Episode
Ep 38. Exit Planning, Selling Your Business, and Maximising Value with Rod Cook
- Podcast
- The Better SMB Podcast
- Published
- Jul 16, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3367
- Processing state
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Summary
Episode OverviewIf you had to sell your business tomorrow, what would it actually be worth to a buyer — without you in it? Every year over 50,000 NZ businesses close and only ~2,000 actually sell. Businesses that sell are built to run without the owner as the glue. Rod Cook spent over a year pulling himself out of the critical path of Jackson's Flooring Design Commercial to make that possible. Origin story: Rod joined his wife Leanne's family flooring business, buying the commercial division in Hawke's Bay. Investing in advice early: A business coach from day one, plus a rule to always pay himself a salary — "the cost was irrelevant to the benefit I got from it." Weathering the cycles: The GFC and COVID — the pandemic pause pushed a systems overhaul that set up later growth. Delegate, don't abdicate: Early hiring mistakes taught Rod the difference, before building a nine-person team. "Milk the cow a little longer": An accepted sale offer was shelved on advice from friend John Hutch (Plan A Consulting) — unpopular with Leanne at the time, but the right call. The 2024 plan: Standalone premises, working Rod out of the day-to-day, and preparing for a future sale. On loneliness in business: Why an informal "board" of trusted advisors matters without formal governance. Sales as the engine: Ranked #1 in his franchise group for 19 of 20 years. Would it have run without him a decade ago? "Not a chance in hell." "Delegate, but don't abdicate." — advice from John Hutchinson that reshaped how Rod built his team. The Better SMB is on a mission to lift New Zealand's productivity by helping SMB leaders take practical steps to improve business performance — through the podcast, our column The Last Word, and our growing community.🌐 Website: The Better SMB — Turning High Performance Int…