Latest / Exit Algorithms / Why Most Founders Sell Too Early and Leave Money on the Table | Bryan Durkin (#94)
Transcript
- Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Welcome to Exit Algorithms, the podcast where we decode what it really takes to unlock growth, streamline operations, and prepare your business for a high-value exit. I'm your host, Pete Vera, and today I'm joined by Brian Durkin. He's a seasoned entrepreneur with more than 25 years of building and growing B2B businesses. He founded his first company grew it to over 250 employees before exiting. He's authored ⁓ multiple books is currently focused on as the founder and CEO of MVP Inner Circle, helping consultants and experts scale through virtual teams and driven marketing systems. Brian, excited to have you here. Welcome to the podcast. Bryan Durkin: Hey Pete, thanks for having me. Don't mind me I'm sweating. It's a little hot in Florida at the time of the at the time of our podcast recordings. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, to totally understand that down down here too in South Carolina. Bryan Durkin: Don't worry, it'll be okay winter time. Please don't come, it's full here. Please there's no room. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: I love the Brian, do you mind starting off and and sharing a bit about your journey and how you got started in business and you know what led you to your work today? Bryan Durkin: ⁓ god. How much time do we have? So, true story, how did I get started in business? So I've always you you how you meet people and people say, ⁓ you make this look so easy, right? So I've been what I call a professional salesperson my entire life. So when I when I was about ten years old, a brother and I had he was raising chickens and I got stuck taking care of him when he was gone. And then ⁓ we would take eggs and sell them around to the neighborhood. And then during certain times of year in New Jersey, he would bring corn home. And so I would go on a Friday night and go door to door and sell corn and we split the profits. So early on I realized if I put hay in the wagon, in my little whatever I was doing, I would sell 30% more because of positioning. So any anyway got to really good. and then in college I worked did all kinds of stuff. So I was always what I called people now call a sales professional. People like, ⁓ you make it sound so easy. I'm like, well it's not. And so like every other crazy entrepreneur, I got mad at my boss and I my own company. Like that was crazy. So I was in my early twenties. I started this tech services company. I actually did it. I did it what we called it as an entrepreneur. I was I partnered inside of a company and we split stuff. And just all the beauty that happens, once we got profitable, they decided they didn't want to do it. So once they earned their money back, they just said, ⁓ we pulled the plug. And I went, ⁓ this is great. I went into enterprise sales and sold hundreds of millions of dollars of stuff to the fortune two hundred probably. And then then I decided to start my own company while I was working for somebody else. So that company's out of business, so it's okay to say now. and then we had a document management company. ⁓ that business no longer exists, unfortunately, because my partners decided to go in a different route. But we had we started out as a simple document management company where we scanned pieces of paper. ⁓ my God, that sounds crazy. This was in the mid nineteen nineties. ⁓ we were scanning pieces of paper. My partner at the time had a records management company, and so he was taking files out of the out of the filing cabinet, getting into his van and driving an hour away to drop off four files to a OBGYN or a family doctor or whatever it was, because that's that was what life was like then. And I was like, There's gotta be a better way. So I said, What if we could scan files, put them in the internet or email them so that you wouldn't have to do that? They could load it in their system and they could have everything out and they could write up stuff. So early e records, right? HIPAA was just beginning a lot of stuff. So to say, over about a five year period, we started out, we were lucky to be able to scan the maybe a couple bankers' boxes a day, about 1,500 pieces of paper. So ask me how I know. So an average banker box you have sitting in the corner may between seven and eight hundred pieces of paper in it. By the time you have the folders and all the other nonsense in it. ⁓ By time I sold my interest in the business, we were doing like three, three hundred thousand images a day. Right. So how how do you do that? Well, one, you have to have systems, right? So We we broke everything. We broke everything, right? Just like every other founder. We broke everything. We didn't know what we were doing. I brought in an operating partner to fix the operations. and then we found that we needed more fingers on the keyboards. And so we ended up meeting a a guy from India in nineteen ninety six, ninety seven. And at the time that was not like it is today. It's not like going to Upwork or five or Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, you're good now. Okay. Yeah, it it was ⁓ it was cutting in and out. You sounded like like a robot for a second then ⁓ it's all good. Bryan Durkin: I have a gig I have a 150 meg up and a gigabit down. So ⁓ anyway, so ⁓ if you need help with editing, let me know. So I'll yeah, so the quick so the quick version of the business I had that I sold. So I'll pause for a second and then we'll just go. So here's the version of my partner having ⁓ we decided to work for another I was working with another company, started my own. He had a a record storage company. So the record storage company would take files out, he would deliver to the doctor's office, his lawyer's office. I was like, there's gotta be a better one. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: We'll cut that out, yeah. Okay. Bryan Durkin: So we helped we designed, we took our own money, we designed a little system so we can scan files, take scout files out of the out of the warehouse, scan them, put them in a special d specialized internet portal. They could log in and download them, or we could email them to them. So this was the beginning of cloud storage. It didn't exist when I did that. When we got our first license of Oracle, I came from Enterprise and my friend sold me the license. And he goes, I he goes, I'm gonna I have to charge you per user. I'm like, but it's on a website on the internet. There's only like three users. He just gave me us, he didn't even know what to do. So they just gave us a studio license and just ignored us. And so every time we did the renewal, I just told my partner, just pay the renewal license because they don't know what it is. Because if if they figure out what we're doing, we're gonna have to go do a whole nother thing. So push comes to shove as the business grew. We learned we had a bottleneck. The bottleneck was people on keys. we found a partner at a at an industry event that said, Brian, I have highly educated workers in India at the time. This was in the beginning or middle of the big enterprise like ATT and American Express were moving to a lot of offshore stuff. we decided to try it and we would tell our clients we could do it in New Jersey or we could do it in India. So a file might be might cost you $3 to do it in New Jersey and we could do it for 45 cents in India. And they would say every time, yep, we'll take that. So that's how the business grew. We ended up having about I think we had a little of about 225 of the remote team working for us and about we had 26, I think, in the US ⁓ Project managers, coders, scanning, delivery people, salespeople, project managers. And so that's how the business grew. and then I had an o I had an opportunity to exit, probably shouldn't have. And so I decided to to kind of say I'm gonna reset and kind of go on to new things. And I picked up my family and moved to Florida. So never never no one's ever heard that before. It's 20 years before COVID. So it was a big thing. And so that's how I that's how I got started doing it. I guess kind of the next evolution of Brian was I was consulting with Small businesses on how could you do what I do, right? As a business coach and consultant. And that that was okay. and then I guess the next version is I met this Dan Kennedy guy and went to an event and got the most incredible free gift ever. and 15 years later, I've written a book, I've published a book on Amazon. I've got two others that I use as lead magnets. I have an ⁓ team, a small team in the Philippines doing all kinds of crazy support work. I run a mastermind, I speak and consult. So we are the doers, we are not the talkers, we are the you know, we don't just say what you should do, we actually help you implement it. So if that's the that's the five minute version about Brian. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Awesome, love it. Yeah, you said it's something I I wanna ⁓ talk more about. You said, you know, you you sold your your first company infostore, but you probably shouldn't have. W why is that? Bryan Durkin: ⁓ so it was a personality thing, right? So a lot of times you I I I I've had two sets of partners in my life that I did business with that was not my that I didn't have my wife. I will never do that again. So I will tell you if you a lot of founders want to go out and find the fact that they've got partners to fill the gaps, or in this case, my partner was a funding partner and he was trying to be an operating partner and he wasn't. And I don't want to get into a lot of the fall on your face kind of stuff, the but But I probably should have just bought them out and kept it, right? So that was the reality of the situation. and we get emotional, right? Because we're like, I can do a better job. And I always tell people this figure out a way to stay the if you if you have a if you're an overachiever, I'm an overachiever. I was always the number one or two sales guy number where I went. Remember, I at that point I had sold a couple hundred million dollars worth of stuff. I wasn't an amateur, I didn't need to know how to sell, I didn't need to know how to deliver. I did all that. Figure out how to keep it yourself, right? Because you can hire. smart people to be around you. In fact, part of that growth path of we went from, you know, five people to, you know, whatever the numbers were, 25 in the US and a couple hundred, ⁓ I had an operating partner who handled the operations of the business. Paid him a lot of money to be the operating partner because I wasn't an operator. Right. So a lot of times, you know, Tony Robbins talks about visionaries and operators, and I was not an operator. right now I do something called the working genius and I'm a I'm an inventor discerner and not a tenacity enablement. So I'm Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Bryan Durkin: I I know what to do and why, but don't ask me to do it more than twice because I'm gonna barf and not want to do it anymore. So ⁓ but the the blessing is is that I had a chance to move to Naples. I live in Paradise. I live where you vacation, I live where people vacation. my and I have an amazing interior design business. She's got an interior design coaching business. I can work from anywhere. It doesn't matter where I am. So I've really reinvented ⁓ what I and quite frankly, don't miss the cold. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Ha ha Bryan Durkin: I don't miss the crappy roads. do miss the Italian food. There's nothing like Jersey Italian food, man. Cause every chef from New York who gets burnt out goes to Jersey somewhere. And so every hole in the wall is amazing Italian food. But ⁓ don't exit too early, right? I I definitely undersold. but but we had the things, you know, we didn't know. We had operating procedures, So we had, I can tell you right now, seven processes with seven steps. How hard, Brian, can it be to scan some pieces of paper? I can tell you there's seven steps. seven big processes, and every one of those has seven steps. And we used to track it on a piece of paper. So if something happened, three months because what would happen would be, you know, because it's all this kind of you ri you you you get it you get a customer service order, you go pick up the boxes, then you inspect and log them, then you or then you then you take out the staples, then you organize them, then you scan them, then you code them, then you put them back in the database. That's seven steps. ⁓ Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Is it? Bryan Durkin: Sounds really boring, but if you're doing it a couple hundred thousand times a day and someone always screws up step three and you got to redo three days worth of work, you're screwed. I can tell you we almost went out of business because we had to redo about a month's worth of work for a really big client. And I told the client, like, we have two options. We can say no and we'll walk away as friends, and you this this will never happen and I will not charge you the money, or we can move forward. But if we move forward, I need your commitment that we're gonna at least get a year because if not, I'm gonna just I'm gonna say no because I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go out business. Cause we were, you know. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Yeah. Bryan Durkin: thirty, fifty thousand dollars in a hole. Like, you know, when you do an when your average transaction is eight point one cents to get the thirty thousand dollars is a lot that's a lot of dollars. That's a lot of pe that's a lot of transactions. So, but Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. is did you have those steps documented before ⁓ Bryan Durkin: We did during it, that's when I brought in my operating partner to really unpack what because I'm I'm a typical sales leader, right? Yeah, you guys got it, you're good, ask me any questions, I'm out of here. And then stuff happened and they didn't know they didn't have enough context to know if they were doing right or wrong, right? So today is different because we have a hundred and thirty seven different SOPs and and we them all documented. But the difference even today, like no one wants to go back to the documents. So what did we do? We created a document AI repository. Hey, I'm working on XYZ company. Give me the I I have a new person starting. What are the five steps I need to do? Or I'm checking, I'm doing QA. What do I need to do for QA? What should look out for? And and the bot responds back with the answer. So it's completely, you know, it's complete again, it's all specialized knowledge going in. We're not using AI to create the knowledge, but we're using AI tools to ask natural language questions to get the answer. So that it doesn't matter, you don't need to be a coder. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Bryan Durkin: And they don't need to figure out all the various for that stuff. It's just how that happens. It's vastly different than it was. So Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Yeah y you said you undersold. So you what do you can you explain that a a little Bryan Durkin: ⁓ it was a it was an ask for me. It was like I'm good. We had a lot of stuff I don't won't go share a lot of public stuff, but the short version is we were growing, we had an opportunity. So this is the beauty of buy-sell agreements. If you have the opportunity to bring in th other investors and you're willing to take something, your partner must also be willing to take that going out, right? So that's exactly what happened. We had a buy-sell agreement, we had three parties that investments, part of that restructuring of the right, a company comes in and they're making a major investment, they're gonna restructure the business. We all knew that, we all agreed upon that, and then ⁓ my founding partner, one of the three people, two two of the three people were staying, one of them wasn't. That wasn't acceptable to them. So guess what happens when it's not acceptable to them? Well it's acceptable. And I and our agreement says if it's acceptable for you, it has to be acceptable for me. And I went, yep. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Yeah. Bryan Durkin: I was pretty burnt out. So it was ⁓ like I said, we were a four million dollar business. I don't miss the eighty thousand dollars every two weeks in payroll, you know, I don't miss the lease payments of eighteen thousand dollars a month, I don't miss the ten thousand dollar a month rent payments, I don't miss the truck broke down, the van broke down, we got to pick up stuff. I don't miss that because it got to be a real thing, right? And then we were a small company doing business with big companies, and so one of the challenges is that if one client Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm-hmm. Bryan Durkin: goes from sixty days to ninety days, how does that affect your cash flow? It killed us. So we were always fighting the cash flow. We were great on paper, but we couldn't get ahead because we were always three months behind on everyone's payments. And then when you were buying pieces of equipment that were fifty thousand dollars a piece to kind of get to the next level, that creates also a lot of like it's like it was a cash thing. So it was never intended to be a cash business. we weren't structured for that, right? We didn't have lines of credit. We just were funding it ourselves. And so ⁓ Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Bryan Durkin: If I had met Dan Kennedy when in my 20s, when I started my business, the business would be completely different, right? We would have demanded payment up front. We would have gotten 10-day payment terms, not 45 or 50. Like there's a whole thing that are different now. So but it was worthwhile. I mean, I learned a ton. I had amazing clients. We in way over our head. I had public companies as clients, CFOs, CIOs, legal counsels. You know, so I was in the boardroom of public companies having conversations with board members about projects. So I'm telling you that we were way out of our pay grade. ⁓ but it was an amazing experience. So when your client calls and says, Brian, do you have a jacket? So yeah, I got a jacket. He's No, a suit jacket. I'm like, Well, I got one in the corner of my office. It's dusty. He goes, Can you put it on and I know you have a tie in your car? Can you put this one? 'Cause we have a board meeting of four. Can you c you're on at two? Are you kidding me? He's like, Well, I can't have the whole board there. I'm gonna have three or three people out of the eight, because that otherwise we'd have a quorum. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Ha ha. Bryan Durkin: And they want to know about this strategic. It was a strategic project. It was a three million dollar project. And so that part of it was cool. So like I I I I I had some amazing, ⁓ had some amazing experiences. So I wouldn't trade that for a second. But now I you wanna be in Brian's world, you pay up front, you pay a premium. I'm not a we're not a discount provider. you get what you pay for, but that part of it's that part of it's definitely truly life changing. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think the takeaway for, you know, business owners maybe looking to exit would be is timing is is probably the number one thing you gotta you wanna think about, right? Bryan Durkin: So we're working with some clients trying to acquire companies, right? And so they're talking to people in their fifties, my age, their kids don't want the business, right? One of the things I see is they don't have good books. They're lifestyle businesses, right? They got their they got their F three fifties, they got the boat payments, they got all the other stuff. And they're like, well, that doesn't really count. That but that no, it doesn't count for taxes, it does count for selling. So when you bleed out a half a million dollars a year of lifestyle expenses and you expect to get your three X return on your profit. No buyer's gonna buy that. Because it's well, yeah, I can't I don't know if that's is it real profit? Is it not profit? Maybe I need to do that stuff. So that's the one big big mistake I see with people because several of our clients are on the acquisition side of things or trying to buy, and they go through this process. You clean up your every single time, you gotta clean up your books. Well, who I you your books clean. Well, are my inventory's worth three hundred thousand dollars? Inventories look like it's worth about $30,000, right? So know, ⁓ there's goodwill. There's no goodwill. And businesses under $10 million, there's no goodwill. Right. And then where we fit in in that is like, well, what about your marketing systems? Do they run without the founders pushing buttons all the time? ⁓ And one thing that could easily help with the exit part of it is like having you know, the you know the deal. If the business is built around one person, once that one person leaves, it's gone. And smart buyers know that. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Is it? Yeah. Mm. Bryan Durkin: Right. So that's a that's a challenge, right? Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Eliminating that key man risk. clean financials too. Yeah. I I talked to a lot of business sellers that just like like the exactly the story you're talking about. Like ⁓ Bryan Durkin: It's crazy. So I so I'm a little bit more avant-garde. And so I have two clients going through this. I'm like, just set up the deal and promise in the future, but have it all clawed back. That's what by the way, that's what they do. All the big companies claw back. They're expecting a three year payout and all this other stuff, and they don't get they get their whatever, they get their asset value. They get the they get the true value of their assets, they get their inventory and their equipment and computers and stuff like that. And then they get their salary, quote unquote, whatever that is for three years as part of their payout. Unless it's not quite what they think it is. But they don't want to do that. So but I get that. I've had friends on the other side where they got bought and then they got clawed back and they're like, You didn't read the terms, man. They were smart buyers. So ⁓ I like businesses that have money in the mail, so that's my kind of businesses. So that's why Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, definitely. So Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like you learned a lot about, you know, ⁓ working capital or payment terms, Bryan Durkin: God, it killed us. Yeah. I I was twenty six when I started that business. Like I I was like, we have Matt Cali real estate as a client. ⁓ they don't pay for 90 days. What the hell am I supposed to do with the thirty thousand dollars they owe me a month or whatever it was, twenty thousand dollars a month? Like that's a lot of money. I got people that get paid every two weeks. Like, what am I how am I supposed to do that? So cash flow, you know, especially for young businesses, is hard. but then managing that, because that's part of like, you know, maybe maybe you have someone talking about this or, you know, Is is if a business that has a real business line of credit built into the business is worth more than the CEO owner dropping cash in to cover payroll. Because then it's the enterprise value of the business, is the the the business's ability to have cash flow through a bank line of credit that they have as a normal course of business, right? So I didn't know any of that stuff. So that was crazy. So Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. And then you took a lot of those lessons learned and applied it to your the your new business venture. When that Bryan Durkin: The new Brian. Yeah, we've I've so the all the things have happened between then. I've been a sales consultant. I've been a marketing consultant. I've been a VP of sales for hire, all that stuff. And so what I realized was I needed to build my business my way. And honestly, we talked a little bit pre-call about the the influences, right? So I'm a big Dan Kennedy influencer and I was really fortunate. One of my clients had Tony Robbins as an investor. So I got a chance to go, got a chance to go see him and he talks about the business map, right? You got to know where you are to figure out where you're going. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Bryan Durkin: It's not a business plan, it's business map. I thought it was an interesting concept. At this point, I was really into business coaching and working with small businesses. And then I realized 95% of small businesses want you to tell them that they're right, pat them on the head, and do one little thing for them, and then hopefully they grow. And I'm not that kind of guy because I'm like, listen, these are the 17 things you're not doing, you gotta fix one at a time, right? So, like you can't fix them all. Pick one at a time, decide if it's the right one or wrong one, do it for 90 days, 120 days, and then move on to the Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Bryan Durkin: But they didn't do it. And so Tony had a thing where he talked about if you don't have a business map, right? You don't know where you are, then you can't figure out where you're going. And he talked about you have to have great customer experience. They got to come back. They got to be raving fans, all this other stuff. He goes, if you don't, if you don't do that, your business is stuck and it's stuck on first. That's a resonate because what's the name of my book at the time? the name of my book is called Stuck on First, ⁓ nine positions of a playoff ready business. At the time, my client, he called himself a third base coach, right? Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Mm-hmm. Bryan Durkin: Or no, he called himself a first base coach. That's what it was. Excuse me. So he was like, and he was great. And what means that what does a first base coach do in baseball? you get on base, it's his job to get his job to help you get on base and get the second. The third base coach is to figure out how to get the hitter to drive that guy in and make sure that guy gets home. And what in business, what counts? Runs, money, revenue, whatever counts. And so what I realized is that my client, who called himself a first base coach, was a great idea guy, but he had s he couldn't stick with anything for more than five seconds. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Bryan Durkin: So he was like, you know how we all have entrepreneurial AHD and we go this way and we go that way and we go this way? He hit his was like explosion. It was like every day it was like star it was like at the Magic Kingdom fireworks, right? Going in 50 directions. So I started calling myself a third base coach, right? It's your my job to get you home. Not everyone can hit home runs. That was the idea behind the book. So I still use a business and baseball thing. it has evolved a little bit, but it's been it's still a lot of fun. People get it, right? So the idea is like you gotta fill the stadium, you gotta keep them coming back. Your team's got to do the right thing because right, anyone, every business owner should be in some kind of coaching program, mastermind, something. Their friends don't know what they do. Your family thinks you're crazy. been my my mom, God bless her, she's 89. She's like, I always worry about you. I said, Mom, I've been on my own for 34 for 35 years. I'm okay. I my dad had his own business and he had ups and downs. And she's like, I worry about you. I'm like, Mom, I was I I've worked for myself longer than dad did. And she kind of looked at Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm-hmm. Bryan Durkin: So and I've had more employees than that ever had. So I'm I'm okay. It's okay. We can figure this out. So ⁓ but it's been it's a fun the the book's fun, like I said. If you get on Amazon, it does talk. It's it's a hard read. It's designed for the two and a half hour read. It no, it wasn't a bestseller, it was never designed to be a bestseller. It was designed to get to know Brian. So those of you listening to it, obviously go get a copy of it. It's 20 bucks. It's a really interesting read. There's still a ton of nuggets. I wrote it about eight years ago. There's still a ton of nuggets, maybe nine years ago. There's still a ton of Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Bryan Durkin: very valuable nuggets in there. I did a re I did a re-edit for COVID. It's applicable today as at any time, right? It's all the business fundamentals. ⁓ ⁓ call them big game tips. Let me go back. ⁓ one, you have to have raving fans, right? What you to be able to fill the stadium. So you got to be able to get people that are interested in what you're what product you're doing. The product you have, you have to be able to deliver. So no one's going to go to a baseball game where that it's a bunch of clowns playing baseball. Even the banana, even the Savannah bananas are legitimate bananas. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, what what are some of those maybe top top I guess? Bryan Durkin: ball players, right? I think the other thing is the sticktuitiveness. Like, how do I do things every day? The reason why the best athletes in the business, let's use ⁓ Baseball batters are the are the they fail seven out of ten times and they're considered the best in the world, right? Why are they the best in the world? You know how much time they put in? They talk about 10,000 hours is it takes to become an expert in a field. So that doesn't mean you can't take a course for two hours. You can't Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm-hmm. Bryan Durkin: watch an Alex Hermozzi video and get all excited to do things one time. Like you got to put the time in to do the work, right? Not to say they're not brilliant people, but I can't even we talked pre-call. I can't imagine how much time Hermozzi spent. He sold his business, gym launch business five years ago. He spent three years, no one know what he was doing, then all of a sudden he got on social media. Then he did his book, right? The $100 million offers or whatever it was. And one he just did last year where he sold Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Money models did. Bryan Durkin: Whatever he sold $75 million worth of stuff in a day. That didn't happen overnight, right? so he worked, so that's the part of the take, that's kind of a couple of the takeaways. ⁓ what are some other takeaways? another one. ⁓ yeah, geometric businesses. I just flipped through my book. Sorry, I was cheating. So geometric businesses. So when you small ⁓ minute in parts of your business, it changes dramatically. So let's just everyone wants new customers, They all I gotta get new customers. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Bryan Durkin: Well, what if you just took every one of your customers and you got them to buy one more time a year and you had a small upsell and a small price increase? That's not an 8% or 10% different in your business. That's somewhere between 30 and 40%. let's just say you sell a $10,000 once a year. What if you could add a $2,000 thing once and few ⁓ a few thousand dollar things ⁓ that are ads as it goes? Now that's a 50% increase in the business because that $10,000 sale went to $15,000. People don't think that way. They spend all this time and effort acquiring new clients. client acquisition is hard and it's expensive, right? So I have that'll easily spend three to five thousand dollars to acquire a client. Now they may have a hundred thousand dollar sale, right? But so and they might have to get those three to five thousand opportunities, they might have to get five of them to get a sale. But if the sale's worth $100,000, the math still works, right? So people and the other one is people don't know their. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Bryan Durkin: On the customer acquisition side. They just don't know it. They just ⁓ they they just don't know it. Cause you you know, in in in the exit business, you're on the operating part of it. Part of that is customer client acquisition cost is an is a number if you don't know it. Right. you know, some in some businesses, I've got really high-end consultants and coaches, you know, they'll do that they'll they'll say their client acquisition cost is, ⁓ I spent five hundred dollars in ads and I got a ten thousand dollar customer. I'm like, Yeah, but it you spent three months. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm the metric KPIs Bryan Durkin: Doing the prep work and all the other stuff. So is it really that case? So it just depends on the mindset of that. So, ⁓ but those are yeah, those are kind of the big ones. So that that's kind of the those are the those are really kind of the more fun ones of the of how I did the book. I honestly I I wrote it to support a program because I the Tony Robbins book, and then I in the Dan Kennedy world, and Dan's like, if you want to be an expert, you have to a book. So I had those two worlds literally collided, and I was in the process of doing a small business consulting thing and I was partnering with a local university. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. That's it. Bryan Durkin: And I was like, listen, if you come to the if you come to the program, I'll give you a copy of the book. And that was really the the justifier of getting it done. So it's worked ever since 'cause people books are perceived as than those that have not. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. More credible. Yeah. And ⁓ you go through a learning process. Bryan Durkin: How many and you've done quite a few podcasts. I know of one other person on your podcast. How many besides Vance have written a book? Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: a a a good percentage, I'd say at least ⁓ probably almost half of ⁓ yeah. Bryan Durkin: That's good. So then you're dealing with the experts, right? Because they're willing to put their opinion. I'm in the process. I had a new one that I pulled the plug on because it was like I might not that it's not a great book, but my business has shifted so much over the last year with how AS AI is fundamentally changing everything that's happening in in our business. And since we're we've always been ahead, now we're now I'm realizing how far ahead we are because now we're talking, I mean, I have clients that range from, you know, two million to 150 million and they're coming to They're coming to us going, I I heard you do this for that. Like, how do we do that? Like, what do you mean? You don't do this already? I thought I was behind the eight ball, right? So I was like, you know, but I'm not. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. ⁓ awesome. Yeah, that that leads me to my next ⁓ question here. I I'm curious, what are some of the most common mistakes you see in businesses that you work with? Bryan Durkin: I think the biggest one I touched on earlier, they're spending too much time and effort trying to get new clients instead of trying to get more out of the same ones they have. Right. the second part of that same question is understanding what those clients really look like and find out where they hang out. So if you're in in this in industry, right? So where do people hang out? Like, well, because you everyone wants to run ads or do other stuff. Where do they hang out? They hang out at trade shows, they hang out at conferences, they hang out in masterminds, are in the same industry. You don't have to be a part of those to go to sell. I I joined a mastermind my first one 2016. I went to the back of the room to go spend an and an a a sick amount of money that literally made me barf to like to to the amount of money that I had to do plus the travel plus everything else. And I there with the only intention was I got to figure out how to fix my business. What ended up happening was I made some of the best friends I've ever had. I've had so I've I have clients still from that time. And I still get referrals from people from that time because I was in the room with people that had like mindset, like part now. We were all in different businesses, but we had a like mindset. And so that part of it is like be in the right place. We call it a place strategy, right? So if you're trying to grow a business of X, then put yourself in a place. I just talked to a friend of mine yesterday who's an e-commerce expert primarily in the beauty space, right? He was in an e-commerce. He's I he's You've been telling me to go to an e-commerce show. We're in a mastermind together. I said, David, you're brilliant. Your clients are making fifty million dollars. You know, you're making also money for clients, but It's just you, right? I'm like, just go to an event. He literally told me last night that he went to a show in New York City. He met old board colleagues and all the other stuff. I'm like, there you go. And then the next step was like, well, are you gonna go to a one of the things about a play strategy is going to a place that's different. So Kennedy talked about horse shows. So what do you think this what do you think is on a horse show? Tac, trucks that tow your horses around, jockeyware, like all the stuff that horses. Well Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Vendors. Bryan Durkin: There was a guy selling jewelry there. And everyone would say, Why would a jewelry guy go to a horse show? Well, if you go out and just spent $30,000 on a horse and you're you're of that mindset to spend $30,000 on a horse, your wife's gonna say, What'd you do? Why'd you buy a horse? And so instead of saying that, she he would come home and say, Hey, honey, look at this beautiful necklace I got you. Right? So it's like being in those being in the those unusual places will help you with cause a lot of people that they say they want to get new clients, but they just wanna, hey, I You know, Pete and I have a great relationship. I want you to know this people because they're helping me, they can help you. Three quarters of my clients regularly introduce me to their suppliers and their vendors. Like it's it's unusual. So I got referred to Pete from someone who was on his podcast. And not only is Vance a customer, but I'm also his customer and I operate his business. So when you have that kind of like you guys do need to really know each other, Tony talks about giving, giving is living. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Bryan Durkin: Right. And so that's why I got involved in all the stuff I did because if you give without the expectation of getting, all of a sudden you do it without recourse, you do it without expectations of anything to return, you do it genuinely. People get that, they figure that out. And I think that's really where people miss on the growth, you know. I have a client drive me nuts. They're industrial distribution in the cert geography. And I'm like, did you know there's a manufacturing association ⁓ like miles from where you live? Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Bryan Durkin: And they get together once a month to talk about stuff, you should be in that room. Even if you're not like, why wouldn't you want to hang out with other people who are all serving the same well they're compet they could be competitors, but they but they might be an acquisition partner, they might know what's going on. I'm like, I can't imagine what that is. back to that. One of the things I wrote in my book was about we called it the mafia. it was it was it was Cisco. ⁓ It was Hue it was Cisco, Sun Microsystems, and probably HUL ⁓ Sun Sun Microsystems. They were the three big guys in the dot com era. I'm dating myself. It's twenty five years ago. So you wanted to cause those guys were making money as fat because they couldn't people couldn't print money fast enough to get people because it was the dot com craze. You couldn't get online fast enough. You had to have a sun server, you had to have Cisco stuff, and you had to have ⁓ Oracle. That was the other one, Oracle. There you go. They all had to go together. I didn't work for those companies. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Bryan Durkin: So they're like, well, how does that help Brian to sell more stuff? Guess who introduced me to every one of my enterprise clients? Those guys. Why? Because I made whatever they needed to do easy. Hey, who do you know here? Who do you there? So my job was I was a connector. And so I gave and that's why, and now by the way, so I bypassed all the bullshit and got right to the CIO. Hence my little company dealing with like my little company that's me. We were in an old chicken coop in New Jersey. True story that we converted. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Bryan Durkin: So 30 years before it was full of chickens and eggs and that kind of stuff. And then we had a little data center in there and a T1 line and a backup generator, which was an old gas generator we had to pull out, right? but that's how we grew. And then so we were just an add-on and we looked at us ourselves as an add-on to what other people were already doing. And so that's kind of how I believe in how selling works simply is how do you, you know, how do you attach yourself to great tons of value? You know, value add today is like, Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Bryan Durkin: I'll sell you a protection plan on your car for too much money. That's not real value. That's just a profit. That's a profit squeeze, right? so that that's ⁓ that's kind of how I think. So did I answer your question? And I ⁓ are good because I these are different I don't get to talk about this stuff much. This is great. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, absolutely. No, but It's awesome. Yeah, a lot of good takeaways. ⁓ I love it. ⁓ networking. open up a a lot of cans of worms and we're gonna we only have a few minutes left here. I w I wanted to touch on AI. so we'll we'll try to try to be yeah, try to be I guess concise. We'll see what we can do. But I'm I'm curious, how are you leveraging AI most today, Brian? And how do you see it affecting yeah? Bryan Durkin: Yeah. ⁓ we can go for four hours. So today I think ⁓ as it relates to industrial people, right? People in industry, logistics, that stuff. I think the biggest two big takes. One is help it figure out your l help it figure out how you're planning your day, week, month, product planning, that kind of stuff. I I do that a little bit of internally, like, am I doing the right stuff? Just ask Claude, ask ChatGPT that chat question. But I think the most fundamentally ⁓ the the big the big shift is that. Everyone wants to have more voice out. They won't want to show up in chat. They want to show up in perplexity. They want to show up in claw. They don't know how to do it. There's two things that happen. One, there's a technical reason your website has to be in a certain way. The second thing, you got to talk about crap that people care about. So the AI slot that we did a year ago that says, write me an article about the the use of Muppler bearing juice in 2000. No, no, no, no, no. Have an interview with an expert, figure out how to format it, they'll turn you to all your other stuff. either you be either you be visible, like you and I are having a conversation. You're going to repurpose it for your needs, and I'm going to turn into a whole lot of takeaways for my needs. That's just what's going happen. But in but a lot of times in these weird technical engineering-specific places, they don't want to, they're too afraid to have their voice out. What if I don't look good? I need to lose 10 pounds. I don't feel comfortable on camera. So we figured out how to take all the stuff they've created and create what we call an invisible authority. So there becomes this unseen voice behind the business that talks about all the things that are happening in their industry. ⁓ And the conversation their techs are having with their customers, the service people are doing, the sales people are doing, and all of a sudden it creates this regular content engine. That's truly the conversations that are happening. Robert Collier talked about you need to be having the conversations that are going on in your customers' mind. But everyone's like, well, what does that mean? You know, you you it's seven things that before it was the seven things that ask about your b before buying a BMW. Now it's like, Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Bryan Durkin: You want to talk about someone about the beauty of what it owns to what it's like to be in BMW, what it feels like to get behind the seat, what it feels like to have your sides snugged in, you go around the corner, the rust of the adrenaline, the sound of it, and then get out of it as soon as your lease is over, because they'll kill you with all their maintenance, but you know, other stuff. But now all of a sudden that voice becomes different. And so you can use your actual words and your actual tonation and your other stuff, and then create structured stuff so that the machines find you and then they come and listen to the podcast. That That and your social posts and all the other stuff, that has been fundamentally changing so Contrary purpose has been around for a while. So we created this thing called we call it invisible authority because it's what every business wants to get more clients. What we want as authority is when they go and type your name, you're the first person that comes up. So you guys that are listed, this will finish on this story. If you go to ChatGPT and type in Brian Durkin, Brian with a Y, the first guy's gonna come up with Brian Durkin, who was the Who was the chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange up until three or four years ago, he retired. The reason why I knew that, I was always very active on LinkedIn. So anytime something would happen in the markets, looked on my LinkedIn, they were journalists, whatever stuff. So I started publishing a lot about my journey in B2B and other stuff. So now if you go to ChatGPT and say, no, no, no, the B2B guy. And then all of a sudden it'll give you this big on thing about Brian, the B2B guy. And that's what I'm known as, is the B2B guy. It'll tell you his influences, it'll tell you where I come from, it'll tell you do something every day. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Bryan Durkin: Version one is better than version none. Like just like so it's very interesting how it does that. So in every industry, you want that it's gonna happen, right? Just two weeks ago, three weeks ago, Google on the top of your Google search, it says AI first, right? So there's gonna be some blurb there. You show up there. There's some technical reasons what you have to do, but if you're not producing the right content talking to your customer, it's just not gonna happen, right? Because in B2B, Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm-hmm. Bryan Durkin: Ads are tough to work, right? That's why outreach still works. People s we still have cold callers. We do cold stuff. It still works. That's why people still do it. That's why you get those stupid spam messages because someone must respond to those dumbass spam messages we all get 50 times a day. Cause it must work. Someone must reply because they do that. But the first thing they do is they go go Google it. So when I get those pitches, the first thing I do is I go pull up their I click up the date domain, do a DNS lookup. If it doesn't show anything, there's no chance I'm even opening the email. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Bryan Durkin: Right. So if if their name doesn't show up anywhere, I'm not they're not that's it's not gonna respond. So your name needs to show up when they when they do it. We talked w five years ago about Googling. That's why people wanted you to write books. Because when they Googled you, your book was great because Amazon's great, LinkedIn's great about publishing your stuff on their sites. But now you wanna you want that's that's their media, not yours. You wanna drive your website because you own it. So that's the big thing with AI. Like you gotta show up, you gotta figure out how to do it. There's only one thing you can do to show up in AI. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: My bit. Bryan Durkin: Produce consistent content that's relevant to your audience. The weirder the niche, the better you are. So if you are, you know, a specialist the spotted owl mating habits in and you write all about that and you want people that are interested in spotted owls to find you, now you can do that. You have there's some certain things you have to do from a format to do that. But you're gonna do, you're gonna do great. So Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Awesome. Great advice. Okay, la last question. If you could pick one practical tip for small business owners wanting to build a business that will eventually run without them, what would it be? Bryan Durkin: I would say say thank you w every single day. Find someone to say thank you to every single day. A past customer, a past employee, a friend, someone who you someone who helped your kids, who helped your family, your faith, whatever it is, say thank you for being you. That's the one thing you can do is just say thank you. and it. And I think that if you do that, it will it will bleed into so many other things. It will make you feel good. And when people feel good about themselves, their businesses feel good about their customers. The team gets it. So I would say thank you is probably the number one thing you could do. And it doesn't require any skill. It doesn't require a ton of discipline. It just needs just you just need to say thank you. Even if it's a text message, which I kind of sucks, a handwritten card is better. But hey, I saw you I was thinking of you. I want to thank you for our time together, whatever. Come up with something that's interesting, but be genuine and mean it. I think that's the best thing. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Well a good takeaways, say Brian. Thank you so much for pouring into this show. ⁓ where can where can listeners find if they enjoyed this as much as I I have? With your book, your website. Bryan Durkin: So the best thing to do is on Amazon look for Brian Durkin, stuck on first book. I'll have Pete put it into the show notes. And the other thing, we are launching a new program called the MVP Authority Hub. Just go to MVP authority hub dot com and then start to understand what it's like to be your own version of an authority, how you can do it and have fun, and there'll be all these all this craziness that we talked about probably in a lot more detail. There might even be a book. I don't know. I haven't I haven't decided yet, but there'll be something along the lines of it. But I I I certainly hope it can help and I wanted to thank you, Pete, for having me on today. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Absolutely. Have a great day, Brian. Loved having this conversation today. Bryan Durkin: All right, thanks.