In this episode of the Trusted Adviser Podcast, Rob Pyne interviews Gabe Enslin, Co-Founder of ADAPT, who shares insights on building resilient businesses that don’t rely solely on their owners. The conversation delves into the origin of ADAPT, the importance of succession thinking over planning, and the five principles that guide business owners towards creating a sustainable organization. Gabe emphasizes the significance of role clarity, the challenges owners face in letting go, and the value of reverse performance reviews to enhance business resilience. In this conversation, Gabe and Rob discuss the critical aspects of employee and customer retention, emphasizing the importance of understanding needs and motivations. They explore the significance of cultural health checks and the necessity of non-anonymous feedback to gauge employee satisfaction. The dialogue also highlights the impact of ownership alignment on business success and the common weaknesses in organizational design within financial planning firms. Gabe introduces the concept of a business resilience assessment and the need for a structured framework to ensure lasting success. They conclude with a call to action for business owners to proactively plan for their future and take meaningful steps towards resilience.

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SHOW NOTES

Topics Discussed

Why many SME owners feel stuck, lonely and overwhelmed
The personal story that led to the creation of Adapt
Why corporate frameworks often do not translate well to SMEs
The difference between succession thinking and succession planning
How owner dependency reduces business resilience and transferability
The five principles of a business that does not need its owner
Why role clarity is often the first and most underestimated problem
The difference between a position description and a properly defined role
How to hand over responsibility without creating chaos
Why owners often struggle to let go
How reverse performance reviews can improve employee retention
The role of cultural health checks in building a healthier business
Why non-anonymous feedback matters when understanding employee needs
How ownership alignment affects long-term business success
Why organisational design is a common weakness in financial planning firms
How a business resilience assessment can identify areas needing attention
The importance of building an operating system for leadership and ownership
The first practical step owners can take toward building a more resilient busines

Episode Highlights

(Timestamps are approximate)

[00:00] – Introduction to Gabe Enslin and Adapt
[01:15] – The origin story: crisis, dependency, and the birth of Adapt
[03:07] – Why corporate frameworks fail SMEs
[05:12] – Ownership vs employment: why SME design is different
[06:10] – Succession thinking vs succession planning
[09:33] – The five principles of a business that doesn’t need you
[10:56] – Why role clarity is the biggest blind spot
[11:24] – The three layers of accountability in SMEs
[13:15] – Why position descriptions fail and roles matter more
[15:45] – Structured handovers vs chaotic delegation
[17:06] – When a business is ready for this level of thinking
[19:57] – Letting go: the hardest shift for business owners
[22:03] – Building trust through small handovers
[25:49] – Reverse performance reviews and employee insight
[29:04] – Business resilience assessments explained
[33:15] – Cultural health checks vs meaningful conversations
[41:03] – Why organisational design is the weakest link in advice firms
[44:06] – Building a business operating system that lasts
[50:55] – Warning signs owners are leaving it too late
[53:44] – The one action every owner should take today
[55:34] – How to engage with Adapt and next steps

Quotes from Gabe Enslin

“Being a business owner can feel stuck, lonely, and overwhelming when the business depends on you.”

“Succession thinking is proactive. Succession planning is reactive.”

“If you build a business for succession early, it becomes stronger, more profitable, and more efficient anyway.”

“Role clarity is always the first problem and the most underestimated.”

“You cannot hand over a role that hasn’t been defined.”

“If you don’t let go, you stay stuck.”

“If your people get what they need from you, they won’t leave.”

“A business is just a group of people solving a common problem.”

“The business is only as transferable as the owner is willing to become.”

“Figure out what you want your life to look like, then build the business to support that.”

Key Takeaways

Bill Withers founded ADAPT to help SME owners feel less overwhelmed.
Succession thinking is proactive; succession planning is reactive.
Role clarity is often underestimated in business.
A resilient business can thrive without the owner’s constant involvement.
Business owners must let go to build a transferable business.
Reverse performance reviews provide valuable insights from employees.
Understanding employee motivation is key to retention.
Building a resilient business requires trust in the team.
The owner’s behavior can hinder business growth.
Starting small in delegation can lead to significant results. If your customer or employee gets what they need, they won’t leave.
Cultural health checks should be frequent to catch issues early.
Non-anonymous feedback is crucial for understanding employee needs.
Ownership alignment is key to preventing business failure.
Organizational design is often a weak point in financial planning firms.
A business resilience assessment can identify areas needing attention.
Good leadership and strategy are essential for business health.
Proactive planning can prevent pain points in business operations.
Understanding personal circumstances of employees can improve retention.
Business owners should regularly assess their long-term goals.

Resources & Links

The Trusted Adviser: https://thetrustedadviser.com.au/
Adapt: https://www.theadaptway.com/
Connect with Rob Pyne on LinkedIn
Connect with Gabe Enslin on LinkedIn
Follow The Trusted Adviser Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

Rob (00:01.42)

Welcome, Gabe Enslin to the Trusted Adviser Podcast.

Gabe (00:05.688)

How are you going?

Rob (00:07.662)

I’m going well, Gabe. We have known each other a little while now, it’s fair to say. You’ve been in the orbit of the financial planning world and other businesses, SMEs being your area of expertise. But you’ve been in the financial planning orbit for a while and the founder of the Adapt Business, I think is well known to a number of financial planning practitioners, Bill Withers. Bill has spoken at a few conferences that I’ve been at, so I’ve heard him speak more than once and he’s kind of the pioneer of this approach that you take at ADAPT to help SMEs get better prepared for succession. But there’s a bit more to that. So we’re gonna dive into that today with you. I’m looking forward to our chat. Let’s start though, where I just mentioned, ADAPT grew out of a very personal experience for Bill. He was the founder who built a successful global business, discovered how fragile it was when life kind of got in the way. And I’d like you to take us back to that origin story and tell us what problem Bill became very determined to solve based on his own personal experience.

Gabe (01:15.926)

Yeah, no worries. I’ll do my level best to do justice to Bill’s story because it’s not my own. But we’ve talked about it many times over the years. I guess the problem Bill was trying to solve is this challenge of being a business owner and feeling stuck, lonely and overwhelmed. Because you’ve built a business that’s too dependent on you. And that came about for him on account of a family crisis. know, his global SME was scaling rapidly. He was too central. In a very short span of time, his wife became really sick and also his son and the GFC hit. And he realized that he may need to go and become a primary carer. What happens to the business? And voila, there was the issue. And he managed to navigate through that period and therefore became committed to solve this problem. How can you help SME owners build businesses that can thrive through boom bust cycles but not be so dependent on the owners and that’s where our passion for resilience in SMBs came from.

Rob (02:21.1)

Absolutely. I’ve actually titled this session when it comes out on the podcast, it’ll be called The Business That Doesn’t Need You. So that’s essentially what we’re talking about here is how do you make their business resilient without you being the one with hands on the wheel all the time. And that’s really an important learning, I guess, Bill went through through personal experience and something you now help business owners work through for themselves. You’ve made the point that most of the business knowledge available to owners was built for the corporate world, for the top end of town. It doesn’t often translate down to how an SME actually works. What’s the gap there? And why has it taken so long for someone to design, as you guys have it adapt, something specifically for business owners at the scale of an SME?

Gabe (03:07.341)

Look, I think the gap is that most business thinking, like you said, was built for corporate entities and then just handed lazily to the SME world as if it would translate. But an SME is a different animal altogether. You’ve got ownership, leadership, culture, roles, accountabilities, all really tangled together. We talk about it, the complexity of SME is like a bowl of spaghetti, you can never put it back together the same way. And so for owners to build an organization that can be resilient, they need good stewardship, not just handed down corporate governance, it just doesn’t work for SMEs. And we’ve seen it fail time and time again. Why is it? Why is it taken so long for somebody to tackle this problem, I think? Probably because corporate is where the money is and it’s where the resources go. Any SME owner will know that it is tougher to run an SME and you have to be far wiser with your expenditure, all that sort of stuff. Also, it’s a very tough problem to solve and we’ve just not found many people who are willing to go.

Rob (04:25.646)

Yeah, as you point out there, the corporate world, there’s really distinct responsibilities, quite segmented, you’ve got a very deep leadership team and management team. So it’s very different. SMEs, as you just said there, Gabe, the principals are often wearing multiple hats, there’s cultural, there’s responsibility issues, in terms of leadership as well as ownership. So it’s a much more entangled sort of structure because you don’t have that sort of wide and varied leadership team that’s very segmented, if you like, and very, you know, I guess, specialized roles exist at corporate world, which they just don’t happen quite as often at SME level. I want to

Gabe (05:12.065)

Yeah, I think if I may, one distinction that helps often is to understand that in a corporate entity or a publicly listed entity, the owners are over there. And then the people that run the business are over here. Now they’re employees, they can just resign and go. If you own the business, you don’t get to go anywhere. So you have to design differently.

Rob (05:33.102)

Let’s rock.

Rob (05:37.004)

You can’t just leave and resign when you’re actually running a business and you own it. You’ve got to solve the problems for yourself.

Gabe (05:43.821)

We’ve got to solve the problem, see ya.

Rob (05:46.349)

You talk about a distinction between succession planning and succession thinking, and most business owners would use those two terms interchangeably, but you really draw a very important distinction between them. What is the difference? Why does the difference matter? And what is leaving it until the planning stage actually cost people? What is succession thinking versus succession planning?

Gabe (06:10.541)

Maybe I’ll go to why it matters. It matters because one is far more likely to give you what you want than the other. It’s as simple as that. Succession thinking is a proactive approach to building a resilient and a long term business, something that can deliver sustained value to you without being dependent on you as the owner. We talk about a business that’s ready for succession long before you need it because then it gives you options, right? This makes the business far more valuable as well. Succession planning on the other hand, it’s a reactive pathway that gets undertaken when an owner nears the end and most just leave it too late. And there’s real cost to this. If you take the reactive approach towards the end of your owner’s life cycle, you end up with a less valuable business, a far more difficult transition journey and a far higher likelihood that you might get sucked back into the business if you end up keeping it. And we’re trying to combat that. We’re trying to build early for a business that’s set up for succession so that when you decide that it’s time, it is a good transition.

Rob (07:28.258)

Yeah, it’s a really important point, isn’t it? You know, this audience, people listening, they’re financial planners, so they’re used to thinking ahead. They’re also often business owners, so they’re having to plan ahead always and staying ahead of the curve. So this is not a foreign concept for financial planners, that we should be thinking ahead, but not wait until the last few years where we’re ready to start thinking about leaving and to start planning for succession. Because as you say, there’s money left on the table there. If you’re not thinking way ahead and saying, well, what would I be doing today?

Gabe (07:36.203)

Yeah.

Rob (07:57.911)

If I wanted to build this business that wasn’t dependent upon me and I wanted to exit in 10 or 15 or 20 years time, how do I build it with the end in mind? Which is that it’s actually ready for sale at all times, if you like. Not that you’re planning to sell it, but it has to be effectively ready for that all the time. You’re trying to prepare it such that you are doing succession from day one, not the end of your days when you’re ready to pull up stumps and retire. That’s essentially the distinction, isn’t it? It’s just getting ahead of that curve way before, because you are then maximising the return you’ll likely receive when you do come to leaving the business.

Gabe (08:37.621)

Yeah, I mean, you made the point about, you know, we see similar things, financial planning businesses and what that does. And there’s great alignment between your world and ours, because of the problems we’re trying to solve for the same audience. And the simple mechanics is if you built a business as if it was going to succeed early, it becomes far stronger, it becomes far more profitable, it becomes far more efficient anyway. So you serve the dual purpose.

Rob (09:06.924)

Yeah, so it’s a win on the way through as well as at the end. In this process of succession thinking, you’ve developed five principles that gives owners a framework to work toward a business that doesn’t need them. Can you walk us through those five principles and tell us which one financial planning business owners most consistently underestimate when they first hear it? So give me the five and then tell me which one they most underestimate.

Gabe (09:33.528)

Yeah, sure. Yeah. And again, the credit here needs to go to Bill. you know, you know, over a decade of research and development and testing experimentation, finally had the chance to go away, his book and he was able to identify a great way to articulate what we should learn with these five principles. So all credit to Bill for my ability to explain them now. But the five principles are number one, seek role clarity which is a problem that we encounter in every single business. The next one is define your owner’s vision. So be really clear on what you want and what that needs to mean for the business. The third principle is build leadership that can extend beyond yourself. The fourth principle is build culture that can extend beyond yourself. And then the fifth principle is build your business way. So the truth of who you are, how you operate comes the thing that can be handed over. And the one that probably most commonly is a problem or a challenge, and look, to be honest, it’s not just for financial planning businesses. This is the case in every single business. Industry agnostic is role clarity. It is always the principle that is the first problem, and it is always the one that is underestimated.

Rob (10:56.206)

Okay, so talk more about role clarity then. So we’re talking at every level of the organization, everyone understands what their role is, what they’re expected to do, what success looks like in that role. So just give me bit of an insight. You’ve worked with a number of businesses now, lots of businesses, Gabe, so you’ve seen this firsthand. What’s typically the gap there? I kind of probably, it’s probably self-evident what the gap is, but what differences does it make when people kind of look at that and solve for that issue?

Gabe (11:24.653)

This is a very comprehensive topic. I’m going to try to distill. There’s probably two things that’s most important to try and understand. First, you have three levels of accountability in any SME. You’ve got the operational level, which is where you execute and you do and you perform technician work. Then you have organizational leadership. That is where you

Rob (11:29.665)

Yeah.

Gabe (11:53.238)

… design and implement strategy and build and uphold cultural leadership. And then you have the owner’s layer of accountability. That is where you set the vision and you make decision about capital to realize the vision. Now, most of the time, those three layers of accountability and the discipline to uphold them don’t exist in businesses. Most of the time, the operational layer exists and there’s a lot of complexity there. There’s no good discipline to do strategic leadership at a healthy cadence. And often there is no ownership team discipline at all. There’s the occasional chat over a beer, or, you know, Barney in the hallway, you know, next to the water cooler or whatever, but there’s no good structure of how do we perform our ownership role well. So that’s the one thing. And then the other thing is to realize that most businesses operate with position descriptions, not roles. So you’ve hired somebody as a general manager and you go here, you’re a general manager and here’s all the things we want you to do, right? And then they go and they try and do it and it is a mess. And often the owner will still stick their hand in the cookie jar and mess with the decisions and break the trust and yeah, lots of people will probably be able to relate to this experience.

Rob (13:12.924)

Loads of people relate to that point, I’m sure.

Gabe (13:15.701)

I think we see it often when in fact a better approach is to realize that if you are the general manager or the CEO or the leader of technology or whatever, you actually have multiple roles within your position. And it is important to understand what they are often for an owner, even if they call themselves the CEO or the principal director or whatever their main roles would often be a sales role, head of sales, a head of leader of finance, a risk and compliance, and a principal delivery role or something like that, And they are different roles. They have different sets of accountabilities. They have different decision rights. You need different skills and attributes to be good at those. And if you can’t articulate the difference in the roles and the difference in the accountabilities, first of all, you operate from a position of confusion always. And secondly, it is nigh on impossible to hand a role over because it’s not been defined. So how are you then meant to extricate yourself out of the business in a successful way? This is why so often owners will build talks about stepping out instead of handing over. And so often we’ll see an owner will hire a GM say, here you go, here’s your position description, off you go. And then they step off and then this person is trying to do the best they can with a lot of confusion. And often it fails because the owner feels fear is not going the way they planned. They start to interfere and the relationship breaks down. Where a better way is to say, look, I want you to come and take this position of general manager, that means I want you to have the role of finance, the role of operations, the role of risk and compliance. They are different accountabilities. I have them at the moment. I’m gonna give them to you. Let’s hand this one over first. And we’re going to spend three months handing that one over. Then let’s hand this one over. This is quick, we can do this in two weeks then let’s hand this one over, this one’s going to take a long time. But then you’re leaning, you develop the leader, you systematically hand over the roles. So that means when you step away, you can properly step away, you don’t have to come back because you’ve done a good job of handing over.

Rob (15:45.487)

Yeah, what you’re describing there is really good framing because you’re talking about structure, giving people a framework to kind of work with and understand there is distinct responsibilities there and they must be managed to successfully hand them over, done intentionally. It can’t be just unhaphazardly and just like give them the position description. So there you go, have a crack and then come and ask me any questions. That’s not really gonna be an effective way of getting it done. With businesses that are listening now, business owners listening, they’re probably thinking, that’s a lot, there’s a lot there. just in, you’ve just said, that’s just sort of a sketch of one of those five principles you’ve spoken of. What phase of a business do people start to think that they need this level of support from a business like you at Adapt? Is it a scale of a certain level? Do you work with business owners that are kind of like turning over? Three to five million or is it five, 10? Where does this SME market typically sit for you guys at Adapt? Given that I think a business owner that’s got three staff listening to this would think like, man, I can’t do that. That’s too much for me to absorb. I’m not ready for that level of thinking at my current scale. So where is the right scale for these questions to start being asked?

Gabe (17:06.617)

And I have an answer for that and we’ve learned that the hard way. So what we know and what we talk about is useful to any business owner. And that’s what’s so great about Bill having had the chance to write the book, you know, anybody, whether you’re a sole trader or a team of five. You can read the book and get some ideas and start to practice some of those ideas in your business. But to do this work of building a resilient business and where we are the most effective, we found typically with businesses where they’ve got 15 to 20 employees and more, and there is a real need for a leadership team, even if it’s two people to lead the business or there is an existing attempt at a leadership team, but how to build that leadership capability beyond the founder is not clear. We often see businesses in that range would be around a two million annual revenue mark and up. From there, it goes into the many hundreds of employees and, know, $100 million in revenue and more. The fundamentals stay the same. It just gets reproduced throughout the organisation.

Rob (18:15.736)

For sure. So that starting position is probably the employee head count is a good indicator, isn’t it? You’ve got 15 to 20, you’ve got a couple of people in leadership roles, and they’re thinking, okay, if we’re gonna level up, we’re gonna start thinking like a business that actually can level up and be more clear about and intentional about how we actually structure our business to be resilient, that doesn’t rely on us kind of hands on the wheel the whole time.

Gabe (18:37.9)

Yeah, that’s right. we, you know, again, because we learned this the hard way, we’ve reframed now how we help owners. The first part of working with us is very short engagement, where we really just go deep on what do you see you want and how do you articulate that for your business. And any owner can go through that process is really valuable, whether you have 10 employees of 20 or 50 or 100. After that, decision is, okay, well, I want to implement this framework into my business. And typically, if you are a smaller business, we will encourage you not to do that. Take some smaller steps and we’ve got people that support that. But really, to do the rest of the work, you’d want to have enough people in the business where you can take some time away to do this work. Because it does, it is, it takes work to build a business that doesn’t need you. There’s no beating around the bush there. Yeah.

Rob (19:28.27)

Yeah, ironically, it needs you a lot initially to get it to the point where it doesn’t need you because you need to actually be involved in doing this planning and thinking and implementing a plan to be able to step away from it when that time comes. You’ve made this point before when we had a chat previously, you said it’s often the owner’s behavior, their own behavior standing in the way of getting what they want. That the business is only as transferable as the owner is willing to become, like letting that letting go. What does it look like in practice?

Gabe (19:50.719)

Yeah.

Rob (19:57.667)

How do help someone genuinely hear that message that they need to prepare for them letting go? Because people start businesses, like to sort of be very involved in decisions and hands-on. How do you help someone hear the message and get ready for that letting go and being able to transfer responsibility rather than resisting that change?

Gabe (20:21.172)

Yeah, I mean, let me preface this by saying I am not immune to this challenge myself. Probably a bit more match fit these days because I get subjected to this discipline by our team all the time. But in practice, really is as an owner, you have to let go. It’s as simple as that. If you don’t find a way to let go, you’ll stay stuck.

Rob (20:26.915)

Yeah

Gabe (20:49.8)

How to get unstuck, you got to find a framework that you have confidence in, something that can help you build infrastructure that you will trust, whatever that is, right? But you need to have trust that it’s going to give you the outcome. Then once you’ve made the decision, you got to do the work to build that infrastructure. And then you’ve got to make a commitment to let go and see what happens. And you start small, but you have to go, all right, I’m going to let go of this thing first. Let’s see. You stay close. We’ve got a really great process for handing over, which means you’re close in the process to take care of anything that doesn’t go well. But you have to do that first one. Let go and see. Most of the time, if you’ve done the early work well, the results are surprising to the owners. They go, crap, they’re doing a better job than I have. Faster. They’re pushing me out of the way because they don’t need me. Man, I should have done this last year. Well, where’s the next one? And then people become handover junkies because they’re like, man, there’s actually light at the end of the tunnel here. I’ve done a great job of hiring good people. I’ve got good leaders. I actually want to invest in them. So let me give them a pathway to grow.

Rob (22:03.598)

Absolutely. it’s, as you say, you can crawl, then walk, then run. Start by handing over something you don’t feel anxious about handing over. a small responsibility you can hand over and stay close to and connected to. And you’ve got a framework for helping people get comfortable. So, but as you say, what becomes very obvious if you’ve got the right people already there waiting for the opportunity to help and step up and you give them that opportunity and chance and believe in them. It’s amazing what things can happen in a business if you actually just let go and let responsibility fall into the hands of other very capable people that are just as keen as you are to do a great job. So I can relate to that story.

Gabe (22:42.122)

Yeah, and you asked me how do you make them hear this? It’s a great question. And for me, it becomes quite simple. It’s their choice, right? They have to decide what they want their life to look like and then they’ve got to make a decision. I’m going to invest in getting that. Now, if they commit to something and they start letting go…

Rob (22:47.276)

Yeah. Yeah.

Gabe (23:09.74)

… they’re far more likely to get what they want. If they don’t, then the chances of getting what they want is demonstrably lower. So they have absolute control. Nobody else can make the decision for them. And I would always say, look, what do you want? You want this? No worries. Well, we’ll show you how to build a business that’ll give you that. But you’ve got to green light it. You’ve got to resource it. You’ve got to do the work and we’re here for you. And if you don’t, no worries. The choice is yours and so we have to control over do we want to get this outcome or not.

Rob (23:43.043)

Yeah, absolutely. think people, as you were saying that reminded me of Jerry Maguire conversation is on the phone to his sports star client and he says, help me help you, help me help you.

Gabe (23:57.196)

Yeah, Cuba Gooding Jr. I think he was his sports star. Yeah.

Rob (24:01.198)

Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, it was a great line. Very memorable. But you have to help them see what the goal is and say, well, let help me help you because if you don’t let go, then I can’t help you. So one of the things we spoke about when we last chatted, Gabe, you talked about this idea that performance reviews, which because we’re talking about owners now and them being possibly part of the problem sometimes.Performance reviews should run in both directions. I mean, everyone’s used to performance review of staff members, how is the team going? They do a skills assessment perhaps on how the team’s developing and they get their performance review. But something that you’ve done for a long time now, and we’ve been through the process ourselves, you’ve done a business resilience assessment. And essentially it’s the person assessing the business is the people working in it. And they’re actually giving you a framework to think about how well the business is performing. So it’s not just like a pulse check on how they’re feeling about their own role, but it’s a sort of a business assessment that the staff inside the business are actually asked to do. Why is that reverse direction assessment so powerful? And what does it change in how owners think about their staff and the retention of their staff? Because I imagine, I won’t answer the question, I’ll let you answer it because I kind of think about how this works and we’ve done it before. But how does it help business owners see what their staff see? And what does it do for the staff that are asked their opinion as to how we’re doing in these areas in the business? Tell me a bit about this process you take businesses through.

Gabe (25:49.152)

There’s two different things here that I’ll try and address that’s appointed at the same outcome. And it’s what you talk about, the reverse performance review and business resilience assessment. Let’s go to the business, the reverse performance review idea first. We just call them career valuations or culture catch-ups. Businesses are great at doing a performance review on their people saying this is your KPIs and this is how you’re delivering. They’re not really good at asking their people. What does it matter? Look, a business is just a group of people coming together to solve a common problem. It’s as simple as that. So it is crucial to know how everybody feels about what they are getting out of the deal, out of coming together and solving this problem but some are owners and some are employees. Now, like I said, businesses are good at telling employees how they feel about the performance, but they’re notoriously poor at understanding how their employees feel about what they are getting and what they need and are motivated by. Now, if you understand what your people need, what they’re motivated by and how they feel about whether they’re getting that or not. It gives you incredible power to build a workplace where your people are highly engaged, where they turn up and they do their best work, where they’re far more likely to not leave you and cause that level of disruption to the business. And again, it’s just by understanding what are they motivated by and are they getting that with you or are they not getting that with you. If you detect gaps in that, you’re able to have a conversation early, you’re able to make intelligent strategic decisions to close those gaps, or if you couldn’t close those gaps, you can talk about, how do we enable a good transition for you and for us? Because people will come and go in your business. Now, the business resilience idea is, so let’s assume I’m trying to build an organization that is focused on intrinsic motivation. I want to motivate my people. Pursue the things that they enjoy, to do their best work, to have autonomy, to feel mastery and connection to purpose beyond themselves, right? And if you take that approach, it sounds it seems like a smart idea to ask them, how do you think the business is doing? Because you just never know what information or what intelligence you might get out of that. Now, it’s a difficult thing to ask your people sometimes because what if they are little bit concerned about being honest about what they see. So we’ve taken the approach of an anonymized survey across the entire organization. And we measure four key areas we measure the economic engine, we measure organizational design, financial security, and leadership and culture. And we ask everybody in the business, are we doing good or are we doing poor on certain things? And there’s several questions underneath each category.

Rob (29:04.547)

Yeah.

Gabe (29:04.847)

Now, if you do that, you are able to see, do my people at the coal face see or feel what my leadership see or feel? Or are they identifying an area where we can approve that we didn’t know about or we’ve not planned for? Or can we see that there is a negative trend in the data that means we’re heading in the wrong direction? And have we not measured it? We wouldn’t. And so, you if you pull those things together and you start to create a real time intelligence source of how the business is going and you draw on all of the potential sources of information, you’ve just got way more Intel at your disposal. So sorry, at your disposal to make smart leadership decisions.

Rob (29:54.189)

Yeah, totally. And thanks for making that distinction between the reverse performance review, is because I guess financial planners shouldn’t feel this is a foreign concept for them because they’re actually sitting in front of clients often asking how they feel about their finances and what’s working for them. And so it’s essentially, instead of dictating to a client, we wouldn’t say, here’s how you’re performing on your finances and sort of judging it the way that people think about the performance review operating. It’s like, here’s how you’re performing and here’s where you’re at, but actually asking. The team member what they want, what are their goals. It’s more of a different framing that advisors are very comfortable of having that conversation with clients and we’re just taking that framing and taking it with their team members as well. So it’s good distinction to make because it’s different from the other business resilience assessment, which is much more about in these areas of economic engine and leadership and culture and so on, how are we performing? So it’s a more business view that you’re asking the team to perform as opposed to their own personal goals and objectives in their career and the things that are going on for them. That’s a good separation.

Gabe (30:55.754)

Well, there’s thank you. Yeah, there’s a fundamental truth here that’s worth hearing for the listeners, right? And it is directly applicable to financial planners and it’s directly applicable to employers. And the truth is that if your customer or your employee get what they need from you, why would they leave you? They won’t. It’s too risky to make a change. Now, the inverse is also true. If they do not get what they need from you to be happy or satisfied, whether it’s a customer of a financial planner or an employee of a business, if they don’t get what they need, why would they stay with you? They won’t. I guarantee it. Whether they leave it for weeks, for months, a year, they’re going to go. So it is incredibly powerful to know how they feel about what they’re getting and is it fulfilling their motivation or not? If it’s not, you ask yourself the question, can I do something about it? And if you can do something about it and you keep your people and you keep your customers. If you can’t do something about it, but you can talk about it early, you can help each other with a transition that’s not disruptive.

Rob (32:18.402)

Yep, same principle applies to both clients of advice firms as well as the team members in it. I love that. So let’s talk about something else which businesses often try and employ is like a cultural health check, checking in, we do it monthly, just checking with the team, how we call, what’s the pulse of the firm? We’re using Employment Hero as our software for that purpose. And we asked our team is monthly too often? Should it be quarterly? And they said, no, monthly is fine. It’s a good cadence around how we’re feeling, what’s going on in the business, and just getting that anonymized pulse check of what people are feeling. You talked about before when we’ve spoken about the risk of leaving too long between cultural health checks, that by the time you feel the problem, you’ve already missed the window to respond to that problem. What should a financial planning principle be measuring and how often to stay genuinely across the health of their team, how their team are feeling.

Gabe (33:15.39)

Yeah, so I’m just going to go back to that distinction we talked about before. Cultural catwalk shops are about building a healthy organizational culture. The resilient business assessment is a strategic tool to generate insight and intelligence to inform your decisions. So that one is worth doing once a year because you reset your annual strategy typically once a year. Cultural cat chaps hold different beasts. And this cannot be anonymous. Because if it’s anonymous, it’s kind of useless to you. You might get an aggregate view, but you don’t actually understand where’s the problem.

Rob (33:36.237)

Yes.

Gabe (33:51.39)

When we do cultural catch-ups, you have a cultural leader and they sit with you once a quarter and they have a conversation and they say, how are you going? What’s important to you at the moment? Is it remuneration? Is it flexibility? Is it career progression? Is it access to training or feedback or mentoring? What’s important to you in your life right now? And how do you feel about whether you’re getting that or not? And then they will give scores across the categories and they will give words to explain why they give the score. And it is in the words where the wisdom line. Because if you can detect a trend in somebody’s data, things are hold on something’s happening here. This person’s cultural health score is going backwards a little bit. You need to understand why if you don’t understand why you can’t do anything about it. So that is definitely not anonymous. is private and it’s only seen by the cultural leaders, not the broader organization. But the leadership needs to understand if we did Rob’s catch up and for Rob’s data is going backwards and we realize it’s because he’s got a young family, he is more needed at home, but we’re smashing him to clock in at eight and clock out at five because that’s just the way that we’ve done things here. If we don’t consider his need at this phase of his life. We may lose this person. You’re not going to know that with an anonymous server. You have to have the conversation, you have to have the words to explain how he’s feeling. And then we can say, hey Rob, man, let’s mix things up a bit. We can actually manage for you to work from home one day a week or have flexible hours as long as the job gets done. Cause we understand you need to be there for the kids or whatever for a period of time. You know, those things, making those decisions for you people, if you can, without being detrimental to the business, will come back to you in spades, but you cannot do it if you don’t understand the nuance of what’s going on in that person’s life. Now, if you go to that level of understanding what’s going on in their life, a quarterly cadence is more than frequent enough to do a checking.

Rob (35:57.259)

Okay, that’s great.

Gabe (35:59.818)

You couldn’t leave it much longer than four months in our opinion. We have some customers that do every six months and that works for them and you gotta decide what works for you. But things in a person’s life can change very quickly and if you don’t detect it in time, you may not be able to respond to adapt to accommodate them. And if you don’t respond fast enough, you’re a loser.

Rob (36:22.104)

Totally. actually just what you just said there makes so much sense. We do have one-on-one monthly catch-ups, private one-on-ones as well as our pulse check anonymously done across the whole team. But your point’s so well made, that is if you don’t do the private conversation, the pulse check means kind of how’s the mood of the room, if you like, but it doesn’t get to the heart of the issue that someone’s experiencing, because it’s gonna be lost in the data and you don’t know who it is that’s actually answered that question. So having those one-on-one catch-ups, we’ve only been doing that now for probably maybe nearly two years and the insight into what’s going on in the world of each team member when those conversations are being had has been super useful and powerful to be able to help people navigate some life challenges. Sometimes things come up, things get in the way of them being as productive as they’d like to be. So knowing what those things are and helping them kind of adapt to their circumstance and being supportive of that has been a real game changer for us. it’s when we first started thinking about doing it, so it’s a big resource. If you’ve got a team of 20 or 30 or 40 or 50, you know, it’s a lot of people you’ve got to see. And if you do that monthly, it’s a lot of conversations, but we’ve got the resources now to be able to do that. And it has been just as an anecdotal comment on your point there, it’s been super powerful. There’s been so much insight gathered there that’s been helpful for us to help support our team members when they’ve been going through different life challenges. yeah, I just wanted to reiterate that and add my endorsement of the point you made. Let’s go back though for a second.

Gabe (37:59.188)

Glad you guys are doing that. That’s awesome.

Rob (38:01.487)

Yeah, yeah, no, it’s, you’re just talking about the one about, you know, family life at home. One of our guys was really struggling after their first child. you know, just because life just gets really messy all of a sudden, you got a baby on the way or a baby’s arrived and, you know, sleep patterns and all the demands that go into that. can be a difficult transition, but yeah, we found out and some…

Gabe (38:25.639)

It’s important. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you Rob. I was just thinking it’s worth saying. It is important for the owners to also do theirs, especially if you are an ownership team, your buddies that started a business, your co-owners or your husband or wife or whatever. If there’s more than one owner, it is important for the owner to do theirs because it’s a marriage at the end of the day.

Rob (38:28.982)

No, go for it.

Gabe (38:53.607)

Now, if you can understand what’s going on for your business partner in their life, because they also have a life, also have a family, they also have stressors, they’re also dealing with all sorts of stuff, right? If you can understand what’s going on in their life and what their needs are and how that’s changing, and if you’ve got the ability to respond to that, you can maintain a long, healthy co-ownership relationship. Many of the troubles that we see in businesses start at the ownership team, start with owner non-alignment. And the reason is because they don’t talk to each other. They don’t tell each other what’s going on in their lives. There’s pride or there’s ego or there’s whatever, money. And they haven’t got a discipline to have the conversation. And therefore, either make a decision early, something’s happening in your life, you need something else. This might mean that we can’t continue to own together. Let’s help with the transition. Or something’s happening in your life, you need to take some time away. I can step up and accommodate you because my time is going to come when my life turns to crap and then you’ll step up and accommodate me. It’s the same thing. It’s just understanding what’s going on in that human being’s life and asking you the question, can I do something to accommodate that? Can I do something to give them what they need and are motivated by? If you do that, you can have long, healthy relationships with your employees or with your co-owners.

Rob (40:18.04)

Such an important point, so well made because ownership alignment is often one of the things that destroys businesses or lack of alignment. And if you don’t talk about what your issues are and you can’t get help, you don’t trust one another, what chance have you got? So super important point. I wanna go back for a second to this business resilience assessment. You talked about economic engine, culture, financial security organizational design as kind of the four core areas and there’s questions within each of those areas. For a financial planning principle thinking about their own business, what typically comes up as the weakest area in those four and why is that pattern so common in our profession?

Gabe (41:03.496)

I would say for financial planning businesses most of the time organizational design is probably the weaker area. I find that financial planning businesses are commonly built around free earning roles first, without early consideration for a good design. And so role clarity is a common problem there. Financial planning businesses are money people, so financial security is typically pretty good. The nature of people that are attracted to that world are good with people, so often cultural and leadership scores are pretty good. The financial planning model as a business model is a reasonably healthy model to have in your economic engine. But because you start first by solving a problem and you’re really focused on those roles that are earning, you know, fees through the work that you do for your customers, there’s not a lot of time is thinking about, well, as we grow, how do we design a sophisticated system? So that’s usually where we see the gap in those businesses. And look, it is fairly common across most industries, this role clarity issue, but other businesses will often have big economic engine challenges or big financial security challenges or big cultural challenges.

Rob (42:29.772)

Yeah, I found that process so interesting that business resilience assessment is why I’ve come back to talk about it because it’s just a great way of giving people a framework to kind of address the areas of the business. And you just get such great insight from that as to where people’s feeling is about areas in your business that do need a bit of attention. Because if you’re thinking about what should we spend our time and attention on, why don’t you ask your team first of all, where those issues are surfacing for them. And that assessment was really powerful in that context for us. So I just wanted to touch on that again. is a really important one. the coaching that you undertake and the frameworks that you employ in small to medium enterprises, only hold for a business though, if they’re captured somewhere that lives beyond that engagement, because we’ve all had coaches come in, tell us what to do, and then it goes into a sort of a…

Gabe (43:07.56)

Yeah.

Rob (43:29.774)

It goes on some butcher’s paper or it goes on to a whiteboard and tell us about the platform that you’ve created to make sure that the coaching and the frameworks are designed to hold. So, why it matters this becomes the ongoing source of truth rather than a set of documents that sort of age away and draw somewhere. Tell us about that platform because everyone would relate to that. They’ve being motivated by something that actually makes all the sense to them, but they don’t have this method to employ it and make it last in the organisation beyond that engagement.

Gabe (44:06.768)

Yeah, look, all of our research and all of our testing and deployment in the SME market over a decade or more across 500 SMEs around the country, we’ve learned that in every SME, there’s five things that need to be in a healthy state. You need good leadership, a robust and executable strategy, a healthy culture, high performing people and teams and good systems and processes. If those five things are in a healthy state, you have a resilient organization. Now, the as you stated, often good coaching work or good advisory work will happen in the room and then it’s captured on documents or PDFs or whatever it is that sits in a SharePoint and then it fizzles out after a few months. And we wanted to combat that problem. We were aware of that problem. And, know, Bill being a technology guy from before, there was always the aim for the way that we approach this problem, we will approach it with technology and intellectual property so that something can stay. So the platform therefore then was designed to house all of the data for these five things to promote the right actions and the right behaviors to keep them very healthy, and to track the performance and the associated intelligence in real time. What this does is it gives the owners and the leaders an amazing competitive advantage to build a highly resilient business. And it makes the business far more valuable as a result and far easier to hand over if you want succession or to sell if you decide to move on down the line.

Rob (45:51.215)

Yeah, as I was looking at what you do, and we’re talking about this particular platform you’ve created, it made me think that many businesses would think about, like in financial planning space, it’s a software that does modeling for clients. It’s a financial planning specific tool that’s built for delivering advice to clients. Then there’s more recently, in more recent years, there’s a real push towards building out a CRM. So a really sophisticated way of managing client information and having good Intel on all of your clients at aggregate level, dashboards, analytics and all, that’s really super powerful. But what we’re describing here is something that sits above all of that because it’s almost like the business level CRM. It’s not the customer relationship. It’s like the business, the BRM. It’s the relationship management of the business and all the issues that go into the business. And it’s like that level above the customer relationship software that sits about what are all the things we do and how we do them? What are the issues that we’re working on? What have we resolved? I know there’s a number of different businesses out there or implementations out there that kind of go to this issue of how to actually get a structured way of managing your business. I won’t name them as a few of them and I’ve read all the books about how they get deployed. But that’s what you’ve created, isn’t it, Gabe? You’ve built this system that kind of houses the intellectual knowledge and corporate knowledge of the business and it becomes an operating system for the business to run because it’s a level above the client work. It’s all the other things that go behind the scenes to run the business effectively. Is that how you think about it? Sort of sits above that CRM and connects perhaps to it.

Gabe (47:38.149)

Yeah, I guess internally we refer to it as our ownership and leadership operating system at the end of the day.

Rob (47:45.048)

Okay.

Gabe (47:50.108)

The thing is you, as an owner, how do you make sure that you understand the state of your business? We care about business stewardship. That is what we’re passionate about. We want to help owners be better stewards of their business, because we believe if they become better stewards of their business, they will get what they want. SMEs will stay, they will flourish, they will continue to employ people for many years to come continue to create opportunity that will continue to contribute innovation to our society. That’s a problem we care about. So it’s a stewardship system. It is a place and a way that gives you the information you need as an owner or a leader to make better decisions to deliver on the vision for the business. And in order to do that, it has to zoom right out to the absolute macro of where are we going?

Rob (48:39.822)

Yeah.

Gabe (48:47.269)

And then, well, what do we need to get there? And then, well, how do we build a system that can be in a healthy state as we pursue that? And needs to give the place for all of those actions and those behaviors to be conducted to ensure the likelihood of that outcome. You need to understand the complexity and the interconnectedness of your system, your business. You need to understand the data about performance trends, the intelligence that’s captured in there, and you need to have it delivered to you in such a way that you can make wise decisions in an expedient way.

Rob (49:23.522)

Yeah, I love it. It does make so much sense to me. As you say, it’s an ownership and leadership operating system, which sits above that client relationship management system that everyone’s so familiar with. So I wanna touch on this issue that business owners would be thinking about as they listen to this. In your experience, they probably tend to act either because they’re in pain now and think I’ve got to solve this problem. I literally haven’t got a solution and they’re experiencing some level of discomfort in their business, or because they’ve landed in a rare moment of headspace where they got to time to think, because they’re at a conference, someone like you speaks, they think, wow, I should be doing this, and they get that moment of headspace to think about what are the warning signs that a principle of a business should be acting now, even if they think things feel fairly fine on the surface and they don’t feel the need or the motivation right now. No catalyst in their mind that is kind of saying, I should do this. Because what you’re saying, everyone listening thinks, I’m sure will think, this makes so much sense. when you’re describing it, it’s not rocket science, but there’s a structure, a framework and a methodology to it and the way we capture it, record it and use it ongoing. But how do you get them to see that there’s more need now than just sit back and think, yeah, I’ll get to that at some point and start the thinking early so they don’t wait too late? What are the warning signs there?

Gabe (50:55.108)

I think I want to answer that like this. If you have or feel or see warning signs, you probably have already left it a little bit late, you probably should have acted already. And we want to we want to save people from that pain. Often owners act when they are in pain, and they’ve been in pain for a while and they don’t know where to go next. And they’ve tried lots of different things and they failed. And then they end up…

Rob (51:07.149)

Yeah.

Gabe (51:24.654)

… connecting to us. We’d much rather they not have to go through that pain. And that’s why we are so passionate about advocating for proactively and early building a business that’s set up for succession. I think a good way to go is to ask yourself in great detail, what do you want your life to look like in five or 10 years? And what needs to happen in the business to ensure that you get that? And then ask yourself, do you have a plan to achieve that in good time? A plan that you can trust and it’s proven. If the answer is yes, rock and roll. Just get after it. If the answer is no, maybe try and find one early before you run into the difficulty. It’s easier said than done because the SME owner trap is that you are the principal technician and you’re the leader and you’re the owner. So you’re overwhelmed, you’re under the pump, you’re wearing too many hats, you’re working 60 hours a week. Where do I find the time to pursue this? I will get to it, I will get to it, I will get to it. And that’s when they end up in pain.

Rob (52:33.998)

Do you know the funny thing is, as people hear you say that, they’ll be thinking like, this is like the shoe being on the other foot, because they’re doing this for clients turning up to get financial advice, who don’t have the time to think about their own affairs and what a professional to help them. So this is about saying those same questions that you would expect a client to articulate when you ask them what they want their life to look like, what’s the goal, are we trying to achieve here? All those questions are questions they themselves should be asking, and perhaps with support, asking to make sure that their future plan, not just financial plan per se, but business plan, their vision of what the business will be and what the end state looks for them, what that looks like. It makes so much sense. so there’s no, there’s such a, you know, it’s obvious when people think about it like that, it’s actually doing what they should be doing for themselves that they’re doing for clients all day, every day. So if someone, is that the one thing then, if someone were to finish this episode, last question for you, cause you’ve given me about an hour of your time. If someone finished the episode does nothing else, what’s that one action that you’d want them to take in their business this week, that would start them moving toward a business that’s more resilient and less dependent on them personally?

Gabe (53:44.263)

I think it’s very simple. Go and sit by the fire with a glass of wine or next to your barbecue with beer or in the spa or whatever tickles your fancy. Give yourself an hour and then figure out in detail what you want your life to look like. Doesn’t even need to be in detail, just have an idea and be sure about it. And then decide what would the business need to look like if that was the final outcome, and then agree or make a commitment on what is the first thing that you can do tomorrow that is a small but right step in that direction. It’s that simple. And you don’t need help for that. Nobody can tell you what you want. But you can figure that out if you give yourself the space to ask that question, answer the question, then go, well, what does my business need to look like if I was to get that? And then what’s one small thing that I can do tomorrow that’s a good step in that direction? Just go and do it, see what happens, see how you feel.

Rob (54:51.626)

And if people feel like they can do that on their own, great. But if they feel like they want to actually have someone take them through that process, much like clients turn up to advice firms and have them take them through the process, how would they reach out to Adaptive? What’s the best way to get in contact with you, Gabe?

Gabe (54:58.182)

Thanks. Our website is theadaptway.com and on there you can read about us and it’s very easy to connect with us. I’m on LinkedIn so people can reach out anytime. Happy to have a chat, email, call, whatever. I tell the story and I think it’s worth hearing because it helps with this decision.

Rob (55:14.818)

TheAdaptWay.com.

Gabe (55:34.338)

It matters more that you have a plan and you do something than that you work with us or anybody else. Just do something. But the story that I use is if you jumped on a sailboat and you went sailing and you did all the right stuff and you responded to the wind and this well and all that, where do you somewhere but we don’t know where because we didn’t really set a destination. Now if you said I want to sail to Singapore you’ll still sail, still you know make sure the sails are in the right way, you’ll adapt to the wind, you’ll adapt to the swell, all that sort of stuff and you’re a bit more likely to end up in Singapore. Now working with somebody like Adapt or somebody else who might do this work is like having somebody on your boat who has sailed to Singapore a hundred times and they know exactly what to do. And they can give you the phone numbers of the other skippers that they’ve helped get to Singapore. And they’re there for you and they’re gonna help you. And the likelihood of you getting in Singapore is far greater. So I say that because a lot of owners have tried to solve this problem on their own and then you got into trouble because it’s not an easy thing to solve, especially if you don’t have a lot of bandwidth it makes sense to find somebody that you trust that can increase the likelihood of you getting this outcome.

Rob (56:55.212)

Yeah, I love it. It makes a ton of sense. Everyone listening who’s a financial planner, and that’s pretty much the audience, everyone who’s listening is a financial planner or running a financial planning firm, they would be thinking, this is a no brainer, we’ve got to be doing this. If we’re not already doing it with a coach or a consultant or someone that’s or even just on our own and actually having a cadence around structuring and thinking about a business in a forward way. It makes so much sense. So I do really appreciate you taking the time. Yeah, yeah.

Gabe (57:21.059)

I want to say, can I say one last thing, Rob, if that’s all right? And luckily, if it’s not allowed, you can edit it out. So I think this is important to understand. We care more about helping as many SMEs as possible in the world to survive in life than what we care about building a massive company. That’s not really what we’re about. And to that vein, we are actively partnering with businesses who advise us to SMEs and we pass on our intellectual property, our technology, our knowledge and say, hey, if this helps your community, go for it. We care about SME stewardship on a global scale. And if that’s something that anybody wants to explore or wants some support with, we have a pathway for that.

Rob (58:06.55)

Yeah, I love it, Gabe. What I understand about you and your business is you are a very mission driven business. This is a mission for you beyond what ADAPT can do to move the needle for businesses. You want to see SMEs get more prepared and be better stewarded, I guess, by the people running them for the benefit of the people they serve and the people that working within those firms. I do appreciate your time. Thanks for taking that hour or so to have a chat today on the Trusto Advisor podcast.

Gabe (58:39.375)

Thanks for having me, it was great.

Rob (58:41.155)

Thanks, Gabe. Appreciate it.