Ep 60: Family Business Chaos: Turning Dysfunction Into a Sellable Company

Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast, Episode 60. You must, in dealing with as many family businesses as you deal with now, you must see all kinds of— I mean, I can't even imagine the stuff that you see that goes on. I mean, right? Family businesses are a completely different animal.

Without question. And sometimes, frankly, it's heartbreaking. You know, where I have 2 independent contractors on my team that are mental health professionals, and sometimes I have to bring them in with the client's permission because they're in a really bad place. I mean, well beyond my, you know, training and capabilities. So yeah, it's usually not a good day.

What are the things in your experience, Scott, that really make these family businesses so different from kind of more traditional businesses? You know, what are the unique challenges and things like that that the family businesses face?

So if you work in a traditional business, you're more likely to speak open and freely and, you know, just upfront and honestly, whereas in family business, you tend to be reserved. You don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. You're kind of like, I don't know if I should really say this because I don't know what it's going to do to Christmas. I don't know what it's going to do to Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. I better keep my mouth shut. I better not say anything right now. Or maybe I'll go through a back door, like I'll go to another family member to kind of plant seeds. So, and the other thing is pitting non-family members against the family, other family members, to accomplish the goal. That's pretty common too.

And also, I imagine, like, I'll speak for myself, but like the, the dynamic of there was something that happened 15 years ago or 30 years ago or 40 years ago that I haven't quite got over. So that can, and that sort of can come up again in either negotiations or problems that you did this 25 years ago to me. And, you know, that comes up sometimes.

So, well, you know, I don't know if I shared this with you, but my wife and I have been married 42 and a half years together, 45 and a half. And people ask us all the time the secrets. And I think for both of us, we just did Everything opposite our parents did in both cases.

Right.

And when it comes to business, my wife and I have worked together for— till she retired, you know, 40 years. And we just kind of did everything opposite of what else was out there. You know, we always knew what each other was doing, but we stayed in our respective playground, if you will. We knew what was happening. We knew enough to— if we had to back one another up and that respect level. And you don't find that in a lot of family businesses. Respect is, is not an easy thing.

It's not. And the reality is that when we talk about family businesses and fixing family businesses, right? Because obviously on this podcast, we talk a lot about growth. We're talking a lot about growth acceleration, and we're obviously always kind of talking it through the lens of exit planning and that eventual exit. And so today we're going to talk specifically about family businesses, what those family businesses kind of go through in terms of their growth challenges. Obviously, we just talked about some unique things that happen from a personality standpoint. and the dynamic of families and how that's different. But the dynamic of the families around the exit process and all that stuff is also rife with all kinds of problems. So today on the Exit Engine Podcast, we're going to be joined by— we're joined here by Scott Gingold, principal of Gingold Advisors. Scott is a seasoned troubleshooter, fixer, and growth architect for family-run and closely held businesses. Scott doesn't offer off-the-shelf frameworks. He brings decades of real-world experience and a no-nonsense approach to helping business owners fix operational misalignment, leadership confusion, and revenue bottlenecks. Whether it's improving communication in founder-led teams or building systems that support sustainable growth, Scott brings clarity to complexity. Scott Gingold, thank you so much for being on the Exit Engineer Podcast.

The pleasure is mine. Thank you so much for having me today.

The, the, the, the notion of family businesses has All kinds of different— they're completely different animals often from the kind of traditional, you know, non-family businesses, right? And obviously we talked a little bit, just a little bit, just a little while ago about the family dynamic, the personalities involved, the way that potentially issues that are outside of the company find their way into the conversations, into the manipulation, into the You know, the humanness, right, of being families and stuff. When it comes to, when it comes to what are the growth challenges that family businesses find themselves in that might be different from, you know, kind of other companies and their growth challenges?

Well, I think one of the most common things today, frankly, is the battle between innovation, legacy, and heritage. You know, we've done it this way for 100 years, whether grandpa or grandma started the business or mom or dad. And now the newer generations are coming in. And, you know, I remember vividly when desktop computers made their presence out there and the resistance even back then to just desktop computers. And when you take AI in the workplace today as just one example, it is earth-shattering and earth-moving for so many founders and the people that really are stuck in trying to find a way to grow the business, but at the same time not lose what made them special in the first place.

Right.

So that, Communication is the real key here, and unfortunately, the generation that wants to bring new innovation is not always the best at explaining the how, where, when, and why, and how that's going to benefit the future of the company.

Hey, I'm Jo Stapleton.

And I'm John Kniff.

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Don't let your life's work get discounted. Control your business destiny today. Start preparing now while you still have time to engineer the exit you want. Visit myexitengine.com to learn more. Well, it's so funny you mentioned that, is when you say desktop computers, is my mother—

we—

I grew up in a family business, as many of our listeners know, but, but my mother would not have a computer. She would not do anything on the computer. She, she, she—

we were—

we had to ship candy all over the world, and she reluctantly let my father bring in a Pitney Bowes machine to send candy around the world, but, but she would write down everything. And her hand, I remember her hand, she was left-handed, and she would write down all the orders. And we had files and files of stuff. And we had all the, you know, it was, it was absolute chaos other than for my mother. She understood all the, the organization, but she just resisted computers, you know, entirely in the work that she did.

Well, I can tell you that in, I'll use our last business as an example. We had a cybersecurity IT company that my wife and I sold, and we had great systems. Great. I mean, just ticketing systems, you name it, backup systems, you name it, we had it. My wife continued to write paper notes, continued to write on whiteboards, and it drove the team crazy. But as she said, I've seen systems fail. I'm not saying we shouldn't use systems, but, you know, one is none, two is one, three is two. So let's make sure that we have it. And this is what's comfortable for me. To me, that was an awesome compromise. She explained it beautifully. And it wasn't that she was saying I'm resistant to technology or advancement. She's saying let's Let's not, again, lose what works for me in my particular role in the company. And let's not lose what works for us as a business.

Right. She wasn't, she wasn't being just a Luddite. She was basically, she was basically considering she worked in that technology space. She was right. It was just a matter of, this is what works for me. This is the way that I, my brain works. This helps me explain the things I need to explain or write the stuff out the way that I need to. And that should be allowed. And it's a redundancy, right? And so, having that backup and stuff like that. But the question in there really is, right? And again, whether it's between John and your mom, right? Or Scott and your wife or whatever, the idea here for any family business in here is that there are the challenges of even the way that people work, right? Is different in a family business than the challenge of the way that people work out in a non-family business. Right.

Exactly right. You know, it's funny, back in the day when we talked about kids in school, we used to say every kid learns differently. Some are visually, some, you know, everyone learns differently. And it's the same way in the workplace too. We all have our ways that we work effectively. And isn't that what we want in the workplace, especially in family business? You do the system, you do the way that works best for you. That'll help the company be the best it can be.

And the question is, again, so when you come across these challenges and things like that, what is your approach to helping people kind of through these things? Because I'd imagine too that they are also, I mean, you know, obviously they're set in their ways. You know, a lot of times it's a matter of how do you get them to basically to open up and allow, you know, and get them to have the conversations and the things like that that are not just about work, right? But as you said before, they're also potentially about, you know, whatever happened last year or 25 years ago or whatever, right? at family dinner or whatever?

Well, the first question I always ask is, why, why are you resisting this? Is it an automatic knee-jerk reaction? Like, hey, we— I don't want to hear this. I don't want to do it. It's too scary. Or what is exactly your objections? Let's make them concrete. Let's make them real. Because once we make something real, we can deal with it. But just, oh, I'm scared of this, or I've heard bad things is not the right answer. So let's put something real together, and then we can address it.

Right.

Yeah. And yeah, I was gonna ask, you know, you describe yourself, Scott, as like a, as a business troubleshooter and fixer. Um, what, what are, when you're going into any business, a family business, what are the typical things like, um, that you're asking them about? Like, what are the, what are the, is there like a question there or what do you typically find from A, the questions you ask and then the typical problems that you encounter?

So when I first meet with someone, it's not structured in the sense of having a questionnaire. I just ask a lot of different questions, everything ranging from, it's your worst day. First of all, what are your challenges right now? Why, why am I here? It always starts out with revenue, right? Our revenue's flat, our revenue's not growing.

Yeah.

But then you peel back the layers of the onion and that's when you find out what the real issues are. But from there, I'll start asking other questions that they think like, why are you asking me this? So for, in other words, as an example, if you're CEO which is a family member or COO. Unfortunately, bad things happen to good people every day. Something terrible were to happen tomorrow, what happens to the business?

Right.

If your data got hijacked, if you lost all your data and you didn't have any access to it, would you continue to operate? And if so, how? Also, what is your succession plan? What is the— I know you have an org chart probably, but is it real? So I'll ask a lot of probing questions and from there, Then I will put together a formal questionnaire of things that I need to know to best help them. But it really starts out as a friendly conversation. And usually the longer I talk or the more questions I answer, that's when more emotions come out too on their end, when all of a sudden that's when you find out what's really happening.

Really fascinating. And so normally the way, the way in for you or the way that people are coming to you is because they feel like they've got some kind of business revenue problem or something like that, right? The first kind of indication that something is amiss here is the fact that they're seeing it on the bottom line somehow. Right?

Right. They think— they say again, they see their sales as faltering or they're not growing or they're stagnant, and they believe they've got a sales and marketing problem. And in my experience, it's rarely a sales and marketing problem. It's all the other stuff underneath that they just haven't wanted to talk about, much less address.

Right, right, right.

I mean, it's that Jack Nicholson moment of you want the truth?

Yeah, exactly right. And that is a thing too, right? I mean, the reality is that you're— this is not an easy thing for people to be able to, to either accept and/or deal with, right? So I mean, once you do get down this path and you do start to open this, what can be obviously could be a can of worms, right? I mean, um, how are you working with people through these things? And, and because I would imagine that, I mean, the, the first thought would be that, you know, well, if I'm gonna get, uh, if I'm gonna get dragged onto the therapist's couch during this thing. I'm not sure if I want to do this. And your answer would be, well, okay, but if you want to fix what you think is your revenue problem, then I'm pointing out to you what the actual issues are, right? I mean, that's got to be the approach somehow.

Absolutely. But one of the first questions that I'll ask Joe, I should say, is, are you really open to change? I mean, really, just be honest with me. You know, I don't want to waste your time or money, much less my time, which is a lot worth more these days than money. So let's be honest with each other. Are you really going to do the homework I give you? Are you really open to change? Because if you're not, let's part friends. Let's just, you know, I wish you the best. If you ever need me in the future, I'm here. But if you're not open to change, that kind of ends the discussion. And believe me, more times than not, that discussion does come to an end right there and then.

Oh, I bet it does a lot, right? Because I mean, again, in my— I'll I'll just speak of my experience is like, I'm wondering about the lifestyle aspect of a family business versus like the profit-making entity. And if you can just speak about like if you've encountered that, the sort of either change from one to another or how you navigate that difficult situation. And that's sort of what my experience was, was coming into that and dealing with that dynamic.

Well, I'll go on a slight tangent of that and say everything in family business changed after COVID. Now, you hear that every day about everything, right? But let me narrow it down to family businesses. And what you're seeing now in Gen 3 and Gen 4 is after COVID, like the rest of the generation, you know, similar generational people, is they don't want to take phone calls at 10:00 at night. They don't want to take— they may want to work in the business, but they sure as heck don't want to run it. They don't want that responsibility.

Okay.

They don't want those phone calls. They don't want that pressure. They want to be able to work. You know, in the world that we live in today and the way they work, but they don't want that responsibility. So the lifestyle question becomes really interesting because it's you want your cake and eat it too. You know, there's a price of admission for everything in this life and in business. Unfortunately, you know, that 4-hour workday is a great thing. That book was a great book. But when you're in a family business, it's a different story.

Well, yeah, like you, like they're able to work 4 hours, but someone else needs to work on the business, right? And is that bringing in a CEO? Or elevating somebody that wants to do it because maybe the owners of the Gen 3, Gen 4 want to be the owners, but they don't want to be the CEO.

Yeah. Every, you know, it's the old saying of everyone wants to be the king until they are, you know, and then all of a sudden it gets real, real fast. So, and when you bring in someone from the outside as someone that's also done fractional work, you know, that's a whole other conversation.

Oh yeah, because again, not only are you dealing with the business problems, right, whatever the business problems are, maybe it's sales and marketing, maybe it's operations, maybe it's process, maybe it's vendors, supply chain, whatever it happens to be. Oh, in addition, you have to deal with, you know, Aunt Margaret and Uncle Charlie who hate each other and can't stand each other. The problem is they have to work with each other 60 hours or 40, 50 hours a week.

Well, especially to your point, John, they want the lifestyle, right? They want the company credit card. They maybe either get a car or a car allowance or other perks. They don't want to give that up. But on the other hand, they're not happy with the arrangement they have either to get it. Again, that price of admission, right? Yeah.

Interesting.

Let's talk about— let's, let's talk about succession in these companies, because I think, again, that's something that is— that's got wide-ranging kind of implications. The question is, is that— is that when you— what has been your experience when you're dealing with succession in terms of We see things, some of the numbers that we see, 70%, there's a survey we saw recently that said that 70% of business owners at some point think that their kids are going to take over the business, and then something like less than 30% actually do. Are we seeing, I think, to your last point, maybe, are we seeing a situation where people are less willing to take over the businesses from the family? Is, I mean, is that a trend or is that, or, or what, what, you know, what do we see in terms of the trends of this stuff kind of, you know, happening? Is it more? Is it less?

It is definitely more. Again, I go back to the cake and eat it too, right? They want all the benefits, all the amenities, all the perks, but they don't want to do, have the responsibility or do the work. Um, it's not that they don't necessarily have work ethic, it's just they want a different work ethic than what was in the generations prior to them. So yes, it's definitely been a change, and it is an area that is definitely going to be a problem going forward as it comes to succession, because now all of a sudden they want to keep their job, but it's, you know, if there's a new sheriff in town, and that's a real challenge for many of them.

I'd imagine too, within the succession planning stuff, the, the notion of who's going to take over, how it's going to be done, obviously is going to become a hot potentially a hot-button, uh, you know, issue in the whole thing. And for anybody who's actually ever seen the TV show Succession, I think we actually did an episode on this, John, you know, a few months ago. But right, right, I mean, obviously that's an extreme example, but probably not all that extreme, right? I mean, in terms of, uh, right?

No, especially when they're siblings. I mean, when you have, you know, I'll say, you know, you have siblings that are all between the ages of, say, 25, 35, And they're all involved in the business and doing different things, it becomes very contentious and ugly very quickly because again, they didn't lay out the communication channels early on. There were no goals and objectives set for each one of them. They just came into the business and there was no honest, raw discussion about what does the future really look like and what do you really want out of this?

Right. But then when you give But then when you get in there, right, I mean, when they actually bring you in and you start to kind of identify, hey, look, you know, yeah, maybe you've got a little bit of a revenue or a growth issue here, but the reality is that I can see behind the scenes and I can see what's happening here. I'm trying to— it feels so charged, right? Like, you know, how do you move people through this? You know, in terms of, and get to the point where they can actually fix this stuff? Because I mean, you're not a, you're not a therapist.

No, exactly right. Well, first of all, one of my favorite questions that I ask people is when they say they want to be the leader is why? Why do you want to be the leader? I need to understand your why. How I get people through it is just get them talking. Just get them to understand exactly what their position— defend your position. This is like a dissertation. Defend your position, defend your stance, defend why you should be in charge, why you should be the Heir apparent, why you should be the captain of the ship. So when you put people up against that and it takes away the, well, I'm the oldest, I'm the smartest, I'm the best looking, whatever, it doesn't matter. Right. But defend why you think you should be the one to take over this role. And again, to the revenue problem, what have you done to really study the revenue problem to figure out why do we have a revenue problem?

Right.

Right. I imagine that sometimes you come into these places too, and you can kind of also see, you can see the stars, right? Like you can see the people that stand out as the people who are moving the needle versus the people that aren't. Your outside perspective gives you that kind of unique view, right?

Well, for sure. Especially because one of my caveats is I need to be able to randomly talk to people in your company, not just family members. I'm going to interview people. I just did this for a client. In the last month where I interviewed different people in the company. Now, nothing that would cause, you know, upheaval in the family, but I would just ask them basic questions about, tell me what a day in the life is like here. Tell me about your best day, your worst day. Tell me about what you see where the company is today. Where do you think the company's going? What is the vision of the company? Probing questions like that will usually point you in the direction of why there's a revenue problem. And why succession may not be the right answer for this company in the sense of a family member and might be looking at an exit of a different type.

Yeah. And it's funny, like, you know, when you talk to other people that are working in a family business, they often have— and from my perspective or my background is they have the best perspective on the business, right? Because it's not clouded. That's a job for them. They're there for whatever time period they're there for, and they have, they've had to navigate oftentimes the emotional, the stressful, the business aspects of the business, and they give you, you know, unvarnished or accurate picture of what's going on. Oh, the chief, the salesperson's never around, right? And that's their perspective. Or, there's not much of operations, or we don't have pricing things, and all the They give you an interesting perspective on family businesses, right?

Well, John, to that point, I'll share with you a quick story. And that is about 5 months ago, I was on site doing client work and there was a senior manager who was not family. It was towards the end of the day and I did the interview and something inside me said, I'm missing something here. I don't get it. I said, hey, what are you doing after work? And he said, my, my wife and kids are not home. Visiting some family member, whatever. I said, well, you want to go grab, you know, a cup of coffee or just talk outside of here? I've been here all day. Well, we didn't even get out of— we got to the place and he got in my car for a minute and we just started talking about an hour later and he was crying. He was emotional. I finally got out of the car, got him out of the car, and I just hugged him. And he said, I loved my job. But I hate these people. He said, I don't really hate them. He said, I hate them because they put me in the middle of them, each other all day long. But I love the work I do. I enjoy the work I do. I believe in this company. I've been here 16 years and every year it just gets worse. And I said, why do you still stay? He goes, I feel an obligation to the founder of this company who hired me when no one else would hire me. And I feel like I owe it to them. But he said, I can tell you this is impacting my marriage. It's impacting how I act as a father. That's why my wife and kids are right now not home, because they know when I come home, I am not someone to be around. I am just miserable. And unfortunately, many family businesses don't understand the impact they have on their team. And when they lose team members because they— well, they left over money. Most people don't leave over money. You know, now the buzzword is we leave because of the culture. We don't feel appreciated. And that's true in family business, but it's also just because you've made life hell for your team personally.

You know, people don't leave companies, they leave bosses, right? I think that's the— that's what I've heard. And looking back on what, you know, what just for me, like, that's so true. And I've seen other people when they've left companies or they've left jobs, like, no, no, I didn't leave because the company, I left because of my boss.

And obviously, look, let's swing it back here to this around exit planning and the value and the company and that kind of stuff. Because again, all these things that we're talking about, right, all have a direct correlation to the overall value, right? The sustainability, the health of the company, and its ability obviously to grow and to sell one day. You are obviously coming across situations too where, you know, sometimes they didn't bring you in to sell, right? But sometimes the answer is, yeah, maybe, maybe we're done here. Maybe we have to move on to this or whatever. And maybe the right thing to do is to break up the band, so to speak, right? Uh, that, that can happen a lot. What are, are the— talk a little bit about what family companies need to know, um, about about, about growth and about exit and that kind of stuff that might be, again, might be different than, you know, traditional companies?

Sure.

Well, the first thing, and this applies to every company, but family businesses are also in a denial of it's Thursday, we're going to sell the company on Friday. No, it doesn't work that way. It's going to take time. So we really have to button things up. We really have to look where our weaknesses are. We really have to make this thing sellable. And most people think their company's sellable today, even if it doesn't happen tomorrow. They think they're ready to go and chances are it's not. They don't have the right people, process, procedures, and systems in place. You know, it's not, it's kind of a false illusion. They haven't done a quality of earnings report.

Yeah.

They don't really know. I mean, they look at their profit and loss and balance sheet, they think that's the Bible and it's not. So it's also understanding, like for many family businesses, the family business is their identity. So who are you going to be after this liquidity event? Who are you as a family? What are you going to talk about? What are you going to do? Because as much dysfunction as you may have today, this is the basis of your family, sadly. It shouldn't be, but it is what it is.

Well, the identity of everybody is so wrapped up in it, right?

Exactly.

It's a family member, right? I mean, again, I'll speak for myself. Like, we viewed the business as a family member because we lived in the factory, right? We lived in the— it was part of our house. Like, when we sold the business, or when my parents sold the business, it was not only are they selling the business, they're selling the house. Everything's got to go, sort of one of those sales. So talk about it was completely wrapped up in everything. I think that's a little different than what you're doing sometimes.

Well, I always say, what are you going to talk about at the dinner table after the liquidity event? Because right now I can tell you, as a kid growing up, it was pass the peas, pass the potatoes. How the heck are we going to fix marketing? How are we going to get cash flow better aligned? How are we— what are you going to talk about at the dinner table now? I'm not saying you shouldn't exit. You probably should if you've hit that point. But what is your plan? You need a personal plan and a business plan going forward.

Yeah. No, sorry to interrupt. But, you know, that's what we— one of the things we do when we, when we set up entrepreneurs to help them exit is we do that exactly, Scott, right? We— it's like the personal goals have to come first, right? And then what do you need to change in the business so those personal goals are realized, right? Because again, the business is there to serve, frankly, the— your personal goals. Like, if you want to retire and go to Cabo or start your next business, you need to maximize what you get out of this current business. So if you don't have the personal goal set, How are you going to know when you meet them, right? Oh, I'm going to sell. You want to sell for $20 million? Is that enough? You want to sell for $5 million? Is that enough? Like, how does that— so I imagine you're working on goal setting a lot with people of like, what do you want from the business, right?

Exactly. What do you want from the business? And also, are you going to be open for— I mean, if a big corporation decides to sell and somebody comes in and says, Boy, they're really disorganized there. It's not personal; it's just business. When you're talking about a family business exit, it's personal.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, well, we don't like the logo. What do you mean you don't like my logo? My wife designed that. Aunt Sophie designed that. You know, it becomes very, very personal. So you have to make sure that you are really understanding that exiting is probably the right thing if you've hit that point. But what does life look afterward? Are you willing to take the arrows that are going to come pointing at you? And are you also going to be open to the fact that you're? valuation. You know, fortunately, if they're working with guys, you know, a firm like yours, it's going to be a heck of a lot easier and smarter to do that. But so many times family businesses think they figured out their valuation without professionals like you. So now all of a sudden they're shell-shocked when they find out it's worth a fraction of what they thought it was. Yeah.

And we find what we have to do a lot of times— I shouldn't say a lot of times, all the time when we have family businesses that we're working with is we cannot go on even EBITDA, right? We cannot go on, clearly not on net profit, because the business usually what shows is they want to minimize taxes, right? Not all the time, but they're paying people way too much in the family. So we need to do like seller's discretionary earnings, right? So that you, we're doing a lot of add-backs, we're doing a lot of adjusting, and that can That can freak buyers out sometimes because, you know, they, they see that the business is being operated. And once we explain it, it's okay. But when they see the drastic difference between what's on the P&L and what shows as a profit versus how we're getting to evaluation, it takes— so we find it takes a lot of discussion.

Well, listen, Ed, let's just focus for a moment on add-backs. In family business, my goodness, add-backs are everywhere for everything.

Yeah, you know, right?

Yeah, you're not going to see that typically at IBM, Microsoft, and Google and companies like that.

But in family business, Uncle Charlie's car doesn't go back on the, uh, P&L at IBM.

Yeah, exactly right. So I mean, that's a cold slap to the face for many of these family businesses when they're doing their exit planning. Again, I'm sure you guys see this every day in your practice that, hey, listen, you know, we gotta have some real discussions here because Because those numbers are really skewed and you've got to get real about your numbers.

Yeah, that's it. And that's the thing. And being able to do that stuff ahead of time before, as you mentioned before, a lot of times you're in this, it's an emergent situation, right? You're like, I've got to get rid of this. I've got to do this now or whatever. And everybody, when people call us, they're like, I want to sell my business tomorrow. And the answer is that, okay, well, let's take a look at what you got. But the reality is that you're probably not going to be happy if you actually try to go through with selling your business right now. The ability for any business, but particularly family businesses, to be able to unlock and unravel what really is going on below the waterline, right? And to be able to have that, to be able to understand, not only to assess it, understand it, be real about it, but then to set a plan for how to address it. Because again, it might be that you need a year or 2 of a changed P&L, right, to be able to actually even be sellable in any kind of real way, right, without it being a fire sale. And the reality is, again, it's a matter of just, you know, everybody exits, you know, most people exit one of 5 ways, right? I mean, you know, death, divorce, disagreement, disability, and dissolution, right? So, I mean, that's no different for family businesses, right? Just because you're a family business and you run the business, and just because, by the way, you're the 2nd or 3rd generation The numbers of family businesses actually get worse as time goes on too, in terms of the ability to be able to make them exist, not just because they get acquired and stuff over time or things like that, but because succeeding generations are, you know, and things change and environments change and industries change and economies change, right? It's hard to have a business that lasts 100 years.

Well, especially nowadays, because Because in, you know, I always say, you know, back in my grandfather's day, and, you know, he was in a family business of different sorts, but there was expectations. Like, if you were grandpa, grandma, son or daughter went into the business, there was no discussion. It just happened, right?

Yes.

And then maybe their generation just went into it again, no discussion. Today there's a lot of discussion, and that's what's causing Many family businesses, you know, it's frankly what's making firms like yours boom because family businesses are not what they once were. The desire to exit is that much greater because of the conflicts and because of the unwillingness to pay the dues to do what needs to be done.

Yeah, well, that's definitely— that's one of those pain points, right? Those— this is the crossroads that John and I talk about all the time is this notion that these businesses kind of get Every business gets to these, maybe multiple times if you're lucky, right? But comes to these places in which they have to be, they start to make these decisions, right? These decisions become, or at least they become, they're thinking about it for the first time. I've taken it as far as I can take it, right? I've got, I hate these people, right? You know, whatever, I can't get this done, whatever. I want to be the one that, or I want so-and-so to take over, so-and-so doesn't want to take over.

Or I want to do my own thing. Look what happened with, um, you know, the, the contemporary thing, right, that just happened this week is with Fox. With Fox, right, they've been going through this and they— it spawned a, a TV show, Succession. But Lachlan Murdoch just got control over Fox. And I think what his siblings did, and reading between the lines, his siblings said, I'm done. Like, I want— I'm not going to control the company. I'm not going to win this match. I want to go on and do my own thing and do, you know, His brother James wants to do music producing. His sisters, I forget their names, Prudence and something else, but it seems like they've reached the end of the rope. And and the the the the the son took over. Lachlan took over. It's like that's a I mean it's a publicly traded business, but it's a family business too.

And that one, you know, talking about that one specifically, how long did that get dragged through the courts?

Oh my goodness!

How ugly! And is that what you really want? You know, I had a client recently, and I called it the Godfather moment, where no matter what we did, we could not get the family. family in alignment. And I said, you need to be veto and go to Michael and say, this is— I didn't want this life for you. It's time we pack up our bags and go home, you know, sell this thing and move on.

How did that go, Scott?

Um, Michael, you know, again, these are fictitious names. Michael was not happy because, you know, he was driving, you know, he was driving a Ferrari on the company's dime, had the great lifestyle, but barely showed up 10 hours a week. And then when he did show The expectations of him were so great that, you know, he was literally on someone's couch for 2 sessions a week. So again, he wasn't proper. I wish I was brought into this 10 years ago because I would have avoided— this could have all been avoided, but it wasn't. So eventually the company did have a successful exit. Ironically, sold it to another family member, like in-laws. that it was like one of the wives' families ended up buying the business.

Really?

It was really kind of a weird situation. But yeah, it ended. And unfortunately, Michael did not— on one hand, Michael did not keep his position. Everyone, Vito and Michael, were very mad at me at the end of it because Vito wanted to give Michael a nice check. And I really pushed hard. And eventually, I won, but they hated me for it. Where the money got put into like a trust for him because I knew he was going to blow it on all the wrong stuff.

Blow it right away.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah. But neither of them talked to you about it. I mean, this is the, this is the other thing that goes on. I mean, this is, you know, we don't, we don't talk about this much, John, but I mean, one, this is actually a good time to talk about this because the reality is, is that, you know, as a, as a, as an advisor, as somebody who is, um, you know, we do this all the time. We have, we, and you and John, you and I have You know, we've gone through this, where you get to a point where sometimes, especially normally in the heat of the negotiation, right, where somebody, where the client suddenly goes, the company goes, I don't like what's going on here, right? And they start reacting. And those reactions, Scot, you've seen this stuff happen too, right? I mean, what are the things that there are, that what I was gonna, the stuff I'm talking about is that this notion that they start to start to push back on everybody, including the advisors, right? They start saying, I don't want to do this, I'm scared. They start to react, they start to blame you for things that you have no control over, right? I mean, this is the emotionally charged situation that any business, but especially a family-run business, is.

For sure. Well, first thing I tell them is, let's just get real. Let's turn around and face the boogeyman and ask, what are you really afraid Because you're telling me what you think it is, but let's make this real. What are you really worried about? What are you really scared of? Why are you not facing these fears and why are you not addressing it? And they really don't know what to say to me at that point. And then I start breaking it down. I said, you know, it's like the pie. I never ask anyone to eat the whole pie, but I'm gonna slice up 10 pieces. Let's just eat one piece at a time and figure this out.

Right.

And that usually will calm them down. But there's times when some founders Some executives in family businesses or family members, they just don't have the emotional intelligence to do that.

Well, they don't, and it's too tough for them, right? The communication aspect, right? I always, in my experience in corporate America and in family businesses, and I didn't do a good job of this in family businesses, but in my corporate career, communication, communication, communication. Because what I found in that is that brings stuff to the surface. that people either don't want to talk about, or it's sort of, it's like a forcing mechanism. When you send an email or you have a discussion with somebody, it sort of forces either through questioning or bringing something up that needs to be discussed. But, but people, again, don't necessarily want to discuss it at that point.

Well, here's the problem, John. When we say communication, people don't know what communication is. To your point about email or Slack or Teams, it's CYA in most cases, right? They're not having real discussions. That's why, and this will not make me popular, I'm not always the greatest fan of a remote, you know, work from home, work from wherever.

Yeah.

Because, you know, when you're together with somebody and you can just walk up to that person and say, can we just talk for a minute? You know, when you're face to face with someone, you know, you're not a keyboard warrior, you're not somebody that's CYA, you're not somebody that's just trying to impress somebody, and you can have a face-to-face discussion. And I see that in family businesses all the time. They're really great at text messaging each other, but they don't actually pick up a phone, much less have an in-person conversation, except at the dinner table when it becomes a whole argument.

Well, look what happened on that. Yeah, look what happened when you took that guy out to coffee, out for a cup of coffee. He didn't even— he got out of the car and he didn't even get into the place before he hugged you and broke down.

He just cried. I mean, and, and that's But a lot of families, you know, when families— I never said, I don't think I ever said this in any of our businesses. You know, we're family, we're one big family. No, we're not. You know, it's a family business that requires and relies on a lot of smart, talented people to make this ship go forward. But we're not family. And I really don't like when family businesses say we're one big family because Chances are you're not treating them as well as you think you are.

Right. And that's— this, again, this makes a huge difference when you do go to exit, right? Because these are all the things that we're mentioning here, guys, right? Remember, if you look at through the lens of exit planning, okay, all these things matter, right? Your ability to have people that are too close to the business, right? They can't remove themselves. You've got people, you've got potentially, you've got situations where where, uh, where again, there might be one person's working harder than the other. Certainly there are— then people may not be staying in their lane, right?

Yeah.

There may be people that are all over the place. All, uh, you have employees, your employees and the whole thing, and the reaction to the family ownership, right? Sometimes whatever creates that, that kind of, uh, you know, uh, you know, chaos or dysfunction, right? And so now you've got— and the whole thing, and then how do you create, you know, uh, and then a lot of these families and the whole thing are again like John's mom. I'm gonna do everything written down on a piece of paper and not have a system or not have a standard operating procedure or not have something that— a repeatable process that I can transfer to somebody else.

And then another challenge that you reference is like the thing that Scott mentioned earlier in the story of the guy that worked 10 hours a week. It's like the worst-case scenario in that situation, or one of the things I've dealt with, is you have some family member doing that, but then you have a very hard-working employee that is picking up the slack, because usually that's what happens, right? A family member is not doing X, Y, or Z, so someone picks up the slack. That loyal employee's been there for 16 years because the uncle, brother, whoever is not doing what he should be doing. And that causes real chaos at a company because the more valuable team member is not the family member.

Well, here's the other side of exit, and you guys know this better than anyone, is What a lot of family business owners don't realize is you have a suitor that comes to the table, they're going to want to talk to team members.

Everybody.

And now all of a sudden, there's going to be things said that should have been said to the family that weren't said because they were afraid to.

Or even worse, were ignored, right? Maybe they were said and they were ignored by the family. Sorry, continue.

No, absolutely right. And I would say that, you know, there comes a time when And family business founders and owners need to say to employees, listen, we really need to have that come-to-Jesus talk. What's really going on in this company? Why are you, you know, I'm always amazed at how, why are these people so afraid to ask their team what's really going on in the company? Because they know, you know, one of my first gigs early on, I almost got fired on day one because I showed up. They had a cleaning crew all night long. It was a big building, so they had a crew all night long. The CEO is a family owner. It came in and I was in the basement talking to the cleaning crew because he came in looking for me and he heard I was in the basement. It was like 6:30 in the morning. And he's— so he called me up to his office and he said to me, what are you doing? I said, well, I'm here to talk to the people, find out what's going on. He goes, well, I hired you to work with the family and the management team. I said, okay, well, I'm talking to the people that you ignore all day long that hear and see everything. And I showed him at that time, it was before electronic— I was using electronic notes. Like I had a legal pad with have 5 pages of notes. And he started looking through it. And as you tell, his face dropped. He was like, I said, you've been afraid to ask the truth. You don't want the truth. You can't handle it, I guess. But you've been afraid more than anything. And he said to me, I was honestly going to fire you till I read this. And I said, well, maybe you should have thought about that a long time ago. But the important part is we're here now and we can fix this.

That's it. And that's the thing. But it does take— I want to come back to mindset for a minute. Because again, It's the mindset in anything that you're doing from an exit planning standpoint or whatever is so imperative, right? Because it's about the founder, the person in charge being able to step away. You have to start looking at your company differently. There's all these things that are hard enough to do in a regular situation, right? But in the family business situation, Scott, they've got to be so much harder, right?

Right.

And the reality is that the mindset of— and again, it's a mindset with often not just one person, right? But you've got a situation where it's husbands and wives who are co-owners, who equally own, right? Who have the exact same voting rights, right? Or whatever, as each other, right?

How do you—

I'm trying to tell us, or tell us a story or whatever, of how these things, of what you have found inside these companies in terms of their ability to be able to to change the way that they see this stuff. Because we have so many times seen people who, even if there aren't family members necessarily, aren't family things, that are so resistant to the change because they're so used to their own stink that they just can't, right? What is John's favorite thing? Is that what got you here won't get you there, right, when it comes to exit planning. And the reason is, is because again, you think, I've done all this, I know what I'm doing, right? It's a, but in the family world, there's a whole other element going on here.

So 2 things that I commonly do among many are I will ask them, I'll take, let's say a husband and wife. I'll say to the wife, I want you to write down your goals and objectives for the next 1, 3, 5, 10 years of this business. I'll ask the husband to do it separately. By the way, there's separate rooms and I time it, by the way. And then also I have them then do a list of What are their fears about change? What are their fears about the, you know, what they, what they need to do to make change in the business? And then we, I bring them back together and then I swap the papers and I watch them actually, usually with their permission, I'll film it too. Because you could see the facial expressions changing.

As they read each other's things, right?

They're reading each other's because they didn't talk about it because it became the third rail. Like, we can't talk about this stuff because it'll break the marriage, it'll break the family. We can't talk about it.

Yeah, the expectations are very different when that happens. And, you know, when you, when you, when you say, oh, like, I want to be out of this business in 3 years, and the other partner's like, what are you talking about? We're going to sell the business in 3 years? Like, we can't do that. It's amazing. I can imagine that it's amazing to see those eyes drop and those expressions change when they read The other spouse's desire for those objectives.

Well, the most common thing I'll hear is, I had no— that I will hear is, I had no idea you felt this way. I had no idea you believed this. I didn't know that adding this change or this technology or this system was so scary to you.

Right.

You know, and—

but that's when you get the— but once it's out on the table though, how freeing is that?

Oh yeah, that's when I can really bring change in.

Right.

You know, and I make it clear, like, I'm not here to be part of the furniture. You know, we talk about being a business troubleshooter and fixer. Like, I'm not here, you know, this isn't like a typical consulting gig where me, I'm gonna be here 3 to 5 years. Uh-uh. I'm here to get you back on the road, figure out what's going on, get you on track and get you moving forward. That's my role. So we gotta be honest with each other. You know, I'm not here just to collect a check. I'm here to make a difference.

Right. And you got to know everything, right? I mean, that's the thing. This is what we say to our clients all the time from the beginning too, is that don't hide stuff from us. Morning people wake up for peace and quiet. McDonald's breakfast people, we wake up for the sweet rush of getting that warm, delicious breakfast right before it ends.

Hotcakes, sausage patty, hash browns, scrambled eggs, biscuit, real butter and syrup. You know how our big breakfast got its name, and you know where your whole family can share one for just six dollars. McDonald's. Limited time only. Present participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer or combo meal. Ba da ba ba ba.

Right? We're not here to judge you, right? We can help you. We can help change things. We can. There's almost nothing that we can't undo, right? I mean, really.

It's it's kind of like the person who goes for lab work and the night before has a Diet Coke and. It says this will all be for Diet Pepsi. I don't wanna give credit any particular brand, but you know, like that's gonna fix everything for the lab work.

Yeah.

No, 'cause you've been drinking carbonated sugary beverages for the last 10 years.

Right, exactly. Right. Yeah, exactly.

Broccoli the night before will not fix all the fries, right?

No, it will not.

Broccoli might cure cancer, but not overnight. The, in any case, the, yeah. So when, when we look back at, at, again, the, the mindset becomes really important, right? The ability to be able to say, again, we have to be able, if we, from an exit standpoint, if we want to exit for an exit for, you know, and optimize our exit, there becomes this situation where everybody has to now potentially change what they're doing, right? Or step it up or have a new strategy, right, that they haven't had before, right? Talk a little bit about the execution of this stuff and how, and as you're sticking around for as long as you are in terms of actually rubber meeting the road and moving forward, Talk to us a little bit about what you see in terms of, you know, I want to talk about the success, right? I want to hear the— I want to hear this, like, the good news. Like, tell us about how these things can actually change and can change for the better.

Well, once we start talking about exit and once we start putting the right processes and procedures and systems in place, first of all, the first thing that usually happens is after a little bit of resistance, there's calm, there's peace. Like, we know we have a shared goal, we have a shared objective, But not only that, but the roadway leading to all of that is now smoother because we have better communication. We have all the foundation properly realigned. We know what's happening. So now when we go to exit, we're better prepared for the exit. And also we're better emotionally prepared too. Like, we're all in agreement. And sometimes that does mean bringing in a licensed therapist to help them through that. Not always, but it does happen. And that's not me. But, you know, bringing in someone that can do that for them. But it's just getting them to that place. And they're generally, by the time the exit comes, it's, yeah, it's a little bittersweet. On one hand, we're letting go of something that's been like that, you know, that like the 5th Beatle, if you will, that's, you know, been part of the family forever and a day. But on the other hand, because of the fact that we're happier now in how we work together in the process of the exit planning strategy and execution, We're generally happier as a family.

Yeah, like the shared goal, right? Like you mentioned, Scott, it's like when people sort of shift their mindset to saying that they're working on projects, as an example, even outside of family business, working on projects to achieve a goal of selling the business. And either, you know, if you're in a family business or a regular business, like people appreciate those shared goals. And when they make progress and they do things to that'll pay off for them in the future. I can imagine that that's helpful for them.

It is. And one of the things that I've done in certain cases, I brought in a vacation planner. Like, okay, business sold, you know, they signed the paperwork on Friday. On Monday, your whole family's on a cruise going somewhere, or you're on an island somewhere. And this is what our plan is for the next 6 to 12 months. Right. You know, so with their permission, I will bring in a vacation event planner, whatever you want to call it. But, but you know that, you know what you're gonna do because the worst thing that could happen is you wake up on Monday morning going, right, what am I doing now?

Right.

You know, and that's when people tend to get sick. That's when people tend to get depressed. That's when people tend to be really falling apart in their lives and causing other issues. So I like to bring in somebody to kind of plan what that first year is gonna look like for them.

That's a huge point, Scott. It's a really good point to, to say. I mean, the, you know, and for anybody going through this, family business or not, You know, we can tell you from experience that you are, whether you think you are or not, you are not prepared for this. The reality of going through this and having this thing end, and of course, the longer you've been doing it, the harder it is to make that break. But knowing what you're going to do for the first year after you're done. Now, look, some people aren't done-done, right? There's earnout situations, right? There are things that—

I was just going to say, Jo, with regard to that earnout situation, it helps to transition. I can imagine you've worked with people on this, Scott, as Because you owned a business, you sold it, it's Monday morning and you have to go in and you're not the owner anymore, right? You have an obligation to fulfill for 1, 2, 3 years as a consultant or something other than the one making decisions. And I can imagine that those, I mean, the ones we've worked with, the situations are the personality. Some people adjust to it really well. Some people have real major problems with not being the the, the, the one making the decisions.

It takes an incredible amount of emotional intelligence. Sort of a tangent to that is I talked to a physician recently who sold his practice to a hospital system, and he said on one hand he's never been happier because he doesn't have all the responsibilities, you know, about running a business. He's, he said, I was never really a good businessman. He said, ego being what it is, I'm a great doctor, but I'm not a good businessman. He said, but now I need paper clips. You know, that's a dumb example, but I need some supplies. I've got to go through a whole requisition process, you know, or I need batteries for my tape recorder. You know, it's like I've got to request them. Right.

So before, you just go and spend stuff out of petty cash anymore because you're right.

Right. GPS reports, like they have an office space, right?

Exactly.

Yeah. So it's really that kind of thing I try and talk them through too, is like, you realize that if you're going to be doing an earnout and coming in, or even if you took on maybe not an earnout, but a consulting type of role, you're not the man anymore, if you will, or lady, as the case may be. But it's a whole different world. Are you really ready to be grandpa now? Because you're going to be the kind of the, yeah, I've got the tradition and the history, but I'm not that decision maker anymore. I'm the person to kind of help smooth out some of the edges that may come, and they always do come after, you know, exit. But that's my role.

Yeah.

And that's a significant shift. And also the fact is that you're not, you know, there are going to be people taking your baby and doing things with your baby that you are just not, you don't even know what it is. Right. I mean, Some of the things, the innovation, the way that you can roll— I mean, roll-ups, I think, are a good example of this too, right? Because you're often getting put onto a, you know, a platform. There is technology that's being involved. I think the doctor example is a great one because we see that happen a lot where, you know, you've been— your practices have been purchased by, you know, by one of these roll-ups. You're, you're now, as you said, you have to recreation— a requisition form for being able to buy paper clips. Um, but not only that, it's a matter of now there's a tech There's a technology thing I've gotta do. I've gotta learn this stuff. I'm an old dog with new tricks and, and I don't own the business anymore, but I still have to do this. I mean, this, this transition is not, is not easy. It's just for anybody.

Joe, I couldn't agree with you more. And I would add to that, you know, the CEO or the founder or the one that exited, you know, he never checked his email. He had an assistant that did that. And she literally, I had one case where she literally would print them out for him. And he had a flip phone. I mean, he didn't have a smartphone. And they were— the new people were not giving him an assistant. So he ended up hiring an assistant on his own dime. And her role was, among other things, chiefly to go through his email. As he said, I'm not going to do— I don't want to learn this.

Right. You know, I'm going to learn this, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm done with this. I never— I made it this far. Not going to do this.

Right.

Do you think I'm going to learn email after I sell my business? I mean, Having that, I can just imagine having that discussion with my mom when she sold her business. Like, you want me to respond to email now that I've— after I sold this thing? You're crazy.

I'm trying to imagine myself having it because again, what would— with my experience in selling my company, the thing that I was not prepared for was that I was now an employee of this other company. And the big story I like to tell is the fact that we owned a digital marketing company and it was relatively regional. We had you know, really had 2 big clients, and I split my time between Parsippany, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, between Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corporation and Comcast, right? And that was the stuff and whatever. And then suddenly we were— we had sold this company to a giant consulting company, and during the earnout period, I was instructed to get on the plane on Sunday afternoon and fly to whatever, to Charlotte or fly to whatever, or this client or this new business thing or whatever, and come back Thursday night because that's what they did. And I was like, wait, what's— what, what do you mean? What's, what's going on here? No, no, you're now— you're a senior managing director. This is what you're required to do. And if I had— I didn't even— I'm just like, okay, I guess I'm just— what I'm doing now. Like, I just— it was like we're just automatic. But it was like, I, I can imagine if I had said No. Like, yeah, what would have happened to that, right? Like, I would have lost my earnout.

I don't know too many business owners in family business or otherwise who could be good employees. I know I would be a terrible employee, honestly. Um, it's just, it's not an ego thing where I have to run the ship, but I'm not good at keeping my mouth shut. So if I see something wrong, if I see something that needs to be realigned, If I see a trouble spot, I'm going to say something. And in a lot of these cases where, especially where they've been absorbed as a roll-up, that's not the way you get, you know, you get a lot of applause and a lot of attaboy pat on the backs either.

And you'll know that.

And you'll know that as you go through the courting, you know, and all that stuff too, whether or not you're going to have a strategic role or not or whatever, or how you're going to be viewed, right? Because you're going to agree obviously in the, in the sale agreement in terms of how you're actually going to be used and what your role is going to be for the next 3 years and how you're going to do that. And again, if you're a doctor like that, they just want you to be a doctor, right?

Yeah.

That's, that's what they want from you. I want you to be a doctor, keep seeing your patients, and do this for the next 3 years while we get all this rolled up and earned out, whatever. And then maybe if you're lucky, you're going to get the, the rest of it, or you're going to get a piece of the larger pie, or whatever that is in terms of your deal. But But, but the idea— they didn't buy—

in most cases, they didn't buy your company so that they could let you run their company, right? Does that happen? Sure, maybe every once in a great while, but that's not the normal course of events.

Mergers, maybe, where 2 companies are kind of coming together and one, one becomes the CEO. Yeah, one CEO takes over. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I mean, but yeah, but you're right, that's the, that's the, that's the question. So we're running out of time here. What, what, Scott? What are the things that, if you could give the advice to, again, if we've got family companies out there listening to this right now, right? They are, what is your, what is the biggest piece of advice that you can give to family companies in terms of how they operate and what they should be doing with each other in terms of the things you see? What are the things that, if you could do one thing to help make them more successful, what would it be?

Don't be afraid to ask for outside help. Don't let your ego get in the way of asking for outside help. And I don't say that to show for myself, like, oh, call me, call me, call me. It's just like, be willing to listen to outside sources that have been doing that. It's not book knowledge, it's real world. Don't be afraid to ask for help. That's a sign of strength, not weakness.

Right.

Right? So be honest, be open, be willing to accept input from people that have been in this space that are in this space and know what they've, you know, who've been through, frankly, been to hell and back more times than once.

Yeah.

So that's the first thing is just reach out for— reach out.

Right. And then as far as from exit standpoint, you know, and things like that, what are some of the things that you would think that a family company needs to know, you know, when they start to contemplate exit or what they're going to do moving forward? moving forward to leave the business?

The 2 immediate things that come to mind are really understand your why. You think you— why you are exiting, why are you really exiting? Once you know that, if you're still at a point where you think or you believe in your heart that the exit is timely, work with professionals like you gentlemen. Because if you try and do this on your own, you know, unless you have a— unless you have an employee that's going to want to buy the company and then you can work something out internally, But work with professionals like yourselves. Don't try and do this on your own because you're going to make 100 mistakes, and those mistakes can really separate where those commas come in on that final check.

Yeah, those mistakes can be lots and lots of money, and you don't want to make a mistake in something like this.

It's already, as we've been pointing out, it's already kind of fraught with difficulty, right? And unexpected and chaos and stuff like that. And So trying to mitigate that chaos as you go through this, as you prepare and understanding what to expect and be able to, again, make decisions. And by the way, part of the beautiful thing about what we all do here, Scott, is that what we can give people is options and options that they don't even know they have as they move through all of this. So as they work with you or as they work with us or whatever, or in tandem or whatever it is, the ability for them to be able to, you know, new things arise. To your point earlier, it's like, you know what, I thought I wanted to exit. And now that I've gone through this, and I've gotten this air cleared, and my wife and I are in better terms now, or, you know, whatever about it, that now I feel maybe I don't want to exit, right? Maybe I can do this more.

Right.

You're bringing up the biggest takeaway for me today about this conversation. Frankly, for me, Scott, is the fact that it's like, if you can get this air cleared inside the company, right? If you can be brave enough, right, to sit down and have someone like Scott sit down with you and ask you the hard questions and honestly examine what's happening and be able to say, yeah, I've got this issue and this stuff, or I'm— or I have a tendency to hide this stuff from when I don't like it or whatever, or I don't like to deal with the financials because it gives me agita or whatever those things are. Those honest kind of answers to things is your salvation.

Exactly right. And thank you for that. What I would say is we're also living in a time where frankly there's never been more resources available. You know, if it's on the idea and fractional as an example, like CFOs, you know, if you're afraid of your numbers and you don't understand your numbers and you don't feel confident There's so many resources out there today that didn't even exist 2, 3 years ago.

Right.

And so many ways that you can make your life easier. You can make your company a better place for you and your team. Again, exit, it's right for a lot of people, but for some people, to your point, Joe, it's really not. It's a knee-jerk reaction to a problem that can be resolved probably more easily than people realize. True.

That's very true. And I know for us, we would rather help people through that and have them decide not to sell right now or whatever, right? Than have them try to go through and not optimize it, leave money on the table. Look, sometimes you got to go, right? There's just—

But yeah, no, to your point, Joe, it's like, but when we get into due diligence and you get into the difficult parts, right? People think of selling their business, they think of the check that they're going to get, but to get that check and to get that money, They're going to walk through— it's like Andy Dufresne in that movie Shawshank Redemption. They're going to go through a river of you know what to get that because it's due diligence. It's getting data. It's answering questions. It's digging deep into the business that they've built for n number of years. And that can be difficult for someone's ego, especially in the family business, because those critical questions come across as critical of them, not just critical of the business.

So yeah, it's to your point, John, it's like I said before, it's the 5th Beatle. And now somebody told you your 5th Beatle's ugly. Your 5th Beatle doesn't, you know, doesn't dress well. Your 5th Beatle's dumb, you know? And that's a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people. And, you know, it's not, it's not for everybody.

Yep.

No, it's definitely not. Well, Scott Gingold, principal of Gingold Advisors, thank you so much for being on, on the podcast today. Really appreciate your insight into family businesses and the work that you're doing to help people, help these people kind of move through, get past these, you know, some of these kind of family, you know, issues and be able to actually set them on a trajectory, you know, for health and sustainability. The work you do is really, really important. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Scott, for people who want to, how can people, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me today. It's an honor and a privilege to be with both you gentlemen today. Thank you very much. My website is Gingold Advisors. That's G-I-N-G-O-L-D. Gin like the drink, gold like the commodity. Gingoldadvisors.com. I live on LinkedIn. You can find me Scott Gingold, one word. I'm really easy to find there too. The other thing I would say is if you schedule 30 minutes with me, I don't pitch slap anybody. I don't, I don't force anyone. People actually have almost had to talk me into taking the assignment. So they're not going to get a heavy sell from me. They're not going to get any sell really. We're just gonna have an open and honest discussion. So reach out, love to talk to you.

That's great, Scott. Thank you so much for being with us on the ExitEngine Podcast today. We really appreciate it. John, when we talk about family businesses, any business is rife with issues, right? We always talk about the fact that, you know, a business is like family to begin with, right? It's a group of human beings sitting around, uh, we're trying to move a common— we've got a common goal. We're trying to move that ball forward. The human nature of people in general, right, is already difficult enough, right? But to add the extra element of the familial relationship on top of that, whether it's husband and wife, father and son, daughter and mother, whatever it is, sisters, whatever the thing is, right, there is— you are bringing this baggage, and you already know this, you're living it.

Well, yeah, I'm convinced that any company that says, oh, we're like a family, those people, anyone who says that has never been in a family business, A, and doesn't understand what they're saying. Because anyone who's been in the family business and hears that line from a company would probably walk out the door and probably should walk out the door. So if your company is saying it's a family, be wary.

Beware. Exactly right. It's a red flag. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us on the Exit Engine Podcast today. Go find Scott Gingold on, on Gingold on Uh, sorry, on LinkedIn. Um, he's there with us. You'll find him with us too, uh, you know, coming down the pike in a little while too. There's gonna be more coming from Scott for sure. Um, the Exit Engine Podcast, guys, we are, we are, uh, we have a community. We want you to go right now to, to myexitengine.com where you're going to be able to find, you're going to be able to sign up, uh, to be, to get notified about our community that's starting this fall. We're helping, uh, founders of any ilk who, who want to be able to learn how to, how to set their exit trajectory, learn how to examine their business to make sure that they can actually raise their value and salability and be able to exit on their own terms. So again, please go to myexitengine.com to do that. You can find John at john, J-O-H-N, at myexitengine.com. Send him an email anytime. You can send me, Joe, J-O, at myexitengine.com an email anytime. Find us on YouTube. On, on this podcast, wherever you share this podcast with someone you love because they need it. They need to learn this stuff. Scott, thank you so much for being on today. John, thank you for being my partner and have an awesome day, guys. Thanks again.

Thanks, Joe.

Thank you.