Matthew Pohl, CEO of the ReWild Group, reflects on the turning point in the first business he founded and how the discoveries he made during that time propelled the business forward.
When my business partner and I decided to get a valuation of our company, back in 2012, we were 12 years into our tenure as business owners. We had built a legal professional services business that was running successfully and paying the bills, but we wanted to know what it was actually worth.
The site of our business, Class Action Administration, from 2004-2013.
It took a lot of courage to let someone put a number on this company we had invested so much of our lives in. And the news wasn’t encouraging. The number we received from the business broker did not reflect 12 years of blood, sweat, and tears. It wasn’t even close.
We knew we had a decision to make – should we fight to increase that number dramatically, or should we accept that this was as good as it was going to get? I can recall thinking to myself, “How are we going to do this when we’ve already been giving our all? Haven’t we tried everything we can think of?”
What popped in my head was a picture of my dad, who was forced to close his interior design business when I was in the ninth grade. I realized his business had also plateaued and was unable to sustain a downturn in the economy. He was never the same after he lost his outlet for his artistic talent. I wanted something different for my life, so … we decided to fight.
That day marked the beginning of a three-year journey that changed everything.
I began devouring everything I could find about business growth and valuation. That’s when I came across a book called Navigating the Growth Curve, and I knew right away I was onto something. I grabbed hold of the principles described in the book and put them into action.
The results were astounding. In the span of just three years, our sales nearly tripled, while at the same time, our profitability—which was already strong— improved as well. It was at that point we received an offer to sell the business to a competitor at a value 10X the Year 12 value.
The amazing thing to me is that we weren’t working any harder during those three years than we had been all along. The difference was that our efforts were going to the right places. We were more effective, our entire team was more motivated, and the momentum just snowballed. We had fallen in love with our business again!
Team celebration on the first day in our new, completely redesigned office space (2013).
After we sold the business, I could have retired. But I had experienced the power of a methodology that I knew could help other businesses too. Not just here in the US, but around the world.
Instead of buying a beach house or a boat and settling into retirement, I acquired the Intellectual Property that I had first encountered in the book Navigating the Growth Curve (based on the Stages of Growth). Over the last several years, my small team and I have developed and solidified those foundational ideas into the methodology that is called Organizational ReWilding®.
Today, as a founder and principal of The ReWild Group, I’m passionate about growing the number of exceptional business globally. I hear from business owners and advisers every day who are using the methodology and seeing tremendous growth and benefits.
Matthew Pohl, founder and principal of The ReWild Group, leading a session of the Exceptional Manager Program.
Looking back, I’m glad my business partner and I didn’t fall for the lies like “this is as good as it gets” or “but we’ve already tried everything.” Our decision to change how we had done things for years to have the chance to reach whole new levels of success not only impacted us financially, but also opened up an avenue to help other business owners who are in the same place today that we were in Year 12.
If you’re a business owner or leader, or an adviser to business leaders, I hope you’ll take a closer look at Organizational ReWilding. (I recommend you begin by using the Stage Calculator to find out your business’s Stage of Growth.) This methodology is not based on my single, unique experience. Instead, it is based on the collective experience of over 1,300 business leaders. I’m just one example of how it can change a business, and a life.