Women Who’ve Sold Their Business: Carey Peters | E169

How would you describe the woman you are today after selling a business versus the woman you were before you did?

Well, that's a beautiful question. I'm really touched by it, to be honest.

Like, if you were going to go back and talk to her right as you today, what do you. What's the difference? Who are you now?

I mean, before we sold the first business, even the second, it was the process of selling the second, where I had to understand that so much of my journey has been about proving my worth and that I am not my business success. And I matter and I'm deserving no matter what. No matter what. And I don't have to impress. I don't have to perform. It's like that's not what it is. It's not. I am not my business success. And I, I have to say that's brought me such an enormous amount of peace, such an enormous amount of contentment. I don't feel now like I have something to prove. What I feel now is I am so excited to access the joy.

So welcome Carrie Peters. I'm so happy that you're here on Leadership is Feminine Today. And if you could just help people know who you are and a little bit about just the work that you do in the world. I know we're going to dig into the business that you have sold, which I'm super excited to talk more about. But who are you and what do you do and why and where did.

You come from.

That makes you tick? Yes.

Well, first, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. And I'm just like, can't wait for this discussion. It's gonna be so juicy. So I've been an entrepreneur for 18 years. I've co founded or founded about six businesses and taken them from nothing to over $220 million of revenue. And the one that I'm probably most well known for is Health Coach Institute. Health Coach Institute is one of the top rated. It is the top rated dual health and life coach certificate training in the market. We've trained over 36,000 students, probably more, a little higher at this point in over 100 countries around the world. And throughout my journey, I've experienced a bunch of acquisitions. First as the seller twice, I've been acquired twice, then also as a buyer and through four acquisitions. So I'm really excited to talk about this topic because. And I'm thrilled that you're offering this series. I can't wait to listen to the other interviews because it really is something that's not talked about enough. I definitely. I mean, women who get into business and who are entrepreneurs, not everybody has an MBA or has a. Like a. We don't have.

And not everybody really should because they don't teach you about people parts in the MBAs. Like, I get the numbers part, but anyway.

Well, let me tell you something. In my 18 years, I've worked with a lot of executives who have business degrees from Stanford and Wharton and whatever. And it is shocking how few people like that, at least my experience that have amazing pedigrees actually cannot do that. So it's like the lesson for me was, okay, yeah, I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting, and, you know, who am I? What do I know? But the fact is, like, I do know that. I do know that the. The part of the business that matters. And that's really all you need to know. Yes.

That's so interesting. That's what the woman I was just interviewing, she said, it doesn't matter if you have a product, if you can't sell it. You don't have a business. Right. You're not making any money. You don't have a business.

So I've had employees and my company say to me, like, oh, well, when are we going to focus on, you know, the content, the product? To me, having a great product, though, is kind of the price of admission. Like, it just has to be great. But that's not. That can't even be where your focus is. And it really, like, for anyone who's an employee, like, do not say that to your. Your employer. Do you know what I mean? Like, let your employer know that people complain. Oh, you. All you care about is the numbers or whatever. Like, yeah.

We'Re here to deliver a result.

Exactly.

Yes.

Because if we don't, then we don't have a business, and then we can't get our mission accomplished, et cetera, et cetera.

So, yeah, that's so great. Yeah. Well. So how did you go from being an actress to creating the Health Coach Institute?

I just, you know, I was working in theater in Chicago and I went to the theater School at DePaul University, and I loved it. But there was a. I hit a period where I just wasn't getting jobs regularly, and I didn't realize, like, oh, yeah, it's not typical as an actor for jobs to just happen constantly. There's going to be down periods, and so I had to do temp jobs and I was working in offices, like doing filing or whatever. This is like, computers were barely even A thing. And I just remember sitting in these offices, like, I just want to blow my brains out. Like, this is miserable. I could care less. And I started spending like, I'm like, I'm spending too many hours doing something I don't care about. And so I started to think, well, like, if I'm gonna be spending this time doing something else, then what feels meaningful to me? And I started thinking about, of like, my secret desire was to be a therapist. But I started researching. You know, I'm like, look at Leo. And I was really intimidated by the education. I was intimidated by the student loans. I was intimidated by the fact that it would take years. And I just was like, I don't know. And then my sister sent me this email that was a profile of someone called who. Who called herself a health coach. And I was like, huh, what is that? And then I went down the rabbit hole and was like, I think I want to do that. I.

Give me a health coach.

Yeah. I did not believe I could actually do it for a living, but I was like, I was struggling with health issues, and I'm like, if I could at least help myself, then it will be worth it. And I enrolled in my first training in 2005, and off we went.

Wow. And then you built this whole thing.

Well, first I graduated from that training, tried to build a business and coach people and realized, oh, my God, I have no idea how to coach. I had invested thousands of dollars into this very well known training and realized later, like, oh, they don't actually teach you the skill. So at that point I was like, well, choice point. I can either learn how to coach and learn how to build a business or just quit. And I was like, I bet if I learn how, I bet if I have coaching skills, I could do it. Other people are doing it. Why can't I do it? And so I just recommitted and doubled down. And it was like three years after my. I finished that first certification. I had my first six figure year as a coach, and I think I made $130,000. Totally changed my life. And then, you know, the business kept building and building. And then I ended up partnering with another coach named Stacy Morgenstern. Stacy's like, I have this idea for something called holistic mba because everyone was asking, how'd you build your business?

So she's like, I'm thinking about holistic mba. We could just like, show what we've done. And, you know, I'm like, yes, let's do that. So we partnered up and did one sort of like joint venture launch together just to test the waters and see.

How it would go.

Went amazing. And then, like, launched Holistic MBA in 2010. And that business went insane. I. I mean, honestly, we. The first year we made half a million dollars, and then the second year we went to 1.2, and I literally had a. I didn't even know I needed a bookkeeper. And when I finally went to one, he said, let me see your P and L. And I said, what's the.

P and L now?

What is the P? L? I don't know what a P and L is.

Like, I really had no clue. And then we went from 1.2 million to 2.3 million the next year to 3.2 million the following year. And then we capped out at like 3.4. And I started to realize, like, man, as you get up into these levels, your mistakes become more and more expensive. And I, I just started to have a come to Jesus with myself of like, because I was the CEO and she was sort of like the cmo and we have really complementary skills, which is why it's a good partnership. But as the CEO, I was like, I just flat out do not know what I'm doing. And I didn't have any sense of what an operating system would be. We hired a coo, right? But I didn't know even how to hire one. We just said, like, okay, what are we going to do here? And the other thing was, if we got to three, four, if I had an operating system, we could probably double the revenue. We could probably, you know what I mean? Like, more is possible. But when I thought about that, I was sort of like, wah, wah. That just doesn't seem exciting. By this point, we had also started not just doing business training, but offering coach certification. That's when I fell in love with certification trainings because they're just so spectacular for so many reasons that we can talk about. But we offered that first one and she and I were like, this is.

Where our true love is.

It's in the craft of coaching and in the training of coaches. And we started having people ask us, why don't you have an entry level? Why don't you have like, we're become a coach. Where were you when I started? I wish I had, but we were like, very intimidated by the idea of doing that until we got to that plateau point in our business from a revenue perspective. And I had to say, like, yeah, I'm not sure what we're gonna do here. I don't Know what we're gonna do going forward? And we said, okay, what do you love? What do you care about the most? Like, if we were to blow, like, blow it all up and do the thing that makes us the happiest.

Such a great question. Blow it up or burn it all down, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

What will we keep? And the thing we keep is the coach training. That's what we cared about. That's all we cared about. We never thought we could be acquired. We didn't think we had sellable assets, to be honest. But we happened to meet a group of guys who. Their expertise was traffic and conversion for profit. For profit schools online. And they saw the opportunity in coaching. They didn't have what we had, which was we content. Kill the content. We know our audience. We're marketers, like. And so we started having the conversation of what might it be like to be acquired by them and to create this new entity, Health Coach Institute. And that took a year of negotiation and sort of like, real soul searching. Because when you sell your. But even though we're being acquired and we're going to start something new, the end of this.

Yeah. Every single. Every single woman I've interviewed so far has all. They have all said some version of. Nobody prepared me for what one of the women said, which I think summarizes this sort of. This existential crisis of what happens when you sell, especially when you sell something that is like, of you. Right? It is 100%. Yeah.

I mean, I can't tell you now. I've heard women say, oh, I didn't feel that way at all. I was, like, ready to get rid of it. And I was delighted. I felt. It felt like a death to me.

It was.

I was, like, racked with grief. I was sobbing. I was just, you know, you're giving your bait. It felt to me like I was giving my baby away. Even though in the new company, Stacy and I were still owners, we were board members, but now there's, I think it was six of us. And that's a completely different.

It's just a completely.

It's a whole note. It's a whole new ecosystem. Right. Which is, you know, great. And also, I mean, the ecosystem is what attracts people. It's what makes it thrive or not thrive. And so I can see, like, that first meeting must have been odd. Like, oh, they have an opinion.

Oh, 100%. And now it's like, oh, we're going to have to, like, work with.

We have to share.

Yeah. And we're developing this new partnership and this new kind of thing. And it was very.

Weird, but. But it was so exciting because we had the opportunity to make a much bigger mark. It was a certification, training, training coaches. And that's what we cared about.

Right.

That was the thing. The whole idea is like, they're like, we're here to handle the operation so you can do the test now in practice. It wasn't like we could just go, oh, great, you handle everything.

And you didn't turn off teaching coaches. Yeah, no, no, no.

But we still got to make this thing. Become a health and life coach. That honestly, I could cry to this day. I will say this. So, so, so back to the sailing and not being prepared for the grief. The other thing that happened that I was surprised by was that it actually gave me the opportunity to sit back for a minute and actually appreciate what we'd done. I think because there was a certain level of pressure, relief of like, okay, now I do have other partners. It feels a little different.

Aren't quite in the weeds.

Maybe there's other people carrying the weight too. So now I can look back at these years and go, oh, my God, that was amazing. And I had the same experience. We built Health Coach Institute. We started acquiring other brands and created a company called Empowered Education. So it was like a umbrella holding company.

Okay.

Got it for four different brands anyway. Four or five different brands. And then when we sold Empowered Education last year, last October, I had the same experience where I was utterly devastated, even though it was absolutely the right thing to do. And I think the buyer. I feel very good about the strategic partnership with the buyer. I think Health Coach Institute has the opportunity to really shine now in a way that I've always wanted it to. So that's thrilling. But just again, it was the end of a chapter. It was the. Felt like a death. But I also got to appreciate, like sit back and appreciate.

Wow. Wow.

Amazing, amazing.

I love your story because you. It was like a roll up, right. Of assets over time, which then you then sold the entire book, if you will. Right. The entire portfolio, which is such an interesting. That's not something that is something I have heard other women do or other people be involved in, which I think is fabulous. Right. Sort of like mind like. Like products or programs or companies. But maybe I'm assuming Empowered Education, you guys had different disciplines. Is that what you did?

It was all in health and wellness. So it's either like and it was nutrition or it was life coaching or health coaching. And there's. We. The intention was always to Sell. We did all agreed that we are going to sell this at some point. And we were more attracted to a strategic buyer versus a private equity buyer. So strategic buyer is like they're looking for synergy. There's a way that they're going to expand their products. They want long term growth. Private equity buyer is like, how am I going to maximize my investment in X amount of time? So the first sale of holistic MBA was like a strategic. Because we want to expand into something new but empowered. Education is. We sold. It's like a combination. It was a strategic buyer, but they're backed by private equity. So it was like a little bit of both.

Oh, fun. And so then after you did that, what's your relationship now with what you sold? I guess is the next best question.

Well, I, I technically am an employee.

Okay.

Which is, which is super weird. And honestly, I love hci. Like I'll stay with HCI as long as I can. And it's valuable for HCI because the dreams and visions that I have for it, I'm not even there yet. Like it's not even achieved the what I'd want it to. So I'm, I'll stay forever. But it definitely, like I didn't take me long before I was like, okay, what's the next. What am I going to start? Just because I think when you. Well, first of all, after the thing closed, I pretty much just like fell down on my face and was like with grief and exhaustion and just relief and like, you know, because I don't know what.

How long did. From the day you got your loi. Let's just go with that to the day that it closed. How much time was that?

Longer than anticipate than everybody. Always longer. Always. And it took June, July, August. Four, four and a half months.

Okay.

Which actually is.

Is short. Pretty short.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Something I gotta say about Lois, and maybe you've heard this on other interviews, but when you get into a process to sell something to keep in mind when you get the letter of interest, is that the number and the terms, that's just an opening gambit. Yep. That does not mean that's what the sales price is going to be. And then you get into due diligence. And.

I mean, I think there are situations where it turns out great and maybe the number is the same or whatever or higher maybe. And. But there are situations also where the buyer is going to tie you up in exclusivity, hold you for months and months and months of due diligence, find every place to put a haircut on the purchase price, present you with an ed, like an alt, you know, adjusted LOI at the end of it all, which is not what it looked like before. And then you're months behind in your process and you're, like, in a terrible position. So you just have to be really, really careful with the LOI that you accept and understand that if it's a private equity buyer, they already know where they're going to cut. They've already, like, in the loi, they have baked in where they're taking off the. Yeah, I'm not saying people are evil and awful, but what I am saying is it's business and they're going to go for every possible advantage for their shareholders and their value. And you've got to. You cannot get in a place like where you go, oh, they care about us.

No, no. I absolutely have heard the same thing happen to a couple of the clients that I've worked with as well who thought they had it done. And then they come back and in one case, it was a lot of money.

A lot. Oh, they'll come back. And not just the money, but the terms will change.

But did you guys work with a brokerage or did you just get an offer?

We did not work with a brokerage. We did a very informal process in like 2021. And the. The company that ended up acquiring us, Issa International Sports Science association, which is great company, we had kind of started talking with them in December of 2021. It was a really natural fit for them. They' fitness trainer certification in the industry.

Nice.

And for them to move into nutrition and health coaching and life coaching. Just makes sense.

Yep, absolutely.

So we had been in contact with them for some time and then we did have to sell in a timeline. And so there wasn't. We're not going to go through a process and take three years, you know. So what I learned is that when you're selling, you have to be able to tell the story that your business is an income machine, that if you put in X dollars, it's going to spit out Y dollars and that the total addressable market is Z. So the story is you put in X, you spit out Y, and this is the number of market share that we could potentially capture. And then that tells the buyer, like, oh, you know, I get to put.

More in so we could get more out. Right?

Yeah, that's right. I get how my investment is going to turn around and pay me back. And then you, you support that story with the credibility in like, you have to show credibility in your team. You know, oftentimes the buyer wants to know the business is going to be able to run and scale and they don't have to do much. Right. They're not going to have to replace the entire executive team, although in my experience that happens anyway. But you want to show team cred your data, they're going to want a data room. I'm like, they're going to crawl through everything. And then you can also expect that once they've done that, they still might not understand your business. And also, depending on the buyer, private equity in particular is looking often for that your growth rate and your profit margin are both going up. They call it a rule of 40 where your combined growth rate and profit margin exceed 40%. And then you're going to get a higher valuation. If it's lower than 40%, you're going to get a lower valuation. So these are all things that hopefully are like, helpful be preparing.

It is. It's a language that you know. And I do think a lot of people go into I'm going to sell. And they. And they just don't. The gruel of it is. Is honestly what I have watched my other clients go through. It is just grueling. It's not to say that it's not worth it. It's just so intense.

It's so intense. Just knowing some of these things just helps put you in a better position if that's what you want. The other thing to think about is like, your, your person that. That like, had to walk up, put the keys down and leave the phone and walk away from the desk. Like, there are situations where you're out and done. And like, the grief of that is crazy. Also in the situations where like, our buyers were like, no, you are part of the deal. Like, you need to come forward with school. Same with my founder, Stacy. So now you're in a situation where you're working with a new team. You have a boss. Like. Right. And that's also super weird. I feel fortunate. There's a lot of people that I really like working with. But it's another thing where sometimes that doesn't work out at all. Like, I've also seen acquisitions where the founder is just like, I can't take this at all. I'm out of here. Yeah.

And that's not uncommon. And, and you know, especially, like, hopefully everybody has a pretty good agreement because if they fire you.

Yeah.

And you lose the other half of your. Or a quarter percent or whatever it is. That you negotiated that you would. If it's an earn out or a, you know, a delayed payout, it's tricky.

You want to definitely invest in the employment agreement, invest in a good lawyer, go negotiate as hard as possible. And something to keep in mind just for women. You're dealing with so many men, so many white men. So, yeah, like, it's just the patriarchy is real, but that doesn't mean that you aren't capable and that you shouldn't fight as hard as humanly possible or what you want because they are not there to protect you at all. Right. It's not like they're going to be total a holes. It's just that you, as women, we're not. It's hard to ask for what we want sometimes. It's hard.

We don't want to make people uncomfortable. We don't want to feel uncomfortable. We don't want to feel like we're asking for too much.

Don't want to be seen as a bitch.

Right. Don't want to be too demanding. Right. Right.

So we're walking this fine line of sexism in the middle of this, you know, negotiation.

Yeah, I just, I do, I think that's, I think that's such good, the wisdom in this is good. I, I know that my, in my experience with other women I've worked with who have either done mergers or been gone through that to sell, I've always said there should be three lawyers, there should be their lawyer, there should be the business's lawyer as your business, and then there should be your lawyer. But the, A lot of times what I have found is that people, the founders will have a lawyer who represents basically the business and the deal, and then they'll have a lawyer. But the founder doesn't have her own lawyer looking at the deal that the lawyer is putting together. Right. Just so it's this whole other person who all their job is is to make sure you're getting a good deal. And several of my clients have done that and it's really paid off because they catch things.

They do. I did that as well. I mean, even if you don't have other founders or you don't have like, it is worth investing. It's. It's such a significant transaction that it's.

Like it's worth the whatever money you spend for that lawyer.

Investing in the lawyer.

So what is your role now in this business? What do you do?

Well, it's, I mean, similar really. We work closely with the CEO and the executive team on the strategy of the school and how we're going to grow it and what we know about our custom, like our leads and our customers and what they want, the messaging. Also thinking a lot about like, how we keep evolving, the training, being out in front of the students and all of that, like, I still totally love. I really and truly feel like we've barely scratched the surface in terms of the reach that this should have. So yeah, it's really, it's, it's exciting and it's fun. And honestly, I am enjoying like I'm enjoying for a minute not being, having a business on my shoulders. But that being said, I mean, I.

Feel like maybe you have a business another way.

I think I already do. Like, like, wait, did we forget a.

Part of your, of your life?

No. So as I'm thinking, like, because you have an entrepreneur brain and you can't stop, you know, I've been testing a bunch of different things and like what do I, you know, what do I want to be when I grow up and what I've found two things that I'm really, really enjoying. One is teaching other businesses how to add certifications to their business because it's an incredible stream of revenue and it's an incredible way to like exponentially increase your impact. Like if, if you have the magic thing you do, imagine if there's tens of thousands of people who have the magic thing, like you're going to have a bigger impact and legacy. So that's really fun. And then, you know, I'm also a health and life coach at heart. Like I am the teacher and the creator of the coach training and whatnot on top of like the entrepreneurship. And that part of my brain really loves working with high achieving women who really struggle with emotional eating. And then so that's been a passion too. It's.

So you do work with your own private clients outside. Yeah. That's lovely.

And the thing about it too is usually people like you and I, we've done so much personal growth work, like get to where we have to do what we're doing, then it's even more frustrating.

Yeah, I've done the work.

I don't understand why is it how.

Many more times I have to think about this? It's ridiculous. Exactly. I've made lots of other people rich with me talking about it, right?

Yes.

Yeah. So I love that, I love that you keeping, you're keeping the piece of you that you are so passionate about. And I'm curious about your certification because I think there's probably some people listening who would be curious about that. And this is true, probably for me, not as much today as it might have been a few years ago, but maybe still a little. Like when you say, imagine if there were 10,000 people who had your secret sauce, right? Like, the thing that you do, do you help people figure out what that is?

Yes. No. That is the sweet spot. And it started not only with Stacy and I years ago, but one of my first private clients. Her name is Andrea Nakayama. She is a powerhouse functional nutritionist. Like, powerhouse, amazing. And when she came to work with me, she was making, like. I don't know, it was like, $25,000 a year or something like that. She's the founder of Functional Nutrition Alliance. But when she talked to me about what she was doing and the way she worked people, I was just like, do you know what you're doing is not what anybody else is doing? You know, this is, like, completely different. And she was like, not, you know, like, you are. With your own stuff. You're not quite aware of that. And I just was like, what if you taught other people? And what if. And then we just started hammering, like, hashing out, what would the structure be? How would it work? What's the thing? And at the time, she called it, I think, holistic nutrition lab. And this thing was born, and then it grew into this multimillion dollars, and then eventually was acquired by a powered education. And now she's a colleague of mine.

Which is, like, quite cool, right?

Yeah, but it's. And. And she's trained a kajillion people. And so there's. I think what I love most about coaching, and I'm guessing you probably feel this way, too, is there's a way in which when you're observing someone in front of you and you're hearing them, it just all of a sudden, for me, turns into Technicolor. And then you go, I see it. The thing that is like, the special sauce, the magic. And then taking that magic and putting it into a structure, to me is the most fun. And honestly, I think that's why I'm so obsessed with certification trainings, because if I can do that for Andrea, then now I'm expanding the impact now all through her.

Yeah. And we, you know, on a. On a much. On a macro level. Right. Our ability now, as a species on this planet with brains to help people be educated and understand so much more than what we've all just been traditionally trained and educated to know. Right. And so all this gorgeous wisdom inside of all of these People who otherwise would just have been in their own little world can now introduce that to thousands and thousands and thousands of other people, which I just think is so miraculous that that content and also wisdom and ideas and wit and intellect, knowledge isn't, isn't hidden like it might have been even 20 years ago before we had the technology and the way that we have things today. And I want to share with this with. To the listeners because I've had, I have very successful female entrepreneurs in every kind of industry, right? Like trades, real estate, interior design, insurance, I don't know, recruitment, just everything, right. And so I listen to these women who get to these points in their business and I think you, you could create apprentices all over the world who understand that thing that you do. It doesn't just have to be, you know, I don't know, something that is more commonly known like if you, if everyone wants you to be the president of the association of the industry that you're in, you're a person. That's to me as a sage. That's what my sage program is called. Right. But you're someone that other people want to learn from and you could give it away for free or you could create a whole entity that holds it and perpetuates it in per. In perpetuity.

And to your point, it's a legacy. Yes, it's a legacy that you're not. And I do think it's so important for women too, because like I say, I mean, I'm joking, the patriarchy is real. But like to be able to share that knowledge and wisdom with each other and the future generations, I just think is really important.

And for women to do it as much as we can.

As much as we can. Yes.

So I love that. That's what that. So what's so cool, and this is what I think is so fun about when women sell, that we don't talk a lot about, is the freedom then for that gorgeous brain of yours that has all this other ideas, all this other magic that it wants to put into the world right now you have more freedom, right? You're not in this all the time now. You have all this other space and all this other landscape that is going to open up or has opened. Up, right? And that has been the case for everybody I've talked to. It's like, well, I finished and now I'm doing this. It's not like I have coached women who've been a little idle for a while.

I don't know what to do. Right. And that's normal, too, I think there's only so much pickleball we can play.

Well, and it can be like, you know, I've been doing this for 18 years. Like, taking a breath is okay after you. You know what I mean? Take a couple months. Like.

Ultimately, if you have an entrepreneur, creative brain, something is going to pop in at some point and you're not going to be able to even stop it if you tried, you know, now.

You have all this wisdom and knowing about what to do. Right. So not only do you know how to sell, but you know how to start. You know how to all the parts that you need to know to. To run a company or build a company, you know.

Thank you for that observation.

What's that?

I said thank you for that observation. I have felt like, gosh, this is all preparing me for what's coming next, you know, that's what it feels like to me. Like, I haven't even hit the stride. Everything has been like, the preparation. So.

So do you think you want to start another business to sell?

That's a great question. And I can see a yes and a no answer. I can see a no answer in that. Like, I just want to have something for myself, and then when it's done, it's done, and that's okay. I can see a yes answer in that. I'm thrilled by that idea. Yeah. I am still enchanted with the idea of something that creates enormous value for large numbers of people. There is something so magnificent about it. Like if you watch Beyonce or Taylor Swift or something and you see the impact people, that's so significant. I do feel like, I guess it's the performer in me that's like, I want to. The whole goal is to have an impact on people, but if I could build something and hand it to someone who wants to take it forward, that'd be great. I will say one thing about that, though. I've talked to people who will call me and ask for my thoughts about selling their business. And I had one entrepreneur say, well, I just want to make sure I have a buyer who gets it and really takes this forward the way I'd want. And I said, let's not have. I'm sorry, I'm not saying that can't happen, but the likelihood of that happening is very low. Because once they take it and it's out of your hands, they're going to do what they feel is right for it. And you may or may not agree, and there's nothing you can do about it at that point.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the big part. Especially for people who sell work that is of them. That, to me, that, you know, I have known people who have sold, you know, more like a entity, like a business that was a product that wasn't of them. It was outside of them. And it doesn't mean that there wasn't an attachment, because they built the whole thing. But when it's your brain that created a thing, whether it's content or videos or a program or that is. I feel like that's the one I watch people struggle with the most. Because people can take all of that and just make it the way they want it to be.

It's your. You are handing over your baby and going, please raise it to be a good teenager and adult. Yes, maybe they do and maybe they don't. But, you know, and if not, don't.

Tell them where I live, because I don't want them to come.

Right. Okay.

So what would you say, I guess you wish you had either done differently or you wish you had known to do that you didn't.

I mean, there's so much I wish I had done differently because I really. I think that if I could go back two holistic MBA days, the first business, just Stacy Morgenstern and myself, if I had had an operating system, I don't know that I would have sold the business. If I look back, I go, well, that there's a reason I didn't know that at that time. It's because we were supposed to sell.

Of course, like, it all happened perfectly.

Right. But going, going back, it's like, if you have that, you're going to be in such a better position. The other thing I would say is that for founders, you just cannot. It takes so much vulnerability and courage to continue to put your company forward and to continue to grow. You just cannot not have a mentor and coach. You just can't. Like, it's not an option, especially as you get into these, like, areas where you've not been before. And people will say, like, new level, new devil. But I like to think of it as, like, new level, new challenges. For sure, you need help with all the challenges, but honestly, it's the same devil always. And the devil is like your own fear, your own doubt, your own self questioning any, like, trauma that you have from the past, like, being successful in business is not going to heal that. Right?

Money doesn't heal it. We know this.

No, no, but you, you need a mentor and you need a community to help you navigate all of that. It's just so hard to do alone that it's not worth it. And I just think anytime I've not had that, I regret it. I mean, you just have to have that in your entrepreneurial journey. There's gotta be a non negotiable.

Yeah, we call it a brain. We call it brain keeping.

You know, I have a, I have a client, I'm in the process right now of renewing and registering new people into my sage program and one of my original first sagers. So I've been doing this for two and a half, three years now. So this will be like her fourth time, I think. Anyway, she, she just said she's, she's running an eight figure. I think she's probably almost at 30 million by now. And she just said, I don't know how to do this without you. Right. And I have a coach that I've had for four years. And I, I don't go to my coach because she knows the answer. I go to my coach because she knows I know the answer.

And she knows I know how to resource the answer. Right. If I don't actually know, like tactically she knows I know where to go. And then we brainstorm and we come up. And so I agree with you. I think that, you know, as women, we're cooperative, we're collaborative, we, we, we communicate these, this, we, a lot of us are verbal processors and to, to have that kind of support and to expect yourself not to. And with respect to every single person listening to this call, and I do mean this with respect, your husband is not your advisor on whether or not and how to sell your business unless he's your business partner. And even then y' all should have outside support. So a lot of my people that I might know, they're getting the majority of their advice from someone that they're married to who has never built or created a multimillion dollar business on their own. So that's just my comment.

That's a tough one because of course they want their feedback to be important.

They want it to be important.

It can't be the only feedback.

That's right.

That's right. We gotta have. Talk to your mom, talk to your girlfriends, talk to your husband, talk to your neighbor who sold a company. But you have to have a place where you can go where that nobody has any skin in the game. And that's what's so great about a mentor or a coach is, listen, I want you to be rich.

It's great.

But I. Whether you should sell to this guy or that guy.

I don't know.

Like, I'm not invested in the outcome. I'm only invested in your personal success.

That that's required. I mean, we've got to have it. It's too hard otherwise. And I think, I think because entrepreneurs, because we have crazy brains and we are so focused on what we're creating in the future and what's next and all that, we can almost lose sight of how hard it is. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, we just been. We're just like numb to the challenge of it. And that's another reason, I think, why we need to be with a mentor who can remind, like, hey, actually you're doing a great job actually. Here are the markers of success. Here are the milestones you've hit. I'm not even going to see that my, I'm not at the vision yet. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

And so just to even have somebody like help you recenter into like what.

Is working, what's going, look what you've already done.

Right. It's so useful.

And I mean this is such an interesting. I didn't put this on my list of questions to you, but I do think it's an interesting question that I'm sure you can handle well. So see, I'm kind of curious, like, how would you describe the woman you are today after selling a business versus the woman you were before you did?

Well, that's a beautiful question. I'm really touched by it, to be honest.

Like, if you were going to go back and talk to her right as you today, what do you. What's the difference? Who are you now?

I mean, before we sold the first business, even the second, it was the process of selling the second, where I had to understand.

That so much of my journey has been about proving my worth and that it I am not my business success.

And I matter and I'm deserving no matter what, no matter what. And I don't have to impress, I don't have to perform. It's like that's not what it is. It's not. I am not my business success. And I have to say that's brought me such an enormous amount of peace, such an enormous amount of contentment. I don't feel now like I have something to prove. What I feel now is that I am so excited to access the joy.

Well, and what I've heard, if, if you don't mind my saying so, is you have indicated that what you feel and think strongly is that you have something to give, which is such a different way of thinking than proving.

Yeah, exactly.

No, I have this to give and I want. I. I see this potential for this impact of if I give. And I just think it's all. It's.

It's. It.

It has to be identity shifting. When somebody pays you a large sum of money for a thing you made, it's just. It has to be like, what you. Okay, that's fun. But then you're now a version of yourself. Now this woman who got paid money real for. I mean, not that you haven't been making money, but that somebody wants to own the thing that you made in. Out of your brain. I think it's such a cool. I think it's all magic, which is so brilliant. Right? There's this little Carrie and little Stacy who didn't even know each other, and they both had these little ideas in their brains and they were growing, and they were growing and they were growing, and then together they made this thing. And then, then it became a thing that made all this impact on other people. And then people said, yeah, we'll take that.

It's crazy.

It's ridiculous. It's totally magic.

Totally magic. Making something from nothing magical.

Absolutely.

I think somebody who wants to buy it, like, what? Yeah, my God, it's ridiculous.

I was looking at my kajabi as the course provider thing, platform I use for my content. And it has a cumulative revenue. Right. For the whole time I've ever had kajabi, which was, I think, December 2017. And I looked at that number and I thought, every dollar in there is because of something that came out of my brain. You know what I mean? Like, I don't sell merch. It's ideas.

And I just.

I don't know, I'm kind of having a little bit of an existential moment. Like, it's such a trick to me.

I think one of the lessons I took away is like, you just. You gotta be open to any. Coaching is such a. There's just ways it's done. Do you know what I mean? And. And. But it can't. It doesn't have to be. It can be anything to be anything. And so I'm constantly trying to, like, you know, blow up ideas in my mind. What if it. What if it was just completely different? What if it was like nothing I could ever recognize? What if I, you know, and what.

If you couldn't use anything you've ever used? These big questions can be quite exhausting. They activate parts of our mind that we don't usually use, but it is fun to think about. And I think that space that you're in, being a creative entrepreneur, it's going to be so fun to see what you do next.

Thank you so much. I do believe that. My gut feeling is that I haven't even gotten to the great work. I haven't even gotten there. It's on its way to me, and I'm just preparing to meet it. And so I do think that there's a good.

There's timing, good bit of luck and time.

Yeah.

You just bump into someone and that conversation becomes something that you never thought it would be.

So there's this way. One of my mentors says we have to meet life on life's terms. Sometimes, you know, I was like. And I would just say circle back to, like. That's also why you need a coach and a mentor, because life is going to throw things, that things are not necessarily going to go according to plan. And it is very helpful to have a place to go to navigate all of that.

Yeah, I can't stay out of. I need someone to go into my brain very frequently and pull me back to wherever I should be. So. Okay. Well, final words. I guess I would just ask you the nugget you'd like to leave behind, the flavor you'd like to leave behind for our listeners as it relates to. To being a woman, building a business and then selling it and now building something on the other side as you figure out what that is.

I mean, I feel like this sounds trite.

But there is. You follow your intuition. The. The things that I have created. I mean, really, I am someone who does automatic writing. You know, you list the meditation music on and it all comes.

It all comes from in there. And that, like, you're not alone. We're not alone. It feels like we are, but we're not. And that there is something greater at play and that you're connected to and as a source of information.

For you when you need it. And I like to think about that business as a spirit. Your business has an energy. Your business has a desire. And we can. I will literally, like, ask the spirit of hci, what do you want from me? Like, where are we meant to go? I ask the future thing that I meant to be doing.

What am I meant to do? Which direction would you have go? And just let whatever comes out, come out. Then follow that guidance. Even though it may seem nuts, honestly, before the sale, the last sale, I did that. Spirit of hci, what do you need to. What do I need to do. And I said, let me go.

You have to let me go. Sob, sob, sob, sob, sob.

You're still sort of there as the. You're still attending to it.

I'm still attending. And now I get to, like, I don't know. This is the way it was supposed to be. And I'm just. I did see, like, I sat, like, sailing off, like, on a carnival cruise with, like, massive confetti and everybody's screaming and the deck's all crowded and everybody's dancing. And it's like the happiest thing, like, I. I just see so much success and triumph ahead for. For Health Coach Institute.

It's wonderful. That's a lovely story because I know some people leave their. Sell their businesses and it. It doesn't end up that way. So that's a lovely story and a lovely experience for you and, and great for everybody to hear that. That is a. That is always a possibility. I just think there's so many ways people go so totally.

It can't be any which way. I mean, any which way.

Yeah. You have to be willing to take whatever way it is. Really.

Yeah. So thank you for your time today. It was lovely to meet you and talk with you and get to know you. You are so super lovely. We're gonna put your contact information in the show notes, but where would you direct people at the end?

People? To my instagram @carrie petersofficial C A R E Y Peters Official.

Okay.

That's the place to find.

That's where to find her. Yeah. Pretty, pretty, beautiful, smart face. So, okay, I'll put your other stuff in there, too, so you make. I know we have those from you, so thank you.

This has been my favorite, my highlight of my. My favorite conversation. I never get the chance to talk about this, and it is a joy.

Oh, I love it.

Yeah.

Well, more women need to talk more about buying businesses, selling businesses, making money, having an impact in the world and supporting each other while we do it.

Well, thank you for creating the container for that conversation.

We're going to do more. Thank you. Remember that I asked you to be a part of my Catalyst podcast event where I'm inviting you to become a visionary Catalyst. Share the podcast link with women that you know. And as soon as you hit 20 shared links, clicks on those, we can measure that. I'm going to give you one of my bonus digital courses. Go to the visionary CEO Catalyst, get yourself registered, grab the podcast link super easy. And please share it with women that you know that are leading in the world because I'd love to be able to impact 20 million men women. I know that when women feel more confident in who they are as leaders, it changes who they are in their lives. Let's help women live and lead on their own terms. I can't wait to see how many clicks we get.

Let's get it.