Beyond 8 Figures

What if stepping back from your business didn’t mean losing control—but gaining clarity?

In this episode, I talk with Margo Crawford, founder of Business Sherpa Group, about the five-year succession plan that helped her shift from CEO to Chair—and the deep mental work it took to let go without giving up.

You’ll learn:
  • When to start planning your exit (spoiler: not when you're ready to leave)
  • How to prepare your team to lead without you
  • Why most founder burnout is rooted in back-office friction
  • How to measure success in more than revenue
If you're overwhelmed by complexity or craving more freedom, this one’s worth a listen.

🎯 Listen now + explore what's next for your business. 👉 Chat with A.J.

🔗 Resources & Guest Links:

Creators and Guests

Host
A.J. Lawrence
Serial entrepreneur with multiple exits, an angel investor, growth expert, and host of the Beyond8Figures podcast.
Guest
Margo Crawford
Founder & Chair of Business Sherpa Group

What is Beyond 8 Figures?

At Beyond 8 Figures, we believe in DELIBERATE entrepreneurship. It means creating a solid foundational framework for your entrepreneurial journey, building from a place of passion, and intentionally aligning your actions with your goals so that you can create success on your terms.

Join A.J. Lawrence, the journeyman entrepreneur with several 7 figure exits, as he shares honest conversations with successful entrepreneurs about their experiences starting and scaling businesses to $10M and beyond, the realities of being a modern-day entrepreneur, advice for practicing deliberate entrepreneurship, and more!

[Intro]

A.J. Lawrence:
Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode. I think we're going to have a lot of fun today. I have the CEO, Founder of the Business Sherpa Group, Margo Crawford, on the show today. Hello Margo.

Margo Crawford:
Hello, A.J. Nice to see you.

A.J. Lawrence:
Thank you very much for coming on. I've been going through the Business Sherpa Group and as we were just chatting before the show, I love the name and I was looking at your background and in hindsight it looks, oh, from HR, you had this, to then starting this. What was sort of the reasoning from your HR background before the Business Sherpa Group to then starting the Business Sherpa Group?

Margo Crawford:
Yeah, well, it wasn't a predictable journey, I'll tell you that. I mean, you know, there's not too many people who would have said that would be a path you would normally take. So what was interesting is while I was in HR corporately and I was in different companies, I had a real interest in all of the businesses that I worked in. I was always really curious about the actual business. So HR, my function, my piece of that business, but how it worked. And I was always very empathetic. I would say to the business owners in particular, you know, I've worked in some larger companies, but some smaller ones too. And it sort of drew me to while doing my HR, going back to school, I did my MBA because I thought, gosh, I find it fascinating just the risks that owners take. And you know, I was always gunning for them. I was just, we've got to support these people, have taken these huge risks as the employees. So it took me out, started me out on a business journey. And then actually before Business Sherpa Group back in 2000, I finished up my MBA. I was working at a school board, in fact, and I was approached by two friends who were engineers and they decided that this was before the bubble burst in 2000 in technology. So it was late 99, early 2000, and they were going to form a technology startup company. And they came to me and said, I want you to do it with us. And I said, okay. And I quit my job like they spoke to me on the Monday or sorry, on the weekend and I quit my job on Monday and said I'm in. And it was promised financing. It wasn't closed financing. We had a product concept, not a product, not even a product idea. We didn't have a name, a location or anything. But I was just two feet jump in because I thought this is what I really find fascinating. Anyway, that was the start of that, an eight year journey with that company was called Meriton Networks. And we were in hardware, hardware and software. Were in the telecom space. So we had to do a lot of financing. I had to raise like 75 million in financing and my job at that time was setting up the company from legal formation to the physical setup to building the team, setting up the systems and tools and so on. And of course taking on every single hat you could imagine from like, I mean I was negotiating sales contract, I was doing customer support, overseeing the manufacturing, getting the lab set up plus HR. And it was really that what are all those business activities that happen while the engineers were trying to develop a product and get it out and get it to market? Anyway, that just continued was a great, great experience. Other than everything collapsed, you know, like a few months later, everything, the floor fell out. But it forced us actually at that point to be really, really smart about business decisions and thinking about, you know, we had ever evolving financing rounds with basically running out of money over time and you know, what do we have to do to get to the next milestone or fundable event. And I just love the challenge of it. We bought a technology company in New Jersey, we bought a technology company in Germany. We set up a development shop in Shanghai. And for me, I was in the front of all of those activities, like in terms of mechanics of it and getting it done and closing it and then dealing with post stuff. It was gold, just gold experience. But it was so hard. Anyway, we sold the company in 2008. So we lasted and I was there right from formation to sale and through that crazy nutty journey. And really that was the impetus for me forming Business Sherpa Group because I lived the experience of being small and punching above our weight, having limited resources, so limited choices or options in the really important decisions we had to make. And you know, I really thought it was great management muscle building, you know, where you really had to think sharply about that. And I sort of recognized the problem. I said, well this exists with this problem, which is you have to have someone with their attention on these sort of back office. These other core business activities while the owners or others in the business need to do their important work, which is, you know, building a product or building a service and getting it to market and trying to increase sales, but never really needing it full time. Because in my case I had 30 different hats and any one of those roles, it would be ages before we needed a full time function and Business Sherpa Group, in my mind was that, okay, that's where there really needs to be some support. Finding it in fractional ways to be able to go into these SMEs and provide that support. And obviously my background in HR, it started in HR and I had a lot of pedigree and background and experience saying, okay, I can provide that support. Although I will say right out of the gate, A.J., I was never thinking about being on my own and doing this because I also felt that having one person and you're relying on one person, and these companies are relying on one person to deliver that thing. That creates fragility in the system. If it's not just me, but I've got others, then that stabilizes the solution for the customer. And also I just wanted to be part of the team too. But it started out that way and I was really servicing the companies on the HR side with the vision that we could tackle a lot of the different business functions, finance, recruitment, IT marketing and so on, and try to sort of feature those pieces into those businesses. Yeah. So I formed it there at that point in time thinking, okay, there's people I know who want to work this way.

But in 2008, it was honestly really early for that business model. People weren't getting that idea that you could hire someone part time and share them with another business. No way.

A.J. Lawrence:
2009, I remember looking for a fractional CFO was almost impossible. There was like one or two franchises doing it and they were so old school about everything. And then it was just like, why do you need that? Just hire one. I'm like, but we don't have the business. So I could see the chicken and egg wasn't there.

Margo Crawford:
It was totally chicken and egg. So it was really evangelizing on the model a lot in those early days, but some getting it. And then really over the space of the last 15 years, it's become, as you know, for a lot of SMEs, as very much a mainstay type of business model to let everybody get the focus that they need on the key activities. So, yeah, so that's how it started.

A.J. Lawrence:
That is really cool. So, all right, you come through this, you create this and obviously you've weathered that early phase of sort of creating the understanding of the value you generate. Now 15 plus years here, where are you as an entrepreneur now? The Business Sherpa Group has grown so much. You're in multiple countries, you have clients around the world. Where are you as an entrepreneur?

Margo Crawford:
Yeah, it's been really fun. So for me as an entrepreneur where I am now, so I've been like we were saying before, it's been 23 years I've been at this entrepreneurship stage and 15 years on here I am, where I am personally. I'm at the stage where I have very carefully planned and staged sort of the scaling strategy of Business Sherpa Group and that means getting in other leaders who can run the company. So I'm at a point now which is a really tough thing for owner operated and smaller businesses and something, I mean we can talk about that more. But where I'm at now is I have over a five year plan, built out a leadership team and essentially handed off the reins to them to run the business on a day to day basis. And that's now allowed me my freedom at this stage in my life and where I'm get to really decide what I want to do. I'm at a point where I don't want to work full time. I want to be able to do some other stuff, enjoy. I mean I've been at it for a long time. I still have that itch to get into things. So what I'm doing right now is I've actually said, okay, I've got the business running and now I'm operating as the chair of business and I've got a fantastic team and we are very aligned on the right things and we check in and I get the information I need to feel comfortable that things are moving forward and I'm also supporting them in the way that makes sense for them. And I am, you know, doing the things I want to do personally. Travel and other sorts of things. But then also I'm still going into some businesses and giving, going back to, I mean I hadn't done direct support of the businesses for a long time because I had to build my business. I had to move out of delivery. So I'm kind of cherry picking a few different types of situations or businesses and helping them through different parts of their scale and be an advisor to them. And I'm loving that.

A.J. Lawrence:
I think there's like three things. Let's start with that sort of five years ago when you put that plan in, what was that transition like? I hear it a lot. And as someone who had great, great difficulty in doing so, building that plan or understanding what that is, instead of just throwing some pasta against the wall and hoping it sticks to like now, what's that sort of structure that you're doing? And then let's kind of use that to then set up with the type of clients that you have and the transitions they're facing. Because what is resonating with me, as I just said, I had such difficulty going through my own transition phases when I had my business was trying to find the services that could help me through that. The advisors, the consultants. There's so much out there around how you should. But it always feels, it always feels like you're being told what to do versus an understanding of the situation you're in. But let's step back, sorry. Five years ago, you know why?

Margo Crawford:
I mean, let's face it, time doesn't stop, right? Time marches on. And so five years ago I was sort of looking at, okay, where will I be five years from now? And what do I want to be doing and what do I want the business to be doing? You know, I was not interested. To me, there was 15 years of growth. And honestly, A.J., the company's done so, so well. And I feel we've just started, even though we've scaled significantly because the market has come to us essentially and just a great team to deliver. So was all around thinking, what is the long term path for the business? What is the long term path for me and what I recognize as a single owner of the business that I have to secure all of these things. What do I need personally over the long term, but what does the business need to succeed me? And I really sort of broke it down. And it's interesting, I just actually this week met with– I digress a little bit and I'll come back to my journey– but I met with another business I've been around for 15 years. Five owners, three of them are either 60 or in their 60s and trying to figure out how they do succession. So I did this whole workshop with them on exactly this at this topic and we talked about my journey and it was just so, to your point, relatable to their situation because they just couldn't figure out how to do this in a way that made sense, that was going to protect what they had built for the purpose of the business, but also for themselves.

So I really looked at it from several dimensions. I thought, okay, one thing that everybody thinks about is just what's my liquidity? Like, what's my ownership? And that's where everybody starts and everybody thinks about that, of course. So how am I going to exit? Well, maybe someone will buy me or, you know, and then I'm thinking, well, I've got a team. That may or may not happen, I don't know. But even if that happens is it the right thing for my team, my clients? And, you know, there's a lot of question marks around that you really over rotate. I think on the liquidity, how am I going to get this out? And so on. But the reality is, no matter what you're doing, whether your liquidity is for you to either get a sale of the business or get proceeds of some sort from the business, or live off the dividends, passive income, you have to build business value. You have to be building business value. So focusing on that. So I sort of said, okay, for me to actually have some outcome on an ownership or liquidity perspective, I have to think about what is the leadership succession, what are the role successions, first of all. And that's sort of staring quite honestly at what does the business look at that time, who would be doing my job as a CEO and do I have anyone in the business and recognizing that there's a succession for leadership that has to be in place. And leadership succession is not a short journey. That is something that takes years to bring into play. You have to find someone or identify someone. You have to test and make sure that they've got the right competencies and skills, but also temperament and style. To be a leader and an entrepreneur themselves, you have to develop the relationships externally so you're ready to transfer those relationships that you might have built up over time that your business depends upon and you have to support them. And you also have to work that relationship with a leader to be prepared to hand off accountabilities and build trust that they're going to manage it well. Right? So it's a long journey, and I think it's a thing that gets overlooked a lot. Or they know that they need that, but they think they'll just find someone at the time they're ready to go and it'll all go well.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah.

Margo Crawford:
And to me, that's probably the biggest gating item. So I really sort of said, okay, well, if I'm here, if I need to be here now, what do I need to identify? And not just one role, what other roles need to be in the company and frankly, when can I afford to bring them in? Like, what's the timing of all of that? Because you don't all of a sudden have this magic bag of money that you can turn to and say, okay, I can hire all of these people.

A.J. Lawrence:
Are they revenue producing right off the bat or are they a training value?

Margo Crawford:
Yeah, yeah. And then how do you ramp them off of being revenue producing to, okay, you're managing, etc. So that was one piece that I was really looking at. I actually mapped out for myself in a future state saying, okay, well, what do I want to be doing? Do I want to be active in the business at all? And if I want to be active in the business, in what way? You know, do I want to be running the business? Like, nope, I don't want to be, but I want to maybe do a little bit of client stuff or. And I had to really spend some time mapping out that future state. What do I want to be doing personally? And then imagine there from that picture, what did I need on the leadership side? But then also, what is the business succession? Right. So what. And that's just strategic planning and business visioning. You know, where is the business going? Because that's going to morph into, okay, who do you need then to fill that out? And then the last piece was then, okay, so with all that, then what could be any sort of liquidity is, are we looking at ownership, succession, MBOs?

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah.

Margo Crawford:
You know, selling the shares internally, or is it a sale externally, etc. So yeah, it's interesting. I mapped it out in a lot of detail on all of those dimensions and I put timelines in each of the five years and said, okay, in each of these years, what key activities do I need to take care of to advance the needle? And it played out pretty much to the plan.

A.J. Lawrence:
That is really a great concept. And looking back, I'm like, oh, okay, where did you get the idea to do those things? Because I love the idea that you were in this position. You saw sort of the state you wanted to be in. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs were very good at sort of pattern recognition for where we want to get. And then we sort of just start pushing things. But I think it's that finetuning of the plan, like that strategy you put together, where did that come from? Because that's really pretty interesting and pretty unique.

Margo Crawford:
Yeah. I mean, I did create it, but I would say where that really came from is I had just spent the past 10 years working with tons of businesses and just seeing it and going, it's so obvious. And people who were too late, I mean not too late, I mean you're going to exit your business one way or the other.

A.J. Lawrence:
We all exit sometimes.

Margo Crawford:
Sometimes you go out one way or the other. But you know, sort of seeing the problems cropping up and going not well and recognizing what they haven't taken like hearing and experiencing, that's really where it came from.

A.J. Lawrence:
Okay.

Margo Crawford:
You know, working with so many businesses and just seeing them struggle with this thing. And when you're on the outside and not so emotionally attached, it's hard. When you're an owner, there's first of all, there's the day to day take care of. It's not easy. There's been a lot of stressors. So to be able to sort of get that sort of out of body experience and sort of see things from afar and having it planned, it's really hard in the business. But when you're outside the business, you can see it. So I would say I'm not sure I would have been able to come up with that for myself had I not been able to be that less invested, less emotional person in helping and seeing the issue in other businesses now.

A.J. Lawrence:
I like that. And this is what I think is sometimes very difficult to find people to work with. As an entrepreneur who've been through the reps, you need to work with people who've had not just the experience but the multiple iterations to go through a situation. And as you said, you've used that experience and this would be fun for other clients to kind of share and then help them explore their transitions. Let's talk about the type of customers that can benefit from this and sort of the mindset that they should start putting themselves in the things they can do to then work better with like a firm like Business Sherpa Group.

Margo Crawford:
So I think the type, there's really two types. I mean obviously it's a lot of the smaller owner operated businesses. It doesn't matter if it's a product business or a services business. I think that it doesn't really matter what exit they're thinking about that still is relevant. So it's really those smaller owner operated private businesses where they are the leaders, the doers. You know, they're thinking through all this stuff and trying to understand and in those cases it might be at two different phases, it might be at their tail end, but also much earlier.

A.J. Lawrence:
Okay.

Margo Crawford:
I think that when they're at the phases of starting to scale or recognizing that this is not fun anymore. It's just getting really difficult and it's probably due to some underlying issues going on that are taking up honestly a lot of time. It's people issues that just consume so much mental energy, so much time and focus that is important but so distracting from what you do. And as you're scaling that gets more and more and all of a sudden they're finding something's wrong, it's just not working. There's so many things happening and very typically and that's a real sweet spot for us. So it could be an earlier stage company. I mean we work with not for profits, we work for tech companies that are VC finance but owner operated professional services, whatever. But they're at that stage where they're recognizing something is just really making. There's just a lot of friction on the progress of the company and something's holding it back. So that's really a good sweet spot. And the way we would approach that is not going and say, oh, here's our solution, just do this. It's know what's going on and usually they'll come with some pain. Point of just, you know, I've got this problem and that's a problem. And it doesn't take much to scratch beneath the surface to sort of say you've got a scaling problem. Right. And it's typical. And the fact is that the way you're organized can't support your current level of revenue or service and it'll never support the next level. So you're just hitting a point that's a pivotal point in the journey and then how you address it might be okay, yeah, we can come in and help on these areas. Take this off your plate and own this and be a partner to you in terms of, you know, HR finance are the big ones in recruitment and you know, you can start building it out. That's more the how and we can help with the how. But I think you have to understand what is going on, which is not really what people are thinking about. They just know it hurts.

A.J. Lawrence:
It's funny because it is like all the lovely W and H questions I always find, especially now that I've passed the experience, there's an overbalance. A lot of times the why is just not well put in place and it's amazing how effective a good understanding of your why is. But if you don't then have the operational structure of the what together, then it gets so, so choppy. And you lose the why in trying to change. I think it also shows how you bring the importance at the right time. That's one thing. It's interesting just because of what you've talked about, the experience, I could see like, okay, that makes so much more sense. But you wouldn't know that if you hadn't done the reps yourself to guide your customers. It's like, okay, yeah, it is here, do this. But now you're here. Let's get back to that nitty gritty, lack of use of that phrase.

Margo Crawford:
You can almost predict it at different revenue points. Right? You can just sort of say, you know, what revenue or employee size points, business model. And yeah, it's all kind of there. But you could predict, you're right, trying to get to that first million, you know, you can force it along. But trying to get this is kind of one point. And you get there and then you've got a whole other issue, you know, and it's even studied around this and then getting to 5 million and at the 5 million, that's just another state. And you could just predict it and you can almost anticipate what the. I mean, probably go in and anticipate. I said, I'll bet you these are some of the things. And to your point, it's like the reps, right. You're just seeing it many times. And I think the good news though is that for business owners, there's no shame in that. That's just a normal journey. There's no other way. Like, of course, you start it just with will and force and effort and lots of passion and focus, and then things are creating drag on that.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah, it's funny that you say that, because I never really thought of it that way, but I know I've had guilt and I hear this a lot from owners and entrepreneurs I talk with. Very often entrepreneurs feel guilty that we're not able to solve the problem that we're facing yet. As you're saying, why would we? One, generally you come from a passion point to do something. You're doing your passion and then you kind of create a business around it and you're evolving and you're doing all this and then this happens. So taking that guilt out of the way and just being like, look, this is where it is, now's the time to find help, whatever help may be, I think is a pretty powerful thing.

Margo Crawford:
And what's really cool about that, if you get that help and you get that support with the right, you know, team with you who's relatable to your situation. I mean, sometimes people as you know, will come in with big ideas and oh, you have to do this. And it, you know, here's the program and so on. And it's just so unrelatable to the business and it's so discouraging because, you know, you're being told, well, you just have to put this system into place or this program. And it doesn't match with where they're at. And so it actually doesn't move the needle and I think creates even more deflation inflation in the person's spirit and confidence around the owner, around, what am I doing wrong? Because I did this. And it works for everyone else, but not for me.

A.J. Lawrence:
And I know from a fact about two years before, I had to significantly retrench, regrow and I was able to sell and I got very lucky. But about two, not even a year and three quarters before I had a serious retreat retrench. I did go out looking for the support. I knew I was getting through some really turbulent times. I was approaching 7 million and I had an operational system that was built for 2 million. You know, it was great when I had less than 20 people and I now had 35 plus a ton of contractors. We were on the races. And I got so frustrated with the process because I was being sold at, not sold to. There was no communication of my understanding. It was like, oh, yeah, we know exactly, you need it. And then everyone's within variation of voice and it fits. And I got so frustrated that I was just like, effort, I don't need this. But I did, as I learned soon after. It is that almost to a point, that's the time you really do need to go further.

Margo Crawford:
You really do. And the problem is you're right. It's finding the right type of partner to work with you. And the reality is, like I was saying when I formed the company I was doing myself, but I really knew that there's fragility when it's just an individual. And so, yeah, and maybe you can go and find an individual to support you, but something happens and then you're just at it again. So creating some robustness of a firm. But the problem with firms, a lot of firms is the size that they're looking at and the price point and the relevance of what they're doing to where the business is at is misaligned. It just doesn't work. It's either not affordable, it's not practical. You don't have the capacity to take on the activities they want you to take on to move forward. And I found that that's kind of where my passion came in. I mean I was a real sort of. I'm for the underdog. I believe anyone small can make it big and do and knock it out of the park. So was super focused on only servicing small and mid sized businesses, typically under 50 employees. You know, we've gotten pulled into some bigger stuff where. Yeah, we'll do it. Ottawa, I don't know if you know, I mean it's the capital of Canada and it's a huge government. Yeah, it's a huge technology town as well. So anybody who's a contractor, well guess who they want to contract to the government. And I am absolutely not touching that. That is not in my sweet spot at all. I am focusing only on this category of business and for the reasons that you say. It's just this, it was just what I knew. And that's also where I know the problem exists, that I understand that problem. And we can really focus on delivering to that problem, but from being highly understanding, relevant and empathetic to the situation of those businesses and working to that. And that will never change. I mean it's just that's the passion that we've all got and it's satisfying because you really can help move the needle. I mean that bit of effort, when you think about if you'd had that support and you were able to take your time, energy, focus, emotions and so on and put it to the other things that you needed to do and not have this drag on you, it just creates accelerated performance.

A.J. Lawrence:
Well, let's talk a little bit about that because what's interesting is I think so much for entrepreneurs are understanding of what success is, the growth, et cetera of entrepreneurs is the business, yet we're not the business. It got to the point my friends would laugh. It's like, oh, we ask you how you're feeling and you're like, oh, the company just did this, you know, it's like, no, that's not what we asked you. Like what other question? What other meaning is there? Yeah. Well, first, how do you go about defining success as an entrepreneur separate from the concept of success in the business? And then two, how do you find the satisfaction in what you have versus that which you believe is possible? So first, how do you go about defining your own personal success as an entrepreneur?

Margo Crawford:
Yeah, I really love that question, A.J., because I think that for me, when I set out on this business, I did not sit out saying, I'm going to grow this to be a $10 million business. I really didn't care. I just thought, I really like the problem I'm solving. It was purposeful work to me, and it felt like it was creating some good outcomes for society. And that was what motivated me. Right? I could help these businesses. I could help them be successful. I can also work with people who also want to do that and give them opportunities, too, to really grow and develop. And that's what I set out on. So I didn't set out at the beginning. But you're right, it's really difficult because you're measured as a business based on the conventional business metrics, and your business becomes attached to you. So therefore, those financial metrics become gaps. And it's a bit of a mugs game, because I like that phrase, you know, I mean, while you might think you control a lot of it, you don't actually. I mean, there's things you can do, but unpredictable things happen. I mean, we had the pandemic. I mean, you know, there's all sorts of. Of things. I remember when the pandemic first started out. This is the most ridiculous thing. I've never told anybody this. I had this little sense of like relief, thinking, well, that's business goes down, no one will blame me. They'll all understand.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yes.

Margo Crawford:
I got some relief here, removal. You know, no one's going to address the up and down of the business. To me, it's just been kind of a really stupid reaction, obviously. But for me, I found that extremely stressful, you know, that my identity and reputation was wrapped up in, like, just, okay, it's got to go up, up, up and up. And things don't go up, up, up and up. They go this way. They go up and down. And I found that anxiety creating. So that for me was. I really worked hard to put that in its right place. It's an indicator. It's telling you, it's giving you information. It's giving you information for decisions. And I really wanted to tie my identity, and I do it back to that original purpose. And that's to your point, so important to have that purpose and so on and what drives you at the beginning. But then it gets lost in all of this other stuff. And I think reconnecting with it and saying, am I achieving that purpose? Am I doing what I set out to do wasn't setting out to make a $10 million business. I was setting out to create these Outcomes and if I can reflect on those things, that's where I anchor and that's where I'm authentic too. If I'm talking to you, if I'm talking to customers, if I'm talking to my team or employees or friends or whatever, I just say that's what I'll talk about. But it's a really magnetic draw to attach all of your success just to the business numbers versus, you know, what you've accomplished. I created jobs for people. Yeah, I've got people set out on the careers. I've helped a business that was this way, moving that way and then I think that that gets you a little bit more real and helps you sort of stay in the person of you, you know, which there's other things in life more important than this business.

A.J. Lawrence:
Now I, as I've gone further in my journey, I do find very much the people who didn't fit traditional types of roles or were having worked in higher end agencies and stuff and realized the type of people they hire or focus and then having your own and realize, oh, sometimes we have to hire differently because I couldn't afford the top tier talent. But I was able to help people grow to either become top tier talent for larger companies. Literally had a friend at a large, oh, we love your company. You're like the minor leagues for us. You train your people so well that when we can go poach them and they know, I'm like, yeah, I don't think that's good. I don't think that's actually a good thing that you think it is. But okay. But yeah, that is a great way of looking at your own personal success as you sort of move forward with this transition. And yes, I said you were the CEO, but you're the chairperson now of the company. Where would you like to see this go? What is going to be the success down the road for you?

Margo Crawford:
So for me, the success is that this carefully planned transition and handoff to this great team, that they take it, the opportunity is there, it's right in front of all of us and we're focusing on the right things, investing in the right things, you know, staying true, that they are taking it and then putting it on its next slope of the curve. And I know they're going to do it and that they can experience that as individuals, as part of their own journey and being entrepreneurs themselves and saying, okay, you can be entrepreneurs and where do you take this? And then just realizing the fullest of its potential and navigating the thing that I think about the legacy that I hope for the company is that it lives on for years and years and years and years and years, becomes a known name and it's gone a long way of doing that like certainly in Canada and into the US as well in, in certain states where we're known and just saying that it becomes a known business and a gold standard of particularities helping these small and mid sized businesses of, you know that, that you know, under 10 million in revenue, which there's many like by far the dominant category of business. Like in that.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah.

Margo Crawford:
Spot or under, under like 50 employees. That's 95% of employees that we become a known, known firm in there. And that the thing I would like the most is that the team experiences that, that they make it happen and they feel the satisfaction of doing that. You know, we've taken a lot of effort at Business Sherpa Group to really expose the whole team to the business and just let them know that I share all of the numbers with them. Very transparent, you know, the good and the bad and but more importantly, what that's telling us, not just here's results, you know, quake in fear or celebrate in success. No, no, no, those are the numbers. What has that told us about what we're doing, what choices we need to make and what decisions? So it's just the outcome and then the context. But and I say this too and you go to like the experiences that small businesses can offer employees, you can give them growth, you can give them experiences that they just simply can't get. And to me, I always felt I want all of my employees to understand the mechanics of business. I love it. I've always loved it. And yes, you're going to have your functional profession and know that, but I love that you'll have the full context of a business and how it works and how you build and grow and scale it.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah, getting employed. It also just good business because the more your employees understand about the overall business, the less likely they are to go like why this? Or oh, they can understand the importance and the levers and contribute to that growth.

Margo Crawford:
Yeah, absolutely.

A.J. Lawrence:
If someone in the audience is thinking about how they can begin developing their own transition, how they can look for help scaling? What's the best way for one to learn more about the Business Sherpa Group?

Margo Crawford:
Well, obviously, I mean we put out a lot of content around different topics. Right. And we think that they are the topics that we, we know are top of mind for businesses. You know, some pieces won't be relevant at certain points. In time, depending where they are. But we really are focused on putting that type of content together that speaks to the pain points that SMEs are experiencing on their journey. And thinking about that, obviously in terms of finding out about BSG and how we can help you, that's easy to contact us and reach out. There's no issue there. If businesses are thinking about their transition, that's something definitely that we'd be really interested in talking about. And just they're saying and, and like I said with this company that I just chatted with this week, you know, I went in there, I said look it, maybe all this is is just one conversation and you know, I'm going to spend a couple of hours with you and give you some ideas and things and concepts to think with and that all of you then can just go from there and work the plan and that's fine. And that might be the starting point. And then from there it might be, okay, well I've got this problem, you know, okay, well that's something we can service. If you want help with that, here's a solution or here's some other alternatives. You should be thinking about this. It might not be us at all. It's pointing them to the right spot. So I think, you know, obviously checking out our website with the content and following us on the social media feeds, but if there's something specific, you know, definitely reaching out. Todd Luckasavitch is our CEO and he's a great point of contact to start a conversation with and pretty much all those means start with, you know, some people have some very specific asks and we can speak to that. Sometimes they don't know and they just need a conversation to kind of work it through.

A.J. Lawrence:
I do think it would be well worth just in looking back at my own experience and hope that the evolution of the space has come in the past almost 10 years since I've had, you know, where I was in this situation. Just the way you're positioning and your team now is positioning Business Sherpa Group and the way it helps. Such a great word, Sherpa. The value is very high, if nothing more than the type of questions you articulate that you look for that would have helped so much in the situation I was when the complexity started really developing so much and yet I, I was just being sold at as I said earlier. So if you're out there listening, I think it would be well worth adding Business Sherpa Group to your outreach to learn more about how to deal with the increasing complexity you have in your business. Margo, thank you so much for coming on the show today. This was a lot of fun. Thank you.

Margo Crawford:
That's great. I really enjoyed it, A.J. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

A.J. Lawrence:
No, I think the audience learned a lot of great ways of thinking about how to deal with the growing complexity they may be having in their business and their transition planning. Hey everyone, thank you so much for listening today. I really, really appreciate it. And look, if you know anyone who would gain some insight from listening to Margo share about how to deal with the complexity of their business or in how she grew Business Sherpa Group, please share this episode with them and encourage them to subscribe. Subscribe to the podcast because that way we can have even more really great entrepreneurs like Margo come on the show. This is so much. So thank you everyone for listening today. I hope you have a wonderful day and I'll talk with you soon. Goodbye.