IS A GROUNDHOG RUNNING YOUR DEALS?

This article was adapted from my blog. You can see the entire article here.

Do you know why I’m fascinated with Groundhog Day? It reminds me of the way lots of advisors approach their deals. They seem absolutely mystified by how they end up in a repeating loop of busted deals, completely unaware of what’s going on underground and how to change the pattern. 

Likewise, our emotions can seem like unpredictable wild animals that pop up from nowhere and derail our lives and our deals. So, the groundhog metaphor is a good one for us to use in thinking about how to help more owners make it all the way through a successful sale of their business.

The term "Groundhog Day" became part of the English lexicon as a means to describe a monotonous, unpleasant, and repetitive situation. It arose following the release of a comedy by the same name that has surprisingly philosophical undertones that are applicable to the process of selling a business.

In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray portrays Phil Connors, a cynical television weatherman covering the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, who becomes trapped in a time loop forcing him to inexplicably relive February 2 again and again. The film’s creator, Danny Rubin, said that this lack of explanation made Phil's situation more relatable, as "none of us seems to know exactly how we got stuck here either” when facing our own Groundhog Day experience.

Like some advisors I’ve met, Phil makes no secret of his contempt for the assignment, the small town, and the "hicks" who live there, nor does he conceal that he’s only doing it for the money and his ability to leverage it into something “better.”

In short order, when Phil realizes that each day is the same as the one before and there are no consequences for his actions, he begins spending loop after loop indulging in binge eating, one-night stands, robbery, and other dangerous activities, using his increasing knowledge of the day's events and the town residents to manipulate circumstances to his advantage.

Some advisors in our industry have taken a similar approach, treating business owners, their precious life’s work and the sale process like “a numbers game” – slickly convincing lots of business owners to list their companies with them, but putting in little effort to help those owners succeed at the sale, concealing key information from deal partners and doing just enough to earn their fee and abandoning those deals and clients that don’t quickly show economic promise. 

They put their attention on only the technical aspects of the sale, persuading the owner and themselves that only reaching the highest dollar matters, ignoring the reality that their work as a trusted advisor is about so much more than just running a transaction and collecting their fee before moving on to the next one and the one after that. 

We hear advisors mutter under their breath with contempt that they have to play “part-time psychologist” in their deals, meanwhile actively looking away from the signs of distress that owners exhibit about their uncertainty surrounding the transition and, worse yet, sometimes shaming those owners for needing to slow down so they can catch their breath and adjust to all the change that is happening around them.

These behaviors end up creating the self-perpetuating loop of busted deals and lead to mistrustful owners and advisors who treat owners with contempt that goes round and round.

The behaviors we engage in create patterns and lead to the loops of our lives. We have more power to decide which loop plays out than we sometimes remember.

Ask yourself, “If this was my favorite uncle, how would I handle the sale of his business?” Would it be different than the way you are approaching or interacting with this business owner who might, today, feel like a stranger?

 Do you care about how this owner and his family and employees and community will experience this process and what lies for them on the other side? What can help you to build relationships of trust with your client and your deal partners so that this deal makes it all the way to the close in a way that leaves everyone feeling at ease?

Are you genuinely proud of the way you are doing your work and the way it affects the people you are serving? If not, change your approach or pick a different job. 

Otherwise, reconcile yourself to being like Bill Murray’s character, Phil - living a never-ending series of Groundhog Days filled with misery or his grubby groundskeeper character Carl in Caddyshack muttering about the string of senseless deals as “a pool or a pond, all the same to me.”

Did you enjoy this snippet? You can read the entire article, and my thoughts on showing more #empathy and care in your deals here.