In this redeeming episode, Richard Walsh, CEO of Sharpen the Spear Coaching, shares how he has developed programs and coaching to bring his vision to life, working one business at a time toward his goal of helping 10,000 enterprises.
You will discover:
– Why should you define your exit strategy before you begin
– What closes a business, the market or the leader?
– How to start a business that you can run (instead of letting it run you)
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand. Coach and I have an absolute treat for you all today. It is the one and only Richard Walsh, who’s a 30 year seasoned entrepreneur. He’s the best selling author of escape, the owner prison, the contractor’s new way to scale, regain control and fast track growth while loving life. He’s also a speaker, a podcast host, a husband and father of six children, a US Marine champion boxer, Black Belt and internationally recognized. You have not heard this before on the show, I promise, steel sculptor, all of these things. It’s awesome. There’s some stories in there. I know Richard. His experience lies in combining both the strategic and the tactical. He’s able to deliver immediate problem solving results in the tactical along with strategic, long term implementation of systematization and scalability. Richard shares his secrets and strategies that bring rapid and lasting results to the companies he works with and he’s here with us today. Well, Richard, welcome to the show. So excited to have you here. Love the book. Escape the owner prison. A couple of questions on this. First, I want to start you. You kind of start the book with your story. And being a builder, 2008 2009 was not a great time to be a builder, right? For a lot of folks, is really difficult season, a lot of industries, but builders really had it very, very hard during that time. And you kind of recount some of that story. Ultimately, with your business failure, you’re having to make the decision to close your business. And there’s this question that I get a lot, particularly when times are challenging, because the opposite is true, but we like to take credit for it instead. But folks will say the market closed my business, right? And and I’m wondering for you, what role does the market play? Because it does play some kind of role in all of this, but what role does the owner and leaders of the business play in and the ultimate closing of a business?
Richard Walsh
That’s a great question, Scott, because all the all, oh 08/09, was that collapse? Was just it. The knife just went into the right spot, right? It’s like I was already wounded. I’m laying on the battlefield. I’m gonna check out. Anyways, they just sped the death. That’s all it did. So what it did was it exposed all the things I didn’t do in my business, meaning the business things I’m all making money. I’m out front, I’m being published, I’m a TV I’m award winning, I’m internationally recognized. I’m making all this cool stuff, but you can’t keep pushing stuff to the left to your desk thinking it’s going to do it itself. Okay? So all that, all that collapse did was, and maybe this would have five years later if it didn’t happen, but it just exposed all the weaknesses your house of cards, if you will.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, and how has that changed, both your own approach to entrepreneurs and the way that you coach and consult with entrepreneurs?
Richard Walsh
Because now I have a completely different mindset. Have an understanding what that is now, here’s here’s the key. All that stuff I didn’t do. Do you think I just didn’t do it because I had time. I didn’t have time. I did it because I didn’t want to do it. It doesn’t interest me, it doesn’t drive me. It’s not part of my vision. I’m a founder. I’m this, I’m that. So I said, Okay, well, I have to do it. Otherwise, I’m not going to go through this again, losing everything from my home to the whole deal, right? So I said, Well, how do you do that? And that’s what I really figured out. How do you actually be able to truly automate, delegate and eliminate? How can I really automate things? How can they delegate things properly so someone else can do this? How do I build a business that can support that structure, especially from the beginning? That’s the challenge, right? Because we, most of us, start with nothing, yeah, and that’s the challenge. So you want to do that, but if you have no plan to do that, well you’re never going to reach it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s so true. And I want to come back to this idea of automating, eliminating delegating, because I think it’s massively powerful. But I want to kind of proceed through the book a little bit here you lay out these kind of three big don’t know which term you applied to it, but phases, if you will, in the entrepreneurial journey, I’m wondering if you could just very quickly run us through what those three are, and how do we know which one we’re in?
Richard Walsh
Yes, you’ve got it’s basically, it’s this simple. It’s 1 million, 5 million, 10 million. We’ll break it down, really simple, right? So I always tell people in business to me, and what I’ve shown, the easiest thing to do in business is make money. Everything else that’s hard, and we love what we do, right? We’re happy to sell it. We’ll go out. We’ll do it, make money, because that’s the greatest scorecard we’ve got. In the beginning, we can watch the increase in dollars means we’re doing well, right? In our minds. Okay? So the Zero to One is your first phase. So most people can do that on their own, literally by themselves. Maybe one help or something like that. But then they started getting to 3 million right, and five you are doing that on your own. There’s too many moving parts, right? There’s too many things to fulfill, too many clients to handle. So now you have to have that’s. Phase two, then you hit five, that five to 10, right? That’s where you’re like, Okay, this is getting really serious, and there’s a lot of ways to fail in that period over extension, right? Increased debt. You know, you’re not serving your clients properly anymore, because you’re chasing the next dollar. So that, in a nutshell, that’s what it is. So you got to understand you’re going to grow through these phases. Which is your, I read your seven founders, seven steps, seven founders, or founders, you know, which is brilliant. I really love that. So I look at, I saw that, Scott, I’m like, Well, this is kind of similar in a sense, right? But it’s the business building thing of where you’re going to be at. So I think that sums it up.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, why did you choose those particular numbers? What is there something magical that happens at $1,000,001 or what was it that chose those different breaking points for you?
Richard Walsh
I think a million in a lot of people’s head, and there’s a lot of studies on this too, that that’s like this magic number, until you get there, and then there’s no more magic. The magic is gone. You’re like, oh, this doesn’t feel so great, you know, this is like nothing, right? I got to get more now. So I think that’s why the million, because that’s a great number to drive to. It’s a good number. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not putting it down. It was a better it was a better number 20 years ago, okay? Now it’s, it’s, it’s still a number, right? So if you could get to that, that’s a let, that’s, that’s a, that’s a level, it’s like, Okay, I’ve done that now. Now I understand what I have at this level. I have maybe some more operating capital. I have more wisdom, hopefully, right? I’m doing some right things. Maybe I can get someone on to help me. You know, Coach wise, mentor wise, can really start looking at what are the next steps? Because again, now I want to triple that. Yeah, let’s say now we’ll go to three okay. Now get it three times the work, right? So you got to think, like, Okay, if I didn’t work this hard for one, do I have to work three times as hard? Probably maybe even more, more. It’s not just kind of rinse and repeat at those levels. There’s a lot of new things coming into your into your game plan now that you have to learn delegate do that whole thing.
Scott Ritzheimer
So yeah, so true, yeah. Even if you take just the raw typical entrepreneurs working, be very generous, say 5060 hours try and try and triple 5060 hours in a week, right? It just doesn’t work. And you start running into the truth that business growth is non linear, right? It’s, it’s, it’s so obvious when you say that, but it just that idea that it’s just up and to the right, that it’s this kind of straight line, that it’s growth by addition. We just keep doing the same thing and do more of it, it’s going to be better. It just doesn’t work. It lets us down. So I want to dive in on that first stage. We’ve We’ve had folks with specialties in all kinds of different areas. And one of the things I noticed, we really haven’t spent a whole lot of time on that zero to one stage, and it’s there are a lot of things about that stage that are really hard, right? But even before we can get into that, you made a point, I believe it was in your intro. And you said, your business and your ambition must only be in the passenger seat and never in the driver’s seat. So someone sitting there that they’re either in this phase zero to one and fighting through it, or they’re looking at it from the outside, getting ready to make the leap into the entrepreneurial journey. Why is it so important that they follow that advice?
Richard Walsh
Because what ambition does, and we all need it, right? So, but passenger seat means it can’t be the ultimate driver. It can’t actually have its hands on the wheel, because it’ll go wherever it wants. So it’ll take you to places you never wanted to go, like off a cliff. Okay? So you got to be really, really careful. So ambition is, is it is a, is a trait that we want, because we have to drive forward. I also, I also equated to you in the beginning. It’s called ignorance on fire, okay? And it gets you really far. You’re just, you can run, and you’re just, you’re nuts about your thing, you’re super passionate. But, you know, fires usually go out, right? So we have to be careful. But ambitions, ambitions a fire that doesn’t go out, it’ll drive you. What do you end up doing? Is it destroys everything outside of your business, all the people you connect with, all your relationships, your family. What I what I do, I tell people, these are all things you got in the business for for my family. So I can provide more, have more free time, be with them, and I can do this and this, we have money, have more security, and that first year, two years at zero to million, you sacrifice all of that because ambitions driving Yeah, you know, you don’t have a plan to actually make that happen. You don’t know what that really looks like, because you may have never done a business, right? So you don’t understand the dedication and what it’s going to pull from you to to make it happen. That’s why.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, and that’s a really interesting point. It brings me to the next question, and that is around your idea that you should start. I think it’s Covey who who really made famous begin with the end in mind. And this idea that you posit in the book is defining your exit strategy before you begin. And one of the. Questions that I had about that, is it, is it an exit strategy that’s important, or is it a long term goal that you have clarity on that’s important?
Richard Walsh
You know, I think it’s a combination. That’s a good way to put it. Scott, the reason for the exit strategy is so it gives you a roadmap. The exit strategy actually creates your roadmap for business, because you go out, okay, I want to do this for 10 years. I want to exit for X amount of dollars. Okay, sounds cool. Everyone usually puts the wrong number. They don’t understand what it takes to build that number. But whatever it is now you’re reverse engineered, and they work it all the way back. So you say, Okay, I want to, I want to work 10 years. I want to exit for a $20 million exit. Okay, great. So what does that look like? What to do in the business to make that happen? What’s the timeframe? Everything else, but also, okay, I’m humming along. I’m making a six figures or a seven figure salary. I’m making a million a year, doing really well, right? And everything’s starting to get but when I sell and I get that 20 million, I also lose a million a year, right? So what do I have to do as part of the exit Oh, I’ll start, you know, appreciate acquiring assets to create massive income to replace that million. So I do that with my active business income. Now, all that’s part of the plan. I also know when to hire my first person and second person and third person. I know at what phase it will be in the business, because they use that exit strategy for that. So it’s way beyond being a goal. It is a goal. We get it, but what I want it to be is a business filter. So whether when the shiny object comes floating in front of you, or another opportunity, because now you’re making some money and you can invest in another part of the business, or whatever, you run that through the exit strategy filter. Does it get me closer to my exit sooner? Or does it detract from it? If it detracts, is a hard No. Makes it simple.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, you mentioned this as well. But one of the things I’ve found is, particularly for those who this is their first time, which for a lot of entrepreneurs, it is, or at least the first successful time through this stage, they they’re just wildly off on their valuation. How do you how do you help folks to kind of keep their eye on that, but also know when it’s time to adjust either up or down to make sure that that number stays relevant?
Richard Walsh
Yeah, I think what we do, we do a thing called strategic vision, and we so we make it a vision driven business. I’m gonna give the super high fast level of this, but what it is is everyone knows where they’re going, what the goal is, but it’s only future you Futurecast that was only 18 to 24 months. So you have things in the 1824 months that you’re not doing now you want to achieve, right? So as you’re moving closer and people are achieving that. That’s a short enough time period, because even, like projecting five years now, too much changes. You can’t there’s no way you can do that. But 18 to 24 months, you could pretty much hit that. Then you tweak it and you readjust. That’s when you readjusting, because you understand the whole company’s moving towards the same thing. So it’s way easier to see what’s happening, and you can make those adjustments, because everyone understands the adjustments needed, right? So you developed a business, you created a business and a vision to drive by. So it the the need for a change is very clear. It’s not subtle. It doesn’t creep up by. You see exactly where you’re going to make able to make those adaptations.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so Richard, in your book, you outline a number of just really, really helpful points around the numbers and sales and just anyone who’s anywhere near this stage, I highly recommend it. But I want to go to kind of your very last set of points coming out of this, this phase, if you will. And that’s the idea, whether or not you’re ready for the next like, are you ready to scale up? How? What are some signs that we know, hey, we’re ready to really, kind of, you know, crank up the gas on this thing. And alternatively, what are some signs to say, hey, it’s not a great idea. You know, there’s cracks in the foundation that need to be fixed first.
Richard Walsh
Yeah, I would say one of the big ones that, you know, I was missing, of course, myself was, if someone leaves your company today, where I don’t care what the reason the familiarity is, they’re gone, how quickly can you put some in that position to have them up to speed? Can you do it in seven days? And can they run if they can’t do that? And I mean any position your company, you should not be scaling hands down. You haven’t systemized things. Remember, we put people into systems, not systems and people. So if you have the incredible office manager who’s absolutely spectacular, does everything for you, reads your mind the whole thing, right? And she checks out on Tuesday, you’re in trouble, you know? Or they start making demands for now, you’re a hostage. You don’t want to be a hostage. You don’t want to create a hostage situation with your employees, right? They all these don’t but also, by systemizing, they can also operate at a high level, right? They can do their job better, easier, more efficient, right? And it becomes more profitable for the company. So you got to make sure those things are in place. And that’s what this the big word is. Systemization, right? You want to make sure you’ve got systemization in place. Otherwise you can scale. People do it all the time, but they’re not prepared for when people leave, when new problems come. That’s the tactical these little fires are flaring up everywhere, and now you spend all your time running around, putting those out, and it’s only going to get worse as you’re trying to scale. So that’s one of your big indicators you really need to understand. You know, I think a second one, Scott would be, actually, who’s on your team? Are they bought into the complete vision going forward? Are they coming for a paycheck? You know, what kind of business have you created? We help companies and literally, people take pay cuts to come work for the company because the vision is so clear, and they want to work in this culture. That’s how we change business culture. That’s strategic vision. So we change the culture. So you get to, and this is hard as an entrepreneur, especially in the beginning, you have to think about the big picture. We get really, really blinder focused, right? Because we’re running, we’re making money, we’re trying to make payroll next week. We’re trying to do these things, especially in the beginning, like this is for 0 million, but we need to understand what we’re actually building, you know? So we want we, because the right people will come. They’ll come drawn to an efficient business that has all the lanes built out where they can bring a level of competency and succeed. There. They’re not coming to build your business. They’re not coming to systemize your your divisions. They have no interest in that. They’re going to do that. Guess what? They have their own business, right? So we have to enable them to run with the ball and get to the goal.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. So, all right, Richard, there’s a question I have that I ask all my guests, and I’m going to throw it your way as well. What would you say is the biggest secret you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching and listening today knew?
Richard Walsh
The thing I didn’t do for the first 20 years of my business, and that’s ask for help. Okay, now we’re a lot of us are coaches, or we help more business mentors, but I would not take help. I had billionaire clients give me advice. What do you know? You don’t build what you know, you know? I mean just complete stupidity, arrogance, pride, ego, all that wrapped up with a nice bow. Get the help sooner than later. Sacrifice. We can just sacrifice support, Time Compression, yeah, save that 10 years of cost, mistakes, bad decisions and possible business failure, right? So ask for help. That’s that’s the secret It is.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So true. It’s so true. So Richard, you help entrepreneurs in all these different phases. So tell me, first, where can folks get a copy of the your book? Escape the owner prison, the contractor’s new way to scale, regain control and fast track growth while loving life. Where can they get a copy of the book.
Richard Walsh
That monopoly business on books, Amazon.
Scott Ritzheimer
Beautiful. And where can they find more out about you and the work that you do?
Richard Walsh
https://sharpenthespearcoaching.com Real simple.
Scott Ritzheimer
We’ll get that in the show notes for everybody. Go ahead and check it out. Fantastic website, fantastic book. I highly recommend it, Richard, it’s just an honor having you on the show. What a brilliant conversation and a brilliant piece of work you put together with the book. Thank you so much for being here, and for those of you watching and listening today, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Richard Walsh
Richard Walsh is a 30-year seasoned entrepreneur. He’s the best-selling author of Escape the Owner Prison, the contractor’s new way to scale, regain control, and fast-track growth while loving life. He’s a speaker and podcast host, a husband and father of six children, a US Marine, champion boxer, black belt, and internationally recognized steel sculptor. His expertise lies in combining both the strategic and the tactical. He’s able to deliver immediate, problem-solving results (tactical), along with strategic, long-term implementation of systemization and scalability. Richard shares his secrets and strategies that bring rapid and lasting results to the companies he works with.
| Want to learn more about Richard Walsh’s work? Check out his website at https://sharpenthespearcoaching.com/ Get his book at https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Owner-Prison-Contractors-control/dp/1089318901 |
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