How Jeremy Au Invests In and Grooms His Successor

How Jeremy Au Invests In and Grooms His Successor

Sean: I’m wondering, how much autonomy did you give this person? Did you let go of your control of the company to this CEO that you hired? And just to give people like me an idea like how much equity are we talking about when we’re going to give them a slice of it? Is it like 1%, 5%, 10%? Hopefully not, but I have no idea. And I’d like to learn from people like you’ve done it before.

Jeremy: So, I’ll give you example would be, you know, if you gave away half the company but the person doubled the size of your company, then you broke even, right. If that makes sense, right. A minimum – right? And so, one way to think about it is if you could find someone who’s going to 10X your business, then giving away half company is no big deal because yeah, you know, you grew your stake by 10X, right, you know? Even though you gave up half of it, right. So, you still up by five x, right? So, I think I always tell people is that you want to think about your equity stake and then find someone who is so good, that you think is cheap that you’re giving this equity stake to – right. And it’s a no brainer.

Jeremy: In terms of like letting go of control. I mean, you know, the funny story is that after that hand over, do the handshake and form team, I went for a solid meditation retreat, you know, and it was like ten days. And I remember, you know, it was my first time that I didn’t have a phone, no electronic devices. And it was a pain in the rear, honestly, because there was a lot, and I would, you know, be meditating and visualize my phone vibrating in my pocket, even though I didn’t have my phone at all. So, it just goes to show how addicted I was to vibrations and notifications.

Jeremy: And, you know, it’s all about letting go and being present in the moment. Yet what was interesting was I remember we got a phone back at the end ten days and I was like, open my, you know, WhatsApp? And I was expecting like a bunch of messages from the new person, you know, to ask me for help. Ask you where stuff is? And zero – there was like zero messages, you know, she had gone off and kept going into everything.

Jeremy: And I remember I felt disappointed, you know, I was like, you know, I mean, obviously, intellectually, you know, it would be great if she did not because she was getting stuff done and everything. But I felt like, unwanted – unneeded I mean, obviously, intellectually, I knew that was good. She got it and she had it under control and things didn’t explode in those ten days, you know, and she was off to the races, and she did a better job for the company in the next stage than I could ever have had done. Yet, you know, I was saying, like, it was just interesting to have that dynamic, right? Which was to feel that reluctance. Right. And, you know, having to name that feeling was tough because, you know, I felt lonely. I didn’t feel as wanted right? And dethroned, right? You know, like that role. Right. And so letting go of that was actually quite important for me. So, it was just over time just being like, Yeah, you know, you always want to find someone better than you, you know, certain aspects.