The Exit Engine Podcast Episode 8: The Power of Community

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Welcome to my ExitEngine Podcast, episode 8. Hey, hey, John.

Joe, how are you?

Good, man. How are you doing?

I'm doing great. Excellent.

Me too. It's like a gorgeous—

it's a gorgeous day out, so it's beautiful.

The weather's been great the last couple days. It's been not too hot. It's a wonderful time to be alive. I love being outside in this weather. It's like everything— I get recharged. You know what else recharges me?

What's that?

Talking about exit planning.

Amen.

It's corny, right?

I know.

Um, but I do love it. I love it. I love this. And the reason I love it is because it is the kind of opportunity That if taken— not taken lightly and taken seriously, can have a really, really, really major impact on the state and health of your business. Not just in the future, man, but right now, right? So today we wanted to talk about, um, a couple of, uh, a couple of ways in which that can, uh, be a benefit for you, um, for, for anybody who's got a business of any kind. But there's some There are some things— Exit Engine is a place that, uh, that uses, um, peer-to-peer learning and uses the, the community idea of getting people together from disparate backgrounds who all may be an expert in something and be able to actually work together and play together and give you a place to find, uh, people who can help you, uh, Right. We, in ExitEngine, we've got businesses of every stripe that are working towards their exits, but we also have businesses that are there to help you that are experts in certain areas of things. And that they can— and we try to bring all those people to bear for whatever your particular situation is as you're going through the exit process.

And a common theme, right? You can come from all different backgrounds, all different areas of business, all different types of business. But the sort of common thing about people in ExitEngine is They're at, they've achieved a great deal. They're at that level. They're the founder, the business owner, the CEO of the company. They've achieved that level. And what, what I found in talking to these people is they want to hear from people like themselves. They want to have that experience. They're, you know, eye to eye. They're at the same table. They have, and use whatever metaphor you want, they want to get feedback from people who they respect. And one of the things that a business owner respects is another business owner, because she knows that if you're a business owner, that you can be the CEO of a company or you can be, uh, owner of a small restaurant. Not to disparage a small restaurant because that's a very difficult business, but they have the same experiences. They are— the buck stops with them. It can be so lonely at the top to make those decisions. And when you're a CEO or a founder and owner, those business decisions, whether it's to buy a crate of shrimp or to invest $1 million in a business, at certain, you know, those are, those can be business-deciding decisions. And they want to know that the people that they're getting advice from are having those same debates within themselves and with other people.

That's exactly right. Look, We at ExitEngine, we try to be collegiate about all this. We put people in groups for learning, not based on the industry they're in, but really where they are in the journey, right? Because that's getting that help for where you are in that spot is really, really kind of key. But I think that the idea is that there's a bunch of things that you're gonna get out of, or that one can get, no matter whether it was ExitEngine or anybody else, out of this kind of like peer learning situation. And today we wanted to talk just, you know, kind of about that, about the different kind of benefits and, you know, things that you're gonna— you can get out of this type of thing, whether that's again with us or anybody else. But we wanted to talk about it simply because it, it does 2 things. One is it does obviously teach you kind of our philosophy, right, in terms of Exit Engine and what we believe to be, uh, the best way to kind of approach this.

Mm-hmm.

But also, you know, the reality is, is that this is the way business is kind of heading in general. And if you, especially small business, the ability to joint venture, to partner with other people, whether in a formal or informal way, to be able to get something done is really key. And the fact of the matter is, is that sometimes consultants can be cost prohibitive for people. Sometimes getting that help and finding the right person who's not going to take advantage of you can be a scary thing, especially if you're tight on money and nobody wants to lose money. We've all been in situations, you know, Jon, I've been in situations where I've hired help or consultants and stuff and I've gotten ripped off, you know.

Yep.

And that is a real thing. And as a consultant, you're always kind of like worried about, well, you know, that notion or people thinking that, you know, about what you're doing. And so you try to bring as much value As you possibly can to any situation. But understand that one of the best ways, as John said, is to get help. Is instead of worrying about having to pay somebody to do that, right, let's look for the kinds of people that are also business owners themselves who would be able to say, hey, look, I can sit down with you and spare half an hour, or let's have a cup of coffee or get on the phone, and I can help talk you through and give you some advice about what I've done in this situation.

Yeah, and, and that's one of the, the greatest benefits, frankly, of, of the ExitEngine community. Of course, you're going to go through and you're going to learn, um, discrete topics about financial statements, and all those things are important, and legal advice and tax advice. All those hard skills are important, but some of the best stuff that you'll get from ExitEngine, frankly, is from— not from Joe, certainly not going to be from me, But it could be, and most likely will be, from a peer who's gone through a similar challenge. They're having a problem with their CFO. You know how many business owners have a problem with their CFO and their finance people? I'll tell you, I'll make a hint: all of them. Because, because some— because there's, there's often a communication problem. But seeing how other people solve those challenges and how other people address those problems that are inevitable in business— no business does not have problems. That's poorly worded, but every business has problems. And you think that you're going through something that's unique to you, and maybe it is unique to your business, whatever it happens to be. Those, those types of challenges are rare. Trust me when I say, when you bring up a topic that is challenging, that is challenging you, other people have had that same thing. Right.

All right. So we've got a list of these things. And again, as we, maybe we'll add some as we go. But for right now, let's talk about First of all, the first major benefit that you're gonna get out of, uh, of this kind of situation is gonna be shared experiences and knowledge, right? So, um, the ability to be able to sit with other like-minded business people in the same spot as you and be able to just to be able to trade war stories is a huge benefit.

Yeah.

It's lonely at the top, John.

It's, it's lonely at the top. And, and when you're new to it, you think that every decision you're gonna make is make or break. And sometimes they are. But when you're able to talk to another person, they can kind of sort of bring you off the ledge, right?

They can—

a lot of times when you talk to different people, they'll say, this is a critical piece, but you can always go back and do this. There's very few like one-way door, as Jeff Bezos describes it, decisions. Those really need to be thought of. And a lot of these decisions you're making are very important, but you can always go back and you can always change it. So And also you can learn from people's failures. When you talk about something and they bring up a war story, like you said, and you've had a problem with your accounting system or your general ledger or whatever it happens to be, you can relate that problem to them and say, oh yeah, I made a huge error with going with XYZ software or XYZ consulting firm. And it just, it's good to commiserate, again, share war stories and learn frankly from other people's failures and successes. But I think I found you learn a lot more from failure than successes.

But no question. I mean, look, it's— and this brings us to number 2, this, the idea of being able to enhance problem-solving, right? You, you're only— you have you. You may have your— if you're lucky, you've got a team of people that are working for you that are pretty, you know, that are able to solve your challenges and things like that. But as we talked about in the consulting angle before, you know, sometimes you need an outside set of eyes, you know, to be able to bring somebody else in that isn't mired in the institutional bias that you already— that you have or the the way of doing things or, you know, that you've been doing for so long, to bring somebody else in who's got a completely clean slate is huge.

Yeah. And also, you know, being myopic, right? When you're at the same— when you're at a company and you have, to your point about similar thoughts and similar process, similar experiences, if you're all making widgets all the time, well, you can gain a set of perspectives and a new set of perspectives from someone that sells software or someone that has a restaurant or someone that has you know, maybe more personnel challenges than you're used to and you have a personnel problem. It's just that enhanced, as you said, enhanced problem solving by enlarging your network and enlarging people into the problem. Now, you got to worry about confidentiality somewhat, but ExitEngine is a place for, you know, for confidentiality is a prerequisite for being part of the community. What goes in ExitEngine stays at ExitEngine, right? It's like Vegas. Um, in that regard, the only way it's really like Vegas, but that's another whole story. Um, but yeah, so, so you, you gain a whole group of sort of consultants when you join the ExitEngine community.

No question about it. And you know what comes along with that too is that, that is the emotional support, which again, we don't, you know, a lot of, you know, we're men, we don't like talking about this stuff, you know, but, uh, it's obviously becoming, uh, you know, which May was just Mental Health, you know, Awareness Month. Something to say is that there's, there's the other thing that you get when you join any community like this is, is the emotional support. Um, like I said, it's, it's lonely at the top, man. And there were so many times in my businesses and the whole thing where I felt so isolated. Um, you know, people outside— I had a fear that people outside the business couldn't really relate. I couldn't talk to anybody inside the business because sometimes they were the problem. Um, you know, trying to find a place for— with people that understand what you're going through is a huge thing to be able to do.

Yeah. And especially too, when you're getting conflicting sets of advice, right? Oftentimes you'll go to people and this will happen to— this will happen when an exit engine is— you'll get different bits of advice and differing advice from certain people, and you have to weigh that advice and weigh to make the right decision. And it's, you know, I always find it better to ask people who have had that experience and you'll gather that sort of emotional background and emotional support, because people will empathize, and you empathize with others when you become part of their network to answer questions from them. And that can be vitally important. Once you, once you share something, you know, you're vulnerable. The vulnerability is the big thing now with, with regard to, you have to share something, and then you get, you get sort of gifts of feedback back.

So— That's it. And what we, we call it Integris Value, right? The notion that everybody can provide value to somebody else just by showing up in ways in which they can't really even imagine, as long as they're being true to themselves and who they are and their kind of authentic nature. What we don't do at ExitEngine is have a bunch of consultant people sitting around preying on people.

No.

Very important thing to point out that this is not about consultants getting gigs. This is about people getting help with their businesses and in doing it in a way in which it is less scary, it is less costly, and there's a less chance, frankly, for error and making mistakes with who you come across. You know, the networking opportunities, which is the next one here on this list, the networking opportunities that are available here are, you know, I mean, there's just no end. They are limitless. The ability to, like you said before, it's one thing we put, when we put people in cohorts, we put them in cohorts not based on the kind of business they are, but where they are in the journey. And so that means that you're like, you know, there's just as likely going to be, you know, a baker, you know, in a class with a, you know, with a financial consultant. I mean, that's very likely to happen.

Yeah, it's value-added networking, right? It's not people, to your point of, you You know, right before we were recording this podcast, I got a phone call from a vendor who, you know, had June 11th as the date that he was going to follow up with me. And, uh, of course he followed up with me. It's like, look, I appreciate that, but that, that's not an example of value-added networking. And value-added networking is when we bring in and we have a tax person who advises you on the tax strategies you need to use for selling your business, or the legal advice That when the lawyer comes in and she gives you that nugget of information that demonstrates, A, her expertise, and B, can save you a huge hassle in the future. Those are the types of networking opportunities that we're bringing to bear in our community.

And let's not overlook the idea that the baker might have a recipe that he could share or whatever too. So the point is that there's lots of— there are lots of benefits even outside of the, you know, potentially of the business. aspect of things. There is a personal connection thing going on here because it's the shared, you know, the first, the shared experience. Anytime you go through anything with a team of people or a group of people together, that's a unique experience that you've shared. And being able to have that experience with people helps you grow trust. It helps you grow, you know, potentially, you know, the information that you share helps you kind of, you know, gather ideas for each other. So it really, it might be sometimes immeasurable how much this kind of, this way of actually doing it really works.

And obviously, just one thing to add that's sort of obvious from networking is additional business opportunities. And obviously that's a benefit, that's a nice benefit to have. And as you get more people and you learn from not only the people in your group or in your cohort, but everyone who's gone through ExitEngine, you know, will have the ability to have that type of networking and sharing Just so you know other people in the network to say, oh, I could really ask that person about their digital agency, or I can ask that person about, you know, vendor that I need to, you know, I need to get rid of my vendor because they're charging too much. You never know in the ExitEngine network, you'd be surprised how many people know how many other people who can help you.

That's right. And look, different than like a place like a LinkedIn, that's like a big social, you know, networking situation, right? This is— Exit Engine is something that you've shared with these people, right? You had the experience. You may have shown up— it's like school. You've shown up the first day, you didn't know anybody, you know, and by the end, 4 years later, here you are, best friends, and you're the best friends for the rest of your life. That's, that's the kind of— that's the kind of networking that we're putting together here.

Yeah.

Um, because again, it's not built to be a network, it's built to be a community. And a community is a natural network where you start to— what we say is we are sharing— or sorry, what's the thing that I always say? Completely blanked on it. The merging of ecosystems.

Yeah, merge, right, right, exactly. The network of networks is the way I think about it.

Exactly. So this notion that when you network here, you're not just networking with one person, you're networking with the entire network of that person potentially because of your shared relation, your shared experience. And the personal relationship you have just because you shared this, you know, shared going through a course at ExitEngine or shared going to a live event where you were, you know, wherever you were, you know, together doing this. So that's why this networking thing is not just about LinkedIn and cold emailing somebody, a bunch of consultants. It's about understanding that here's somebody who can really help me and I have direct access to them. And they're going to take my call and they're going to take my email and they're going to do whatever because we all have this Exit Engine thing in common.

And as you, you know, as you further meet people and you get into networking, we sort of go into the next one in our list of accountability. It's like, you know, Jo and I, like, we have accountability to each other to get the things done that we promised to get things done. And in your group, You're going to develop bonds with people, and they're going to, they're going to give you advice. But when they, when you get advice from somebody, yes, it's a gift and it's feedback, but someone's going to follow up with you and be like, hey, Joe, remember that, that vendor that I talked to you about? Did you, were you able to touch base with them? Did you get in touch with Steven? And, and did he give you a good proposal? Well, that's accountability, right? You, you will, you'll, you'll have this accountability with people. And accountability has a negative aspect of it, but it's also extremely positive because it holds you to account for what you've promised to do. I've promised to do certain things for— because I've committed them to do something for Joe by the end of next week. I have to get that done. Joe's done the same thing to me. We're accountable to each other, and you'll be accountable to people in the group for doing the things that you said you're going to do. Are you going to look at improving your financial statements? Are you going to contact a tax person? Are you going to get that legal advice? That's an important bond, and it's networking taken to, you know, the next level.

No question. And look, on that particular topic, you know, there are potential things within ExitEngine that you can do that are actually accountable, you know, partner-based. So the idea of being able to actually, you know, work in a group of a team of 2 or 3 people together to be able to accomplish part of a project where you're learning how to do This exit planning stuff is another great way of basically building stronger bonds. But, but you're right, it's, it's an accountability thing. And the reason that people are, are afraid of accountability is because they're afraid, they're afraid of, right, they're only afraid of accountability when they can't actually show up, right? Because accountability, accountability is easy if you're into it, right?

Yes.

Because even if you don't do a good job of the thing, doing the thing and showing up for the other people is probably more important, right, than the fact that, well, I did it. Maybe it wasn't good. Maybe, you know, maybe it needs more work. The group can decide on that when you deliver the thing on time. But what the group can't do, right, is feed back on anything when you haven't delivered it. Or what we see too, and this is just a shame, but people just suddenly just like ghost, right? They're just like, poof, the second I'm on the hook for something, boop, I'm out of here. And that's frankly—

And it's motivating, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Go ahead. Sorry.

No, I was just gonna say that, that we see all the time. That's how what happens is that some people just, they just disappear. Um, because as soon as it gets hard and it gets accountable and they have to show up for something or whatever, it gets, it's, it's, it's something more. Now, the reality is the most important person you need to be accountable to is yourself, and that's the hardest thing to be. Okay, so We've got some advice on that that you can look up as well. We can give you some things like that. We've got some great people who can talk to you about how to train yourself to be more accountable for your— and to show up for yourself more. That could be a real problem for business owners, right? The reality is if your entire motivation is about what other people will do and isn't coming from inside and what you want to do, there's going to be some— I'm going to just be honest with you. There's going to be some— you're going to face some sticky wickets when it comes to exit strategy. And the reason is because if you don't know who you are or what you want, it's going to be very hard to, like, to think you had a successful transition out of the business.

And no matter— yeah, and just building upon that, no matter how many experts and how much learning and how many people we bring to bear, the ultimate responsibility for building your exit plan is you. You hold ultimate responsibility. Exit Engine is the community that surrounds you. But ultimately, if you're not motivated, you won't be accountable. If you're not into this, if you're not getting the benefit from this, you have to be the one that wants to get this thing done, wants to get your exit plan completed.

That's right. We can sit there and, like I said, you could hire us to write you a— we could do a plan for you. The problem is, is that you would— you'd be the one who would have to execute it. And the problem is, is that that's, that's very hard for, you know, for people to do. We can come in and learn your business and we can do, you know, we've got a whole other company that could do that, frankly, you know. But the idea here is that you're, uh, you are a— the business is you. You are the business. That's both the blessing and the curse. Right? And so what we needed to have, we need to what what the process that you're going to go through is a little bit of a metamorphosis, right? And it's going to rely on you saying, "I understand that I don't know what I don't know, and I'm here to learn what I need to know in order to make good decisions." And then there's going to be some work to do in order to actually make change, which is at the end of the day, you know, probably what we're looking at. Very few people come out of the box and enter exit engine. with a full-blown notion of what it is, of how they want to do this, or anything about it. So it's rare that you're going to find someone who's got this all buttoned up. But that's okay, because that's why you're here, is to learn how to do this. But as John said, you got to show up for yourself. And that's a big undercurrent. You're going to hear that a lot in ExitEngine, because a lot of the learning that we're here to give you is actually learning more, a little bit about yourself. In order to understand what's good, what needs to change, and what might be affecting the business either positively or negatively.

And not only the business, but as Jo mentioned, it's, it's, you're the business, the business is you. There are personal things in here that you'll notice that we'll, that we'll be learning. There are business things, but, but a lot of times those are intertwined. So it's just, it's another just example of, of, you know, the business is you and you are the business.

So The, the, the other thing that you're gonna get out of this, of course, that comes with being around a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds is you're getting a diverse perspective. Things we, you know, we kind of touched on this a little bit, but the idea is that people will not always see things the same way that you see them. And in fact, often getting an outside perspective is, is really, really key. But I would be, I personally would be thrilled To hear the baker's take on my IT company's issue, you know what I mean? Because I think that would be potentially fabulous, you know, in terms of an understanding from somebody who has no idea what I do, and I have no idea really what they do. But the ability for them to sit there, I've been listening to you and watching you, and here's an insight I have for you with love, you know, if you know, with coming from a love place of love and admiration, as long as it does that. And, and that insight could be incredibly valuable. So that diverse— everybody's got— everybody in ExitEngine comes from a different place with a different background and a different story and different capabilities, different levels of experience, right? And all that makes a huge difference.

Different generations, right? The different generations that, you know, I'm, you know, I'm of a certain generation that looks at things very differently, I think, than other generations. And You know, you can learn something. You know, you can teach something just like you can learn something. Just as an example, I can learn something from people about TikTok that I don't know a darn thing about it, but I can teach them about financial statements. And there are certain things I can teach. So the best part about this is talk about diverse experiences. You'll have diverse experiences across industries, across personalities, across generations that you'll be exposed to All these different things. And we work hard, as Joe mentioned earlier, about putting together these groups to have so that you're sort of ensured of having a diverse experience just by being part of a group at ExitEngine.

No question about it. And of course, what potentially comes from these diverse perspectives and these abilities to learn and stuff from other people is you start to develop your own leadership skills. And I think that, again, we're not set up, you know, as a, as an entity really to be focused on leadership as, you know, as a proper thing. But the reality is that everything that we do here at ExitEngine has potentially is, is, is doing that. We are, you're, we are helping you become the leader that you need to be in order to get to that, you know, to that place of, of, of the promised land, right? And the reality is, is that as we just said before, you are the business, the business is you. Your leadership in the business and the whole thing dictates how, what follows after that. And your ability to be able to understand and improve your leadership ability is, is not good, is, is, is one way to immediately add value to your company.

Yeah. And in developing your leaders and doing some leadership development training, it's interesting to see just how other companies of your size or larger size or smaller size are spending money on building that capability within their company, right? It's what we talked about in previous podcasts. It's driving that decision-making down. Some really small companies are really good at doing that, and they're driving the decision-making down to the people on the line making widgets or in manufacturing. Some big companies have all the decisions made at the top. Well, Which do you think is more— is better for the people at the company, right? They're the ones that are empowered with making decisions. So, you know, you can learn a lot from when you see like, oh, I can't believe this small company spends this amount of time, effort, and money on training their employees to rise up and take on more responsibility.

But guess who will appreciate that one day? The buyer of your company.

Oh, when you— because, right, super important because When you're buying a company, I'm leaving, right? See you later. I'm going to be on a beach in Costa Rica. But the people who are still there are the ones running the finance group and the operations group and the sales group. The more empowerment that you've given them, the more skill training you've given them, and the more responsibility you've given them, that's gold. And that's so important for a buyer to see that.

Not—

you can Say that all you want, and they meet these— when they meet these people who are running these groups in your company, they're going to appreciate the effort that you made with educating them and giving them responsibility.

It's a major point of value. I mean, you know, it's hard to under— actually, to overestimate the importance that especially private equity firms, but most buyers, would put on the importance of being able to be— of the management team apart from you, the owner, being well-versed, trained, they're going to expect that in a lot of cases, the management team that you've empowered is going to train them on how to run the business. That's actually how these people look at it, believe it or not. So understanding this and putting this stuff into place is huge. And of course, the measurement is another piece, right? Being able to measure your progress is really, really, really key. And so, the ability to come on to ExitEngine, be a part of a group, and it gives you some— the ability to really, again, measure yourself a little bit against other people in terms of where they are and what they're doing. At the very least, it can give you some benchmarks.

Yeah. Benchmark. It can give you some ideas for— obviously, the metrics are going to be different across the operational metrics, as an example. The financial metrics are pretty similar depending on if you're— what type of business you are. What are those smaller, my size company, larger companies, what are they measuring? What are they looking at on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual basis? How do they compare themselves, frankly, to their competition and to other businesses within ExitEngine, as an example? Like a software business and a baker have very different business models, but man, the bottom line is profitability, operations. How are they making the money on the, on the top line revenue? How are they containing costs to maximize that profitability?

And even if you're looking at that baker situation and saying, hey, look, they're doing this and my situation is completely different, it could still be a benchmark for you of something to be able to, to look at, to examine. So it may not be that you're getting the answers, but you might be getting the questions. And sometimes the questions are more important than the answers because What we've found to be true, especially in exit planning, and really it's one of the major kind of fundamental pillars of what we do here at Exit Engine, is understanding, learning what it is that we don't know, right? Learning what, what is there to know and how do I learn what I need to know? And that's really what we're doing here, right? Because it is not something that's taught in business school, really.

No.

It's not. It's not something that's taught. There's no place for entrepreneurs or anybody to learn this except in the case like us, we went through it. We learned it through the school of hard knocks and through going through it a couple of times and learning what happens. And then it opens your eyes to a world of stuff. And then of course we become, you know, we go into the M&A space ourselves as careers, and then we really obviously understand what can happen and what can go wrong and all those things. So you're going to get that, that kind of education, you know, from not just from us, but from, from everybody that's involved in this thing all the time.

And just one additional thing is that I know I didn't mention it, but, but it's like best practices, right? And that can mean a lot of different things to different people. But one example is, how do you, how do you manage change in your company? Every company has to change or else they'll die. But what I've found in my experience is how companies manage change and implement projects specifically is sort of— it's eye-opening to see, wow, they invest in a consultant or they invest in a project manager or they have very robust learnings from what they did previously. So that's another example of benchmarking. It's like, wait, this person does this and every time they make an investment, just as an example, every time they make an investment outside their budget, They require a lessons learned after that. I thought that was brilliant.

It's like, really great.

We have our, we have our budget that was, that was made last July that, that we've deviated from, but we've made changes to it. But if we make a change to it, we take money out of the budget and we change something, we must do lessons learned, good, bad, or indifferent, to learn from it.

You've got to, you've got to be a post-mortem, post, post Postmortem anything is really important, right?

Right.

Our ability to be able to go look at things and be able to, to, um, to go back and go, all right, what was different? What, what did we expect to have happen? What actually happened? Why did it happen? And what are the results of what's happening? And do we need more changes or things like that? And so again, just, just the fact that you're seeing other people talk about their businesses is enough for you to be able to potentially start getting a lot of— start asking yourself a lot of questions. And I think, frankly, for my 2 cents, you know, the more questions you ask of yourself about the state and health of your business, the better off you're going to be. If the main question that you start asking is, what does one day— does a buyer of this company really want out of this? And asking those questions and then and then being able to come up with as many answers as you possibly can. And those answers and questions are gonna be found within the network and within the other people in your cohort, within us, within our experts, within our advisory partners, all over the place. There'll be questions and answers everywhere you look.

Yeah, and just one, I wanna add one actually to this, if we have a couple minutes, is to add honesty in this. What you just mentioned, Jo, is super important to be honest And not only, obviously, honest with the, with the community, but more importantly, just like accountability, you're honest with yourself, right? You need to be honest with yourself about, about getting advice, giving advice. One thing, last thing I'll say about myself is what I learned is think about how you are part of the problem or what percentage of the problem you are, right? If your company's changing, or are you the one that's resisting the change that someone's bringing to you?

Yeah.

Because that can be a really hard and tough thing to, to first of all acknowledge and realize. But it's ultimately super important if you're empowering people and you're making, you're allowing them to make decisions and you're trying to benchmark and you're trying to hold yourself accountable and everyone else accountable. You have to hold yourself accountable too, right? And you have to realize and be honest with, are you the one that could be derailing the progress that your company is making? It's, it's surprising sometimes because change is hard for everybody.

So It's really hard, and it's a great point because we see it all the time. I mean, and, and that's why some of it— so much of our, of our training, um, and, and so many of the experts and the advisors and the whole thing that we have around here are, are— have that same kind of like, you know, that a little bit of that kind of, uh, you know, there's a psychological bent to it, you know, in a way in which an underpinning to all of this, right? Because it is about your When we say you're the business and the business is you, that cuts both ways. So you, you've been successful, you've been good, you've, you've gotten all these clients. Look at this thing that you built, and you're gonna be proud of it because you built it almost with your own two hands and all that stuff. And that's great. Um, but now it is a time, because you're here and you're thinking about exit planning and things like that, things are going to have to be looked at a little bit differently than they have been. Moving up to this point, you're going to have to start asking yourself hard questions like what John's just saying. You're going to have to start asking yourself if I am, am I, am I making things, am I capable of making things better, or do I need to get out of the way and let some other people, you know, that I'm hired to, you know, to do this? And maybe you feel like you don't have the right people, and that's a whole other thing too, right? So, you know, understand that there's always a way, you know, to be able to fix that problem, you know, which is to be able to obviously to You know, if you don't have the people who are capable of doing the thing that you need them to do, you got to look at, you know, maybe they aren't the right people. And so there's, there's, there are those tough questions that, you know, to answer there as well. But I think overall, the ability to be able to, you know, again, to, to understanding what it is, what is it that I don't know?

Yeah.

And when we come at exit planning, when we come at business through exit planning, it changes our perspective, right? We're not about how do I get through this year? We're not about how do I make my revenue to be X? Not by itself anyway. You know, where are we? These are the kinds of things, the myopic things that I do when I own a business. I'm worried about this client today. I'm worried about getting this new piece of business. I'm worried. All these things are important, don't get me wrong. But what we're doing when we do true exit planning the Exit Engine way, okay, is that we are, we are, we are very much concerned with the ultimate, the end state. What is it that I want at the end? And working backwards, basically reverse engineering, if you will, from that, that place, right?

Yep.

And being able to— and that takes a Different. That requires you to look at things from a different perspective, including yourself.

Agreed.

And so, and then we've got, oh, the resources. I mean, come on, man. You know, we've got—

I mean, all these have been our resources, right? Every single point we've mentioned is the community, the relationships, the expertise. This whole thing, all of ExitEngine, is is providing you with resources, not only resources, but it's like they're vetted resources, right? And I can't remember. Oh, it's like value-added networking, right? Like, networking is great and cocktail parties are great for some people. They're terrible for people like me, but that's another whole story. But access to vetted resources, the people that— and the resources and the vendors you're going to get in ExitEngine, they aren't someone off the street. They're someone that someone used. Like, here's the guy that helps me plan for taxes. Here's my financial person. Here's my attorney who helped me avoid X, Y, and Z. I mean, these are by definition, when they're here and they're given to you by someone else on ExitEngine, you can consider that a vet. Obviously, do your own homework, but realize that they're at a different level than someone who, you know, sends you a cold message on LinkedIn asking to, you know, to connect next week for whatever, 15 minutes.

Absolutely. There's something here that makes it, and this is again, you know, this is kind of Integris value, which is that it's value with integrity, right? It's not about, I'm just trying to hit my numbers. We don't let anybody in here who is going after, who is simply here to go after new business and to build from a number standpoint, things like that. Everybody here has been vetted. There's an application process.

We've worked with them in the past. I mean, a lot of the people that you'll see in here, have popped up in Joe's past and in my past. And we've culled that list of people who we've always worked with here. And these are the people we want to work with. It's a small group. And they— yeah.

And they have to— and also, I mean, this is no big thing, no little thing. They have to subscribe to our philosophy. And our philosophy is one that's a lot more human in nature than I think a lot of other people that do this planning stuff where it's about valuation and things like that. And the reality is that the valuation of your company is important. There's no question. No one's taking it away. The question is, how do you build a better valuation? It's not just about the exercise of going through the numbers. It's about understanding, as we've said this entire time, understanding who— what the business is, how you are interacting personally with the business, what the business becomes as a result of you, how the decisions that you make along the way to help you get to make those decisions and to implement things that you want. Everything that we do here is ultimately coming back to one thing, which is raising the value of your life's work.

Yeah, that's it. And sort of moving along to the, to the next one, it's related to this, right? It's, it's how do we get there? How do you raise the value of your life's work? What are the things that we've done over the course of just this podcast? It's, it's learning. It's continuous. It's being open to A, learning new things, B, responding to and giving and getting feedback and acting on that feedback, right? Whether it's a vendor, whether it's giving you something, whether it's a good vendor that can improve your business, whether it's feedback from an employee on a typical, on a particular process, feedback from a peer on something that you're not doing that you should be doing that you think that they think is really important. You need to be open to that. Obviously, you know, from industry trends and those things that are going on, those are important, and innovations and best practices. But, you know, being open and motivated to learn is a prerequisite, frankly, for being in the ExitEngine community.

And you'll get that learning forever, right? I mean, the thing is, your exit planning thing you might get to a final conclusion. But, you know, one of the things that we do here at ExitEngine is that we like to keep the graduates around and part of the way, right?

I'm glad you mentioned that, right? Like, so, right, so you've finished the exit plan, you finished the course you're taking, you've taken another couple courses. Well, when you finish, you don't really finish. Yeah, you finish the exit plan, but you become an advisor to all the people that you, uh, that come after you, right? You, you are— you have the ability to log on to, to ExitEngine to be— to continue to become a, a value-added resource, right? A value-added networker to help future people that are in— that they're in your spot, um, uh, learn from what you've learned from and advise them. That's the, that's the beauty of ExitEngine. It's a community that just keeps on growing.

Keeps on going. And this mentorship thing, we, you know, probably should have made a little bit bigger mention of, but the idea is that, that, uh, you know, it's, uh, Your— the ability to, you know, to have somebody who's been through this to guide you is, uh, you know, is a huge— is a huge thing. Even if it's just there to, you know, even if it's just one-on-one, uh, you know, to— for someone to hold you accountable. We have coaches that just call. All they do is they call— they call their client, their coaching, you know, guys once a day, you know, in the morning and say, you know, look at their list of stuff they were going to do and say, did you do X, Y, and Z yet? Right? That's like one way that the mentors in the Exit Engine, what we call advisory members, can actually provide that kind of service to people. And it's all part of built-in part and parcel of belonging to Exit Engine. So, you know, the ability of this kind of— we're looking at reinvesting the knowledge, right? So everybody learns and grows, and then we can invest that knowledge back into Exit Engine, back into the community. And into the rest of our lives. And so, what we're doing is we're building better companies, we're building more better exits for people, we're building therefore better lives for people to have in terms of what they want out of their life and to get the, again, to increase, to optimize the value of their life's work they've been doing their entire time. And then, you get to be at the end, you get to be an advisor who comes back and basically is just helping people Because you've been through it and you have so much advice to give. It's a really wonderful thing and it's not just a kumbaya, like, oh, let's all feel good thing. Guys, this is the way that business is moving in total. As we opened up the podcast by talking about the fact that this is a new— it's been happening for a while, but this is a new trend that's emerging because of places like LinkedIn and because of the social media stuff and because of people We have to tip our hats to people like Tony Robbins and people like that, Gary Vee and people like that who have basically done— who have gone out of their way to say, hey, look, I've got this valuable knowledge to share and I'm going to essentially give it away because it doesn't do me any good to keep it inside me. And in fact, what I've found and what we've all found and what we all subscribe describe through here is that the more knowledge you give, right, for nothing, the more inform— the more stuff and help you kind of get back.

Yeah, right. In the form of, in the form of stories, in the form of, you know, people implementing what you've learned from, you know, Tony Robbins always talks about, and the, the, the, and Simon Sinek always talk about the results of their feedback when they hear back from people that implemented things that they told them, they talked about. And, uh, I mean, that's the ultimate form of, of, of payment back to the company. Like, hey, thank you for this. Yeah, I implemented it and this is what happened.

So, and for us, and for us, that, that guy who comes, who's made the successful transition and has come back to be an advisor in here and the whole thing is just, it's the most wonderful reward there is. I mean, because every, it's a reward that everybody gets to share in, right? So, I mean, it's just, it's, it sounds like I said, it's, and it is the way you, you look at the Gary Vees and the Simon Sineks and all those people out there, and they will, you, that you will see see that this is what they believe. These are, these are the people who are the idea shapers in the whole thing, in the, you know, in, in the world. And, and their belief in this kind of system and the way that we're doing this whole thing is a, is a huge reason why we do it.

Yep.

It's a really proven thing to do, and, and we're really happy that, that, that you've chosen, that you'll hopefully, that you guys will choose, you know, to, to take the next step with ExitEngine. And the way that you can do that quite simply is very simple. You're gonna go to myexitengine.com. You're going to take the assessment, 7 minutes. You will— out of that 7-minute assessment, you will get— you will be able to immediately increase the value of your business by 7%, immediately, right away, because you will learn something, I guarantee, even in that assessment that you didn't know that you ought— or at least you will ask yourself a question that you didn't know that you should ask, right? You want to come to myexitengine.com. For this podcast, please like, share, ask any questions you've got about this or anything else in the comments. Make sure you subscribe to this. But most importantly, take the assessment, become part of the ExitEngine community. Don't take our word for it, ask around. Uh, there'll be plenty of people that can tell you what this experience is like, but please come. And one of the best ways to figure out exactly what this is going to be like, come to one of our webinars. We do a free, uh, Exit 101. It's completely free. It takes an hour. You will learn exactly what the process is and how you go about it. why it's important, and you will get a very good strong flavor for, I think, what ExitEngine is, right, John?

Absolutely, Joe. That's perfect.

All right, excellent. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. We will see you guys next time. John, thank you very much. Have an awesome day, and let's keep making more excellent, excellent exits.