Ep 79 | Designing Your Business for Exit with Christie Kaplan

Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast, episode 79. 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, 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 great, man. You know, John, if there's one thing that we know about, about, uh, exit planning in general and about how to make a high-value exit on your own terms one day, it is about purpose and intentionality.

Right.

The, the even startups, John, need to be thinking about how to design a trajectory for exit.

Well, yeah, because if you don't do it from the beginning, you're gonna have to do it later. So it's, you know, it's like, why not? And, and it's not, this isn't, you know, rocket science or brain surgery or anything like that. This is, these are things you can do intentionally, as you said earlier, to, to begin the process of Making your business not reliant on you is one of the big ones, right? Setting up systems and processes, building the right team. And there's about 10 or 12 of them that we counsel people on to say, you really need to do this. You're gonna have to do it anyway, so might as well just do it from the beginning.

That's exactly right. So today we're gonna dive in and we've got— our guest is Christy Kaplan. We're gonna talk to her in a second, but we're diving into the conversation about the intersection, right, of design, Founder psychology and intentional venture building. Because—

Super cool.

What we're gonna talk about today is that even as a startup, that you can actually, whether you're building to grow or building to exit one day or whatever, and everybody really should be, okay, is that you are— this one thing is clear, and that is experience you create for your customers, your team, and even your investors is gonna shape not just your brand, but your overall enterprise value. And we're gonna talk about specifically with Christie about exactly how that happens and how that occurs. But first, John, let's talk about the new ExitEngine ecosystem. Yes, what we think is going to be a very valuable and important platform for those of you who care enough about their business and your own futures that you want to learn and grow towards a successful exit.

It's everything and everyone you'll need to plan and execute a successful exit on your own terms and 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.

So, John, in a world where attention is scarce and execution speed is everything, design isn't just about aesthetics. It's about clarity, empathy, systems thinking, and storytelling. And no one embodies this philosophy more than our guest today. Christy Caplan is a founder, artist, and venture builder who's putting design at the heart of early-stage investing. She's the founder of Blessing Fund, a VC fund currently raising $50 million to back design-led startups in health tech, climate tech, and infrastructure. She's also the force behind Startup Design Partners, a global collective of elite fractional designers helping founders translate vision into scalable, human-centered experiences early and often. Her mission is as clear as it is powerful. Every company should be design-led, because when design is embedded from the start, you don't just get better interfaces, you get better companies. From working with Fortune 500s like Amazon and Roche to uplifting early-stage founders who are raising capital while raising families, Christy brings a unique blend of operational discipline, creative depth, and emotional honesty to the table. She's also an artist whose work explores the raw emotional journey of entrepreneurship, because she believes business building is not just strategy. It's soul work. Christy Kaplan, thank you so much for joining us on the Exit Engine Podcast.

Thank you. Thanks, Jo and John. I'm excited. We got a lot to talk about today.

We sure do. So that intro is a lot, right? I mean, that's for a lot of people that's going to be like, whoa. And by the way, it does sound impressive, just so you know. I think it's— and obviously you have spent some time with some big brands and things like that. You have been— you've had your own ventures. You've kind of been through the wringer on this stuff. Tell us a little bit, to kick off, you know, what, what got you here, right? Tell us the, tell us the Christy Caplan story, right? Where does Christy come from? And what's led you here?

Yeah, I mean, I started off very, very early in my career, actually at 13. I was actually working with a publisher in New York. Funny, John's out there. And I was, yeah, publishing their magazine at 13, helping with magazine layouts. That was a while ago.

Wow.

Yeah. And I just, I loved everything from not just art, but design. And then I learned along the way a lot about people. And people are, they are essential to how our systems work, to how our relationships work, how money moves. It's, that's it. So along my journey, I did everything from working with pretty big ad agencies, worked with Amazon, flew out to Hershey's headquarters. I just flew out everywhere early in my career. I wasn't even old enough yet to drink. So I would go to happy hours and I'm like, okay, no one knows, but here we are. I couldn't even rent a car. So this is before Uber. So yeah, I had to get creative and I just kind of got absorbed into how these projects were working, the people, and I got a lot of connections early in my career. But really, where it really started to change for me, about 12 years into my career, I was building— I had a big moment. I was working at a startup at the time after working with agencies, consultancies, which got me exposure to those big brands, helping them build tech products primarily, everywhere from not just you know, high, you know, Fortune 100, 500 enterprises, but also well-funded startups. And I was always the go-to girl for startups. They're like, OK, we have a startup project coming in. We're putting Christy on it. I was always that person. I was like, yep, I love the informality. I love the, you know, getting your hands dirty, just figuring it out.

Right.

So I was that person in incubator world, I'd call it. And yeah, from there I was working at a startup. I literally left the giant consultancy life for a really powerful startup out in California. When I say powerful, everyone thinks like, oh, the amount of money they raised, or— it was powerful in the terms of the impact they were making. They were focused on Alzheimer's and dementia. We were working with renowned scientists who actually, in, you know, was the founder of the glymphatic system, not the lymphatic system, the glymphatic system. So I ended up minor— I guess minoring, but have a specialty in health tech for about 5 years of my 12-year career. I worked everywhere from software as a medical device, worked with Genentech Roche, worked with ophthalmology products to help track the eye virtually without— back when the pandemic was happening. So it was just a right fit to go work for this startup. And I had this moment where it was, it was truly an amazing team. We had developers, we had an amazing product owner. Actually, I left the consultancy to go work for her because she was such a good product owner.

Cool.

Yeah. And so I was like, yeah, I'm like, if there's a client I'd ever leave, you know, to go work with, it would be her. And I did, I did go. And it was a very powerful startup. And we, We ended up working with clinical studies out in Florida, actually, with some retirement communities to actually test our hardware that was synced with our software products. So I was in charge of the software and I worked with the hardware, you know, engineers and designers. So I just learned a lot. I loved it. I was very hands-on. I was the second founding designer, so I got to do everything. And then early 2023, everyone here remembers, the Silicon Valley Bank started to close.

Oh, yes.

Yes. It was a huge blow to our startup because we were about to go for our Series A. And our stakeholders were kind of pulling back. The market was pulling back. I mean, even today, right, the investors are now investing in different areas. But it was, at the time, health tech was, you know, not as, I guess, a high priority for the stakeholders as our markets were all turning at that time. And I, me and the whole product team, we got laid off.

Oh, gosh.

The cash was burning. Yeah, we, I mean, it was $100K to get one participant through our clinical study. I mean, we were doing MRI scans, blood tests, and then sleep study at night. And then Turn around in the morning, do it all again.

Just to qualify someone for the study.

Exactly. Yeah. Oh, no. Yeah, to get them through the study. So it was very cash burning, as the funnest thing as startups that we have to deal with is just our cash flow. So yeah, I mean, it was just kind of a calamity of everything coming together. And I was like, okay, I've— I was also at the time 8 weeks Postpartum. I know. And I'm a first-time mom at that moment, so it was kind of everything at once. It was already a lot dealing with a newborn. That was my first experience. And then also dealing with a layoff I've never had in my entire career. I was like, okay, I've got to just get through this, do something. And I think along that journey. I came to the realization that I was like, I just worked with an amazing, amazing mission-led startup. Like, it was very hard to find another one like that at the time because the market was really starting to turn. If y'all remember 2023, I feel like from here to now, it's been just getting worse in terms of certain areas.

Yeah.

And it's been harder and harder for startups. So yeah, so I joined a consultancy after that just to quickly like, you know, pay the bills, get stuff going. And, you know, throughout that journey, I was like, this still isn't what I want to do. There's a reason I left the consultancy industry and I went to startups. So the way to find to go back to that, you know, especially now with a kid and, you know, insurance and a mortgage. It was like reality, right? I was like, okay, what can I do? And still be a part of the startup world? Because I just, it's been my whole career. So from there, I one day, one morning woke up and formed an LLC called Startup Design Partners. And here we are.

Right, exactly. So you hung out your own shingle and said, I'm just gonna do this myself. And I'm not gonna wait for someone else to offer me the thing that I want. I'm gonna go out and get it. And, and you start it from scratch, and here you are, right?

Yeah.

That's, that's amazing. So talk to us a little bit about your approach to all of this, because again, it's a— I think the first thing that people, I think, hear is that they hear the design standpoint, and they start thinking immediately about, you know, about design, brand stuff. They know that, right? When they— we look at your resume, Obviously, you've been doing, you know, you were designing interfaces, you were doing that, you were involved in that connection between software and people, right, in terms of their interface and things like that. But talk to us a little bit about what you're doing and what your company does now and how you focus and what is your real approach to this entire thing?

Yeah, you know, as a designer at heart and at first, it's just everything I do, you have to really, you ask a lot more questions. Before you do anything, you do a ton of research, tons of research to determine what the problem space you're approaching, what are the customers you're going to be, you know, potentially pursuing, right? And from there, I quickly learned, I was like, design is— and I've been talking with many, many industry leaders in the design space and You know, everything is by design. If you think about the microphone I'm talking into, right? The platform that we're using for recording, the houses that we're literally living in, the vacuum cleaner that was going above your head, Jo, earlier.

Yeah.

You know, everything is by design. And it's, you know, the term itself, I, you know, we can debate about that forever. And, but what really is, is when it comes to venture design, This is a huge opportunity. Uh, everyone thinks design has to do with products, digital products, interfaces, right? The look and feel, the branding. Some people think it's marketing, right? The misconceptions out there. When it comes to venture design, that's where truly you can actually start designing the venture for not just your customers, but for you. And I think this plays a very heavy hand into what you guys do. In the exit world.

Yes. Talk about that a little bit, Christy. Like how, you know, because to your point, like I've always dealt with the designer or early in my career, we would bring in a designer to design a product or an interface or something along the lines. It was, it was design was, was secondary to the business objective. But you're, but, but in what you're doing is design. The whole venture is, is revolves around design. and you're designing either your career or the job to fit your needs or the user's needs. Just talk about that a little bit, how that sort of fundamental thinking has either changed or evolved to be so central to what you're doing.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it goes really hand in hand with entrepreneurs and founders, right? They're actually getting into this because they want to design their life better. So with that, We design the ventures, right? We have we make sure that it becomes the business model, right? Like is this even the business model? Like yes, you might advisors might have told you do this because it scales to this, but it's like but is it actually going to meet the end needs for you as a business, but also your customers? Is it actually what is required and actually needed? So we're actually in the process of redesigning business models, and I actually did that for startup design partners again. I live the agency life and. I lived it and I saw the pressure. Oh my gosh, the pressure from the business side. I mean, just staffing and chasing clients, but then you have a full burn rate of talent you have to pay because they're W-2s. It doesn't make sense. And that's just how they run. And that's just, it roots back to the ad life.

Yeah. And specifically about like business model, either design or redesign, like tell us how, because I can imagine that that discussion with a founder is difficult when the person maybe who's funded the company or someone, one of his or her founders, one of her founders is against it. And you're trying to come in and you're redesigning the business model of how the company started or maybe even why that person join the company. So how does that work? And, you know, resolving sort of the conflicts of that would be, I think, an interesting story.

Yeah, I mean, that's one of the best things about designers is they are truly human. They're giant people solvers. So anytime there's conflicts, anytime there's, I mean, a room full of stakeholders, I've facilitated them arguing and yelling at each other. And it's— I love it because it's like, I can help facilitate a consensus. And that is the power of what design is. You're designing a process to get them to a consensus. So whether it's 2 co-founders fighting, which, yes, happens, whether it's, you know, disagreement with, well, I'm assuming this has always been done this way. But it's the questioning. It's like, well, it's not working for you, and it's definitely not working for your customers. Like, there's an opportunity here inside of your startup to start know, innovating of what you can do. So it's really just trust in the process, which you don't really understand till you go through it. And then you're like, this is where it all comes to a point.

It sounds like though, there's a lot of, you know, we are teaching people further on most of the time, right? Yes. In there, they've now reached the people that you're working with, pretend they've now reached $2 to $5 million in top-line revenue.

Right?

This is where they need ExitEngine because this is where what you— what most of these people have not done, what Christie basically has evangelized doing earlier on, right? Which is to examine the business, understand the underpinnings, understand what are the things that— you just brought up a great phrase which we use all the time, which is to say that you have You have been in business for however long you've been doing it, and you've just always done it this way. You have a process that isn't written down that just happens because, well, it's some— because Helen in accounting started it and that's how we do it. And right, there's never been any more thought to it. All things that happen in the business at this point are often not intentional. They are just— they just are.

Right.

And what we're trying to tell people at this stage in particular is This is the time when you, if you, especially if you haven't done it yet, this is the time where you actually have to stop, stand back and fix these issues underneath the waterline. Because when you go to scale next, all you're gonna do is scale the problems as well as the good stuff.

Right.

And that's gonna actually make it worse and harder for you as you move forward. So I love the fact that you talk about this, um, and that you really are, when you're looking at a business model, you might be what, 2 or 3 years into a startup, right? When you do that. What's the general kind of timeframe? How do you generally kind of get engaged with people? What stages are you kind of coming in at, even though it's, again, a startup can still be 5 years old, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So again, as a research, you know, this design is mostly research. I, you know, I interviewed 5, like over 100 founders, I would believe. And I came up with 3 personas. And above those 3 personas, there was commonality across all the different pain points. They were everywhere from about to sell, they were all the way from like the very, very beginning. And I noticed there's this journey, right? We all talk, we all see those, you know, the Valley of Death, like everyone's seen that, right? The journey of a founder.

Yep.

And startup life. And I've identified really 3, 4, almost, well, 4th is the exit. But really 3 primary stages that a startup goes through. And really a founder, right? They're going through this because they have to lead this giant entity that they have built. So really, the first one is called the honeymoon phase. Hello, there's a little person on your screen. So yeah, the first phase is the honeymoon phase, right? They're excited. You, you know, you have— you might be starting to corral a team. You're like, okay, this is the vision. This is what we're doing. And There's a very clear reason why it's called the honeymoon phase, right? It's, it's the fun. There's no strings attached yet, right? There's no burdens or responsibility yet. And that's when you hit the formulating phase is when, you know, you start walking the— talking the talk, you're gonna walk the walk, right? So that's when you actually start building and, you know, taking initial investments. You start actually seeing the sacrifices that is actually required to start building. And that's when you typically start building out your full teams or you start building your product, right? If it's a tech product or physical product. And then you get to launch, right? That's usually the pivotal moment of like, okay, let's test this with the market. Let's see how it actually runs. And people are doing this, right, in very lean ways with either 1 person, 2 people right now, but you can still do it with big teams depending on what you're building. So then you get into the perseverance phase. And you guys know this one very well because this is where your people are at, the people you help. And they are truly in this scale or die phase. It's you have to put everything to— they either have investors, right? Like, hey, we need to get to this in 2 years or 1 year. And they have to start really reshifting the way and reprioritizing exactly what they need to focus on. So really, and then they get to the exit phase. So that's, that's where you guys shine. And that's where you guys start to help them through the transitions of becoming a founder, scaling a company, building this, and actually handing this off, hopefully to the right people.

Yeah.

So for From there—

The right amount of money, FYI. But yes, for the right amount of money, I said yes, exactly. It's the right people in the right terms and all that stuff. Correct.

Right, right. So where we help is truly in the beginning. After the honeymoon phase, I don't take many founders seriously if they're in the honeymoon phase because your vision's going to shift. You're not yet committed. You haven't been burned, let's say, a little bit.

But you don't know what you don't know yet, right?

You don't know yet.

This whole thing of going through being a founder and having to try stuff and put it out there. And you talked about the perseverance. The perseverance is one— I mean, if you persevere 5+ years and you get to $5 million, you know, in revenue and the whole thing, you've already won.

Okay. It's like the perseverance. It's like when a boxer gets into a boxing ring and everyone has a plan until they get hit in the face, right? And I think of the perseverance phase to, you know, just to bring it to my terms is when you get hit in the face for the first time and it's like, oh, like, okay, now I have to pivot. I have to change. I have to deal with the adversity that was not there in the honeymoon phase.

Yeah. Yeah. The honeymoon and formulating phase is honestly like, it's truly like childhood. You're right. It's the golden years. And then you hit launch and then it's like, wow, adult life is here. Yeah.

So we have to pivot, we have to change, we have to, we have to adapt and we have to go like, we have to figure out what we have and where we need to change it so that we actually have what we have is what the users and our customers want. And that difference, that shift can be drastic.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's all what, that's all what design does. Like from the very beginning is, is determining the PMF and your ICP. Like that is everything of what design is and intentionally designing for them.

I know what ICP is. I have to confess, I should know what PMF is, but I don't know.

PMF, product market fit, and ICP is your ideal customer profile. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you for clarifying that.

Yeah, no worries. Yeah, we can't throw acronyms out there. You never know who's listening. We got to explain what we're talking about.

But product market fit is an excellent— it's an excellent thing to talk about for a second because it is— we talk about pivoting, right? And sometimes pivots are big. We've made many pivots while we've been doing this, right? And again, they're not necessarily 180 degrees, right? There's various shifts and things like that that go on. But so much of it at the beginning of being a startup is listening, right? As opposed to— right? And so many founders want to do, do, do, do, do. And the reality is that they may have— the worst thing that we think that founders can do at the beginning of the whole thing is lock them into one way of thinking about this. Because they will come and not be open to— again, you're going to find a lot of people as you go through, especially when you get into the financing part and you start to meet with potential investors. They all have their own ideas, right? And one of the things that I think was about what you are so good at doing is that you are working with the founder, okay? You're not hired by the— by the— generally by the financiers.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. I wanna make this very clear. This is a founder psychology, founder mindset, founder enablement, founder empowerment situation that Christy does, because this is not just about setting out a business plan so you're satisfying your customers or your, uh, or your finance, financial people or your investors. It's really about making sure you know what you're doing. What is your vision for what's going to happen and how is it going to unfold so that you are satisfied with what you're doing? Because there, I can tell you countless numbers of stories of founders who have gotten involved in something, hit on something early on, got a bunch of money behind it. And what are you giving up to get that money? Right. Control. Right. Giving up control. You might even be giving up your vision. You might be selling a little piece of yourself. Right? Whatever. And if you are starting to shift that early on and changing your values and what you value, what you felt was important, you're going to be very unhappy when it comes to exit. Right? I know that seems like exit seems like it's so far away. Right? But the reality is, is that if you don't start being intentional about who you are, what you want, and aligning yourself with your mission, right?

Mm-hmm.

Then you've got no hope. of getting to a place where you're going to sell anything or do anything on your own terms one day. It's all going to be based on what other people say and what other people feedback. Has that been your experience?

Oh yeah. I literally had a conversation this week with a founder. She's, she's about, she's 5 years into her product. And she's completely bootstrapped it, but $100K in at this point. And she's She's now entertaining investors, right? She told me, I'm willing to bootstrap this for the next 10 years. I'm like, okay, that's a good sign. Green flag. Also, she said, I have a term sheet and this, I am starting to entertain investors, but I feel like I'm now sacrificing what my values are for what I'm building. And I pretty much validated her. I'm like, so if you're— it depends on what, right? Like what your tolerance is, like what exactly is important to you? Is it keeping the values to your company? I mean, obviously this was a big one to her. She was willing to bootstrap her company for 10 more years.

Right.

And I told her, you know, if you're willing to sacrifice those things now, By the time you get to exit, you're like, what was the point? Like, you're going to be sacrificing similar, you know, if not values, but even more things to get to exit. And it's kind of like, what's— what is the point if you're already doing that now, right?

Yeah, great advice.

Because, because again, things will come up, as you know, and as you counseled her, Christy, it's like, right, the Things will change and things will come up. And if you're, if you're willing to do that at this point, what else are you going to do? And are you going to be happy knowing that you conceded this so early and relatively early in the journey?

Yes. Yes. And I, again, I've talked to many founders who've exited multiple times and they all, they all have some regrets by the way they exited. And again, it's by design. It's like, well, what, what along that journey they could have been more intentional about, right? Like, there's opportunities there to— and I mean, you go into foundership, right, because it's, it's not a nice-to-have. It's like, it's a must-have, right? You, you can't go back. If you can, I don't know how you do it. But you can't really go backwards, right? You see something, you see a problem, and you see it needs to be fixed. And you have to do it. So Along the way, you know, you have to make it worthwhile because especially when it gets to you guys, right? Like, it's, you know, what's the point? What was the whole point, right?

Yeah. What was I doing here? What was the mission? And, and also, again, most people aren't, you know, we, we know this, this is just the truth. You know, it's our reality that we have to deal with. Most people are not thinking about exit even when they're at this stage because they, they are so wrapped up in the way they've been doing it. that they think has been successful. And I'm going to make air quotes with successful because, again, it's, you know, success is in the eye of the beholder.

Yeah.

But I think that ultimately what happens is that, yes, people are, are not intentional about what they're doing or they're intent— maybe they're— maybe what's happening is that they're intentional in ways in which they— that don't matter or aren't the right ways to be intentional. And John, I think the thing that I think about, you know, right away is the way that we see so many founders Worried about top line revenue at this stage, right, where they are, and they can't understand why their profitability is not keeping up with the top line revenue, right? What happens is they keep making more money coming over the top of the fence, but their profitability is actually shrinking.

Well, yeah, and we've talked to somebody recently, and it escapes me who it was, but they had a great point. It's like when you scale, you scale everything, right? So you can scale revenue, which is wonderful, and scaling revenue is great. But when you scale all the crap and all the shit that you've not fixed and the processes that are bad and the people and you're hiring more people and you're scaling that too, like, that's a bad outcome because again, revenue is great. But when profitability suffers just because of at the expense of revenue, it's not a good thing long term because again, when people invest and they see those numbers in the P&L, like, great, your revenue's up, but, but you're scaling everything bad too. So you really have to scale intentionally and design the company so that you're getting the right customers, right? You're designing the product and refining the product so that it's getting the right customers at the right time and, and fixing processes and fixing things as you go along.

Yeah.

And you're designing it for you as the founder. Right? Again, it has to work. Like, how are you paying your bills? Right? Like, are you taking any income? You know, what does that look like? Or what are you— what is your next— you know, when you exit, like, what are you gonna do with that money? Like, what is your plan? What are you intentionally gonna invest that back into a new company? Like, what does that look like for the founder? Because it's important. It's so important.

And let me ask you a question about that specifically is about like, so What have you seen recently or lately in the last couple of years about the design that a person thinks about the design of the company and what it fits to their needs? Because I think back when I was, you know, I was younger and we started the company, it was like, make money, right? It was like, make money, move along, sell this company and make money and then go on to our next thing. So what are entrepreneurs in your sort of, when you're dealing with it, what are they designing their businesses for? So that they can do better or so that they can do instead of what they were doing in the past? Hopefully that question makes sense.

Yeah, no, it definitely does. I'm seeing a huge shift from let's just make money. I mean, that's a huge part of it, right? We need money to survive and to build this abundant life that we're all trying to build here. But more so, I'm seeing a huge, huge shift and the more and more founders I talk to, they're focused on values. They're focused on not just, you know, is, is what I'm building needed? But am I building it in a way that's actually part of my values as the founder? Right? Like, it has— there has to be that internal alignment.

Yeah.

And I'm seeing that more and more. And I see that as a good thing. Because if you're that invested, if your values are aligned with the company, that you, you're building, you're gonna go the distance, right? Rather than just, it's making money, and then the minute it's not making money, you're like, okay, shut it down. You know, like, it's, it's, there's a detachment there that, that's happening.

I think there's, there's so many things that, that are unexpected that happen along the way, right, that, that you can't necessarily, uh, plan for. There's, and when you're a startup, there are so many things that can affect how you move forward. Right? We're so— obviously, lots of people, we get into these modes too, where you get into like, okay, this is about, uh, we gotta— oh, we gotta do this, we gotta make sure this happens, we're all right, uh, we're running around like crazy, right? Oh, we got this new business, we gotta get this stuff, we gotta make sure this gets over the fence. Did we invoice those people? Like that, you know, the idea of trying to like run a situation where it is always just in time, it is always firefighting, right? It is always— you're always in constant fight or flight. Right? This is where burnout happens, and that's why it happens, right? Because you spend so much time worried about, like, what John was saying, like, you know, we— if we don't make this money— now look, to be clear, we understand the money thing. Like, it has to happen, right? Otherwise you don't have a business. That is the definition of what a business is. So it's one thing. Otherwise, what you have is a vocation and maybe a hobby or something like that, right? What we're trying to counsel and what you're trying to counsel people to do is to say, hey, look, let's design this business to be not only a good business, but to be a business that fits into your life as a person. And not just your life now, but as your life changes and grows and whatever, you should be looking at the business and looking at yourself, you know, and kind of reexamining that stuff as you go along, which is exactly right what we're teaching people to do. the same thing, which is so much of this is what is in it for you. And this is where most exit planning and most— and definitely business brokers and those kinds of things, just, that's just not their job, right? They don't see it as their job to work with the founder, um, to, to, to be able to plan, hey, look, what do you want at the end? And let's design a program that's going to get you there, not just get you out, which is 2 different Objectives, right? You're doing the same thing, you're just doing it earlier on and saying, hey, look, what kind of life/business/situation are you in? And you must be dealing too with— you've got startups that are like going to be big companies one day, and you might have startups that are going to be, you know, relatively small agencies that, that are something like that, that people are happy to have because that just fits their life, right?

Yep.

Not growth for the sake of growth isn't everybody's objective.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think they're— what do they call lifestyle businesses is what they call them. Yeah. And there is, there is like a huge, um, seeing a huge growth of that too, because there are people, or a lot of people that are entering the founder market that I, at least I'm talking to, they're, they're questioning, they're like, the systems that I've been put They're the systems that, you know, were designed decades ago, like they're not built for where that person is headed in their next phase of life. And they're making new ones, right? They're making new businesses to help accommodate that gap that they're finding in their life, just like me, just like you guys, you know.

Right. Hey, I'm Joe Stapleton from the Exit Engine Podcast. Building a business is hard enough, right? Planning your exit shouldn't feel like another lonely, confusing project you have to figure out on your own. That's why we created ExitEngine. ExitEngine isn't just a software tool, it's an entire ecosystem designed to help founders engineer a successful exit. You'll get access to self-assessments, growth roadmaps, and a peer community where you can learn from other founders who've been in your shoes. You'll also find the guidance and expert resources you need to build a business that's actually worth buying, and to do it without burning out. Imagine having the clarity to know what your business is worth, exactly where to focus to improve it, and the confidence to exit on your own terms, whether that's next year or a decade from now. You don't have to do this alone. You don't have to build a business alone. Join us and let's build your exit strategy together. Visit MyExitEngine.com to get started. That's MyExitEngine.com. Yeah, that's it. I mean, and any business is finding some kind of hole, right, in a marketplace somewhere that you're gonna, you know, they use the word exploit, which is not a good word, but, you know, take advantage of to say, hey, look, I can fill this hole, right? I can, I can fill this gap in the market with the thing that I can do, or an idea I have, or a new way of doing it, or Right, or that kind of thing. That's just, that's generally the stuff. What is the— sorry, John, you want to say that?

No, go ahead.

I was just gonna say, when we, when we are thinking about— give me some things that you see that are common when you start to talk with people, with founders, because again, it's not always, you know, Christy's not, not coming in day one. Okay, I mean, to be clear, right, very— that's not very often the case, right, where you're, I'm a founder, I want to start something, let me do the first phone call I'm going to make Is Christy to help me design what it's going to be, right? That doesn't really work that way. It should, frankly, but it probably doesn't.

Yeah, that's not the reality. You know, that's la-la land.

What are the, what are the common things that you're seeing when you arrive somewhere? What are the common traits that you see? You talked about the personas and stuff before, but what are the common traits that you're seeing these founders kind of embody, right? And where are you seeing where the opportunities are for them? Mostly. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, founders are changing. I mean, I'm sure, I mean, you guys are seeing the, the ones further along, but the ones entering this market, or at least have been in this, you know, last 5 years, I'd say, uh, that, that market is very interesting. Uh, you know, I mean, of course we can contribute to the, the amount of tools entering the marketplace, right, that people can start building on their own.

Yeah, absolutely.

So there's a lot of experimentation that is happening. And when I talk about the personas, again, it's my way of identifying my ICP for the business that I'm trying to support. But you guys will resonate 100% with this. So, you know, one of the first, you know, buckets of folks that I consider the ones entering the marketplace most recently in droves is the DIYers.

Mm-hmm.

DIY is like, it's pretty much, you're hiring pretty much like say an event planner for a birthday party and for like, I don't know, Barack Obama, right? You're DIYing. You're like, I have this big vision. I'm going to invite the best people. And then you're still figuring it out, right? There's a lot of things that are going to be missed along the way. But you're not ready as the founder to invest or to have that risk tolerance yet. They haven't built that up yet to truly invest in their vision and honestly investing in themselves. That's a big part of it and believing in themselves, right? And so I call that the playground, really. DIYers is the playground. And then from there, I'm seeing my favorite founder that I see is the SME. They are people that have been, let's say, the restaurant manager that has been in the industry for decades and they run, let's say, a bunch of franchises and they've seen the inefficiencies in one part of that business that they're trying to run. They're like, why can't this ever be fixed? Why isn't there a solution out there that either does it better or does it at all? Right? That's the SME, the subject matter expert. You know, designers, when we're building any product, We interview the crap out of them. We always bring them in, in no matter what the domain is, no matter— like, I was a part of building out a platform for a hospital one time, and it was about tracking the top opioids that were running through that hospital at the time. And I had to bring in SMEs to truly understand how the fulfillment of opioids are allowed into the hospital, right? Like, there's only a certain amount of opioids allowed in the hospital at a given time. I don't know if you guys knew that. But basically, I had to learn all about opioids. And I— because I— and in order to, in order to design it, right, for these SMEs or for that business, you have to truly understand it. So the SME is one of my favorite founders coming into the marketplace. They are done. They're tired of the way things have been run. And again, And these are some founders that I actively talk to all the time. They're, you know, the farmer who grew up with his dad owning like lands and lands of farmland and grew up around in rural areas where there was a bunch of plumbers and a bunch of tradesmen, and then there was no training for them, right? There was no long-term. So he built a platform for them called UpSmith, if you want to check it out.

Interesting.

But he built a platform for them because, again, he That was his lived experience.

Right.

So SMEs is lived experience, professional experience. There has been time, there has been investment put into that expertise that they are owning and solving. Because again, they have the relationship, industry relationships, right? Which is so important when you're building a company. They also have, you know, boots on the ground understanding of their ICP, their ideal customer profile, who they're solving for, what is happening here and why it needs to be solved. And then 2, they're super passionate about it. I mean, imagine investing, again, time, your life, your profession, decades into it, and then not doing anything with that expertise. You are the SME and you are built and equipped to do this.

Yeah.

So SMEs, I love them. They are truly humble people, especially now building in the tech space. And then the last one, you guys know very, very well, the serial entrepreneurs, people who've been there, who've done that. They have a high, high risk tolerance. And yeah, they're willing to do it all over again, again and again and again. And that's this video.

Yeah.

And sort of, so for sort of pivoting a little bit, but I think you sort of answered this question, just want to confirm is like, you're raising a fund. So I can imagine that the fund that you're looking like the companies you're looking to back, I should say, are in that SME. You're looking for SME founders and you're looking for serial entrepreneurs. So talk about the differences between the two of those, because SMEs, you know, serial entrepreneurs are easy to— it's not easy to back, but it's probably a little bit more easy to back them because they've done it before. And the SME has that domain expertise, but maybe she's never been the CEO or maybe she's never done this before. So talk a little bit about the differences between those two groups of people. Oh yeah.

I mean, investment standpoint, it's a huge difference. I mean, one needs a lot more handholding. The SMEs, right? The first— they're usually first-time founders. They, they— but they are extremely passionate about what they're solving, and they know exactly every— the system that they're solving for.

Right.

And they're the ones who, from an investment standpoint, standpoint, They need a lot more handholding. And that's why a venture studio might be a better place for them than more of an off-hands approach, which could be the serial entrepreneur. You can afford more, maybe more investment for their portfolio, depending on what you want to do there. Again, it's all temperamental on the venture fund and what their risk levels are. But yeah, there's a huge difference. I mean, Serial entrepreneurs, they've failed many times before they succeeded. We all know this, but you only hear about the successes.

Right.

And it's exciting to see serial entrepreneurs entering this space and they're kind of having an identity crisis a little bit because you build and you build and then you sell and then you build and build again. That's just what they're built for. And they're becoming into a place where they're like, what, what do I build next? Like, that becomes a big question. And usually it's something I'm seeing is they're asking this question before they even exit, which is a sign they're going to exit. You know, they're like, I'm— my foot's out the door. Yeah.

And just one little point about that. The serial entrepreneurs that we've dealt with and we've seen, it seems to us that Or I'll say it seems to me that they know their faults and they know their weaknesses better than the SMEs know them. Because to your point, they've failed and they know that they need a Joe as an example, or a John that complements their skill set, or someone else that they need to bring in when they do these entrepreneurial ventures because they know what they don't know. And sometimes that's more important than what they do know.

Yeah. And also their networks are already full. They already have people they can reach out to, whether it's advisors, whether it's friends that are in entrepreneurship, investors. They already have that network. And that is, again, it helps with acceleration as well. So it's a really good area to invest in. But the SMEs, again, they do need more handholding. it is usually their first time entering the founder market. You know, building a brick-and-mortar is, yes, it has its risks and everything, but then building a tech company is very different.

Yes.

So, you know, there's a lot of handholding that has to be done. But the SMEs, I really think they're, you know, especially now with all of the interesting AI enhancements that are happening, you know, SMEs are gonna be very, very sought after because it's knowledge that you can't get without truly interviewing, doing your due diligence, researching the crap out of them. All the steps and processes that designers do in order to build a product, we go directly to the sources, the SMEs who've lived the experience, who's talked about it, who understand every facet and corner and gray areas that, right, you can't get from a schematic or an SKD that already exists out there, right? Or just general knowledge that you can get from an article, or nowadays you can ask ChatGPT or go into the Notebook LM and do deep research, right? There's so much detail there.

Yeah, sorry. And the fact that like they've, they've had that lived experience, right, Christy? Like the SME knows what's screwed up or thinks they know what's screwed up about their particular industry. The restaurant industry, the whatever it happens to be. You know, they're designing a ghost kitchen or they're doing something sort of very innovative, or their thought process is very innovative in the restaurant business or in the real estate business or whatever it happens to be. And they just need guidance, maybe some fractional help, and they need a little more handholding from their financial backers to bring in people to help them. So, yeah.

Yeah.

And yeah, I mean, anyone investing, I mean, you look for domain expertise.

Exactly. You do.

You— I mean, that's why there's so many founders right now searching for capital. It's because they're the, the machine learning, uh, you know, data scientists coming into the market. They're the engineers building something. Yes, you can build something.

Yeah, every single day, Christy, right? Is there somebody— there's a product guy who thinks he's got a company. Yeah. And what he actually has is a product. Okay, he doesn't yet have a He has a single product and, uh, and what's— and they come, we got this great thing and we want to do it. And our first question is always, great, first of all, how many subscribers, how many users do you have? Is the first question. And so the answer to that question is, right, whatever the answer is to that, normally it's relatively low. What's the next question you have to ask is, how many followers do you have on social media? How many people are following you around as you're talking about this? Because that's the next place I'm looking for Right? I'm looking for heat, right?

Yeah.

Where where is this person getting right starting to look at market and addressable market and how is it and is there any social proof around what they're doing and how they're building and stuff like that, right? Which is a big a big thing. But once you get past those two questions, it really becomes a matter of a what are you doing, right? Why why why what what is it you're doing? Why does it have to be done right now? And why are you the person the right person to be doing it.

Yes, that's exactly the way I vet founders today. I go through, make sure they actually have legitimate, like, social standing, they actually have domain expertise, right, going through. And I actually just hired a sales associate on the boots on the ground in California, in Silicon Valley, to get even more conversations with founders. And I went through the— I, as a good designer, I document everything. Y'all would be Of course. Y'all would be so happy as someone, you know, you know, people trying to sell companies. But yeah, documentation is so important. But I pretty much went through the entire vetting process with her. And it's exactly very similar to that. And once I do the due diligence on my end, or her end, right, then we get a discovery call. And in that discovery call, we're not talking about the product. We're not talking about how much you need to raise. Like, if those are the first 2 things I hear, I'm like, okay, especially the raise question. Like, oh yeah, I'm raising this. I'm like, stop. Like, don't even ask that question. Not in the first call. And what I do the first, really within under 10 minutes, I can ask and truly understand if this founder has it long distance is 3 questions. One, why are you doing this? Like, what's your why? You know, what is that?

Yeah.

And it's usually The founders love to talk. So usually they're talking about, if they're an SME, right, they have domain expertise. I saw this, I lived this. Oh my gosh, I'm so tired of the system. I'm going to rebuild this from scratch. And you're like, okay, that answers that legitimacy and trust and belief in themselves to do it. And then 2, I ask what you asked, Jo. I was like, okay, well, why now? Why is this an opportunity, not just for the market, but for you? What has shifted in your, you know, life that you're like, I, I want to, you know, build a, you know, a mansion, whatever, whatever it is, right? What, what has changed in your vision for your future? And I have to see an alignment there, right? And sometimes founders don't even have an answer to that question. Sometimes they're like, not to the mark, not to the market piece, but their why, you know, oh, like, I didn't even think about Do I want to sell one day? Do I not? What is that, not end game, but what is it all for in the vision of where you're headed? Exactly. And then the last why, it's again another why. And so we asked, why now? Why are you even— why are you the one to do this? And then You know, what, what and why is this? Who, and who is this for? Right? Because a lot of folks, especially founders, I'm seeing, and that's another reason I have it in my bio is, you know, people that are raising families and raising capital, it's an interesting play. But they, they're truly, they're, they have deep whys, you know, I have a kid, I don't know what his future is gonna look like, I'm gonna, you know, build this for the next generation, right? Like, you know, why are you doing this? Not just now, but, and why are you, what are you doing it for?

Right.

And that opens up a lot of room for founders to truly spill about their deeper whys. Because if, I'm sure you guys, you guys deal with the aftermath, but the beginning for founders They're going through a huge transformation of themselves, especially if they're a first-time founder.

Right.

They're challenging systems. They're challenging their own beliefs. Hopefully, they've gone through lots of therapy, closing out lots of trauma from their past, whatever it is. There's a lot of deep work they have to do to get to this place in order to build and think abundantly for What they're building, right? I mean, this is so much risk, otherwise you wouldn't do this, right?

Well, and it's so funny because it's like, you know, we talk about limiting beliefs, right? Because a lot of this is the person has put limiting beliefs on what they believe they can do, right? They've been doing something for so long, like your example of a manager in a restaurant. They've been doing these things, the manager in a restaurant, for a decade or even longer. A decade and a half. And some of it is that they've put this limiting belief that other people can see in them an entrepreneur and they can't see it themselves, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I'm seeing that a lot with designers, actually. So designers I work with, they've— I mean, as a designer, you're building products, you're building, but eventually you get into a niche. Right? You, you end up loving healthcare. Like, for me, I loved healthcare because my family's in healthcare. My dad went through the system with stage 4 cancer. He's still alive, thank goodness. But, you know, I've just, I've lived, there's a lived experience that I—

Right.

Why I deeply resonate with the healthcare system and why I want to design for it and help improve it. Because I've been on the other end of, you know, either failed systems or ways that, you know, you're like, why is it done this way? And so you start to question, and that's really where it starts, right? Questioning the whys of even why are these— why is this designed the way it is? And then that's the opportunity to turn around and start redesigning it. And that's where I come in.

So it sounds, it sounds so familiar because I mean, this is exactly, you know, where we're doing it. We're, you know, we always say it's like, we're not here to give you— we're not— we'll figure out the answers with you. Right. But what we're really here to do is to get you to ask yourself the questions. Because without those questions, you've got no place to start, right? It's like saying to them, why are you doing this? And they go, huh, you know, I don't know, I never really thought about it, I just had this idea. And some people, like, you know, me and John are, are those kinds of people, right? We see a thing and we just go, well, I'm just gonna do this now. Um, you know, that's—

Yeah, I mean, you gotta answer the question about the why for us. Just for us, you didn't ask. Yeah, when we were, when we were at another firm and we were at doing slightly different things, right? We just noticed all these problems. Joe got down the line with a couple of companies to sell and he experienced these problems and we were commiserating about it. And it's like talking one time, it's like, I've had the same problems. Like, wait a second.

That'd be a better way.

We've both encountered, we both did not get paid for a deal because it didn't close because the company, the underlying company was so screwed up. that when the buyers ask these relatively simple questions, right? I mean, it wasn't— again, it wasn't rocket surgery or brain, you know, brains, whatever that is. It wasn't brain surgery. It was very simple financial metrics of like, wait, you don't have the right costs for your right products? And this is my case. It's like someone was ready to buy this huge business. They had 3 products and the cost accounting was all wrong. Well, if the cost accounting is all wrong, Then how can I—

then what is the problem?

Do you have 2 commodity products and 1 proprietary product that's truly different, or do you really have 3 commodity products and you have to assign the cost correctly? And it turned out it was the latter. And it's like, okay, well, the buyer walked away because it's like, I was going to sell those commodity products and focus on the one and invest in the one. Well, you know, those are fundamental things. So we noticed that there was a niche of helping companies Way before they want to sell, helping design the systems and tools and design the company around not selling next week, next month, or next year, selling in 3 years, selling in 2 and a half years, whatever it happens to be. There's work you need to do to fix your company so that it is saleable.

Yeah, yeah.

And being able to start that stuff early on in the process or whatever. And again, There's a crossover with what we do, right, Christy? Because again, you are— where is a startup not a startup anymore? I don't really know what the answer to that, especially nowadays.

Right.

I don't know. We've been in business for a couple of years. Are we still a startup? Technically, maybe we are. And I think that's okay. I don't think it really matters. But I think the question is just— so it's less about what's a startup and more about where the founder is and where their mindset is and where they are in their journey. Right. And you talk about mile— there are milestones in here. There's, you know, there's, I got, I built the product, I got revenue, started to get revenue in. Those are, those are happy days, right? Those are the things where, hey, look, I've, I've done this, I can see that this works. And once you start to see that proof of concept work, now it starts to become about making a business out of that, which is different than just having a product. As John mentioned before, it's like We used to see this stuff all the time. People, especially in the IT world, because— and by the way, we're seeing it a lot right now with AI because they've got an AI thing. I did a thing. It's AI. And you're like, great. What does your thing do? And where does it relate to the thousands of other AI things that are out there right now? And how do you disambiguate yours from everybody else's?

Right? And it's not even a product, right? In the case of AI, like we had, we have, and we've encountered this, like it's not a You're not a company, you're a product. And then with AI, we've actually seen a couple of things where you're not even a product, right? You've got a thing and you've got some type of thought process. I don't know what it is, framework, whatever it happens to be, of how you think AI is going to impact things.

Like, great. Yeah.

Make it a product, make it something that someone can purchase. And then you're— then you have a product and then you can form a company. But like, AI is one of those— it's one of those just crazy things of There's not even products that people have and they're able to either get investment or sell it for crazy amounts of money.

Yeah, the AI wrapper is—

Years ago, Christy, it was— if you saw this or not, but it's basically— it was, it was e-commerce, right? Like e-commerce businesses. Okay, so before the AI boom, it was, can you show me high number, high volume, uh, e-commerce businesses were really popular in the whole thing and they were going because they were And again, not from private equity firms, but from individual buyers looking to buy things that were already going and they were relatively, you know, easy to get into and they were highly profitable because it was all just— and I'm not talking about dropshipping things, but more, you know, slightly larger e-commerce plays. But the, but the, the notion is the same, where all these people were starting. What did they actually build in that situation? A process, okay, that basically moved product from one place to another. Okay, that was what the business was. It's not, right, as John keeps saying, this isn't rocket science. This is just a very basic situation of, you said, transferring money from— and product and exchanging it, you know, from one place to another. AI, right, is coming along, right? And now AI is all the— is the darling of the ball right now, and everybody wants to go find the next AI unicorn, which is why they're not investing in, in other stuff.

Yes.

Sometimes means they're not investing at all right now, which is another problem.

I know, I know.

But the idea is still that, again, it's still about you. Where we intersect, and I think where we are really aligned here, is that the mission for everybody— and this is the big lesson. If you take away one thing today from this podcast, know this, that in order to build a company the way that you want to build a company, it must be intentional. Okay? Yes, at the beginning, you're going to luck out. At the beginning, you're going to keep your eyes open and go, oh, wasn't that lucky that I met that person? And now I'm going to kind of twist this way. That's all part of the journey. Yeah, right. But at some point, you need to be intentional about what you're doing and where you're headed. Okay.

Yeah.

And I think that's the, that's the real learning here and what you do and what's so great about what you do. And I think also about what we do, too, is that we are very founder-focused, right? Because what you see is There's no business, there's no company without this person, right? This person early on is the driving force behind everything for years, and up until that $2 to $5 million revenue thing, at least, it's— the business is all about them. But yeah, in the last few minutes that we have with you, talk a little bit about that transition, because the whole goal of what you're doing is to say, this is where you are now, but you need to be able to design yourself to be to where— where is this going to go? Right. And how do you prepare yourself for the change? Because it turns out that owning a business is just constant change. And if you're great, if you're good at it, it's constant growth on your part. But it's hard to do that without an intentional plan.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's kind of the— you have to be— you have to plan, but then you can't be married to that plan. You have to be flexible, right? Yeah, yeah. And you, and you want to be able to grow, but you also need to, you know, prioritize what you need to invest back in, in order to grow in certain areas. And then people are also starting to— finally, they're starting to, you know, be more diverse in their business models. At least I'm noticing from the beginning. beginning when they're building their companies. They're thinking about more of an ecosystem or, you know, a community that feeds in itself, you know, and that, again, that helps with sustainability longer term. So, yeah, and back to your— what was your question one more time, Joe?

No, just a question about the founder being prepared for the transition and the change that's going to come as you go through this, right? Because you're working with them at the, you know, again, it's one thing to sit down at the beginning and say, this is where I am now.

Yeah, right, to take the feedback from all the research you're doing, to take the feedback that an entrepreneur is like, this is what your customers are saying, and, and, and being able to actually make those changes to the business so that it reflects what the users actually really want.

Yeah, and you know, this is, this is what designers are trained to do professionally, is they are— everyone's like, oh, you, you design something like wonderful and beautiful and finite, right? But really, designers are trained to never get married to what they're designing and what they're building, because it's, it's, it's, it's a live organism, the way you should treat a business.

That has to be hard, though. That has to be so hard for a designer.

Oh, it's, you know, it's, it's hard. But, you know, if you, if you go back to, you know, the why, and again, it's listening, it's listening to the people you're designing for. And, and as a designer, right, building for, you know, these top companies for years and years and years, you have many complicated people that are all giving many, many, many—

It was one of those people giving terrible feedback to designers. So designers have—

Terrible feedback.

Terrible, terrible, uneducated. Again, this is me. Terrible, uneducated, uninformed feedback about what I thought was right, and I was dead wrong about it. And these designers, like, I mean, I can picture the face of one of them presenting to me, and just— she was exactly right, I was completely wrong. And that she was able to convince me and convince us of how wrong we were was a testament to her ability and education and experience. So Yeah, I respect designers so much.

Yeah, and that's why it's like, like designers have that innate ability to have that constant friction, right, with any stakeholder, with any customer, whoever they're testing with, whoever they're needing information from, right? Like they absorb so much, and in order to take all of that feedback, right, and, and funnel it into consensus and then actually bring an output that makes sense and has alignment. Like, that's truly the power of—

Yes.

Good design. And that goes back to businesses, right? You need to, I mean, really, designers, we're solving business problems. Like, it's not, yeah, customers, yes, we've, and I'm a huge advocate for customer feedback. But again, I talk with founders day in, day out, and they are like, I'm like, are you, every question I ask, If I, if I don't hear it first, I'm like, are you talking to customers? And they're like, um, we're not yet. We're still focused on getting investment. I'm like, no, no, no, back up, rewind. Uh, you, you need to talk to your customers and in— they're going to give you awful feedback, right? They're going to give you great feedback. Uh, and it's your job as the founder designer, designing your company, designing your product, because that's essentially what you're doing. You need to be able to take that information, listen to it, and map it back to, one, the reasons why you're building this, and two, the pillars of actually how you're— it needs to all feed back into your major, like, your main pillars that should be designed intentionally. They're your foundation. And it's supposed to be all going back into that foundation piece, which is going to take you The long way, the long way to exit, right? And so it's, I mean, if you're, I mean, you guys are married, right? You're, you change as people, you change as you know, your life changes, you have to, you know, move out of a house, you have to, let's change out this room, right? We're all equipped to change. It's just the ability to go back and listen.

I always said the one thing you can count on in life is change.

Oh, we're going through the biggest change transformation right now in our entire, I think, existence. But it's, it's, and it's terrifying, right, to change. Because what if you change, you don't know what the result of that change is going to be. No one knows, right? Like, whether it's a product, whether it's a company, like you have data, right, to help support where it's going. But data, data is only a piece of the answer.

Yeah.

Right? It's truly like that risk and that ability to, you know, that belief, that, that self-belief of, yes, this— and it goes back to your values.

And the alignment of yourself and your business, alignment with your values and the things that you care about. Those are the people that are successful. And I know it's hard to look at like Elon Musk and go, well, how is Elon so incredibly successful, this whole thing? But trust me, Whether you like them or not, Elon is aligned with his own values. Okay. And right. And so, I mean, the bottom line is that he is doing the things that he's doing because he believes not only in his own ability, but he believes, you know, in the collective and the ability to be able to kind of make these things better. But it does come down to his own personal values. It definitely does. You know what I mean? So again, you may— we may not know what they are or agree with them or whatever, but And that's true with anybody, right? We're never going to necessarily agree 100% with everyone. But the idea is that, but believe me, he is operating himself in his way, you know, based on how, what he values the most. And that's—

Yeah. And talk about the ability to synthesize data from all sorts of other different sources, right? He's able to bring in the right people at the right time, look at the right, look at problems and look at the solutions and say, I want to choose this path. And yeah, he pivots and does all those things, but he's a good example of, I'm not a rocket scientist. He's not a rocket scientist, yet he built all these rockets. And he's not an expert in boring, but boring in the earth, of course. And then Twitter, right? He was one of the biggest users of Twitter, and he fixed the company in his mind.

Yeah, it comes down to your own beliefs and values, and that's truly where it starts. It starts with you, uh, and as you as the founder, right? And if you don't have that sorted and figured out, then you're gonna have an even rougher journey.

And, and, uh, and by the way, it also ends with you. Okay? So I want you to, from a founder standpoint, right? It begins and ends with you. You are the company. And then we're gonna teach you how to not be the company, right? So you have to be the company at the beginning. And then you're going to have to transition. You're going to have to then not be the—

Good point.

You're going to have to learn how to do that job, right? How do I not be the guy who's involved in every single decision? How do I learn how to not be the guy who's like telling everybody what to do or emailing when I'm on vacation every 15 minutes? Or, right, and can I get— can it— because you're going to have to make this transition that replaces you, replaces your— but still maintains The values, right, of the company, still maintains what got it here in its essence. Because again, we say what got you here won't get you there, right? But the idea is that what you're teaching people early on is if you stay connected to yourself and your values and where you want this thing to be, then you're not going to fail. The only thing that will— the only thing that will get in your way are the things that you can't control, right?

Yeah.

And Christy, thank you. This has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for, for giving us a great deal of time. What's the best way or where's the best place that people can get in touch with you when they want, when they need you, because they're going to need you, and when they need to get in touch with you about, you know, how they, how you can help them?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I, you know, LinkedIn is definitely my, my world. Optimize that. I also, you can And if you want, if curious about what it's like to design ventures from, you know, near the ground zero stage, definitely check out the website that I vibe coded, by the way, at startupdesignpartners.com. And yeah, it's, you know, I'm also, as you guys mentioned in the very beginning, I'm building a design-led fund called The Blessing. Fund, which fun fact about since the designers I have in my community and who we help all these startups and founders with, I call them unicorn designers because surely they can do everything from front-end code to managing stakeholder problems to building products. They're amazing. And I recently learned that a herd of unicorns is called a blessing. So it was only—

I didn't know that.

I didn't know that either. I know. It was very interesting. So, you know, with that was, you know, also like getting, you know, getting runway to build your vision is also a blessing. So it was very, it was very touching to go with that as the, again, we talked about vision and values. It's all important. And I'm, you know, to build on that too, is I, you know, I do a free Substack where I write about my journey as, you know, building a fund, a VC fund live in public. You know, all the cool kids are doing it with startups. I'm like, haven't done this before, but here we do. Here we go. So, you know, designer turned VC fund operator will be an interesting story one day. But it's—

I'm on a great website, startupdesignpartners.com.

That's great. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You know, it's for, for geo or SEO reasons. Uh, but yeah, it's, um, yeah. And I designed it, vibe coded it, did all of it.

It was hard.

It was hard. You know, I had to learn Notion API.

Stretching yourself, right? It's hard. It's hard to, right, to grow in ways in which you're not used to growing and whatever. And, but that's the beautiful thing about what you're helping people do, um, you know, in, in the startup game and the whole thing. Christy Kaplan, thank you so much for being here on the Exit Engine Podcast with us. Really, really, really, really great conversation, and we're going to do it again because there's so much more that we can get into that we didn't have time for yet. But, um, hopefully we're going to be able to get a webinar in and do some more specific kind of things with people and everything else coming up, which will be awesome as well. Thank you so much for being here. We really, really appreciate your time.

Yeah, thanks guys. Yeah, so much more we can dive into separately with— I've got workshops and workshops and workshops we could dive into, so I'm excited. Thank you guys for your time too, and inviting me. I aligned really early on with your guys' vision and founder-focused-led and the human side to building and exiting a company. And I truly admire the work you guys do. So again, thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, guys.

Hey, John, the, you know, there's so much here in alignment, but this is why we build this ecosystem, right? Exactly the way that Kristy is talking about. Because the ExitEngine ecosystem is exactly what Christy is talking about. This ability to be able to have, you know, at your fingertips as you're going through this stuff, as you're setting your exit trajectory, as you're figuring out and learning about yourself and about—

As you're making changes, right? As you're making changes, the inevitable changes that your company will need to go through to figure out what it will be is someone like Christy will help you do that. And if she doesn't have that expertise, she can bring in one of her design partners to help you think in a way that's, that's different and that will get you to— will get you where— so that your why— so that you get closer to your why and get closer to your answers by pivoting and listening to users and using that design-centered thinking to get you where you want to go.

That's exactly right. And then remember, it's not about— this is not about exiting your business tomorrow. This isn't about selling it or getting rid of it, because I know none of you founders are thinking about that right Now, but you should be. Because what even what Christy is saying is at the beginning, it's about intentionally designing that pathway. Where is it going to go? And by the way, and what we're trying to do at ExitEngine is teach people that they have options. As you build, as you improve, as you raise your total exit value score, as you become more sellable, turns out you just become more healthy and sustainable as a business anyway. Maybe you want to go acquire somebody, not just be acquired, but get by someone else. Maybe you want to be able to— again, selling is one thing. Maybe you want to make sure that the company is healthy enough that you want to put it into an ESOP and sell it to your employees one day. These are options that we're trying to create. And the earlier you start at ExitEngine and the earlier you meet people like Christy and the earlier you meet people like our other advisory partners there, the earlier you're going to— the better off you're going to be in terms of setting your exit trajectory and getting to that exit point. Yeah, I think that's a great point. to where you want to get to. And it's all based on you. Where do you want to go? Where do you want to head, right? Where are you now? Where can I get to? What's possible in the time frame I have? All this you can find by going to myexitengine.com right now, checking, getting through that, that initial stuff. You're going to see my ugly face right there, but you're going to listen to the video anyway. You're going to make a phone call. You're going to talk to us. You're going to get evaluation. We're going to take you through this whole thing. We're going to show you what you're missing. Okay, just do that. There's no obligation. Do that first, see what happens. Okay, we promise you're gonna, you're gonna get value just out of the initial calls you have. Okay, um, I want to thank everybody for listening to the ExitEngine podcast today. Again, my name is Joe Stapleton. My partner in crime over here is John Kniff. Uh, we, uh, run a company called Exio Advisors, and we have a new platform called myexitengine.com. You can go there right now and check it out. And we are available whenever you have a question about exit planning or setting your exit trajectory. Remember, exit planning is just growth planning with intent, right? Just like Christy talks about, it's intentional.

That's true.

Join us. You can, you can reach out. You can subscribe to us on YouTube at Exit Engine Community at YouTube. You can subscribe to this podcast wherever you get podcasts. If you're listening to this anywhere else, please go to Apple or Spotify or To my to podcast.myexitengine.com and get the whole thing download. You can have it auto downloaded every month, every week. It's really easy, right? Check us out. If you had a problem, you can email us directly jo@myexitengine.com or john joh n at myexitengine.com. We're available. We actually answer questions all the time. Please share this podcast with a business owner you love. It's really important that you get this to as many people as possible because we are changing. the face of what businesses are and can be. You have the ability, as Christy said at the beginning, you have the ability to do this. You just need a little guidance and a little help, and we are bringing together all the people you could ever possibly need all in one place. They're going to help you move the needle the way you need to move the needle for yourself. Christy Kaplan, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Uh, uh, Christy's, uh, Christy's company is called, um, Sorry, it's called Startup Design Partners. You can go to startupdesignpartners.com and meet her there. She's on LinkedIn, all over the place. You'll see her around hanging out at Exit Engines because that's what she's going to be doing as well. We're going to do a webinar, all kinds of cool stuff with her, so stay tuned for that. Appreciate you listening today, John. As always, thanks so much, man. Thanks for being on.

Yeah.

All right, thank you so much. Appreciate you being here.

Thank you, guys.