Ep 71 | The Trust Lever: How Founder Visibility Builds Exit Value

Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast, episode 71. Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast, where we help founders, owners, and entrepreneurs turn their businesses into assets buyers fight for. If you're looking to grow smarter, reduce risk, and ultimately exit stronger, then this is the show for you. I'm your host, Jo Stapleton, and with me, as always, is my partner in value and salability, Mr. John Kniff. Good morning, John.

Good morning, Jo. How are you today?

I'm doing awesome, man. I'm doing really good. Hey, listen, you've heard the old adage, right? If you don't tell your story, someone else will.

Absolutely.

Right. So some of the most successful founders in the world, have proven this, this theory, okay, of if you control your narrative, your personal narrative can directly amplify your company's visibility, its value, and its trajectory, right? So a couple of examples. Elon Musk, right, turned himself into a lightning rod for innovation, right, using his own story and presence to magnetize investors and elevate brands like Tesla and SpaceX beyond their products. So He's obviously a character in and of himself, right? That is then also kind of connected, obviously, to the value directly of those brands, right?

Another one.

How about Sara Blakely, right? Sara built Spanx not just on great design, but on her authentic, scrappy founder journey, positioning herself as a relatable, resilient leader and turning her personal brand into a billion-dollar halo.

Amazing. Yeah.

Right?

And then one other big brand that no one really thinks about in this way, because it really wasn't about his personal story, but really about how he changed the narrative around coffee, which is Howard Schultz, right, from Starbucks.

Right?

So—

And the success among a certain, you know, my daughter's age. It's amazing how crazy packed Starbucks is on a daily basis.

Right?

That's— it's crazy. I mean, the brand is so big, but the whole thing is about reframing the discussion, right? It's about the It was about less about the actual coffee and more about like the connection and the experience and that kind of stuff, right?

Yeah.

Like, and so, so anyway, the point is that in each of these cases, right, the founder visibility isn't fluff. It's not like, oh, isn't this cute? These are strategic assets, right? Building these stories and being out there and, and showing yourself as the leader and the thought leader and that you're knowledgeable in the space, that you are somebody who's working on a problem, right? We tell all our clients, especially ones that are looking for investment money, right? That the, your, your ability to be able to frame your story and, and answer 3 questions: why this, this idea, why this person, and why now, right?

Yep.

And so framing those stories and creating this visibility around our company is what we're gonna talk about today. Um, and we're gonna talk about how that creates a, a more successful exit on your own terms. But first, Let's talk about exitengine.com, myexitengine.com. John, we have just launched our new Exit Engine ecosystem. It's at myexitengine.com. And this is going to be a very valuable and important platform, we think, for those of you who care enough about your business and your own future that you're going to want to learn and grow towards a successful exit. Right. This is what we preach all the time, right?

Yeah. It's everything and everyone you'll need to plan and execute a successful exit on your own terms. In timeline, ExitEngine helps founders grow smarter and exit stronger by providing diagnostics, roadmaps, coaching, community, and advisory support that reduce risk, increase value, and make their businesses buyer ready. It's the first exit planning ecosystem in the world, and you can start for free right now. Just go to www.myexitengine.com.

Excellent. Your visibility, John, as a founder or a leader is more than just personal branding. It's a strategic asset that directly impacts how your company is perceived, valued, and ultimately sold. So when buyers elevate— sorry, when buyers evaluate a business, they aren't just looking at financials or operations. We know this. They're buying into leadership, reputation, and the story behind the company. A visible, respected, and trustworthy founder sends powerful signals. This company has a clear vision, the team is inspired, and that the marketplace sees the brand as credible and influential. Visibility builds intangible assets like trust, credibility, and perceived authority, all of which enhance valuation multipliers and buyer confidence. And that's what we're all about here at ExitEngine, right? So Christopher Thede, Chris Thede, is a storytelling strategist, ghostwriter, and the creator of Visibility Brief, a powerful content engine helping leaders stay visible on LinkedIn without burnout. After seeing firsthand how executive visibility transformed a quiet IT leader into a talent magnet and impact driver, Chris made it his mission to help purpose-driven executives, entrepreneurs, and emerging leaders amplify their stories, not just for attention, John, but for real influence and trust. With a background in journalism and communications, Chris helped founders and execs find— Chris helps founders and execs find their voice, elevate their brand, and unlock opportunities, especially in environments where visibility isn't second nature. So whether you're preparing for an exit or just trying to cut through the noise, His insights on strategic visibility might be the missing piece to your growth and legacy. Chris Thede, welcome to the ExitEngine Podcast.

Thank you so much, Joe and John. It's an honor to be here, so thank you for having me.

That's awesome. We're so glad to have you because this is such an important thing. And I think it sounds to me also that in our discussions previous to this, that your inspiration here really is that you have noticed something that we've noticed as well, and even about ourselves, right? that the key sometimes to these successful brands obviously start very much with the founder, right? And the ability of the— and the ability for the founder or the owner, whatever, to be able to construct their own narrative, to be able to tell, use their story, right, to help kind of propagate their brand, because often that personal story is so tied to their mission, right?

Yeah, that's right. And it's It works on so many different levels, whether it's to build your brand, whether it's to protect your brand in the case of the inevitable crisis, whether it's about acquiring customers, attracting talent. You know, there's so many reasons that executive visibility and telling your story is so important that there's really— and in today's day and age, when trust is at such a premium, That's really what it's all about.

Right.

Absolutely. Well, take us back to your kind of, you know, your career. What's the thing that kind of got you here? You've obviously been, you know, you have a journalism background, right? You've been a ghostwriter and things like that. Talk a little bit about your personal journey and what led you to, you know, kind of discover this and want to help people this way.

Well, I will. My career background is in public relations and marketing, having worked in both internal marketing departments, PR departments, as well as agencies over the course of 20-plus years or so. But it really, when we're talking about this, you know, the executive visibility focus that I have right now, it started, as you mentioned, with, I was interviewing an IT director of a large big city public school district, and it was about 5 years or so ago. It was actually right as COVID was happening and all of that. And at that time, I had been doing some ghostwriting for executives, social media, and that kind of a thing. And that was— at that time, it was just another project that I was working on. But I was also— I interviewed this gentleman at this school district because I thought My interest at that time, and it still is, was around the idea of storytelling just in general for whatever purpose it might be. And I noticed him on LinkedIn sharing the stories of the people that work in his department and getting a lot of attention for it. And I thought, hmm, this is really interesting. He clearly knows how to tell stories and get people's attention. I'd like to talk to him and kind of see what makes him tick. And at the time, I had a podcast about storytelling and I interviewed him for it. And what I learned from him, and I didn't necessarily put 2 and 2 together for a few years after that, but what happened was he was given the directive by his boss at this— it was Kansas City Public Schools—

Okay.

to raise the profile of his department. And it was the technology department, right? And, you know, when you think of, you know, the, the school district in whatever city you might live in, um, the idea of them even having a technology department doesn't even really occur. It never really—

Exactly right.

Obviously they do. But anyway, he was, he was given the directive to raise the profile of his department, and he told me what his boss probably meant was to raise the profile within the district so that the teachers and the principals and so forth would understand who they are and what they did, and so that they could come to him with— and come to his team for help and, you know, solutions and that kind of thing. Well, he kind of took it a step farther, and he just started using his phone to make little videos and just using— telling the stories of the people that showed up to work every day to put technology in the hands of the kids who needed it, especially in, you know, these large city schools that, you know, don't necessarily have a lot of money to, you know, have fancy technology and that kind of a thing. And just kind of showing the dedication and the commitment that his team had. And what he told me is that when you tell your story, people want to be a part of it. People will naturally want to be drawn to it. And As a result of telling these stories on LinkedIn, he got attention from people all across the country and around the world, really, where— so there's other companies and organizations that wanted to partner with him and help him. He said that the caliber of applicants for job openings went up, even though, you know, as a public school—

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, as a public— you know, he couldn't pay people a lot of money, you know, people who work in, especially at that time, in IT and so forth, you know, you can make a pretty nice living, but, you know, it doesn't happen at a public school district.

Right.

You work for, you know, the Metas of the world and things like that. So he said it was just, it was an unbelievable thing that happened. And so that, and, you know, obviously he wasn't the founder of the Kansas City Public Schools or anything like that, but it kind of showed me As I thought about it later, it's like, wait a minute, if he— and he didn't have a storytelling background, he wasn't a writer or anything like that, he was an Army veteran and a technology guy— but it just kind of showed the power of when a leader of an organization, whether it's a small team or a big company or anything in between, when they tell the stories that matter, good things can happen in a variety of different ways. Now, Obviously, it's going to be different for every organization. His goal was more about telling his team's story, and I don't know if this was his goal, but certainly getting more people to kind of help him and his group out. You know, for another organization, it might be more about getting the attention of customers or getting the attention of attracting talent or potential investors or pretty much, in a lot of cases, any and all of the above. So that's really, that's kind of what led me to where I am right now is, it's one of the things that led me to where I am right now is that realization of, you know, helping leaders tell the stories that matter because it can create so many benefits in so many different ways.

Stories that matter, right? The ones that matter, and it's obviously individual to that company, right? Or that story to the leader. So what do you, when you're guiding these leaders to share their stories, I mean, I can imagine it's not just, you know, they're not making up fiction. They're identifying sort of what audiences they want to attract, or how do you guide them to tell the stories that matter? What stories matter to leaders in those cases?

So it's a combination of a couple of things, really. It starts with the individual themselves. and what they are naturally comfortable talking about and want to, you know, what's inside them that they want to make the world understand. So, for example, I work with executives at a large technology company that, and at any given time, I'm supporting 3 or 4 executives within this company, and each one of them is different in terms of what they want to talk about, you know, what's in their heart, what's in their mind in terms of what they want to talk about. So they certainly, they want to talk about their business and how they can help their customers, but they also might want to talk about, for example, supporting women in technology.

Yeah.

And kind of sharing their journeys so that people who are kind of coming up behind them and maybe following in their footsteps will learn the lessons that they learned. So does that sell the products and services that they are offering? Maybe, maybe not, but it certainly shows the culture of their organization and it shows, and it builds that company's employer brand. So that might be one, that's an example of one approach or one priority that a company might have in terms of building their employer brand. And other times it might be more about Telling the stories, like in the IT director's case, telling the stories of the team and of the people who make the organization go and who deliver the customer experiences that you're trying to—

Kind of humanizing it, right? Humanizing the employees and the whole thing, especially in the tech world, right? It's good to know, hey, look, these are people, these are human beings who are here. Your help desk isn't just a software thing, right? There's somebody here who's literally helping you, and here's Here's who they are and what they like and what they do and all that stuff.

That's—

you talked about this now. It's really building trust, right? That's what you— it may not directly sell widgets, but it certainly helps you become someone who's trustworthy, that people would look at as a trustworthy person, right? To be able to, you know, maybe this is one of those kind of bona fides that people are kind of, you know, going through in their heads when they're trying to make a selection about someone they want to work with. Right? Can I trust this person? Does this person have integrity? You know, that kind of thing.

Yeah, trust, trust is really what it's all about. It's probably now, you know, it's kind of always been the case, but it is now more so than ever. I mean, people don't necessarily trust, you know, logos and brands and companies. They trust people and they want to work with people. And the more that they can get to know them and who they are and the values that they might have or the story that they might have, the more that they will trust them. And one of the— going back to your earlier question about how I guide the executives and leaders through this, so that, you know, one side of the equation is themselves and kind of what they want to talk about, and then, of course, the other side is who their audience is, you know, who they're really trying to reach. It might not It might be, you know, customers or potential investors and you want to kind of develop that level of trust with them, but it might be, as I mentioned before, some sort of tangential audiences that might not be the direct buyers of your product or service, but those people will see how you interact with those people and kind of have that level of trust.

That's an interesting point, right? Because I mean, this day and age now with the video and the social media and the whole thing, we could never see. I always think about case studies and that kind of stuff that we used to put together back in the, you know, marketing agency days, you know, when we're working on our own new business, you know, here's what we did for so-and-so, you know, here's the problem, here's the solution, here's what the outcome was, etc., etc. It's all this written-down stuff, which is great. But the ability now to be able to say, look, this is how we're solving this problem, sometimes in real time, right? Like, Here's where we actually are. I mean, we see people all over the place, founders all over the place, build what we call building out loud, right? People who are actually out there right now telling their story in real time. This is where I am with this right now. I'm literally— I'm on my way to meet with investors today because blah, blah, blah. Or here we are in the thing where the assembly line where the first widget's coming off the, you know, off the line, and, you know, we're so excited and stuff like that, right? So The idea of being able to— the video and the ability to reach these people, to even think about, you know, the phone I have in my hand, right, that I can— is also a camera all the time, makes this stuff a lot easier, right? But I think that probably your biggest challenge, I would imagine, is that there are lots of people that are into this from the beginning, but especially maybe people of our generation, maybe it's hard for them to be convinced that they need to do this.

Yeah, I definitely think that that's the case there. I think there's, I don't know what the percentages are, but I think founders and executives and leaders kind of fall into a few different buckets in terms of why they might not want to take this approach. One, they just, they might be of that generation where they just don't get it and they like to focus on getting the work done and they've view this as a distraction. Others, they might see the value in it, but they just don't have the time, um, or, or maybe not the, the confidence in their ability to, you know, tell their stories, or that, or they might not think that their own stories are all that interesting to people and people don't want, um, people don't want to hear about them. Um, you know, there's, and there's probably other, uh, reasons as well. It's tough to— if somebody's just plain not convinced that it's the right thing to do, that's a tough thing to convince anybody to do. So what I try to tell people is that there are so many leaders out there from, again, from founders to CEOs to even kind of C-level and lower-level executives everybody's got interesting stories to tell, whether you realize it or not. And it might not even necessarily be about you. And that's, that's another part where, you know, people, a lot of people, especially, you know, founders and leaders of nonprofits, tend to be humble, and they want to, they want to focus on getting the work done and helping people. They don't necessarily realize that their stories and their journeys are very, very interesting and can actually help further their goals if they tell them. So yeah, there's a lot of reasons why people don't do that. But I think that, as I was starting to say, there's a lot of leaders out there who are doing great work, who are empathetic and conscientious leaders, who are, you know, whose people love working for them and with them. And they need to have their stories amplified and they're just, they're just not doing it for whatever reason.

And what about like the founders? Like, are founders comfortable with people below them, you know, being, being visible on social media? Have you, have you encountered situations where, you know, the founder's the face of the company, but you're working with other people on the leadership team maybe, and there's sort of, there's sort of some conflict with the founder and the people below that founder? Maybe she doesn't like the fact that other people are getting the spotlight. Does that happen at all or no?

I've never seen that. I'm sure it does happen. I've never come across that personally. And that can be a good alternative way to go in terms of, you know, whether it's the founder, you know, if the founder is either just too busy or doesn't see the value or for whatever reason just doesn't want to put him or herself out there.

Yeah.

And it also might depend on the nature of the company too. Maybe there's subject matter experts within the company who might be better positioned to reach the, you know, so there might be technical experts who are in the weeds with, you know, customer problems and that kind of a thing, and they might be a better choice to—

Good point.

Put out in front. I mean, the only problem is they might not be—

The thing that comes up that strikes me when you say that is there is a time at which it's right for the founder, right, to be the face, right? To be the, you know, to be the, to be the brand, so to speak. There's a time at which also where you need to be able to, especially when you are planning an exit, right, that there's a time at which that has to change, right? So that you do need to start maybe stepping out of the way and allowing your your top line of executives or whatever, your management team start to kind of take over. Because if you've done a good job, right, and I think we could point back to some of the examples I think that we talked about at the beginning, at the top of the show, that are kind of known examples that people can kind of easily understand. Look, you may not like everything that Elon Musk does or says or the way he behaves all the time or whatever, right? But his story and his thing being out there is undeniable, right? He is the company. He's both those companies. I mean, he owns 3 or 4 companies. I mean, they're all, right? You don't even know, like, there's like 3 companies that no one even talks about that he owns. But the idea being that that's fine for him. It's a big giant thing. He's already a multi-billionaire. It's not really an issue. But for companies that want to sell, right, it starts to change a little bit because I can't be the only voice, right? At some point, my voice is going to go away and I need another generation of people here or, right, to be, you know, to step up. So. Is that what you do? Is that what you come across when you're working with companies and things like that? Is the idea of, look, look, there's a stage here where we want to be about the founder, we want the founder's brand and their stories out there. And maybe that stays there even as the company goes through a sales process because the story is the founder, right?

Right.

At some point, there's got to be other people need to kind of step up and start taking the reins on this stuff.

Yes, for sure. And I think there's a number of ways to potentially approach that. And again, it kind of goes back to the idea of one of the main things that I like to tell, whether it's founders or executives of any organization, is one of the best things that you could do is celebrate your employees and tell their stories. And not just employees, but, you know, maybe You know, if it's a nonprofit organization, you know, it's volunteers, or maybe it's dealers, or, you know, channel partners, or whatever the case might be. But if you take the spotlight off of yourself and put it on other people, that's, I would think, kind of naturally helps that cause, but it also kind of, at the same time, it elevates you and it alleviates the the concern a lot of people have with not wanting, you know, a lot of people don't want the spotlight on themselves. They don't want to be sort of the center of attention. They want to put it on, in their mind, the people that matter.

Yeah.

So that will naturally alleviate the concern of, you know, at some point, you know, the company can no longer be the founder and only the founder. It needs to be more of a team effort. And that's where— so putting the spotlight on the people who work with you and then allowing other voices to be part of telling the story and even allowing what I'll call rank-and-file employees, kind of giving them the opportunity and the— what I'll say, permission, quote unquote permission, to also tell the story of the company and, you know, what makes it a great place to work and the work that they do and that kind of thing, providing those moments that they can tell the story of the company. That, I would think, kind of helps avoid the concerns with, you know, the company only being the founder.

Yeah, and it humanizes, right? It humanizes the company, right? Because I think of the training videos that I used to work on early in my career, And it's like, yeah, you get the interview or the discussion from the CEO, but then you get the real down-and-dirty things from the nitty-gritty details from the HR person or the training person or the, you know, the operations person about how the business is done. And it creates that sort of that authenticity, especially in the era of AI, right? The, you know, that you're dealing with a real person, you know, just on a kind of an interesting take.

Yeah. The, um, I want to go back to this. I'm fascinated by my, my, in my personal journey, even what we're doing right now, right? It would have felt like it was impossible to me, uh, only a few years ago, right? To be here, to be able to— not actually doing this part of it, but the listening to myself later, right? The ability to watch myself on video, which I think is what stops a lot of people from starting, right? Has that been your experience? Talk a little bit about those things where you do have those people that are like, look, I know I have to do this, but what are the steps that you, you know, when you work with them to kind of help them get over themselves, you know, a little bit?

Yeah, so I mean, the video, and to a lesser extent audio, is a tough one. Nobody likes to hear— nobody, very few people like the sound of their own voice. myself included. And very few people like to see themselves, you know, outside of Hollywood, very few people like to see themselves on video. And that can be really tough. And also a lot of times there's, and I don't know exactly what it is, but the psychology of the camera in your face can be really tough sometimes. I remember years ago, When I worked at an agency, one of our clients had their director of design was a very interesting guy, very funny, very well-spoken. He was just, he had a great personality and very engaging and stuff. And we're like, man, we need to tell the story of this one product. And, you know, there's a lot, big design element to it. You know, we want you to be the one to tell this story. And as soon as we put the camera on his face, he just froze and he was stiff and he just couldn't— it just didn't work. And so there's— the point of that is, I think it's about finding the medium that's going to work best for the individual.

Yeah.

Some people are great on camera. Some people are great on audio. Some people are better in, you know, long-form text or short, social media or, you know, that kind of a thing. Some people are good as interviewers, and that's, um, one. So like, for example, a, a founder or a company executive can be the one interviewing, you know, employees, for example, or, or kind of talking with them and helping them tell their story. So it, it really, it depends on the individual. Everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. Everybody has what they're comfortable with and not comfortable with. Um, kind of, you have to meet them where they're at and kind of gradually see if you can kind of push the boundaries a little bit, both in terms of the medium as well as what they're comfortable sharing. A lot of people don't want to share too much that's personal.

Yeah.

Um, I certainly understand that, you know, and they want to leave their families out of it and that, that kind of a thing. And that, I totally get that. Some people, other executives I work with, do talk about their families and about how their college-age children are, you know, and the lessons that they're learning and kind of re-experiencing their own professional journeys through their kids and that kind of a thing. So it really just depends on the individual and kind of meeting them where they're at, finding out what their strengths are and, you know, where they're most comfortable, and then kind of starting from there. Cool, cool.

Talk to us a little bit about your about your your community that you've got here. You've got going on right now. You've got this this really cool thing. I'm sorry, I'm looking for the name of it. Sorry to remember. It's called the visibility. Yeah, visibility.

Right, right. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about the the visibility brief. Like what what was the problem you were solving? How does it How does it work in the real world?

So Visibility Brief, it started as an idea of how can I help more people, more executives tell their stories, maybe themselves, at least as a starting point. And the idea is that I can provide them with the little nudge or the little push that they perhaps need to kind of take that first step or at least kind of create a base-level visibility for themselves and start to tell their stories. And so at the base level, the Visibility Brief offers— it's a free weekly email that offers a prompt that you get every Monday, and then that will hopefully kind of inspire you to think about your own visibility and how you can tell your own stories. Each one is centered on a certain theme or idea in terms of, you know, whether, again, whether it's celebrating your employees or kind of thinking back to, you know, like you asked me before, what was the, what was the inspiration behind your, your business? Or, you know, why did you start your business? Or why are your customers so awesome? Or, you know, things like that.

Hey, I'm Jo Stapleton.

And I'm John Kaniff.

You know, John, most founders put everything they have into building their businesses— years of sweat, sacrifice, and problem solving. But when it comes time to exit, many are shocked to learn that what buyers value isn't what they thought.

Here's the truth: buyers don't pay for potential, they pay for proof. Proof that your business can grow without you, proof that your financials are clean, proof that your processes are clear and repeatable.

If you wait until a buyer shows up to think about these things, you're almost guaranteed to leave money and control on the table. Exit Engine was built to change that.

Exit Engine is the first readiness platform that helps founders design their ideal exit step by step, combining education, coaching, and support, and access to an elite network of business specialists and capital. Exit Engine empowers you to build a valuable, transferable business and exit on your own terms.

It's not about selling tomorrow, John. It's about making sure that when you're ready, your business is worth what it deserves to be.

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.

And then, and then above that is my one-to-one consulting where I work with individual executives or corporate communications departments to help them create strategies to use executive visibility to meet their goals. Very cool.

The—

there are times, right, where once you've gotten a client, you kind of understand what they want to do and what they can talk about, what they're willing to talk about, or whatever. What— how do you put in together? What are the steps involved in kind of, you know, building out? Is it a plan? Is it a long-term thing? Is it, when you're doing, and this is what I mean, when you're doing the coaching, obviously, when you're doing the one-on-one stuff, what is your kind of methodology behind kind of getting this stuff set up? And what is it, how long does it take? What's the kind of stuff that people can expect when, when they're trying to, trying to get this stuff going?

So the, the initial, you know, when I start working with a client for the first time, The onboarding process and input usually takes between 2 and 4 weeks, depending on their availability. You know, people are busy sometimes, and so they're not always able to meet right away, but it starts with an initial kickoff meeting, either with the executives themselves, depending on the size of the company. If they have a communications department, a lot of times it'll start with them, where we'll talk about, okay, these are the goals that we have, these are you know, this is the— this person's specialty in terms of subject matter expertise or, you know, the— what they— how they want to reach the customer or the target audience, whatever it might be. Then, but then I'll have an initial meeting with the executives themselves to talk about, first of all, just to get to know them and kind of talk about their background and then talk about how they would like to be viewed how they would like to be known in the public forum in a place like LinkedIn or other platforms, podcasts and blogs or whatever the case might be, or even in person, like speaking events and things like that.

Sure.

How do they want to be viewed? What kind of impact do they want to have on the audience? How do they— what do they want the audience to know or do or understand as a result of hearing from them? And what are the most important messages that we need to kind of hit on over and over again in different ways, of course, to make sure that people understand it? So that's that kind of initial meeting. From there, I'll develop a strategy that I'll review with, again, either with them or the communications department that, okay, here's how I see this person kind of showing up. Here's the style and the type of content that we should be putting out there on a regular basis and the frequency and that kind of thing. Here's how it might kind of plug into any other systems that you might have in place, like lead generation and things like that, if that's an appropriate thing, making sure that it is complementary of the overall, you know, larger brand communications and marketing and all of that. So just making sure that it it fits within the overall puzzle of the marketing mix. It might be the lead piece.

Right.

You know, in some cases, you know, for early-stage founding companies and so forth, you know, they don't have huge budgets, and the nice thing about executive visibility, it doesn't necessarily cost very much, and it's really good at getting the attention of the audience that you're trying to reach. Or it might be complementary or kind of a different piece within it, or it might be Solving, helping to solve a particular problem, like maybe the organization has a change coming up that they want to kind of soften the ground for a little bit, or protect their reputation and that kind of a thing. So we kind of make sure it fits within the overall strategy that they have in place or that they're putting in place. And then from there, so that takes about between 2 and 4 weeks to kind of develop that strategy. And then what I'd like to do is have another Input meeting with the executive and have that meeting roughly every month or so to talk about what's on their mind, talk about what they want to talk about. And that helps me to, first of all, kind of see what's going on in their lives and read between the lines and see what's important to them. But then also kind of capture their voice a little bit so that I can help them develop content that will sound natural to them and not, you know, corporate, you know, not sound like it was written by, you know, the corporate, you know, the corporate PR department or whatever the case might be, where it's just kind of like a bunch of jargon and talking points and features and benefits and all of that, but really sounding like, you know, it's a human being talking. So, and then from there, we just, we develop content on a regular basis. Either I'll do it for them or we'll do it kind of side by side with them, uh, depending on their specific needs and the frequency and depth and all of that.

Right. When you are— when, uh, as you're going kind of going through this stuff, you know, back in the old— I started out in public relations. Like, my first job was in PR, right? And of course, what we were trying to do with that was, you know, it was a lot of like announcement stuff. And, you know, we were writing press releases and stuff like that that were the thing. Obviously, this is way, way before before the internet was what we know it to be today. But I think that there's an interesting way— how does traditional kind of public relations and branding and stuff like that kind of fit into— this is what we used to call thought leadership, right? I mean, in a way, right, was the idea behind it from a marketing standpoint or from a PR standpoint was just to show what I know, right? That I'm a subject matter expert, that I'm out there. And this is whether as an individual, right, or, John, or as a company, company-wide or whatever, that, hey, We're doing this. And as the internet came along and blogs started to happen and the written, you know, writing this stuff and showing that we've got this insight became a big deal, right? But now we're at this whole other level because now we're at a point where it's like what we've realized is that it's not just about the, like you said, it's not the corporate speak. It's not just my corporate mission and saying the things that I want to say from a corporate strategy brief that are going to move some kind of needle. I see it's, it's so much about the individual and about the authenticity.

Right.

That's a huge shift because it's a matter of what, what the, the, the very thing that I think that people reject about this whole thing, you know, in themselves, right, is the fact that they, they, they, they, they are in a weird way, when you say, I don't wanna do this, you're kind of hiding a little bit. Like, it's, it's a little bit of like, this is what I discovered, and it took me a long time to, to realize this, was that I always used to think I wanted to be the guy behind the guy.

Right?

Like, I want to be the guy in the background making the king, right?

Right.

But what I really realized after, you know, lots of therapy and some other stuff was that it's actually— I'm actually just hiding behind that, right? It's like I have all these ideas, I'll have these thoughts and all this stuff. This is all coming from me, but I'm giving it to the, you know, it's the Cyrano de Bergerac kind of thing, right? I have the— my nose is too big, so I don't want to get out on the camera and whatever, but I hear I'll feed the good-looking guy you know, in the front, this stuff, right? But the reality is right now, that would be seen today, right, if it was known as kind of like breaking a major social media rule, right? I mean, in a way. How much does authenticity kind of start to play a role in this stuff when it comes to, especially when it comes to the individuals as opposed to the corporations?

So, yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. And you mentioned the term thought leadership, and that is still an important thing, but I think there's, and I just wrote about this recently, there's 2 parts to thought leadership, one of which I think too often gets overlooked. So there's the thought, there's the message that you're sharing, that's important, but there's also the leader. And the other way I like to think about it is, you know, when you think of a thought leadership article, for example, The headline is important, but the byline, the person whose name is attached to it, is now more important than ever.

Right.

And it's important for that person to be someone who is trusted, getting back to what we were talking about before. You talked about authenticity, and that's a word that I struggle with sometimes because I think that it can be overused or maybe too much emphasis can be put on it. And then as a result, you know, if you try to be authentic, then maybe you're not being just by nature of that. And what does authentic really mean? Like, if you're trying to sell your product or service, are you not being authentic in that moment? No, I don't think so. I think it's more about And it's also a potential input, whereas, you know, you want to focus on the outcome. And to me, the outcome again gets back to trust. So that's the filter that all of this needs to be looked at through, is, you know, will this message— how will this message and how I deliver it impact the trust that my customers, employees, stakeholders, media, general public, you know, regulators, whatever, how will that impact the trust that they have in me and in my organization? And so the best way you can do that, and again, there's so much going on, there's a lot of moving parts here with now with AI making it so easy to spew out content and that kind of a thing. People, I think, if they haven't already, are going to become more and more skeptical of the things that they see, and can they really trust that this is coming from the person? So I think it comes down to being unpredictable. It comes down to being, you know, for lack of a better term, being yourself and kind of sharing stories and ideas that maybe— aren't necessarily always the most strategic. Certainly, you want to share the strategic ideas and talk about your company and your capabilities and so forth. But sharing a story about a random employee who— or one CEO I saw, he did like a pose, a selfie with their FedEx driver, and just as a show of gratitude, it's like, this guy delivers to us every day. He's a great guy. We felt like you should know who he is. And does that sell the product that they're selling? Probably not, but it definitely shows the audience that the person who is sharing this is a real person and he's somebody that can be trusted. So when I do see his messages about his products or about his services, that I can trust that it's coming from him. And that he is genuine in what he's talking about.

Yeah, it sort of gets into like vulnerability, right? Like, you didn't say that word, but I get the sense that you can lay out a plan and have strategic goals of, okay, we have to talk about our new product launch or whatever they engage you to talk about. But I think what you're saying also is it's important to share the failures, right, for lack of a better term, and to share the things that everyone else experiences. But maybe people don't see some of those on social media, right? People see the social media posts of people that are off in Croatia or wherever, those wonderful vacations. But I think what you're saying too is like you need to share the real world to be— in order to be authentic and like everybody else, that you should share the things that maybe, you know, it didn't go perfectly well, but you still learned from, or you had some positive benefit from it.

Yeah, and that is a huge one. And I think, I mean, you mentioned Sarah Blakely, and another one of my favorite, you know, kind of going back to that building in public kind of thing where you share your journey, your professional journey, or even to a certain degree your personal journey, and share the stories of the lessons that you learned, or maybe, you know, things that didn't go so well and what you took from that, or, you know, failures that you had, you know, and showing people that, you know, Failure is a big part of entrepreneurship. And, you know, you have to, you have to stick with it. You have to have some perseverance. And that helps elevate other people. But it also helps to demonstrate that, you know, you're a real human being and that the things that you say are worthy of my trust as an audience.

It's so funny too, because I think that in my journey through this stuff over the last couple of years, I think, John, maybe you've experienced this too, is that You know, we are— people kind of expect the new version of this world, right, that we live in because of social media and stuff like that is like, it is about your ability to express the downside or even the mundane, right? The notion or the things that are taken for granted. You just mentioned the, you know, the example of like, you know, getting the video with the you know, the CEO goes out to the, you know, to the UPS driver to thank him and whatever for doing that stuff, right? That those kinds of things are showing the humanity, right? And I think that's what people— the promise of social media. Forget about this, there's a ton of downsides and we know what they are, and especially with kids and comparing yourself to everybody. Look, that's a given. We know that. But there is, you know, a kind of an amazing upside that allows us to be able to see the people, the actual people, not the corporate speak, not the— right, not this is what we're— but the reality of what being a human is. Because at the end of the day, you talked about storytelling all day, and, and I, as a former copywriter myself and all that stuff, all I can think about when you say that is that, yeah, what, what are we doing to actually tell the human story, right? This is what, this is what When I'm, when I run it, as you mentioned, when I run a company and the whole thing, there's all kinds of bad stuff that happens during the day, right? There were things that don't want to happen or whatever, or downsides or backslides or, you know, things going wrong that we didn't expect or whatever. And sometimes those are the most valuable things to share, even when you're sharing something that went wrong. I grew up in an era where, where it was all about putting lipstick on a pig.

Right.

Like, it was a— when I was coming up in the marketing and stuff, it was all about trying to figure out the way that you could take the thing that wasn't really that great, you know, and kind of like make it shine it up so that it looked better. Like, that's kind of what we were doing, and, and that's how I was raised, right, coming up in the world. Now it's like, no, no, no, you got to be out there saying, this is where I, I acknowledge the things that aren't right yet. I acknowledge the places I need to go. I acknowledge the You know, as John just mentioned, the vulnerability, right? Because those are human things. And that's where, when you're telling a story, that's what people connect with.

Yes. There is a word of caution or a danger there because you can go too far or you can come off as— it has to be genuine to who you are. So if you're the type of CEO like the one I mentioned who is, you know, super friendly and outgoing and, you know, puts his arm around the FedEx driver and he just naturally does that, that's great. If you're not that type of person but you try to look like you are, it's not going to work. Oh yeah, people see right through that. And it kind of goes down to the idea of, you know, the old storytelling adage of show, don't tell. So, you know, show who you really are. Show as a company, as an individual, you know, whatever you're— every company and every person has different things that they're good at or strong at and weak at and that kind of a thing. So just kind of, you know, be who you are. Don't try to be something you're not. I've— there was a CEO post a couple years ago who posted a, uh, on LinkedIn. He was, he was upset because he had to, um, lay off some people and he felt like he, he failed, um, these people and, and all of that. And, and that's a, you know, I'm sure he genuinely felt that way, but he had, he did a selfie and he had kind of tears coming down a little bit, and his post used the word I a lot, and it just came off as Really kind of gross. And, and I mean, he didn't— he talked about himself and how badly he felt about that. He didn't do anything, at least in that particular post, to say, hey, there's some great people, unfortunately I had to let go, but here they—

Please hire them.

Yeah, you know, or if you want to get in touch with them, I can help. They're looking for work, or whatever the case might be, basically. And he literally used the words, I'm going to be vulnerable now. Like, well, that's not how How it works. If you have to say you're gonna be vulnerable. Yeah, it's not what it is. So be genuine. And, you know, you're gonna make mistakes, you're gonna stumble, and, you know, sometimes things just aren't gonna land. That's the beauty of social media is it tends to be, you know, ephemeral. And, you know, as long as you have a track record, you know, build a track record of being genuine, Then, and being trustworthy, then that's in the long run, that's gonna work for you.

Interesting. What about, and to dive a little bit more into that storytelling theme we talked about earlier, is like, what's the, what's usually the desired impact of that storytelling, right? I mean, I guess it fits with the corporate strategy, but what do you typically see as like the impact of like once, once someone's achieved that level of of personal branding, if you will. What's the best way to use that sort of personal branding for either their personal benefit, corporate benefit, or just talk about that from a storytelling or from an example standpoint, if you have any, Chris?

So in terms of, you know, kind of once that the person has kind of reached that level of, you know, maximize their power, so to speak, that's what you mean?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, what that does is, I mean, first of all, over time that just kind of builds this, um, it builds this foundation, this bank of goodwill that I like to call, that, um, will serve you in a lot of different ways. One, if your company ever faces any kind of crisis, um, and you need to communicate as a leader out to the audience, you know, whether it's to customers or whatever, And, you know, the crisis, you know, whether it's, you know, we screwed up and here's how we're going to fix it, or if it was out of your control, here's what we're doing, that kind of a thing. If a crisis happens and that's the first time you hear from the founder or the CEO, that's not necessarily the best way to go. But if you have this kind of track record in place, you have this, you've established that you're a trustworthy person and that people will take your your messages at face value. In other ways, it can help you, like I said, you know, in terms of talent acquisition or, you know, communicating with and about customers. You know, at a certain point, you know, it depends on what stage the company's at, but at a certain point, you know, the company's leader, the CEO, they're not there, they shouldn't be out there selling the product or kind of promoting the product or service.

Right.

Because that's what, you know, that's what the marketing department's for, that's what the sales department's for, that kind of a thing. They're there to kind of sell the company as, you know, who they are, you know, culturally and in their integrity and their values and all of that.

Yeah.

And just create this idea that, you know, this is the type of organization that I want to be associated with, this is the type of organization That I'm proud to work with.

It's so interesting that you mentioned that because that's sort of exactly what we tell our founders, right? There's a certain point where if you're a technical founder, as an example, you've maybe created the product, you're the face of the product to a degree, and but at some point you can't be in every sales meeting, right? You can't be part of, you shouldn't be a part of every sale, right? You've gone from building the products to building the company to selling the company, right? And we're counseling these people that we work with on a day-to-day basis to do that, right? To sort of rise above the company and be the one that's negotiating things to sell the company as opposed to sell the widget or whatever they're doing. So it's good to hear that guidance.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, thinking specifically about LinkedIn, I mean, people don't come to LinkedIn to find out about the latest and greatest, you know, widgets and whiz-bang features that you have. They— it's a social, you know, social media is— it's a person-to-person type situation. And they want to— I like to say there's 3 reasons people spend time on LinkedIn. They are to maybe to kill some time, to find some opportunities, or to learn something.

Yeah.

And if you can do one or even all 3 of those, one or 2 or all 3, you know, some CEOs and leaders and so forth, one of my favorites is, I'm sure, Gary Vaynerchuk, where he—

Oh yeah.

He, you know, a lot of times his content is about helping, you know, young entrepreneurs a lot of times, and to a certain degree, the businesses that would hire his companies, but it's more about just young entrepreneurs and kind of helping them kind of understand that the power that they have and that they should be patient and that, you know, you don't need to be working in a crummy job all the time. You can make something of yourself and that kind of thing. But he's also just plain entertaining sometimes. And sometimes that's really what it's all about. So, You know, sometimes that's just enough. It's about kind of getting attention and getting eyeballs, and, and that's one of the ways.

We, we love Vaynerchuk around here, but the, the, the, uh, but by the way, also not just for young people. I think his latest, one of his latest things, these soapbox things he's on right now, is the fact that if you're over 50, that you still have a place in the world and that you ought to be out there doing exactly what the young bucks are doing and the whole thing, which feeds directly right in, Chris, to what you do, right? I mean, that the idea of being out there, of getting— being over 50 and suddenly going, you know what the key to your success is going to be, right, is LinkedIn. You know, and you're kind of like, wait, what? Um, because— and but it's the truth. I mean, the reality is, is that we've grown our brand and the whole thing over the last year, you know, almost exclusively through LinkedIn. This podcast has been a huge part of that, obviously, too. Um, and putting ourselves out there and talking about it every day and talking about our— and standing up for not only what we do for a living, but the industry that we work for, work in, you know, and then obviously connecting with also all these advisory partners like you, Chris, and all, you know, that we work with as well.

All—

none of this could have happened in the world before, you know, really the last 5 or 6 years.

Mm-hmm.

Because every— the connections, the way that we reach out, the number of people we can reach in the whole thing without Necessarily reaching out with a product, but reaching out with a thought, with an idea, and and and watching all these different people come from all over the world and start to kind of like gather around this idea. You know, a post, a thing, come in and comment and do this stuff. It's you know it's incredibly it's exhilarating on on one level. The thing you have to be careful about, as we were talking about before, where you know is is putting too much. stock in these numbers of followers and things like that, because again, we do have business objectives, right? And so one of the things, how do you counsel, what are the metrics and that kind of stuff that you're using to say, hey, look, this has been successful versus maybe we need to make adjustments here or whatever. So talk a little bit about the measurement of this stuff, because I think that's something that every founder worth their salt want to feel like, okay, am I going to get somewhere with this?

Yeah, so I think that it's tricky in terms of, you know, the metrics that you get on LinkedIn because a lot of times, you know, they're referred to as vanity metrics. You know, they make you feel good about, you know, they give you that dopamine hit, and I'm certainly not immune to that. And they may or may not directly lead to any kind of opportunities. And in fact, most of the the business that I've acquired through LinkedIn over the years has been from people who never ever commented on or engaged with any of my content at all, but they do see it. So, right, interesting. That's probably the— and again, it depends on the nature of the business and the company and that kind of thing. Sometimes, you know, just kind of putting the word out there and kind of building brand awareness is what you want to do. Other times it might be a little bit more direct and where you want to actually acquire inbound opportunities. Other times you can use it as part of a lead generation tool where your executive content or your founder content is again kind of softening the base a little bit and building the trust so that when you have another piece of content that's intended to be a lead magnet of some kind and kind of get people in the door or into your funnel, you know, with their emails or whatever the case might be, that's another way to measure it. You know, it could ladder up to in-person events, you know, conferences and things of that nature. So there's any number of ways to measure it. It really depends on the objectives and kind of what's already in place and And, you know, and who the audience is and all of that. So.

Excellent. Great.

What's the— Chris, we have a couple minutes left here. What's the, what's the biggest, if you could give away one single biggest takeaway in terms of your visibility as a, as a, as a corporate leader of any kind? What, what, what, what, what's the one, one big thing you'd want people to take away from today's conversation?

Give me a minute to think about that. Yeah. One big thing. I would say that the most, the most important thing that you should understand about your own visibility is that it is a lot more powerful than you realize. It can do, it can support just about all, if not all, of your marketing and communications and branding goals. Either in a leadership or in a supporting role, there's so much that it can do to help you get to where you want to be in terms of attracting talent or attracting customers or attracting stakeholders and delivering the kinds of experiences that you want to deliver. And it's one of the best ways and also one of the most cost-effective ways that's out there, I think, that you can reach your audiences. It probably has the best ROI that I can think of because in some cases, depending on, you know, if you're particularly good and talented at this kind of thing, it doesn't cost you anything except a little bit of your time. Other times it might cost you, you know, somebody like me to kind of help you out, but even then it's going to be much less expensive than a than a huge marketing campaign. And I would say that, you know, if your marketing budget suddenly disappeared overnight and your marketing budget was zero, this is the way to do it.

You still have this, and this would probably be an effective way of communicating. And look, I think as a CEO and a founder, at some point, right, you aren't really in touch with your audience, right? You're up in this kind of ivory tower and removed from the work with the sales guys, the people that are touching the audience, the customers. Delivery people are the ones touching the audience, you know, those people on a regular basis, maybe customer service to some degree, which everybody complains about. But, but as a founder, as the thing, you're usually kind of like, you know, that's why these TV shows, The Undercover CEO and Undercover Boss and all those things where people are like, oh my God, I didn't realize that our customers were people, you know, or whatever they're realizing, you know, when they kind of get through this stuff. But, but, but, but, you know, your thing is to say, look, you know, you can, even without a marketing budget, you can be the one kind of affecting, right, the overall, you know, kind of the promise, the values of the organization, the things that you believe in, the people that support you, right, the reasons to be. This is why I did this. This is why I created this. This is the— here are the examples of why this is making a difference. Those are all human things. And they're all about storytelling. And they're all about making not only you more visible as the owner, But making the company and your mission more visible, which is only going to be a good thing when you get to— especially when it comes to things like, oh, now I want to go out and get investment money for some big project, right? Or now here I am at the precipice of an exit and I'm ready to sell the company. And thank God I've been doing this stuff for the last couple of years because now I have more visibility and I'm making my company more saleable and more valuable because I have done this work.

Yeah, and you actually, you hit on something that is important to understand that we haven't really talked about yet, and that is executive visibility can bring you as a founder, as an executive, closer to your audience, both in a couple different ways. One, just through, you know, the content that you develop, you're going to get comments back and you're going to see how people interact with the ideas that you share. And you'll get that kind of sort of indirect feedback that helps you kind of figure out, well, okay, this kind of messaging didn't work, but this did. And this seems to be really important to people.

Sure.

That can inform all kinds of areas within your organization. But even depending on how you do it, like if you're sharing your employees' stories, it will naturally bring you out of the, you know, the boardroom and the corner office and, you know, amongst the employees and amongst the customers and amongst the people that are impacted by your business and allow it just kind of naturally allow you, by telling their stories, you're going to learn more about, you know, who they are and what's important to them.

It's such a good point, right? It's such a good point that you're learning, that the executive's learning more from the employees while they're sharing their individual stories. It's such a powerful message.

Yeah.

And being out there, by the way, and getting this— there's no better way than to get the feedback from your audience about what you're doing and the way that you're doing it. And even if they— when they don't know that's what they're doing, right? So you're out there potentially as the leader, you know, you talked about kind of softening the base or softening the beach, we used to say, you know, for whatever is going to come next or whatever thing, you know, but at the same time, your ability to to kind of test messages, right, that can then be transferred down to marketing or sales or things like that. I mean, that's the real opportunity in real time to kind of get this feedback that could be valuable across the organization.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, Chris, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you? Is it, is it through LinkedIn? Is that the best way to get in touch with you?

Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn. It's Chris Thiede, C-H-R-I-S, last name is T-H-I-E-D-E. And/or you can reach me at my website is visibilitybrief.com, just like it sounds. And there you'll learn about the Visibility Brief product itself, but there's also links there to get in touch with me directly and figure out if you need help with your executive visibility. That's the best way to to find out how we can potentially work together and to contact me. So either LinkedIn or the website is fine. Awesome.

That's great. Chris, thanks so much for taking the time out today and stuff. I know you got a lot going on. I really appreciate your time. It's incredibly insightful. I think, you know, John, the— we've— this is not the first time we've talked about this, right? But I think what's interesting today is that what's pulling— what I'm pulling out of this is that this storytelling thing, right, and the ability for founders to be able to not just highlight themselves and what they're doing and what their thought leaders, you know, thought leadership is or what they are doing or why they did things, but to be able to highlight their employees, to be able to talk about other parts of the organization. I love the thing about the UPS guy, you know what I mean? Like the ability to be able to bring them in and, and to be able to demonstrate not just the, not just the product, the service, the whatever, but the culture, the humanity, right?

Yeah.

And I think I thought, I thought of it in terms of, I think, I don't know if Chris uses this term, but the goodwill that you're building up, right? Like, You're doing all these things and you're, you're launching products, of course, but then you're crafting and creating that goodwill that you never know. Like, every company has a crisis, every company has a problem. And the idea that you're building up this goodwill and getting information about products, testing ideas, all while doing this and while building this goodwill that you hopefully never need. But if you do need it and you need to come across as a competent person, Someone who's trustworthy when there's a problem with your product or service. The Amazon Web Services thing that went out earlier this week, like something like that. When that comes up and someone, someone has to engage with your product and they cannot, and you have to put a message on LinkedIn or wherever on social media, you're going to be a credible person if you've done this and you've worked with someone like Chris to build up that goodwill.

Absolutely. And again, and Chris is going to do this on your terms.

Right?

It's about what you're comfortable with and what you want to put out there and how you want to do it. And it's about taking your genuine kind of authentic self and expressing it that way without covering things up, without trying to make something that, you know, make it look like you're something you're not. All that stuff is going to be important, right? So, and of course, guys, at the end of the day, right, all of this is contributing, whether you know it or not, it is contributing to your overall value and salability. And your ability to be able to be out there and be the face and have a following and have people respond and have conversations around your ideas, all those things are going to set the stage, right, for your overall story, for your value, and the way that potentially investors and buyers will actually see you and your company.

Yeah.

And so this isn't just about, again, about, we talk about branding like if it's just a marketing thing. It's not everything that we do here from an exit planning standpoint, right? Is, is, is the exit planning is the lens through which all these other things happen. But you're setting your trajectory a little bit further down the line. And it's not just about what happens tomorrow. It's about what happens tomorrow and what happens in the future.

Yeah. And at www.myexitengine.com, these are, this, you know, visibility, branding, telling your story is very important. Yeah, we get through the finances, we get through all the other things, but this is an aspect that sometimes can be forgotten or not as emphasized enough. And these are the types of things we're talking about in our, in our ExitEngine community with entrepreneurs and advisory partners that are doing these types of things, that are working on branding, they're working on storytelling, and obviously the finance and marketing. But these are sometimes things that, that you need to emphasize. You need to sort of get your head out of sometimes the, the day-to-day analytical reports And tell the story of your brand and your company in authentic ways. People do and will react to it.

Yeah, no question about it. And look, I think that, I think at the, as we talk about MyExitEngine.com, once you get there, you will see that, as John said, it's not just about finances, right? And making a solid, a successful exit on your own terms isn't just about the numbers. It's not just about the money. The money might be important. We want the money, right? We're not saying we don't. You want more money than you deserve, right? But the reality is that what comes along with that are also, you know, in order to get there, you know, the idea is that there are some of these things you're going to have to examine about yourself, about the way you're managing the company, right? About the things that you have— about the things you have allowed yourself to do. about your own kind of shortcomings. These are things that matter, and this is the stuff that you're going to find inside Exit Engine with all these people. Chris Athidi, you know, just, just one of them, right? So let's go to myexitengine.com right now, and you can start there. You'll see it's very self-explanatory. You're going to go there, you're going to see a video, you're going to see me, um, and then you're going to go and you're going to be able to take this. You're going to get evaluation, we're going to have a conversation with you, we're going to get you into Exit Engine, we're going to set you up. With your own timeline, with your own roadmap based on what your needs are, right? And we're going to help you do this, and you're going to meet— and as you go along, you're going to meet people like Chris, who, wherever you are in the journey, who the kinds of people, advisory partners that you need to help you move the needle in whatever direction you need to move the needle in order to make a valuable and successful exit on your own terms. Guys, also, would you go and subscribe to this podcast if you haven't yet? Okay, subscribe, hit that button wherever that button is. If you're listening to this on YouTube, subscribe there, subscribe on Apple, subscribe on Spotify. We want to— and by the way, and comment. We want to hear back and we want feedback too. Let us know how we're doing. You can also reach out to us directly at any time if you have a question about your own company or your own situation. You can email me at jo@myexitengine.com or john@myexitengine.com.

Follow—

find us both on LinkedIn, Jo Stapleton, John Kniff. This has been the Exit Engine Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Chris Stedy, thank you so much for being here today. We really appreciate it, and, uh, we will talk to everybody soon. Have a great day. Let's exit on your own terms.