so if
you have slack or asana or some place that you that you are you know
integrally involved you see everything if you can remove yourself from
that if you can get off of the company slack if you can get off of the
company asana so that no one can have contact with you and you can start
a separate communication center which is what we have done with our
portfolio we just have one slack that has all of the executives from
each of those portfolio companies so they are the only ones who have

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 direct access to us and their teams
have access to them directly and that is how we can have far more
leverage with the skill sets that we have given the opportunities the
marketplace and so the important point here that i want to make is that
independent of whether you plan on selling or you plan on keeping your
company structuring your company so that you can sell it will ultimately
give you the freedom that you want and this was something that i did not
do earlier on in my career it's taken me years i mean now over a decade
to get to this point and i can tell you i don't think i'll ever build
another company again the way i used to and i think part of that comes
with skill sets part of that comes with beliefs part of that is
character traits that you develop over time but hopefully we can fast
track that which is why i'm making these videos for you so i hope you
found that valuable um hit subscribe if it was for you i'm trying to
help entrepreneurs who are trying to scale their companies and just kind
of show you the lessons that i've learned along the way the the key
point is ownership is the goal not ceo ship and if we can act as owners
i think we make better long-term decisions you are far less stressed
about short-term nuances in the

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 business because you have a much more
long-term outlook and ultimately i think it actually better serves the
business in the long run um in terms of the value that it creates for
its customers so and honestly the value that the business creates for
you in your life which i think most of us wanted freedom um and it takes
a long time to get here so anyways hope that was bad before you leave a
comment if you like uh stuff like this and if you have other questions
around these topics and stuff i love talking about um and i just want to
make stuff that you find you know that's useful for you so anyways lots
of love and i'll see you next video
