John Barnes, CEO of Pendleton Street Business Advisors, uses a takeoff-and-landing framework to describe two types of business owners: those scaling fast and risking overexpansion, and longtime founders treating their business as a retirement plan. His firm bridges the gap between what owners have invested and what they need to retire securely.
John Barnes, CEO of Pendleton Street Business Advisors here in Columbia, South Carolina. We are basically a financial services firm that helps business owners with make or break financial decisions. Usually around growth or around exiting their business. Looking at clients, you know, we kind of think of them like airplanes. Airplanes take off and airplanes land. Takeoff clients are more thinking about growth. They've had a situation or set of situations that have occurred in their business that they wanted, which means they're growing revenue and things like that. But growth is often what does most businesses in. In fact, most businesses grow themselves into bankruptcy rather than sort of fade sail their way into bankruptcy. On the landing side of things, we think about that like landing the airplane. This is someone who's been in business for several decades. They're probably the founder in most cases. This has been more than just a job. It's been a livelihood, but it's also turned into a retirement plan sort of by accident. And we help, just like a financial advisor sort of helps someone think about what they need to save for retirement. The business owner has actually invested in their company, which is their largest investment, and we help them understand, like that financial advisor, what they have, but also what they need. And sometimes there's a difference between what they have and what they need, and we come alongside as advisors to help them bridge that gap. One of the things that, that I have also come to really appreciate about ERG is sort of the the attitude of "we'll take care of it." In other words, I can describe something in sort of plain English that we're dealing with or that we need help on from an HR standpoint, and usually the response is something like, "We'll take care of that," or "We'll handle that," or "We'll fix that," or "You'll hear from us soon with an email on what you need to do." And I can't tell you how great that is as a business owner to sort of be able to take that burden off and put it on someone else, but also trust that they're going to give you good stuff back in return.
