The Business Launch and Exit! (7m 54s) – Association Hustle Podcast Episode 312

Association Hustle

Top business advice and exit strategy for new business owners.

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Hello and welcome to JP Moery’s Association Hustle Podcast. Founder of The Moery Company, JP’s mission is to arm today’s associations with insight and strategy to thrive and a progressively complex and competitive business landscape. 21st century associations must move forward with a little bit of hustle and revenue development at their core.

Here’s JP.

Here are a few things I learned from the acquisition of The Moery Company:

1. Grow your business.

80% of your time early on should be on business development and sales. You need to have a few things in place to make that happen:

• • Good data.
    • • If you don’t know who to contact, who to call, who to send a solicitation marketing piece to, you are nowhere.

• • Communication and content bent towards thought leadership.
    • • We produce a podcast and videos multiple times a week that helps expand our brand awareness.

• • Contact prospects directly.
    • • “Hey, I thought you might be interested in this podcast I just did on membership development. Here’s a link to it.” You always want to be present and always around.

This way, it’s not always about you selling; you’ll have good data, you’ll be connecting with people, communicating regularly, providing value, and you’ll be continuing to send direct messages to those individuals. This is how you grow a business.

2. Don’t hire your first employees until it’s physically painful and you can’t go any further.

• • You’re going to be responsible for them. You’ll feel the responsibility of feeding them. Most of the time, you have another gear left, and you can go ahead and go to the next level regarding your work and activity.

• • You must build infrastructure as you hire. It isn’t easy to extricate those processes or shut those things down. So realize as you’re growing and expanding, you’re building more capacity, but you’re also going to be responsible for more infrastructure, which takes brainpower and work. Frankly, a lot of that’s going to come back on you.

3. Increase your pricing by about 25%.

• • I guarantee you, the services that you offer are underpriced. Many times, you’ll be afraid early that you’re not going to get the job, but you’ll get the work. Later you’re going to be scared of going broke while you’re doing the work. So go ahead and increase your pricing by about 25%. See what happens.

• • I didn’t do it that way, and then I had legacy clients that weren’t paying enough for the services we provided. And it wasn’t easy to bring them up. So think about where your floor will be and then increase 25%.

4. Staffing and personnel relationships are two-way streets.

• • It’s all about the staff. The staff has leverage with their presence, and you have leverage with their salary. It’s fair to be that way.

Let’s talk about the exit strategy.

• • Think about it early on because you got to be ready when the opportunity comes. When my exit strategy came up, and I had offers, I wasn’t prepared.

• • Run the numbers with your financial planner because there will be scenarios that determine what you’re going to do after the exit. Make sure you know those numbers, and you’re familiar with the scenarios before someone ever approaches you about selling the business to them.

• • Some people who are very close to you will resent the fact that you sell the business. That’s just the way it’s going to be. It’s unfortunate, but it’s just human nature, so be ready for that.

• • The company moves on very quickly without you after you sell it. Especially if you set up something that’s genuinely scalable and a good business, they’re not going to need you that much. They’re going to move on fast. You’re going to have that void once that happens.

After the exit:

You’re going to have some of the best days of your life. Know that there’s going to be a gap there, you’re going to experience some loss, you’re going to miss doing things, you’re going to miss being on that staff call when they’ve moved on without you. I tell you what though, it is a wonderful reward.

I’m so grateful that you’ve come along my journey. It’s been an amazing gift to be able to document and tell you about these stories over the last several years. Talk soon. Bye-bye.

We hope you enjoyed this edition of JP Moery’s Association Hustle Podcast.

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