2468 - Preparing Your Service Business for Growth and a Higher-Valuation Exit with Exit 3D Studio's Muriel Touati

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, Muriel Duwitti. Muriel, you are the founder and CEO of Exit3D Studio. You are found on the web at Exit3DStudio.com. You're also the author of the book, The Valuation Gap. Muriel, it's great to have you. Yeah, great to be here, Josh. Thank you for having me. You are a French woman living in New York. And as of when we're recording this to our friends that are listening to this, well, you already know how all this worked out. But as of when we're recording this, we're kind of in the middle of things.

1:27Muriel, I know you've been watching Team France. So tell me about the World Cup so far for you. Yeah, well, it's been very exciting. I feel we're completely crushing it and like dominating the team we've been facing with like four goals, three goals and they only get a chance to make one goal at best so I'm very excited I think we can make it to the final like will we win? I don't know but I was calculating like since 1998, we are the team that statistically get the more often, you know, in the final. Like betting on France, we have more chance to win the, you know, to get to the final. Well, our friend who's listening right now knows how this all worked out.

2:30We're in mystery right now. And so who, so you've been watching all the French games, who have they played and who do they have coming up? Do you know? So the first game was against Senegal. Then they did Iraq. Senegal, I didn't watch. For some reason, I felt we were going to win, but then I watched against Iraq, Norway, and the other day against Sweden. Wow. So far, so good. France keeps moving up. That's exciting. Well, yeah, it's, you know, I really love it. You know, it's just like, you know, despite I'm going to be careful here. But, you know, despite all of what I will just refer to as silliness among those in charge and our elected officials and leaders at times, you know, it's it's like all of the I saw this.

3:27I think it was a meme, right? It's just like, it's all of the cousins are kind of getting together and just having a good time while the grownups are bickering and fighting. And the World Cup is just like, you know, a chance for the world to just kind of get together and say, you know, let's just get together and celebrate. And, you know, I'm very grateful. Also, we have the chance it's happening right here, you know, in New Jersey. I am based in New York, like in New Jersey, Philadelphia, and other cities. So we really feel the enthusiasm right here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, Muriel, tell me a little bit about the work that you do with Exit 3D Studio.

4:10I love your tagline, build a service business that runs without you. With predictable revenue. Okay, Muriel, help me out. I feel like we're doing some stuff that you're going to like. But go ahead and share with me your basic premise of when you work with companies. Sure. If I can give just a minute of background, I've been working in digital marketing for the past 10 years. And last year, I wanted to establish myself in the US, even though I moved here in 2021. And I was evaluating, should I start a new business? Should I buy one? and I decided okay I will be buying one because I heard it's a good thing to do and I joined a business buying community, learned deal making, evaluating deals, doing due diligence, all of that and at some point in December I had an offer accepted and this is where I realized okay this game it might not be for me because what they were presenting to me was not what I was going to buy so I stepped away I made my brain work and say okay what's going on why I cannot find a business to buy but for several reasons first of all most of them are highly funded dependents most of them has some sort of risky customer concentration most of them or let's say half half or 70 30 don't have any revenue predictability and some others uh don't even have some acquisition engine um that is not you know like referral or word of mouth that is again founder dependent so what exit 3d studio do we do that we have fixed those issues to create a business that run without the founder so the founder grow sorry the business grows stronger can scale and even exit at some point if that's something that the founder wants to do in the future.

6:43Yeah. Muriel, so there's so much that we could talk about here. Let me ask you one specific use case. Let's say that, because obviously there's a few things here, right? So number one is, you know, obviously we want folks coming to our front door. I mean, you could call this lead gen or just, you know, attracting, you know, folks that we could do business with. But what happens when you're working with someone and the founder says, great, I could take all the leads in the world and we have a bunch of leads, but at the end of the day, I'm the one who's still doing all of the sales calls because I just haven't been able to find someone who can sell like me.

7:25How do you fix that problem? Well, if the business don't have any lead generation problems and there there are really a lot of calls scheduled on the calendar the easiest way is to find a closer for that and be with you know with the closer on the first few even dozens of calls with that person so the closer know how to be working and converting the lead into clients um but if there are not like a tons of meeting in the calendar, then we have to work on something else first. Yeah. And so now there's more than just more than just hiring a person. So what if they, what if they don't have that person?

8:24Like, how do you, I don't know if you get involved or offer some advice, like how do we hire for that role? And this might seem like a silly question to ask, But I've talked to a lot of founders that they really struggle with this, and they're convinced that no closer can sell like they can, and they know that it would impact their cash flow if they were to outsource this, even if it freed up a little bit more time for the founder. At least that's the psychological trap that they feel like they're in. Help me break out of this. you know i'm gonna be honest with you jorge i think it's a difficult one because i've also tried multiple times to uh hire a closer and uh so i let me tell you what i've tried so i tried to post a job offer on linkedin and on indeed uh i've got some help from um like a hr you know recruiting agency was the agency was filtering the candidates for example with some you know AI call at the beginning so I could hear the person's voice there was some questions so I could already know who I wanted to interview then honestly I found I think some good profile that was interesting i ended up selecting one um and um but i think we were not aligned from his questions at some point in it was coming from uh i think he had some exit planning certification and so he came with that hat and it was maybe way too uh structured or he had way too much worry uh so i say okay that might not be a good fit and um since the business is still a bit new i pivoted my own the business that i had previously with my dean accelerator and this i'm still doing the calls right now um but i think once i have you know like figure things well, I might try again, but I will be holding the person.

10:47It will be two things. I will be with the closer with me doing the call if I have to do that. And this is what I recommend to a founder. Do it together. And once you feel confident that the closer is actually closing better than you, then let it run the calls. Muriel, what are some other things that we can do from a, you know, kind of like, you know, in the user, in the sales journey? So there's initial awareness. What are some of those elements? Like how do we invite, better invite people into our world? How can we build that relationship so that sales might be a little easier? Yeah, I think I believe in inbound more than called outreach.

11:47And to build, you know, some inbound pipeline of leads, you have to be showing up, you know, like online, create content. um i use linkedin a lot that's really where my expertise mainly is there so i would say send the right connection request um to have the right people in your network and um yeah share some expertise but something that i've learned um a bit too late but now i know it It's not about just teaching. It's not creating content about teaching a person how to do something. That's not the way of creating content. And I'm very guilty of that because for a long time I was just teaching.

12:46yeah uh muriel tell me about your book the valuation gap um that's available at your website exit3dstudio.com and of course it's available everywhere but um tell me about um who should be reading this book yes so first of all it's i have my review copy right here so So I will say service, B2B funders, you know, funder working in B2B, you know, services mainly. And I explain in the book why. Not because other funders don't need it, but because they need it more than any other ones. And I can explain you quickly.

13:41I can explain this quickly. It's because when a buyer is evaluating a service business, there is no stock. There is no machinery. There is no real estate. There is absolutely nothing that we can put a price on it. It's all about process, knowledge, client, lead generation, and the team. So it's not something that you can really touch. So it's more important than any other business for them to be reading a book like this. Not only to prepare for future exits. Yes, sure, it will be helping. but also just to run a better business that doesn't drain you. Yeah, well, I mean, that's a huge challenge.

14:42So how might the book kind of step us through getting to a much better outcome? Because I agree with you. I'm done. Sorry, I didn't understand the question. What did you ask? Well, right. So maybe what's one or two actionable ideas that our friend who's listening to us right now could do if they find themselves in that situation where they're just, you know, they're up to their eyeballs as a founder. They need to break out, but they just don't know where to start. Okay. I will, I can give two, there are many things that I can say. But I will say every situation is different. So the better way to evaluate what could be breaking in your business and it's to step away from it.

15:37A couple of days, see what happens. Does like there is no more sales happening? Does the team don't know what to do anymore? see what I start. Is it the content creation? Is it something? And so evaluate that, what was too dependent on the founder. And once you come back, but start creating, like documenting, creating SOPs for example of something that um if if you step away from the business this is not working anymore so if it's on creation for example just explain like on a document how someone else or how can you an automation maybe can be built for that uh so you can start delegating yeah um okay so your website exit3dstudio.com um what what should our friend do that's been listening to our conversation well you you can um go on the website um actually at the end of exit3dstudio.com you can add like slash the dash valuation dash gap and you can download the first chapter of the valuation gap book you know but what buyers is that sellers miss you can also connect with me on linkedin that would be nice to be in touch and uh because i'm doing quite a few podcasts at the moment i've created a new youtube channel uh and i have a playlist there with all the interview and podcast so i invite you also to check the youtube channel it's called exit 3d insights oh very cool and and that's uh that's all linked up um from your site So you just click on the YouTube icon and yep, there you are.

17:50Exit 3D Insights. Yes. Yeah. In the footer of the website, you'll find my LinkedIn and the YouTube channel, as well as the book, The Valuation Gap. Yes. Yeah. This is really cool. You've got some great content here. Revenue isn't value. The lender's trap. Valuation lovers. Exit price killers. Really, really cool stuff. All right. Muriel. Great conversation. Thank you for joining us. Your website, Exit3DStudio.com. You do have some really great ideas on your website as well. So highly recommend folks check it out and then check out your YouTube channel as well. Muriel, again, Tawadi, we'll keep watching France and the World Cup together.

18:40And to our friends that are listening, you already know how it turned out. So hopefully, Muriel had her bets placed right and cashed out. So excellent. Muriel, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Josh. It was a fun conversation.

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