Capability Amplifier EP#96 - The Founder Exit Business Model

All right, Dan, what we're talking about in this episode is founders and exits. And specifically, you've worked with tens of thousands of business owners, founders, entrepreneurs. You've watched their careers, some of which have been in Strategic coach for over 35 years.

30. 30. And wow, still there.

31. All right, well, there we go. It's a long time. Three decades. And one of the things that I've noticed in meeting with usually anywhere from mid to late 40s to the 60s is a lot of these founders go through a phase in their lives where they're done. They want to stay active, they want to stay busy, but they'd love to sell what they built and have less and fewer moving parts, but also spend more time in an expression of themselves. I often say that we go through phases in life from being a human doing to a human knowing to a human being, and then hopefully a human expression where like Dan Sullivan, in my opinion, lives in the world of the human expression you create. You're in your genius zone, in your unique ability to pretty much all the time, and you've built your life around that. So what I thought we'd do today is talk about the phases of preparing for an exit, what happens next, and also talk about different exit models, because there's a few business models that I've been experimenting with and guiding people through and I've learned about that are super exciting, especially for founders. So thought we'd get some color commentary from you and then I'll give you a, for example, deconstruction and ping pong it back and forth. What do you think?

Yeah, I think it's great. And as you mentioned, I've had.

A lot of discussions and I would say.

If this were in person time that I was meeting a lot of the clients in person, I'd probably have more stories, but the stories haven't been as many during the COVID year. With zoom being the medium of communication.

What I notice is, and I use sort of entertainment terms that some entrepreneurs are one trick ponies.

What I mean by that is they had a offering to the marketplace, a service, a product.

And it worked and.

It had shelf life so they could go, you know, probably.

More on the level of that it satisfied needs, you know, it was and therefore a commodity of some sort that actually worked for a long time. And you can think of, you know, if you're careful about geography, people are always going to come to a hardware store. You know, they're, you know, a really good deli, really good deli, where there aren't any other good delis is a really good deli. And you know, so. And, but they're one trick ponies. Their, their original idea still controls the present even, Even if it's 30 years old, you know, and everything like that. And then they get tired, you know, they just get tired and you know, they've probably delegated to a certain degree that their time has become less. But my sense is that they didn't. After the first burst of energy, the first enterprise launch and everything else, not much has changed in their thinking about what they're doing. So in some sense they've just created a job for themselves. They didn't really create a business. Okay. And that's at the extreme low level. And then there's people who you can say that for and they have hundreds of employees depending upon their success level, you know, and.

Their children don't want to take over the business perhaps or you know, they're trying to sell it, they're trying to, you know, but it's a single experience. There's a single experience about it. And I gave some thought to this because I had been coaching since 1974 before we actually started our company. Company. I was a one on one coach. So I was a sole enterpriser for the first part of my life. So the thinking didn't really occupy me very much about exit. I mean I was just trying to get an entrance, you know and, and you know that story, don't you Mike, about what it's like?

Oh, a few times. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I was using three credit cards, not just one.

Yeah, yeah. Did you get down to buying cheese and crackers at your local gas station?

Because you know where it really gets expensive is where you're using your one credit card to withdraw cash to pay down on the other credit card.

You can't get away with kiting at like the good old days. That's how I paid my employees.

Yeah, and you're paying tax too. I mean you have to file tax on some of it.

But when we started the company and we could see real growth.

And especially when it. This was the really crucial decision. And I looked at the coaching business in the broadest sense of the word self improvement, the different kinds of coaching. And.

It seemed to me that there were two distinct models. One of the coaching models was based on a personality.

And they're very famous platform speakers. There's motivational speakers, there's people who.

Found organizations or the founders of thinking of Werner Erhard at Esque. And you know, a lot of that 1970s activity, 1980s activity.

Yeah, it's basically the guru or dancing bear model is what it's happily known as.

Yep. Yeah. And then the other one is that you're teaching a system, you're teaching a system and that other people can teach this system. In other words, that it'll be. You'll sell it on the basis, in our case, it's a, it's a system of thinking from an entrepreneurial perspective of how you think about your complete 360 degree life from the standpoint of freedom of time, freedom of money, relationship and purpose. And one is that I'm a private person and I'm not, I don't really.

You know, I really don't have the celebrity chip. I was born without the celebrity chip.

But I was born with a keen interest in observing how people think about things that can be translated into thinking tools that other people can coach. And so, both temperamentally and from a strategic standpoint, we just decided to go for the system. And so we have 20,000 entrepreneurs who are either active or have been active in coach. And I think I've met maybe 6,000 out of the 20,000, the other 14,000. I was at Genius Network a month ago and I met a 19 year veteran and a 25 year veteran of coach who had never met me before. This was the first time they met me. But they had been in coach for a couple of decades or more and they loved their coach, they love their team, they love the concepts and everything like that. And I felt, you know, I was checking off his success box there, that this is what it was, this was the intention a couple of decades ago and it's working out. So that was the big thing. So the big thing is that is it a one trick pony the person and is it a one act circus as far as the enterprise itself? Okay. And what I notice is that a lot of people who have the.

Exit problem or the exit anxiety are either one trick ponies or they're one act circuses.

And for me, the way I exit, I just create a new level of the program.

Yeah, that's nothing better than that living laboratory. And you get to react, respond to what they have next.

It's like this new one that I'm creating next year, which is the lifetime extender extended and everything like that. I said, well, I'm really excited about that and I'm bringing everybody in, including yourself, on the creative team.

We use it as a model at the center of the Free zone program, another level of the program. And we say hey, Mike, what do you think? If we're developing this lifetime extender program, what do you think? From a marketing standpoint, I'm just going to milk all you people dry and just.

That's how I exit. I create a new creative level with a higher level check writer. And then I do that, and I do that, and I do that, and then one day I die.

Well, here's what you've done, though, is I think part of what lights up Dan Sullivan is constant evolution with people who want to evolve with him. And I've told you this before. You're like my best friend in the neighborhood who says, let's make castles in the sandbox, knowing that you can make bigger, better castles. Together, you're a one plus one equals 11 guy. And you've managed to extend that into a business model that keeps you engaged. And you've got that constant feedback of an audience that you said something really important. This is so good. It's about the celebrity chip. Now, you might not say you have the celebrity chip because you're not an entertainer, charismatic stage guy, but what you have is this consistency of delivery and a combination of boy like, childlike, constant curiosity and the ability to simplify and go deep meaning just to sift and sort and also relate yourself to everyone else around you and then build useful tools. Right. That's part of it. And being useful, staying relevant, being useful, all those things. Pardon me.

Being useful is really big for me.

Yes.

And that's why I always say that the entrepreneurs in the workshops are my 50% creative partner. Exactly.

If I prepared a workshop for a week, I'm at 50%. If I prepared it for two years, I'm at 50%. I said, I can't get beyond 50% on my own. I need my partners.

Yes. And this is. I'll tell you what I found is the most painful moment in a founder's life. Okay. And what you described is the journey that they go on and where they hit that pain point where they're like, ugh, I'm doing the same old thing.

So I've written things down that I literally hear. One of them is, I don't feel valued anymore. Ooh. But the worst thing that can happen to a founder is they finally sell, they exit, and then they're like, oh, I want to get back in the game. But they've waited a little too long, and they can get zero traction. So first of all, the time to plan the next thing is while you're doing what you do, because that's Going to give you a springboard. And once you become irrelevant, being an older person trying to get back in the game and become relevant again is almost impossible.

It's really hard and it looks pathetic, actually.

You're right.

You're right. And I was thinking about this about a month ago. I was just watching an interview on.

Pbs. So it was public broadcasting, and it was with Bill Gates. And it was going along for about 2/3 of the interview, it was about a half hour interview. And.

He was talking about his interests and his investments, and he was talking about his foundations and everything. And right at the.

2 3rd mark of the interview, the operation said, you have this association with Jeffrey.

Epstein. You had this. It's been revealed that you had this. And what was that about? And you want to see somebody go through a complete body change, voice change, gesture, change, difference. And he said, well, you know, well, first of all, he had this interest in. Had this interest in my foundations. And so, you know, I attend dinners with lots of people who have interest in, you know. And so.

There'S a police term that they use for interrogations when somebody goes.

Tacky. I think they go tacky or something. Go hacky or something like that.

But it'd be like your tell. Yeah, your physical tell.

And she said, well, what have you learned from that? And he said, well, what's it matter? He's dead. I said, phew. Boy, I was happy to hear that. Happy to hear that. And I said, poor Bill Gates. Poor Bill Gates. You know what? All of his fortune. I'll just use his fortune as one resource that he has that others don't is.

It'S putting beyond challenge and it's putting beyond risk.

Okay? And what I mean is that there's no business venture or investment that Bill Gates can invest in where.

He can experience failure like he could experience before Microsoft was big. I mean.

If IBM hadn't said, no, you go take the software. We don't want the software. We want the hardware. There's no Microsoft. There's no Microsoft. It came down to a meeting with a guy that he despised, and the guy despised Bill Gates. And the guy said, we're not interested in software. Whatever you call it, whatever you call it turned out to be the future and everything. And I said, the only way that Bill Gates can feel adrenaline anymore is from a moral risk.

Yes.

That costs him half of his wealth. Yeah, yeah. But I think, you know, I mean, not to make light of the, you know, the morality of what the name Jeffrey Epstein and relationship with.

And more than One dinner meeting, what that all implies there is the problem that what.

Motivates entrepreneurs is a continually new sense of risk and a new sense that you could lose here, this could go south. And that's a tremendous feeling inside that you're faced with. To a certain extent, you got to take your past and put it on the table as chips.

Yes. Yeah, well, and that can come in the form of reputation. There's a whole bunch of credits here. So while you're talking about that.

The way I phrase it is, I used to say, give me a hungry billionaire. But what makes it is. It's hunger and grit. And it's not about the money.

But they've got to be able and willing to put some chips on the table. And if all they have is money, it's not going to work. And usually they'll talk about impact, but if they're not willing to risk relationship capital. And this is really difficult for a lot of business owners who are in a state of transformation for them. And I'll flat out tell them, okay, you've got to be willing to go out to your relationships and ask for favors that have never been repaid, where people will say, if you ever need blank, come and talk to me. But if they're afraid of making an ask for something different, they're not going to succeed.

And that's. So again, it's.

Why is the exit strategy the exit strategy? Why is it in play? In other words, why are you talking about this? What's happened to you that you need an exit? Are you exiting to free yourself up from something small and confining for the purposes of a much bigger venture? Totally understand it.

Yes.

It seems to me that that's not too different, what I'm doing internally with the program.

Yeah, I think that's true. But you've built a company that can evolve as you evolve and leave behind a tremendous amount of ip.

So.

When I look at the stack of Dan books here, okay.

And you're producing somewhere between five to seven a year right now, when you take into account the quarterly books, plus the other books, plus other things that are going on, that's massive volume.

Here's what I've learned. So again, I've studied this, I've talked to at this point hundreds of business owners explicitly about this. And here's what is going on inside their heads. And this is a repeating pattern. Okay. So one of them is.

I don't feel like I'm making impact. I don't feel valued in my own organization. Here's another one. I'm an expert. I have a message to share. I've figured out how to overcome big life and business challenges. I understand my message will help more people. I want to connect with more people who think as I do. I know my message and wisdom will increase the value of my business services and give me access to more people. So that's a combination of impact and it's a longing. It's a loneliness that's happened. And that old saying, it's lonely at the top. There's intellectual loneliness, there's financial loneliness, but there's also that soul value. It's hard to put your finger on it. Which comes back to purpose. I mean, in coach language.

And then how do I create lasting impact? Which again comes back to message. How do I get my message out there? How do I go big? How do I grow an audience? That is a pretty constant pain.

Another one is I've evolved as a human being and want to express myself creatively and be valued for who I am versus what I do know or appear to be.

And then impact over legacy. This isn't about me anymore. I want to make a difference. I have all the money I need or I'm good at making money, and I don't fear that anymore. So those are. I've got more, but those are like, very consistent themes. And what I found is.

Once you start going through.

Like, how are we going to get there? The weird fears that you run into are very unique. So being able to step into the unknown and first of all, ask for things outside of what's normal, especially after 20, 30, 40 years of practicing what you've been doing.

But I found that the easy way to transition someone out, and I found that usually it takes a little leverage is to give someone an idea, which is while your business is running itself or while you are making a transition, find four to 10 people that you wish you could work with or could have or helped or mentored but couldn't because you were so busy. Okay. It's usually easy to find those. And then I always recommend creating a blended business model where you charge fees and it's gotta be enough that it makes you uncomfortable to ask for it. So I usually start around anywhere from 100,000 to $250,000, and it's for a limited period of time. And then you get a percentage of baseline incremental revenue. So by making an impact, you see, you get paid and then getting phantom stock in the new entity.

So it's a triple win. And once you start that conversation, you open up the possibilities and it forces that person to really examine their current unique abilities or their superpowers, and that's what you're selling upfront. And interestingly, this is where folks get a little uncomfortable because they've been practicing their old, you know, their touchdown past for 30 years instead of living into what they've evolved into. So there's more to this than that, but I thought I'd get some commentary, feedback from you.

Yeah, I think. One thing I think I can add to this, that.

The first day that I went into the marketplace as a one on one coach, I was the salesperson. And.

47 years later, I'm still the number one salesperson for the company. But the books are the form that my sales are taking. The podcast are a form that my sales are taking. So I've always seen myself as the number one salesperson for the program. I'm now creating the collaborative books with Ben Hardy. You know, we reached 100,000 books on the 31st day. You know, we started on the 19th of October, 19th of November, we were at 100,000 according to Hay House. So this is the publisher telling us the numbers and they don't have any reason to overestimate.

What it is.

And We've already had 375 inquiries about strategic Coach as a result of the latest book and we have 250 signups from the first book. Well, that's a selling, I'm a selling activity and that's the results of the selling. So I always see myself that the form of the selling will change and, you know, and there will be new capabilities adding to the, the selling.

Team.

And the selling system that we have. But it's always selling. I never see myself and coming up with the new ideas is so that I have something to sell. So that's an insight. And a lot of entrepreneurs don't see themselves as a salesperson. Yes.

Well, especially because they associate what they think that means and.

When.

I'm surprised how many people don't understand the breadth of what platform means. So in your case.

Strategic Coach is a platform in itself. Every one of your books represents a platform, your accumulated wisdom, knowledge, every video, every podcast episode, et cetera, et cetera.

But all the IP is a platform.

Yes.

And I think.

The old illusion of it's not what you know, it's who you know, it's actually who knows you. Yeah, that's what a platform is.

Yeah.

Who knows you for very unique, you know, for a very unique thing. You know, in other Words.

Yes.

There's very specific rules about this. The general rules don't generally work.

It's the uniqueness and the specificness of. Like I was looking at, watching, you were mentioning Jesse, the Savannah banana man at Genius Network. And.

I said, jesse, you're a one off. I'll tell you right off the bat, you're a one off there. I mean, let's just do what Jesse does. I want to tell you, that's going to be a long day doing what Jesse does. Jesse.

Yeah, yeah.

Jesse doesn't even have to work at what he does. You know, Jesse's biggest problem is that he can't stop doing what he's.

Well, that and yes. And he suffers from. First of all, I talked to a lot of people afterwards. This is Jesse Cole, by the way, for people who didn't hear our last episode, but.

There are two big challenges. The first one is I gotta ask. Oh, and by the way, the name of the book is Find you'd Yellow Tux. But.

How much money is that organization actually making? His business model didn't make sense. And it just sounded as though they're very reliant on merch as their. Which that's not a sustainable business model. It's like people come in and buy T shirts and hats and stuff. It's like.

And then their tickets are cheap and they're all inclusive, so you get all the food and stuff for $20 tickets. It's like, how many people can you stuff into a stadium and how long is that going to last? Right. There's just so many moving parts and variables.

But the second one which you touched on is there's only one Jesse Cole. And in certain business guru models, it's sort of like there's only one Tony Robbins. He's never been able to self replicate, not even close.

There isn't a replicable model there.

And that it's an extraordinarily risky business model.

Well, there's, you know.

I'm not knocking the model because if somebody puts in 30 or 40 years, you know.

That'S a pretty good run for God bless.

Their souls is what I like to say or anything.

But.

When it looks like it's got to end or it's ending.

Is there any next step? I mean, I always see where I am right now is simply the R and D that I'm going to do for the step that comes after this. I never see myself ever, not.

After a certain amount of time and success at one level where you're not creating the next level. After that. And.

One of the reasons I take care of my health the way that I do and I surround myself, I mean I'm just packed on all sides with people who are creative and productive and are thinking about a bigger future. And so I've designed my environment, both personal and business to be always about creativity and productivity and breakthroughs and their everything else. It's the total environment that I live in. And I'm doing it because.

That'S where the money is. But I'm also doing that is because that supports me and who I want to be.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Here's the question. I wonder if we're not dealing with two types of creatures here and that some people have found themselves actually caught between two stools with this exit strategy and that there are serial entrepreneurs who consider companies like commodities. Company is just a, you know, it's just a commodity and you bought it. And the moment you buy it, you start preparing it for sale. Okay, yep, I understand that model. But the real company there is the whole process that.

You can go through 40 different companies and you learn something every time you develop a company and you sell a company. So the real company isn't any of the companies. The company is the process or the platform that the person goes with. So. And that's not me. And the other one is that you have a single model, a single structure and it just keeps growing and attracts higher and higher level people. Attracts higher level people and you add teamwork to it. I see these as two almost polar opposite models.

And anything in between I think.

Suffers from.

The advantages of both models.

Yeah, when I listen to that.

You'Ll meet folks, it's like live to work versus work to live. And in the.

Work to live model, that would be commoditize, pick it up, systemize it, get the heck out of the way. Nothing wrong with that. But I found that people who are driven by purpose, impact, culture and self relation.

Relationship, Yep.

And they're going to want to create something they can evolve into and there isn't enough time in their life to do that part time. So their organization evolves as they evolve and I think their DNA does as well. And someone might. If you take an extreme example, two extreme examples, you look at Elon Musk, who I believe will be the first trillion dollar personal brand. His stock price always moves when he opens up his mouth.

Usually he already is the first trillion dollar personal brand. You tell me Elon Musk walks away from everything tomorrow. How much they the actual companies are worth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just I'm talking about actually having it in possession. So future value, no question about it, like no question in my mind that's.

Totally a personality driven stock.

It is. But you look at the value there of Tesla and SpaceX if you took the personality out. And I'll use Apple as an example. Apple, I think was in many ways for quite some time a intellectual and spiritual exercise for Jobs.

Oh yeah.

Even though he went away, his DNA lived on while he took his break and when he came back and then when he died.

Well, they were at 300 billion when he died. Because I sent this to Peter. Peter was talking about the speed with which Tesla became a trillion dollar brand. And it was 14 years. And I think Apple is 20, Apple is 40 years.

But I said their big jump from 300 billion to a trillion. I mean we're talking about inflated dollars here too, so you have to take that into account. But actually the majority of their growth happened after Steve Jobs was gone.

I mean gone gone, not temporarily gone. Right, right. The reason is that they build a unique platform that's totally integrated and unified. It's a totally unified integrated platform. And the other thing is that they have a monopoly on the hype, on the high price tag technology market.

Yes. And I think they really figured out how to embed.

First of all, they fit into what I call the triple threat business model, which is get paid, get laid, live forever. So it's selling money at a discount, selling status, authority, thought, leadership, in other words, be creative. They sold that and then they sell lifestyle, which is it's lifestyle, it's a tool and it's a status symbol. It's all three. And they did. And they message it, messaged that with nuance. And you're right about an integrated platform, which.

I mean it is a perfect brand for all practical purposes.

Well, there was a, there was an article ten years ago in Fortune or one of the business magazines of what currently powerful brand will be a powerful brand 100 years ago. And the only one they identified was Apple. That Apple would be. And the reason is once they went to the ipod and then the iPhone, they had freed themselves up from computers, that it wasn't a computer company anymore, it was a technology company. And then it's a platform company. It's actually a platform company because I mean he has his sights on health. And my sense is there will be probably a technological platform that underlies regenerative health. But I don't think it's any of the current, I don't think it's any of the current. I think it's a totally different world, that it's not a commodity.

I agree with that. And I also think what a guy that I really love and I follow Professor Scott Galloway from nyu. He talked about Apple and the rundle the roll up bundle. So you'll have one price, a subscription for your phone, your computer, your television soon your car health subscription. You already have Apple TV which is producing fantastic content by the way. Fantastic content.

The Apple tv. Like I haven't had cable in I don't know how many years now. We haven't had it at all. But if I get health benefits from that predictive health and they bundle that with. It was Galloway who's been saying for years, I don't know if this will happen now, but he thinks Apple will buy Peloton. So then you'll have a device that you exercise in and on that's integrated with the data. Why not Apple Healthcare? I think Walmart and Amazon are more likely to do it just because they're going to do pharma and.

A pharmacy. But you can see if you just start thinking about like where's the big opportunity, the big money. Healthcare is so ripe for disruption. Insurance, financial services, banking. I mean think of all the businesses that you hate. The only thing, if they could figure out a way to completely decimate the irs, then they'd be everyone's favorite. But it's like think of the brands and the services that you resent in your life. Those are the ones that are ripe for rundle disruption. And would I stroke a check to Apple for two or three or five grand a month if I knew I was getting a certain kind of value? Hell yeah. What a lot more like us? Hell yeah. If I knew I could. If you knew you could get an extra 15 years, would you stroke a check for 5 grand a month?

No brainer.

Yeah. Well, I think that there's an opposite side to the.

Tell me everything that you hate and identify everything that you hate. But I think that the other side of it would be what dependable service if constantly improved, would you love and you would be loyal to forever?

Right? Yeah, yeah. Cars, jets, guns.

But, well, those are, guns are already totally reliable. They're perfect.

That's what I'm saying, they're perfect.

No, no, they, they keep, they keep improving. You know the. Yeah, I mean, you know, you got to give credit where credit is due. You know, I mean those people, you know, certain people stay at the top of their craft. You know, they know their customers and they, you know, they. They listen to their customers. What is needed next in a uncertain world. Yeah. So anyway, this is very, very interesting. Have we broken any new ground on?

From my standpoint, there is a breaking.

Get the crud.

All right.

I'll make a mark.

That's coming up now. You know, it's.

Anyway, Gord will get rid of that.

Yeah.

What I'm most struck by this conversation and what I'm taking away with is.

That.

In, I think, examining most of the exit strategy and actual exit executions among entrepreneurial businesses, they basically run out of gas as individuals. And they basically run out of gas in terms of their business model or just what they're doing. Okay. And that they want to. They want to maximize some sort of value that they got out of what they created. And they don't have any real business plans beyond the exit strategy. And then what I see as.

A possible another realm where there's at least two different approaches. And one of the approaches is that it's an addiction. And they can't give up their addiction. And if they gave it up, they'd be right back at the addiction another way. And the other people, it's actually the business and them are part of each other. It's almost symbiotic, the business and who they are. And it's given them a practical structure that makes money, that provides them with an enormous amount of capability and impact in the world, that periodically they jump to another level and the company follows them.

Yes.

Or a business model follows them. They may start another company, but the business model.

Is much the same. And those are interesting people. The addiction ones, I think, is probably more prevalent than the self evolution one.

Yeah, yeah. I think.

The self evolution.

I've seen addiction as a solution here. The real problem is much worse than the addiction.

Yeah, yeah. It's like, as you were talking about that, I'm like, huh? Well, I can think of worse addictions.

Oh, yeah.

I think that where it's bad is if there isn't a self evolution, an awareness evolution that goes along with that, which I think is what you're talking about.

And.

You know, and the company following them. Same thing. It's like.

This is why the ideal evolution is.

Where.

The individual makes that commitment which has pain associated with failure. In other words, money can't solve the problem. It's your own internal evolution. And having some kind of a platform is when you're serving either a group of people or you're willing to examine a completely different way of being rewarded again for your expression. Of yourself. And this is why I always say the difference between being a burger flipping human, doing a human knowing, which is white collar, still salaried. A human being where you're rewarded for who you are, but then where it's a human expression, you're living in a state of zero fear, pure creativity. And there's a business model that can support that even if you don't need the money. I think you got to keep score and there's got to be a reward for impact built into this because just giving something away isn't it. And I can leave you with one guy who I love right now. His name is Rick Beato. B E A T o. He's on YouTube. He's been a music producer for over 30 years. Sold tons of albums, but no one's ever heard of them before. And he's been behind a lot of, I'll say B bands. But now what he does is he has a online show on YouTube and one of his constant episodes is what makes this song great. So he'll deconstruct like Pat Matheny old rockers.

I've watched all number of his and he's pretty encyclopedic. He does classical music. He does, he does.

He does the 20 best guitar openings in rock history. And yeah.

He'S very telegenic too. I mean, and plus he every once in a while he puts his hand to the keyboard and shows that he can play piano. You know, he.

I think he's Juilliard trained.

And here's just to cut to the chase, what happened is he recently interviewed Brian May from Queen. Now he just had Sting, Sting's publicist reached out to him, Joni Mitchell.

And so he's got access because of his platform to.

Major musicians, not.

He's got high intellectual content too, you know, because he's doing original, he's doing original analysis. You know, he's a. No, but he just had one program on Bach. Why Bach? You know, why bach is. There's 300 Bach orchestras around the world and there's Bach festivals every year. And this is 365 years ago. You know, since. What is it about what Bach does that. And there aren't that number of Mozart or Beethoven orchestras or you know, or anything like that. So I mean it's just a unique talent. It's like Shakespeare. I mean Bach is to music what Shakespeare is to theater. And yeah, a couple, you know, I just thinking about a couple things here.

When you exit, you have about a year from my experience as a Coach, you have about a year, and if you're not back in the saddle within 12 months.

You begin to think that.

The success that you exited from was luck.

Yes, there's two big pains. This is interesting. One guy that I'm working with right now.

He built a franchise, had a big exit with a private equity firm. And his number one is, it might have been lucky because it's his first big and real exit. And he's in his early 60s and he's like, I still have juice in me. He's got his money, but that is an ongoing. And the other one is, I saw this, I cannot find it. Which is either in Harvard Business Review or one of the big rags that.

Especially men.

Over. I think it's from 50 on, it might even be a little bit younger than that. If they're not back in the game doing another business within it's either 18 or 24 months, their probability of any success is less than 5%.

I think just from an emotional, emotional standpoint, it's 12 months that if you're not back in. And you know, it's like in many ways, it's like professional performers, like athletes. Take Tom Brady, he's 44, you know, and.

You know, the superstar of superstars in his particular game, I mean, there's just no one like him. But the day after he's out, the influence isn't there and the applause is not there. You're only influential and you only get applause while you're playing. Once you're not playing the influence and the applause, they think they're going to take the influence and the applause with them. They stay with the game.

Yes. And this goes back to something I said. I don't know if it was in this episode or a previous one about relevance. What I found many founders are not aware of and conscious of is how painfully irrelevant they become when they don't have a business behind them. Because there's a scoring system, there's a reward system, or if you. A platform. And in a way, Strategic Coach provides a platform. You know, it's a place for business owners to get atta boys from Dan. You know, you get acknowledged and you get applause. You got a genius network. The 10 minute talks. That's a platform. That is how you create a community. And a community, even if it's just of employees, is a community, even if it's all contractors. It's. It's a brand to be behind. It is very, very tribal. And suddenly when you are alone and naked and you don't have that team. And again, this is another thing that a lot of founders find is like, okay, so they sell and they walk away and they realize how painful life is without their support teams that they've gotten used to after decades and it is hard to build that again. It is really hard.

So, yeah, yeah. There's something about the immediacy of the current game.

Where all the energy is being generated, where all the creativity and once you're not immediate and you're not current.

There'S no electricity.

True.

That's a useful thing. Yeah.

When I deconstruct, why is Dan so active, so busy, so.

Productive and why are you so creative right now? And on it, it's purpose, it's platform, it's the performance.

Totally. Relationship.

Totally. Yeah.

I mean, the one thing that I'm getting is that.

I'm constantly in discussion with people that I've grown with over many, many years. Many, many years. So we've got insights from growing together for a long period of time that you don't get out of some expert. Expert on business because they haven't done the growing. Yes.

Yeah, no, I think that evolution.

It'S why celebrities wind up at some point spending their time with their old childhood friends.

I was just listening, watching or reading an article about Jennifer Lawrence who was huge and then her icloud got hacked. A whole bunch of nude photos got out. She almost died a couple times and she was overworked and just a bunch of crud came up and she disappeared for three years. Now she's married, got a kid on the way, but she apparently has a posse of childhood friends. And you see this time and time again, which is who did you evolve and grow with and where is some of that innocence your original character from? And if you can develop character and content in a community, boy, there's the three C's there. That's profound. And again, I see that as a founder, if you want to have long term impact, you've got to find a way to create and recreate that on an ongoing basis. So I think we better wrap this episode up. I know that. So I think this has been super interesting. As usual. This did not go in the direction I expect it to go, Dan, but I think both of us learned a lot throughout it. Any other wrap ups before we finish this one off?

I think the biggest thing that I got, Mike, is that from an entrepreneurial standpoint, you have to have a different definition of what exit strategy means. And what I think it means is that you have maximized the value that you're getting out of the present stage of growth, and now you're getting ready to exit into a bigger stage of growth.

So I agree, Dan, and I think the best way to end this is, first of all, I think it's just critically important, you spending your time with coaches and advisors and be part of a community as you evolve as a business owner. Without that, I think you're lacking rudders, and you've got to be around people who've been there, done that, and they're further down the line than you have. There's a lot of value in being around wise, older people, and that's what I'm learning from this. And I belong to several men's group for that exact reason. So this has been super interesting. And, as usual, another great episode of Capability Amplifier. Dan, thanks.

Thank you, Mike.