The Virtual CMO Podcast
Season 6, Episode 3
Hosted By: Eric Dickmann
With Guest: Steve Preda
Our Featured Guest
Steve Preda
Author - Buyable
Steve Preda is an entrepreneur, speaker, certified EOS implementer, and author of Buyable: Your Guide to Building a Self-Managing, Fast-Growing, and High-Profit Business.
Since the age of ten, Steve (Istvan) Preda dreamt of becoming an entrepreneur, inspired by his great-grandfather, who had built a legendary bakery business in Budapest, Hungary. After working for top consulting firms and banks in London and Budapest, in 2002, he embarked on realizing his dream by starting MB Partners, a consulting firm, helping private companies arrange ownership transitions. Having overcome many painful mistakes, by 2007, MB Partners achieved market leadership in Hungary, but around its tenth year, the firm hit the ceiling. That was when Preda read Gino Wickman’s Traction, which changed his life and his company forever.
Today, Steve Preda's mission is to help entrepreneurial leadership teams succeed, as a Certified EOS Implementer. Since 2016, he has been helping over 35 leadership teams clarify, simplify and achieve their visions, and start living the EOS Life.
What's Hot?
"TURN YOUR BUSINESS INTO A VEHICLE TO REACH YOUR IDEAL LIFE. Do you own a business that isn't living up to its potential? Are you feeling frustrated by your company's lack of growth, profit, or value creation? Do your employees wait for you to make decisions, instead of driving your organization forward?"
Buyable is a 284-page instructional guide written by Steve Preda. This book talks about how owners can reshape their businesses and remodel them into a self-managing, fast-growing, and highly profitable enterprise that allows you to live the life that you desire. Buyable discusses the simplest recipe to make your company buyable, the seven management concepts you need to master to orchestrate your business, ten management blueprints to help execute your vision, and the major drivers that every entrepreneur needs to grow their business.
Steve Preda
So whatever the reason that we start businesses, begin with the end in mind. So what is an idea? What does an ideal life look like for you?"
What We Discussed with Steve
On this episode, host Eric Dickmann interviews Steve Preda about building a fast growing, high profit business.Here are some highlights of our conversation:
- [00:03:47] Keeping the end goal in mind – Whatever is the reason entrepreneurs start their businesses, whether they want to sell it in the future or run it forever, it is important to begin with the end goal in mind. Whatever your ideal life is, figure it out first, and then use the business as a vehicle to get you there. A business is a great way for people to fund that ideal life.
- [00:06:40] The two kinds of entrepreneurs – While we all have different goals for our business and personal life, entrepreneurs have two different mindsets – those who fall in love with their idea and hold on to it forever, and people who always want to contribute new ideas to the market, and later profit by selling these concepts to larger companies.
- [00:08:47] What does it mean to design your future? – In Steve Preda's book- Buyable, he emphasizes four major points. The first major point talks about designing your future. Steve points out that businesses need to identify what they want to achieve in the future and picture their ideal life years from now. Then, business owners have to build a plan on how they can achieve the desired goals.
- [00:12:27] Orchestrating your business – Orchestrating the business is the second step. According to Preda, orchestration is making the business run well. There are three purposes to make a business run efficiently- make it self-managing, growing at a steady pace, and make it profitable.
- [00:18:08] How should companies think about growth? – Do you own some real estate in the minds of your customers? If you feel that you're not growing fast enough, you have to identify your growth drivers and focus efforts on the areas that can push the business forward. Steve encourages businesses to consider four things when looking at growth- differentiating the brand, consistent growth, building a talent-attracting culture, and having an internal sales engine.
- [00:24:49] Constructing your ideal life – Constructing the ideal life is the fourth element in Buyable. Steve tells business owners that they have to know whether they want to stay in business or not. If they're going to stay in business, they have to identify what the terms are and live with the pros and cons However, if they aim to sell the company, they must accept that there are certain decisions that you won't be able to influence to the same degree. He firmly advises entrepreneurs to sell their business only if they have a compelling future. You are not retiring from the business; you're retiring to something better.
Resources Mentioned
- Buyable- Amazon
- Discover how buyable your business is- Buyability Assessment
