How To Scale Your Business & Prepare A Profitable Exit with Niels Siskens

Struggling to break free from the daily operations of your agency and elevate your leadership game? You're not alone. In this episode, I sit down with Niels Siskens, CEO of ParroLabs, to uncover how you can build a business that runs smoothly without your constant involvement and prepares you for a profitable exit.

Niels and I delve into the secrets of scaling your business by empowering your team and delegating responsibilities effectively. You'll learn how creating structured processes and specializing can enhance your company's value, setting you up for success whether you're considering a sale or aiming for passive income.

We discuss the real-world implications of selling your agency, including earn-outs where your payout depends on future performance, and the strategic advantages of holding onto a profitable business. By investing in your team and reducing turnover, you can build a loyal and high-performing workforce ready for the next chapter.

Don’t miss these actionable insights that can transform how you run your agency and prepare you for a successful exit. Tune in to discover how to make your business work for you and set yourself up for long-term success.

Connect with Niels Siskens on LinkedIn for expert insights on scaling your business and planning a profitable exit. Reach out to get personalized advice and practical tips directly from an industry leader.

Books Mentioned:

• What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith
  
  
• Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You by John Warrillow 
  
  

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Don’t wait until December to address your challenges. There's a few months left in 2024, now is the time to plan for a strong finish! Book a free strategy call with Dr. William Attaway to create a plan for impactful results. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Niels Siskens
• 2:47 The Importance of Planning for an Exit Strategy
• 4:02 Factors to Consider When Selling a Business
• 9:49 The Need for Specialization in Agency Businesses
• 12:10 Transitioning from a Micro-Manager to a Leader
• 17:41 Investing in Your Team for Long-Term Success
• 19:50 Next Steps for Agency Owners
• 23:04 Considering Exit or Acquisition
• 30:10 Leveling Up Leadership Skills
• 36:38 Setting a Timeline and Achieving Goals

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

I'm excited today to have Niels Siskins on the podcast. As the CEO of Parro Labs, Niels empowers businesses of all sizes with near-shore tech and creative solutions, delivering Latin America's top tech talent to their doorstep the near shore industry. He has built a strong network of seasoned engineers, designers and virtual assistants who are proficient in the latest technologies and frameworks. He also hosts the Tilt Show, a dynamic podcast that bridges North American and Latin American tech experts, offering invaluable insights for anyone aiming to initiate or expand their tech business in the region. Through this platform, he promotes and contributes to the evolution of the Latin American tech landscape, showcasing the opportunities, challenges and innovations that shape it. His mission To connect, inspire and enable tech success across the Americas. Niels, I'm so glad you're here today.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:07

Thanks for being on the show.

Niels Siskens: 1:08

Thanks for having me, William.

Intro / Outro: 1:12

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:30

Niels, I would love for you to share a little bit about your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Niels Siskens: 1:40

That's very interesting. I'm originally from Holland, but I've lived places. I've lived in Canada, the US, costa Rica and Spain and about 10 years ago I came to Colombia and I loved it. So I've been here ever since, agency as a near shore. We, you know, supply balance specifically to North America, like that's us and Canada. So I've been doing that for the last nearly 10 years now. So, yeah, it's approaching 10 years. In terms of leadership, it's very different here. It's more hierarchical than you would find it in, in, specifically, europe and the us. Like, uh. The us is very flat in terms of like, uh, technology companies are very flat organizations everybody would call you by their first name, but here it was still a little bit more traditional. It's. It's changed since then, so, especially with the north american influence. But, yeah, when I came here, people really saw you as a, you know, as a, as a god almost. But yeah, I, I wanted to change that culture from the get-go because I like it.

Niels Siskens: 2:59

What america way better.

Dr. William Attaway: 3:02

you know, you, you and I have talked previously about a number of things dealing with the agency world and a lot of the people listening to this. They're entrepreneurs, they're digital marketing agency owners, they're business leaders of a lot of different stripes. And one thing that a lot of people are thinking about when they start a business or as they begin to grow and scale, it is what does the exit look like? What does it look like at some point to hand this thing off, to sell it, and that is not something that I believe anybody is born knowing how to do.

Dr. William Attaway: 3:36

You have to figure it out, you have to get wise counsel. I watched my grandfather start a business back in the 1960s and he grew it and sold it in the 1980s right, and the exit allowed he and my grandmother to live for the rest of their lives based on that recurring income from that sale. That's kind of the entrepreneurial dream and I know a lot of the people listening have that in mind too. They want at some point to be able to exit, whether it's through an acquisition, a sale, however it is. You do a lot with this and I would love for you to talk a little bit about what does it look like? If that's your goal, what are some of the things you need to be thinking about that you need to keep in mind?

Niels Siskens: 4:19

So, william, I would correct you there because I think actually not a lot of people think about it. I think a lot of people dream about it to sell their company what a good difference what that's a major difference I think most people just you know, when they start an agency, the issue that they have is, you know they, they get barked in some kind of job. I've been there as well, and it's usually not a fun job and more often than not, it's not a very high paid job it might turn into a high paid job at some point, but to sell your company.

Niels Siskens: 4:54

Nobody's gonna pay for a company where they can make a hundred thousand dollars, right, they're not gonna pay a lot of money for it because you can you know, you can apply at any job make the same amount of money and you don't actually have to pay any money for it, right? So companies usually, when they sell for anything at all, I mean they usually have an owner that's not very hands-on, that's sort of, you know, having a yacht somewhere or is, you know, lives in Thailand or whatever, enjoys life and his team operates it, right? So it's, you know, it's not that if you have an agency it automatically turns into something that's worth something to somebody, right? So where people dream about, they dream about like, okay, hey, you know, I'm building this thing and I hope one day to get, you know, a million, two, three, five million dollars for it. But that doesn't work like that. You have to really have all the processes worked out and it needs to pretty much operate for, you know, multiple years without you being there physically right.

Dr. William Attaway: 6:05

So, that is the that's so wise. I like that distinction between a dream and a plan.

Niels Siskens: 6:11

Exactly, yeah. So I always tell people this. It's like, look, let's say you're 20 years, you mentioned 20 years down the line for your grandfather, right, and that's kind of normal because it takes time to work out the market, to get market, product, market fit. And then, yeah, I mean, if you're 20 years, I'm 42 right now, so 20 years be like early retirement. Um, like you know, let's say you have a yacht, which also a lot of people dream about, right, it could be a sailing yacht, any yacht. And like, let's say, you have, you know, two owners that talk to each other, right? And the first one says, look, I sold my business. Or look, sorry, I, I have my business, it operates itself, right, and I, that's why I could buy the yacht and I'm here and I can, you know pretty much, and I have Starlink and once a week I check in with the team. And the second owner has the same yacht, but he has to be with his team five days a week and he can only use the yacht two days a week, right? So which owner do you want to be, right, and at the end of the day, both have the same yacht. Let's assume it's the same thing, right? Yeah, and then if you're in the Yacht Club bar, which business are you going to buy, right? Not the one where you have to be there five days a week because you already have the money, so you don't really want to start doing the work on the one that doesn't require a lot of work, right?

Niels Siskens: 7:47

So I mean, as you mentioned, where I I come in, where I help, a lot of owners is think about okay, look, you have this team of developers, right? You build it from scratch. Um, let's say you have five developers where we help them out. It's like we coach them and then we take some of those developers skills. We take them near shore, where it's a lot cheaper. So in the end of the day their bottom line goes up and also in five, ten years, their multiple goes up by a lot. So let's say, you know, in case of 10 people, usually a developer in the us makes anywhere from 100100,000, $150,000, sometimes cheaper. But that's about what? Ina, good city, new York, atlanta, those are salaries that are being paid Near shore. Although it's gone up, it's still a lot cheaper. And so let's say, you make 30%, 50% on that. That's a serious amount of money and that multiplies if you sell it right, the multiple uses, but anywhere between four and a half if you're on the low end, to like 10 if you get super lucky, right, so yeah.

Niels Siskens: 8:53

So that's sort of what I coach people on is, like, look, you have this operation and some of your text out is really good. Some is a a little not right. Let's look at them and see how we can sort of come in there, right, yeah. So that's a little bit where a lot of I would say, marketing agency and also tech agencies they go off a little bit right. So if you have the operation for tech really structured out, it brings you to usually needing to work a lot less. That is what we worked out and including ParroLabs, because we're not, you know, a 2000 head agency either, which is like a really big one. We also have our speciality right. So you need, like, a marketing agency needs to look at what are we really good at right? So that's the other thing a lot of people want to do everything. So if you sell everything to everybody, cut out some things, because there's usually things that are you're you're probably better like somebody else is better at right, so right, so yeah.

Dr. William Attaway: 10:04

You know, when somebody is at the center of the spotter web and everything connects to them as the owner, every decision has to come to their desk. You know everybody's constantly asking hey, what about? What about? What about? What about? When they talk to you? They come to you, they're like hey, I'm thinking about an exit, I'd like to start talking about that. And they're at the center of the spider web still. No matter how old the agency is, everything's got to be run by them. Where do you start with them? As you're talking with them, where do you begin?

Niels Siskens: 10:36

Yeah. So I mean, I've been there, done that right. I mean, I would say I don't have a specific name for people like that, but there is quite a few, not only agency owners, but I would say business owners that are like that. They're the micromanagers that started their business right, and I would always you know, I'm always thinking like as the big, you know entrepreneur says, like look, you got to hand it over to other people and allow them to make mistakes, and that's the hardest thing, because those mistakes usually cost you a lot of money right, I mean, it could be that I don't know like. I mean, a specific example that I can come up with is that you know the the first assistant I hired in Colombia. She didn't know what a formatting a hard drive meant. So she, and if you go from a Windows computer to a Mac, the Mac will ask you to format the hard drive to use it. So, long story short, we lost a lot of data that day, basically because of a format of hardware.

Niels Siskens: 11:46

Luckily, we had a backup, but that was the first employee we had on the first day and then since then, that's an example that I still have, sort of right, and I admire the person because he grew a lot with us being here, because you grew a lot with us being here. But I mean, since then I've gone through many, many things where you sometimes get a little bit allergies from other people making mistakes, but that's the only way to build a team, build a company, and if everything has to go to you, you will always stay a small organization. So I would say, you know, take some whiskeys at night, think about what went wrong that day and allow people to overthink it basically, or to redo it.

Dr. William Attaway: 12:36

If people are at the center of the spotter web, everything connects to them. What I'll often tell them is that when they start thinking about selling their business, you can't. You have to sell yourself, because the business is you.

Niels Siskens: 12:50

Yeah, so, and if anyone who's gonna buy your agency, they're gonna talk to your employees and if they all the time here, know william needs to approve this or will ask william, they soon know, oh, it's that kind of agency where we have to have William on board Because otherwise our entire organization crash. Right so, and you know, a better answer for somebody buying is that no, I have the guidelines right here, it's our SOP. Yes, we have a process in Jira ClickUp. Whatever you're using, it's not perfect, but it gives me enough guidance to do it. Right?

Niels Siskens: 13:33

So the last couple of years, also in Parro Labs, we've been starting to work on that a lot, basically, and that is very important. And you should basically make sure you're out of the operation as much as possible. You're the face of the agency. You need to go to clients, reel them in, sell them, basically, and that's basically the last thing you need to do, like set up the sales process and also outsource that somebody, and then you're there pretty much. Right, yeah, if the agency is willing, it's not worth a lot to anyone else.

Dr. William Attaway: 14:08

That's right, exactly. You know this is. This is difficult, I think, for a lot of entrepreneurs and agency owners to grab onto, because they started it this way. They've been doing it this way the whole time. What do you mean? I have to change. What do you mean? I can't lead it the same way I've been leading it. I got it this far. And what I often tell them is you can't lead a seven-figure agency the same way you led a six-figure one, and you can't lead an eight-figure agency the way you led a seven-figure one. Can't do it. And if you're getting ready to sell, you've got to understand this thing has to be running without you just like you're saying no-transcript. They think they know better. They think, oh well, I'll get to that. I'll get to that, but right now I've got to be the one doing it. Nobody can do it like me. Nobody can do it as well as I can.

Niels Siskens: 15:03

You ever hear this probably listens to this when I send it to him. But he owns a hotel with a restaurant and he still spends about you know three, four hours a day to do shopping for his hotel because he believes nobody does twice vegetables as well as he do. He doesn't trust the delivery service because they don't select the right. You know tomatoes and that is you know. He's been trained that a chef buys his own ingredients and to an extent it will lead to a better project or product.

Niels Siskens: 15:45

But in the end of the day you gotta let that go because you're spending three hours a day to buy tomatoes and you know olives and whatever goes in your. You know your recipes, but you gotta hand that over at some point, right? And and yes, of course you will get bad tomatoes one day, but then the next day they'll be better and you just tell the guy who brought the bad tomatoes not to never come again. Basically, right, that is like how you get the better tomato. So, yeah, I mean it's hard for anyone not just agency owners to hand over, to let go of control, and the ones who let too much control that's the other side basically have no control and that is also not good. It's a mixture of both.

Dr. William Attaway: 16:35

It's true, I had a mentor tell me years ago that if somebody else can do something 80% as well as you can, you have to delegate it to them. And man, I pushed back on that. When I first heard it I was like 80%, that's not very good. They should be able to do it 98%, 99% as well, before I hand it off.

Dr. William Attaway: 16:54

But boy, what a trap that is.

Niels Siskens: 16:57

Yeah, and that's the trap. And then, when you're at 95%, they will leave.

Dr. William Attaway: 17:03

That's right, exactly, that's usually what happens as well.

Niels Siskens: 17:06

So you almost train them and they decide you know, yeah, I mean, I've had that happen to me as well and they decide you know.

Dr. William Attaway: 17:14

So yeah, as you pour more into your team, though, as you invest in them and give them more not just responsibility, but you also give them authority and you delegate both of those things to your team what I find is that when they feel invested in, they lean in and they're far less likely to run down the street to another company. Likely to run down the street to another company. They're far less likely to go do something else, because when somebody feels invested in, they feel known and they feel seen and they feel heard.

Dr. William Attaway: 17:42

And that is so important when you're leading other people. But it has to start with you saying, hey, you know what? I trust you enough to hand this to you and not stand over your shoulder the whole time while you do it. And, boy, this is something I coach so many of my clients on, because they struggle so much with it.

Niels Siskens: 18:01

True, True. I mean, everybody has that right.

Niels Siskens: 18:04

Yeah, that's right.

Niels Siskens: 18:05

I was in a leadership coaching years ago when I was still in Holland at Heineken, yeah, and we were given a set of cards and I still have those cards not here at my desk, but they're in my office and one of which was people empowerment and so also big companies they struggle with.

Niels Siskens: 18:27

It's basically people empowerment, but when they do well, they do so much better. Basically, yeah, right, and I worked in procurement consulting for a long time and that's all about like you know, which products do you sort of like centralize in purchasing and how do you distribute those products? So let's imagine, like everybody works from home yeah, at least a little bit still right. And in COVID everybody worked from home. Yeah, at least a little bit still right. And in COVID everybody worked from home.

Niels Siskens: 18:56

Let's say, a large organization like Heineken did not have an expense policy, so they would need to send out anything small. Let's say somebody's mouse broke, so then somebody would need to go to the office to get a mouse. Right To the office, get the mouse. That's frustrating for everybody. If you just have a mouse right to the office, get the mouse. That's frustrating for everybody. If you just have a policy okay, hey, if your mouse breaks, this is what it needs to. Like.

Niels Siskens: 19:23

These are the models that we suggest, sort of If you want another mouse that's more expensive, you have to pay the difference, whatever, something like that, and that saves. In the end that saves a lot of money. But for agency owners that also gives people more power. Some people want to have a. You know, I don't even know what mouse costs, but you know, some people have very specific wishes about mouses. Some people have economic issues or are afraid for economic issues and they don't care spending 20 bucks more on a different mouse. Economic issues and they don't care spending 20 bucks more on a different mouse.

Niels Siskens: 20:01

Um, yeah, so I mean for agency owners to have control about everything there. We, we, we send out mouses to everybody. That's maybe not the best example, but if they break, I mean I don't care if they go to a shop, get a new one. Yeah, um, yeah, so it's like it's a okay, hey, do you really care about those things? For somebody who, you know, has a lot of experience, it can be dangerizing, like to be that person that you described, william, 100%.

Dr. William Attaway: 20:28

So let's say, somebody's listening, they own an agency, they started it and they're in a good spot. They have removed themselves from day-to-day fulfillment. Right, they may still be a part of acquisition and sales maybe a bit, but really they've removed themselves from most of the day-to-day and they just have to occasionally check in with the team, provide some leadership, some high-level stuff, but they're really doing what only they can do and they're letting and hiring other people to do everything else. Say, they're in that good spot and they want to start thinking about either exit or acquisition. What's their next step?

Niels Siskens: 22:37

Okay. So the decision that everybody has to make. I mean I have friends who sold their agency for a good chunk of money, so they're happily living the life. I mean I have friends who sold their agency for a good chunk of money, so they're happily living the life. But they also tell me that on a day-to-day basis they still think about their team, they still think about their operation. It was their life. It's sort of the same feeling as a soccer player who retires at 39, thinks about still being on the field.

Niels Siskens: 23:09

So really think about, okay, if you were to sell it, what's next?

Niels Siskens: 23:10

You know, are you coaching others, are you gonna be an investor? Are you gonna be? And more often than not, you will have what's called an earn out. So it's not like somebody thinks, okay, hey, this agency is worth, let's say, 10 million dollars because they really do well, no, it's usually, more often than not, it's like, okay, you will have an earn out, which means your performance or the, actually the performance of the, the exit will depend on the performance of the company in the next couple of years.

Niels Siskens: 23:41

Right, so it basically means effectively, that you will get a portion of that, let's say 30, which is still good money but then, effectively, for a few years, you'll be working for somebody else, right, for the most part and not everybody is suited for that it will mean, like you might have to go with, you know, let's say, heineken were to buy your agency, right, you would have to go with their expense policy.

Niels Siskens: 24:07

You would have to stay in the hotel that heineken has a contract with. You're not as free as you are today. So really think about like, okay, if I'm gonna do an earn out and I really you know how sick of my team am I right? Right, do I just need to go, like you know, the Himalayas for six months? Or do I need? You know, like, because the money you will get for your agency, if it's like a 10x, of course it's 10 years of earnings, which is fantastic, right, but I mean, if you hold on to it after 10 years and let's assume it was flat and not decreasing, um, you would still hold on to your agency, right, that doesn't go forever, because life doesn't last forever sure but what you sell is definite, right?

Niels Siskens: 24:55

so, of course, if you, if you get a really good offer I mean, it's usually a good thing right now. The other thing you might want to think about is, like, if you're good at, let's say, google ads, right, you have built an agency. That's fantastic in that, what are some of the additional skills you might want to invest in? So google ads always need a good web developer, right? So what is a good web development agency or sector? You might want to either partner up with them or do some acquisition in that field or build an entire new team around that, right?

Niels Siskens: 25:33

So myself, in my case, parallel Apps is fairly running itself. I have a great manager in place. I'm still there, I mean, but it's more because I want to and I'm still in the process of like, building a little bit, but it doesn't cost me the full time. So we, we build a new team which is called no code bandits, which is web flow and, yeah, primarily web flow, but it's like no code integrations and no code websites, where we think we can help a lot of people Right and and and to. Just I build it in a very small team and it's just given me a little bit of passion. So it's more like okay, I guess if you're 42, it's different than if you're 62, right At 62, you think, okay, I don't really want to spend more time in management meetings.

Niels Siskens: 26:20

But really the first step is think about okay, if you sell, it's definite and nobody is going to give you a check, just in case, it's very rare, like it's, it's not going to happen. And the other thing is, even though you know you might want to hold on to it, like if you're, if your stocks are still, if you still generate income, right, why sell if you don't have to do anything? Everybody's dream, right, people actually buy houses to gain passive income, right, they want to get the rent. So if you I mean right now, the houses are extremely expensive also because of that reason. But if you hold on to your agency, you can still get, you know, passive, almost almost passive income. It might not be a bad thing to hold onto it at some point.

Niels Siskens: 27:08

Now. The other thing is, if you find, let's say, five other agencies that want to sell and they all have complementary skills, it might be a good idea that you find some sort of way where one operator operates the entire team, all the agencies, basically and that you sell together, because bigger means a higher multiple supplier and it's better. It's a different market. Agencies who are making $20 million a year sell for a different price than the ones that sell for $2 million. It's just a fact, right. So there's opportunities there as well.

Dr. William Attaway: 27:47

So many good things to think about there, and this is where it really benefits to have a conversation with you, because you have a lot of experience dealing with this and helping people navigate. Is this something I really want to do? You're asking different questions and you're really diving deep to help people and business owners to understand hey, is this really where I want to go? What's this going to mean for me? What's it going to mean for my team? What's next? What's the next chapter look like? These are all fantastic questions that I'm afraid too many people don't ask and you'll never get the right answers unless you ask the right questions. This is where your expertise shines and, neil, I really want to encourage any of the agency owners or business owners who are listening to have a conversation with you, because I think you're you're able to ask the questions that maybe nobody else is going to ask them, that maybe nobody else is going to ask them.

Niels Siskens: 28:44

Yeah, that's certainly. I mean, I'm certainly open to you know, to talk to. You know your clients as your coach. Also, you know other people that are listening to this podcast. Yeah, where we shine is, like you know, as I said, it's like optimize their IT, their operations there. Yeah, you know their web and mobile development. That is where we shine. But, yeah, certainly it's always good to talk to people and think about like, hey, how should they bring in their you know, how should they think about the future? Right, and that's where we've been doing helping a lot of agency owners. Today I spoke also with an agency owner in Canada, coincidental and they're in the same sort of spot Like, hey, what's next for us? What are we going to focus on?

Dr. William Attaway: 29:38

I want to talk about you for just a minute, niels. You know your team, your company, is going to need you to lead at a higher level a year from now, three years from now, five years from now, than where you're leading today. What are you doing to intentionally stay on top of your game? What are you doing to level up with the new leadership skills that your team and your business are going to need you to have?

Niels Siskens: 30:04

Yeah. So I mean that's interesting. That's a very interesting question because I know exactly where you're coming from. So when I started ParroLabs like in the beginning, I was still setting up servers and configuring them, and I'm not the best. It's called a DevOps. I'm not the best, you know cloud engineer DevOps, but I can do it right, and you know, and that's not something that a CEO of a larger agency would typically do they would talk to lawyers, investors, things like that, right. So that's a different skill set, right? So now, the days that I was configuring servers at night, and those were very stressful as well. So it's like everything has an advantage and disadvantage, but I think what you need to do is ask you on a not maybe daily basis, but on a quarterly basis, make a plan for the quarter and see if you're still the person that can lead that team to the next level. Right? That's the question I I raised. I I have.

Niels Siskens: 31:08

You know, I studied mba, uh in in spain, uh, about meanwhile, almost 15 years ago, and and none of the things what I was doing, the first let's say, five years, five years of Parro Labs had anything to do with the MBA. So the skill set that I gained in that program are valuable right now. Right, and there's a. I mean you might not have to do an entire MBA, you might want to just do some leadership course. It could be online these days or some hybrid version, but that's what I would recommend is like do you still have the skills? And, if not, you might want to consider hiring the next CEO, and there's no shame in that right. Many organizations did that right. Many people think that Elon Musk founded Tesla, but that's not the case. There were two guys before him and one of which I met years ago that actually you know, and they actually founded that company and they thought they weren't suited and somehow they got in touch with Elon and Elon has been, you know, managing that company to the next level. So no shame in that.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:17

It reminds me of something that Marshall Goldsmith writes about, when he says in his book that what got you here won't get you there.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:27

You know, there's a point at which it's wise to bring in outsiders, people from the outside who have different skills, different gifts. You know, so often founders can take a company so far, but it takes somebody else coming in to take it to a different level, because sometimes they're starters and that's a fantastic gift. That doesn't mean a starter has all the gifts it takes in order to go to a different level. And I love your illustration of Tesla. I think that's fantastic, and there are so, so many others where a founder started it, spooled it up, got it running and built an organization that could go to the next level, built the foundation, and then somebody else can come in with fresh eyes, fresh perspective and a different gift, set and skyrocket.

Niels Siskens: 33:17

Yeah, true, because think about the guy you described in the beginning, the one that is the spider in the web forever, yeah, yeah, I mean somebody else that comes in with fresh eyes likely will not want to be that person, because it's right, yeah so let's say you bring in this you know a ceo and you give him a salary and a bonus.

Niels Siskens: 33:41

He does not want to take all those decisions like you know, what color should the coffee cups be in the cafeteria, like those kind of things. Right, um and for sure that is. You know um, I've been there. I mean, everybody's been that first person, because that is that's how you sort of you know, keep control, but that's not how you go further in the future, right, so yeah, that's right.

Dr. William Attaway: 34:11

You know you're you're constantly learning. You mentioned your MBA, a very structured program to help you gain skills and develop things that you're learning that you're using today at the at the level that Parrolabs is at today? Is there a book in your journey that you're using today, at the level that Parro Labs is at today? Is there a book in your journey that you have come across that has made a really big difference for you that you would recommend to other leaders who are listening? Hey, if you haven't read this, you should check it out.

Niels Siskens: 34:34

I mean there's many that come to mind, right, I mean there's many books. If I had to pick one, I would say there's one book that was given to me last year that describes exactly what this podcast was about. It's Built to Sell. I forgot the author, actually, but it's exactly what you described as well. Like there is this spider in the web guy that does everything, sells everything to everybody, has no control over processes, and then he gets coached exactly on, like hey, okay, if you trust me, let's build a different agency right.

Niels Siskens: 35:15

I would say, like that book together with coaching has been phenomenal. Book together with coaching has been phenomenal. Um, basically, like I would say, the biggest advice I didn't give anyone is set a time on the horizon, right. Set a timeline let's say january 2027, right, where you want to be with x number of employees, right, and you want to have all your processes sorted right. And if you buy that yacht or not, but, and if you want to sell, but you should be at the point where you can sell, right. So you're at the point where, okay, if I'm at that stage, I'm that person, I'm not taking any of these decisions, I have the team in place. If that person leaves, it's not damaging the agency other than for a few weeks. We need to know on board that the next person basically we need to hire. If you're at that level, it's really really easy to you know you're in a good spot, but you gotta put pick a date, because if you leave it going, it will never pick that day it going.

Niels Siskens: 36:21

It will never break that day, you will never achieve it. It's like if you're doing any course like a bachelor, you have four years to do it. It's not like forever be able to take forever. No, there's four years. There's X number of courses With a business. There's no course material but you have certain steps. So I wouldn't say coach is is necessary, but an accountability body, like if you go to the gym, if you go with somebody, you're more likely to go. You have somebody that's holding you accountable, yeah.

Dr. William Attaway: 36:56

So good, niels. This has just been a fascinating discussion around this topic, and I know our listeners have gleaned so much from it. If they want to connect with you and I know they will and continue to learn from you, what is the best way for them to do that?

Niels Siskens: 37:15

I am very, very active on LinkedIn. That's sort of my Rolodex. That's where I am on a daily basis, so just connect with me there. I would also say we're in touch already. So if people already know you and they want to hear more about like hey, what does it mean, when should I go? I mean we can connect. Yeah, those are the methods I use most LinkedIn almost on a daily basis.

Dr. William Attaway: 37:46

Excellent, Niels. Thank you for sharing so freely and so openly today. This has been a fantastic masterclass when it comes to thinking about exits and acquisition. I appreciate your generosity today.

Niels Siskens: 38:00

Thank you very much, William.

Dr. William Attaway: 38:15

And thanks for having me, you here. I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out. My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Intro / Outro: 39:26

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