Philip Volk owner of multiple businesses on maximising and extracting value from your business

@PhilipVolk owns and operates 4 businesses including 

Partner @ SuccessionPlus  -  #exitplanning for #businessowners

Executive Chairman @horizonswealth - family wealth management 

Philip grew up in the country,  and inherited a #businessgene from his father. He spent 20 years in #army  as an officer and learnt a lot about #people #leadership #process #management.

In our wide ranging discussion we cover;

• why the majority of business owners don't deliberately succeed out of their businesses, mostly it's accidental
• how businesses become a part of our identity and how that is a trap
• the failing of a lot of small business owners, who can't even conceive of what is it that I'm going to do when I stop doing this.
• why having our own #estateplan  brings 'what to do next' front and centre
• accidental or #unplannedexits 
• why you need an #exitplan and why you need to start as early as you possibly can to avoid what we would call an #involuntarysuccession
• how  the older you get statistically, it is much much more likely that you'll have an involuntary succession
• the 5 major steps in effective succession planning process;

1. Identify what value you've got in the business. So, you know, what's it worth? What are the gaps?
2. How do you protect that value? Because the issue with most small businesses is that if the founder and owner aren't there, the business either will fail to grow or won't be there now, they're out of business.
3. Maximize the value in the business. And you need time to do that. There are often things, in fact, almost inevitably things which can get tied up to make the business more valuable and more likely to be successful. What's important in life to you? And what do you actually want to do, that you don't have time to do at the moment. And then beginning to do some experiments and free up time to do that, creates if you like, an alternate vision of the future for the owner
4. The #exitevent - the #liquidityevent or the transaction
5. How do you manage the value?

• How business owners get sort of really head down bum up in the business, working in, rather than on the business
• How to actually get people trained, and recruited, and upskilled to take over some of the roles that the owner would currently have
• #internalsuccession 
• creating what we call an #ownershipmindset  and the tools needed to allow them to improve the processes and upskill themselves
• creating  #financialrewards and linking them back to these staff that can become minority owners through the business
• creating a  wealth business at 50 years old with partners that were in their 40's and 30's or like 20's and actually building in the succession planning for the partners that I chose.
• Why often the answers are almost always in the business - in the staff, and freeing them up to actually understand and be able to provide those answers
• progressive exits - creating an environment where the owner doesn't necessarily need to get out in one hit, they can stay involved which can be good for them, can be good for the team buying in and all the benefits that brings;
  • team taking more responsibility
  • freeing the owner from stuff they don't like doing
  • prolonging their time in the business
  • keeping wisdom in the business longest, which works for the business and also for the owner.
• #externalsuccession

www.kerrcapital.com.au

A full transcript is included below.

Michael Kerr: Hi. It's Michael Kerr here, presenting Small Business Banter.

A healthy micro and small business sector mean a successful economy and a more vibrant society. Small Business Banter is about helping regional business owners better prepare for current challenges, but also for the next stage of business success. I'm Michael Kerr, founder of Kerr Capital, advises business owners.

Each week, I interview a fellow small business owner or an expert and they share their stories, their lived experiences, the wins and the losses, and their best advice, to help you the listener get the most you can form your own business.

Small Business Banter is brought to you from the studios of 104.7 Gippsland FM and is heard across Australia on the community radio network. And thanks also to Kerr Capital, supporters of the show.

So, welcome! This morning to another edition of Small Business Banter radio and podcast, great to have in this morning Philip Volk.

Morning, Philip!

Philip: Yeah. Michael, good to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Michael: It's excellent. I'm really looking forward to our discussion on succession planning or exit planning for SME owners, which you're doing a lot of work in. But, if you wouldn't mind, just to set the scene, give us a little bit about your currently run full businesses, and a succession planning business is a key one of those. But if you could give us a little bit of a rundown on your background to set us up and then we'll get ripped, get into a discussion on succession planning.

Philip: Definitely. Thanks, Michael. 

Look, I grew up in the country. My dad started as an apprentice printer and ended up managing. And then, building some of the biggest printing companies in Australia, so I guess the sort of business gene was inherited. I started my first business when I was 16. It was a business called Phim Foam, imaginatively named as a conjunction of my name, Philip, and my friend's name Tim. We cut blanks of foam, which we got from Franklin Caravans, and to packing for the local tool and dye making company. And to set the business up, we had an old door and a couple of bits of pine and some nichrome wire. And Tim's dad was the city engineer so we were able to on weekends, get the battery charge of the truck battery charger from the local Council Depot to make the nichrome wire hot and then we cut the foam. So that was my first business.

Michael: Excellent. And now you've got four.

Philip: Yeah, looks like it. For a while, I joined the army. Went a lot about people, that leadership, about process, about management, had no real commercial experience. Probably the most commercial thing I did was an oddity Wine Cellar in the officer's mess. And, I spent 20 years in the army and it was a really actually a very, very good background for the sorts of stuff that I do now. I really learned a lot about people and, you know, start from leading soldiers to talking to generals. Yeah, and the businesses I know now are actually all-around wealth, but not that, that means necessarily in a money sense. Actually mean, you know, wealth in terms of what are you getting out of like, so.

Michael: Just give us a quick, you know rundown on the three of them because they're all the other than the succession planning one because they're all quite related.

Philip: Yeah, so probably the [inaudible] that I've been in the longest is a business called Verizon's wealth where personal Wealth Advisors. The way we describe that, is we cost you the dreams of about 350 families, and we help them to dream again and then connect their money with their dreams. Another business is a back-office business for financial planning business is in Sri Lanka. So, that came out of a mentoring relationship I had with a young fellow that worked for me, in one of our businesses and he went back to Sri Lanka and wanted me to help him and get that started. So that's, you know, a successful business was in that for about 10 years. 

I've been coaching businesses for about 15 years, so, coached several hundred businesses. Mostly in the financial planning and accounting space, but latterly in other areas as well. And then there's the succession planning business. So, we found that when we were coaching businesses, we were doing a lot of succession planning, and then so we joined with succession plus. So, succession plus is a national organization and the fastest growing and probably the most prominent succession-focused business in Australia.

Michael: Yeah, I agree with that a lot. I tracked them closely and know them and then now she knows you well. Yeah, they're doing a terrific job of leading the charge and it is the area of succession planning for small businesses is one that gets quite a bit of, I guess negative attention, in a sense, because a lot of owners by most of the stats that coming out, haven't really got around to doing formal or timely succession planning. So is that a fair assessment of them? 

Philip: That's absolutely right. Yeah, that's absolutely right. So the majority of business owners don't deliberately succeed out of their businesses, mostly it's accidental. Yeah, and so what tends to happen is they get so wrapped up and we know how small business owners working think we are that. So, we now have passionately got about how businesses and it becomes a part of our identity. And so, a lot of small business owners, can't even conceive of what is it that I'm going to do when I stop doing this. So, yeah, there's a lot of businesses. They don't succession plan, and the way in which the succession happens is not always a great experience for the owner or for the staff, all the clients.

Michael: Yeah. It's a terrible experience, you know when it's completely unplanned. So there are a couple of things you mentioned there. One of which is owners, and we love the small businesses that's why we do this program to bring more quality experts and perspectives on small businesses, but people get very caught up in the day-to-day. So it's understandable that starting a succession plan can look like another major project and you know, something to put off until tomorrow, but also this idea of identity and what do I do afterward.

I think that's a particularly important one because, for a lot of owners who have been in businesses for 20 or 30 years, it very much defines them. And you understand why, you know, the thought of not having that in your life can be another reason to say, "Well look, I'll get to that later". 

Philip: Yeah, yeah, it will come. You know, if you bring it back to something that we should all be doing. But many of us done, is actually having our own estate plan. Your own will, and it's snowing, I'm here for a long time. It's, and it's actually difficult for me to think about, or conceive of me not being here. And by actually, having to do your own personal estate planning, that actually brings it front and center. And I think that's the same for small business owners. If I don't address it, and I don't think about it then it's not a problem. But it becomes a problem.

Michael: Yeah, it does. What would you be saying to those owners listening in, that are thinking about succession planning? What's like a, you know, could you draw on some experience of those accidental or unplanned exits that really hit home for you here. Where the owner perhaps they look, if I had my time again, I'd do something.

Philip: Yeah, yeah. Let's take the positive step as, you know, we work in both the personal wealth space but also the succession business wealthy to like business planning. And whenever someone does some financial advice where the predominant thing I'll start afterward is two things. Firstly, do I'm really relieved, I've got a plan. And secondly, I wish I've done that ten years earlier. And I think that translates really well into the small business space as well. You need a plan and you need to start as early as you possibly can, or you're going to end up in an involved, what we would call an involuntary succession. So, the older you get statistically, it is much much more likely that you'll have an involuntary succession. 

One of the businesses we're working with, at the moment. One of the partners in the financial advice business. He is 85 and then there's a whole bunch of changes happening in the regulatory environment. And he was not wanting to be a part of any sort of succession plan because he saw himself as the business. So yeah. Start earlier was the big mess burning.

Michael: Yeah, start early. Can you talk about just at a high level for the minute, what's involved in a succession plan? And I'm assuming we can use the term exit planning, you know, interchangeably with succession planning, I've only got two technical [inaudble].

Philip: Mind if I describe the sort of process the succession planning process if it's done properly. And then a part of that is the exit planning. So, the first, no let's just talk about five sorts of major steps. Firstly, you've got to identify what value you've got in the business. So, you know, what's it worth? What are the gaps? And then secondly, it's how do you protect that value? Because the issue with most small businesses is that if the founder and owner aren't there, the business either will fail to grow or won't be there now, they're out of business. So that's about protecting the value, so they're risking a business by actually creating using the resources that are in the business or bringing resources in so that the business continues independently of the owner.

Michael: Yeah. I think that's, you know, in a practical sense it's in the work I do. It's the biggest single factor. What happens when the owner leaves the business.

Philip: It's a really good comment. I'll say it a ton of times again. And in my own business is, over the last four or five years being very deliberate about recruiting and training people. And you know, the training in business is not that difficult the thing which most of them don't get is leadership training, so training them how to be better leaders. So first step, we said, was to identify the value, what's its worth. Second, is protect the value and then it's how do you maximize the value in the business. And you need time to do that. There are often things, in fact, almost inevitably things which can get tied up to make the business more valuable and more likely to be successful.

Michael: Which is one of the reasons why when we say, and we both know, from a lot of experience that you need time to properly succession plan. And one of them, one of the key reasons is, you know, there's that you go through all the steps that you're partway through but, you often see where things can be improved or need to be fixed before it's sellable. So that's, that's just why that you can't just flip it around in a month, we're talking years. We need to do it well and properly.

Philip: Yeah, look. And the sooner you start the better off. And the wealth business that I started, I was 50 when we started. Then I have partners that were in their 40's and 30's or like 20's. So I actually built the succession planning for the partners that I chose. I chose them not just for their ages, but also for their character and the fact that we actually liked each other and we're able to work together. So, we have in that business, you know, always have a succession plan and an hour working towards executing that. So, yeah.

Michael: That's the foresight. There is, you know, is quite striking me as it, you know, starting a business and having in mind, you know, where it might go. I mean, I think that in an ideal world, that would be what everybody does. But most typically I expect you are dealing with owners who have found themselves in business and have gotten 20, 25 years down the track and, you know, are looking at doing other things.

Philip: And pretty typically in that sort of business usually end up with the owner, sort of the right-hand end of the scale in terms of experience and impact. And then he's got a bunch of people working for him. But there's a pretty significant gap often between the owner and the people that are working for him or her. And because I haven't done the leadership training in the development of those people to actually create the next generation of leaders in their business, and you need to be deliberate about that. That's a part of you know, protecting the value. De-risking business is making sure that the rubber band between the owner and the people, you know, actually doing the work in the business, what might still work in the business is not stretched too far.

Michael: Yeah. I expect also probably that you're, the work you do with on leadership is partly about getting owners ready to make that leap themselves and mentoring, and letting go.

Philip: Yeah, yeah. Well, that's right. But I think those conversations are actually really well executed by financial advisors. So that's the financial advisor that's saying to the tasking that, you know, the business owner. What's important in life to you? And what do you actually want to do, that you don't have time to do at the moment. And then beginning to do some experiments and free up time to do that, creates if you like, an alternate vision of the future for the owner.

Michael: Yeah, these sparks something. By the way, on today's edition of Small Business Banter radio, we're talking with Philip Volk from amongst other things, a partner in succession plus. Philip, you are just about to, I think jump into one another of your steps in the process.

Philip: Yeah. I might just give an outline of the five steps and then we'll put exit planning sort of in context. So, we've spoken about identifying value. How much is the business worth, and what are the gaps in it? Protecting the value. How do we actually cover some of those gaps? What are those gaps that we need to cover? So, maximizing the value, it's a continuation of protecting the value. So it's identifying how much does the individual business owner needs to get out of the business. And how do we cover that gap between, what it's currently worth? And what he needs or she needs to actually get out of it financially, and then that can drive some of the different exit strategies that we might have. 

The fourth one is, really whether if you like the exit event occurs, which is the extract values, so as the liquidity event or the transaction. And then the fifth one, is how do you manage the value? So, sort of two sides to that manage the value in the existing business, if the owner stay is partially in it, but also manage the personal wealth that has been derived from the extraction event or the exit.

Michael: In your experiences are most businesses able to be improved with the right time and advice?

Philip: Yeah, absolutely. What happens is as business owners, we get sort of really head down bum up in the business will spend a lot of time working in, rather than on the business. I know that seems glib but we find that most owners are actually blind to some of the things that can, that can be done reasonably simply to improve the value of the business. And the challenge is a lot of,
a lot of those challenges are around. They're not thinking of what their alternative future is now. And how do I actually get people trained, and recruited, and upskill to take over some of the roles that the owner would currently have.

Michael: Yeah. It's quite fascinating. This, again it comes back to being so deeply involved in the business. The business is what it is to the owner at the time. And then, you know, you go through a process of selling, preparing the business, selling the business, and you find that often each buyer that comes in sees it very differently. They've got, they've got their own unique circumstances. And I think one of the case when you get to that phase of exiting out of the business selling it, it's understanding that how you see your business could be quite different to the value it might bring two different cons of buyers. It astounds me every time.

Philip: Yeah. Well, you've seen it a lot, haven't you? I think one of the things to which we get great joy out of ours, when we see some sort of internal succession or a part of the succession is actually internal. You may have another investor or owner coming in, but by actually working with the staff in the business, creating what we call an ownership mindset, helping them to understand. How do I think and act like an owner? What are the tools that we've put in place to allow them to improve the processes and upskill themselves? And what are the financial rewards and how do we link those financial rewards from the business back to these staff that can become minority owners through the business? And we've got various structures we can use to do.

Michael: Yeah. It gets, I think it's a real trend in from the owners perspective. And that is a key team of staff, are natural buyer of the business. You cut out a lot of things that you would go through if you had to sell externally. But you introduce that, you know a different set of issues. And you know, the one that was particularly interesting is this owner mindset and it's one thing to be a really excellent employee, but another to continue to be that. And take on, you know, put another hat on it's the owner at risk, you know, if the business...

Philip: When you sort of dive into businesses, you start coaching, consulting coaching, and consulting with them. And you often find that the answers are, almost always find that the answers for the problems are in the business. The answers are in the staff and it's freeing them up to actually understand and be able to provide those answers. And for the owner to be able to do something with them, one of them, there's a series of steps, what we call a ladder to equity, where, you know, you might have bonus and some profit share. And then, at the top in, some of the staff actually owning the business either directly or through an employee share ownership plan, which is a very, very tax-effective way of transferring control, some control, or all control. So the all types some time but transferring control and for the owner to actually get their money out of all the money that they need out of the business.

Michael: And, does that create an environment where the owner doesn't necessarily need to get out in one hit, they can stay involved which can be good for them, can be good for the team buying in.

Philip: To start on, that's exactly what happened. So as the team takes more responsibility, the owner, and often what they give up his stuff they don't like doing. And so what we found is that the business actually continues to accelerate its growth because the owner is focused on stuff that they do like doing. They prolong their time in the business but it's often the real value-adding stuff, the rain-making side of things. So finding new clients and that sort of thing that if they're not having to do all of the processing or manufacturing type work, they've got other people doing that. It keeps their wisdom in the business longest, which works for the business and also for the owner.

Michael: It's a bit taking a step away and looking at what the business needs by way of employees. And if you can relieve, you know, focus any individual employee on what they're best at their business, you know, benefits.

Philip: That's what talked a lot about internal succession. And that's absolutely one of the ways to go. But there's also external succession, but there's also a mix where you can actually do some internal succession so that the business can be run, what we would call under management. So someone could come in and invest in the business as an investor, or as an owner-operator. But the key staff are actually tied in and that's a good way of actually doing it through an employee share ownership plan or some sort of equity plan.

Michael: Okay. All right. What are your couple, top tips for right now we're in challenging times. Is that really making a difference to the way businesses are selling, or is it still about getting on with your succession planning?

Philip: There's a couple of things happening. In current times, the created headwinds for some businesses inspire others. So business we're working with which runs major events or provides the infrastructure and support for major events or that it's obviously a real challenge for them at the moment. And that they're unable to actually, you know, run those events. Whereas there are other businesses, for example, a textiles business, which provides suppliers for people making quilts, which has just gone gangbusters. So, the businesses of, you know it's, there's not a lot in the middle it's either going really well or not so well. Well, it's also done and this tends to happen in economic downturns. Now when there's another set of stresses on the business, those business owners to a bit getting towards closer to the end than the beginning also could have enough of this, we need to find a way to get out of here. But, you know, what you don't want to do is run out of puff as a business owner and have the market choose the time. All these for there to be an involuntary succession because firstly, you know, you're unlikely to get what the business is really worth to you. And secondly, it's not as likely to be a successful succession term of business continuing.

Michael: Yeah, so you can see why it just needs time. And I'd encourage all, you know, all the owners listening in to, you know, to take that in because there's a lot that can be done with good advice and time. Which, in terms of succession planning, as a profession is quite unique, you know, it's emerging strongly. Succession Plus is, you know, doing a great job. So, one thing I've always found is for owners, you know, pick your advisors well. You know, it's not, succession planning, selling a business exit planning is not a routine or, you know, the people that do that kind of work and the best ones do it all the time and do it for their own living. So, and just be mindful of that.

Philip, we're unfortunately, out of time. Thank you so much for your time today. I think that's incredibly instructional and you've laid out for us and owners, you know, a pretty compelling case to, you know, to start the process. So I really appreciate your time.

Philip: Thanks, Michael. And just, you know, biggest tip for business owners is get started on your succession plan and do it early as early as you possibly can.

Michael: Yeah, yeah. And if you look, by all means, shout out they, you know, if they wanted to, you know, make contact with you. It's successionplus.com.

Philip: Yeah. So my business partner and I, Vicki Massey, and myself, Philip Volk, we're very, very happy to have a chat with you and just see where you're at and what we can do. Find someone that you've got chemistry with, you know the one you can trust because it's a journey, also, find someone that does this a lot. You only get one chance to save your business.

Michael: Yeah, to do it properly. So, that's a great way to finish. Thanks again for your time, Philip.

Philip: Good on you, Michael. Thanks very much for the opportunity. Thank you! 

Michael: So that is all for today's episode of Small Business Banter. I continue to be inspired, bringing your small business experts and other small business owners and hearing their stories. Do you want to listen to any past episode? Jump onto your podcast platform of choice and search Small Business Banter. There, you will find a diverse and fascinating collection of small business owners and experts, openly discussing and sharing their experiences. For any of the links, resources, or information we've talked about on the show today, or to contact me. Please head over to smallbusinessbanter.com, or you can find us on Facebook and Instagram. And it would be great to have you tuned in the same time next week for another episode of Small Business Banter.

[END]

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michael.kerr@kerrcapital.com.au

www.ownertoownerpodcast.com.au