It was the end of August 2020 and I’d had one hell of a summer. In March 2020 my marketing agency shrank by 25% in one week, when our clients in hospitality, events and travel were forced to close their doors during the pandemic. My team responded by pulling together in a big way. Together, we had spent the UK’s first lockdown not only building back to our pre-pandemic size, but growing by a further 20%.
In one of my favourite business books, ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things’, Ben Horowitz introduces the concept of a wartime CEO compared to a peacetime CEO. The wartime CEO relishes rolling up their sleeves and figuring out how to thrive in a crisis. The peacetime CEO hates it. They want everything to go back to normal and stay that way.
Secretly, I had enjoyed the chaos. I loved hearing the team’s ideas of how we could pivot and watching them excitedly try them out. I loved having to be resourceful. I liked beating the odds, especially when they were stacked against businesses with clients like ours. I loved the celebration when we pulled it off.
Off the back of our growth, we were in a strong position, and I found myself at a crossroads with a decision to make. Do we take this momentum and grow even more, using our newfound confidence to reach the next level? Or do I duck out now, pass the baton and find a new challenge?
I really wasn’t sure. While turning around a sinking ship had been my jam, I wasn’t sure I’d be as excited about it the next time.
Finding the question
For every answer you seek, there’s a question that retrieves it. I had to find the question. The question that would help me find the answer to whether I should sell my business. I found it:
“If I was starting from scratch today, is this the business I would start?”
I was 22 when I started the agency. Fresh out of university, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Excited about meeting clients and networking and solving brand-new problems that popped up. Agency life back then was awesome and it felt like a game. Agency life now didn’t have quite the appeal. The answer was no.
Nine years on, my role had changed, and I’d slowly transitioned myself out of every department. My account management team looked after clients. My sales team looked after prospects. My head of client services transitioned prospects to clients and steered the ship. I didn’t run the team meetings, I didn’t answer the phone, I didn’t do much because they were so capable.
For some people, this is the dream. A business that runs without you, that you can leave alone and trust will grow. A cash cow of the best kind, leaving you free to pursue other things. I knew I wanted to sell my business, but not so I could do nothing. I wanted to start a new business. My current one represented a past version of me.
Finding the intention to sell
With intention, everything seems simple. I wrote myself a pretend cheque and visualised it coming to fruition. I asked entrepreneur friends for introductions; I found a broker. I prepared my agency for sale with a PowerPoint presentation, just like one we made for pitches. I practised my answers to questions
I knew buyers would ask. The broker said a sale would take six months and it took six months and two days. After a whirlwind of meetings, offers, negotiation and due diligence, the company I’d outgrown was free to flourish without me and I was free to find a new venture.
It started with a hunch that something wasn’t quite right. It ended with a deal that was exactly what I had envisaged. In the middle was a simple question: “If I was starting from scratch today, is this the business I would start?”
No matter what obligations you have, you always have choices. No matter how trapped you feel by your company or your commitments right now, you can set an intention and watch everything change.
Don’t continue living the life or business you know you have outgrown. Make today the day that you start down a new path.
Jodie Cook is the founder of Coachvox AI.
Listen to Cook explain how her company creates “artificially intelligent” versions of coaches and mentors on the UKTN Podcast.
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