# Ep 38. Exit Planning, Selling Your Business, and Maximising Value with Rod Cook

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-better-smb-podcast-7059551/ep-38-exit-planning-selling-your-business-and-maximising-value-with-rod-cook
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-better-smb-podcast-7059551/ep-38-exit-planning-selling-your-business-and-maximising-value-with-rod-cook.md
Podcast: [The Better SMB Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-better-smb-podcast-7059551)
Published: 2026-07-16T02:58:42+00:00
Episode link: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/ep-38-exit-planning-selling-your-business-and-maximising-value-with-rod-cook--73007396
Audio file: https://api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73007396/ea9886ae_029e_f54e_1afa_b5e930a38bd2.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-better-smb-podcast-7059551/episodes/ep-38-exit-planning-selling-your-business-and-maximising-value-with-rod-cook
Duration seconds: 3367

## Resource

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…

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-better-smb-podcast-7059551/episodes/ep-38-exit-planning-selling-your-business-and-maximising-value-with-rod-cook/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-better-smb-podcast-7059551/ep-38-exit-planning-selling-your-business-and-maximising-value-with-rod-cook.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.