EP4: Can 1 million Business Owners be Saved w/ Tracy Gunn

I have this saying about setting the date right. I gave myself six months and I figured I could do anything for six months. I could do this for six more months. And then at the end of that six months, if I haven't fixed the things, found a buyer, then I have, like, my full permission to bail.

Welcome back, everyone. We have a special guest today. We have Tracy and we are discover covering her Mount Everest today. So very excited. Thank you for coming on, Tracy.

Nice to meet you, too. All right. It's a double whammy, right? Five birds, one stone, right. Content. Getting to know another owner's club person. All the good things. So I love it.

Exactly. Yeah. So I like to show this to people in. In our community because we'll get into how people can help you specifically with your Mount Everest, and help bring value to you in return. Obviously, everyone gets value as well, so that's really what today's focus is.

Well, I hooray for me. Good thing. I know I'm from New York and I know how to talk, so that's good. So I'm excited about. So thank you so much. I really appreciate the chance. And I love this idea of everyone's origin story. And I don't mean like when I was born in. I mean like this idea of how we got to this Everest and how we got here and what formed us, made us care, that kind of thing. I think it's fascinating. So thanks for doing that. I love that.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So tell me about about your journey. How did you get here?

So. Oh, my gosh. So I'm an ex New York girl, so if I'm tired, you'll hear it. Sometimes you won't, but definitely the attitude is there. But I am in New Hampshire part time, in Charlotte part time. If you're in either of those places, I'd love to connect in person because I love being able to spend time and meet people. But let's see. So I got married kind of young, right? I'm going to start there because I stayed home for a long time and homeschooled and my kids went to school in 2006 and I was like, what the heck am I going to do? At the same time, my ex husband now, but he had been in 911 and he had this mental health crisis and we're in New Hampshire. That's how we wound up in New Hampshire, going away from New York, where buildings fall on you. And I was like, what the heck am I going to do? I've got. Everything's falling apart around me, like, my kids have left. My job is. No. Like, I don't do that anymore now what? And so I thought, gosh, I'm going to create a little world that's mine. Like, mine to take care of mine. If it fails, it's on me. And if it succeeds, it's on me. It's nobody else's choices, decisions. And it gave me a project like. So it was like this opportunity to make lemonade. And that's what I did. So I started my first candy store called Life is Sweet. Can you hear me? Okay. Because I hear something back. Okay, good. As long as you can hear me, I'll. So. So I created Life is Sweet. And I figured if I set it long enough that I would remember because things were not sweet at the time. And so I created my own little world. My kids came and worked there. I did all these things. And years later, unfortunately, eventually divorced in 2012. And the business was like, really running well. I was really blessed. Somebody gave me the book called the E. Myth. I don't know if you've heard of it. Highly recommend to everybody I ever talked to about business. And it was really about setting up a business where you're not the business. This idea of ownership versus operation. Right. Which is what we're all into. So if you haven't read it, you should read it. It's a really easy one to read. Not too dry, but really practical. And you will relate to everything that he talks about. But. So I had been given that when I first started, and I started to see that did I want to be a business owner or the candy lady? Right. That those were two different things. Running the business versus working the business. And from the beginning, I always set it up to be not dependent on me. And so years later, that allowed me to. When I started to get bored and get shiny object to start a restaurant, because I was like, I don't need to be there anymore. What else can I do? And so then I started my first restaurant. A couple years later, I started a second restaurant. And then I had another camp research. So four businesses in 2019. And at that point, I was working a lot, but my kids were all grown, so it didn't really matter. I was doing well, had 42 staff. But all of a sudden, my daughter had my first grandchild. And all of a sudden I went from wanting to be in all these businesses in New Hampshire to not wanting to be in any of them. I was like, I'm out of here. And so I hired a broker to Help me sell. That was the point. And again, most people, when they start their businesses, they think, someday I'll sell it. You're building for that eventual cash against, right? Like you want to win the game of business. Someone will buy it, it will continue on, and you won't have to do it anymore. And so I was like, I hired this broker and he sat me down. I had two restaurants, two candy stores. And he was like, don't bother. And I was like, what do you mean, don't bother? And he was like, there's not really anything worth selling here. Just liquidate and move on. And I was like, what? Like I had staff. It wasn't like I was doing everything. So I didn't understand. And so after I cried a little bit and had a moment, I decided to think about, is he right? Because sometimes brokers can be lazy, right? Is he right? And I realized on some level he probably is. And I thought, okay, do I want to just quit, or do I give myself some time to see if I can fix it? And so that's what I decided to do. I have this saying about setting the date right. I gave myself six months, and I figured I could do anything for six months. I could do this for six more months. And then at the end of that six months, if I haven't fixed the things, found a buyer, then I have, like, my full permission to bail. So that's what I did. So I started with the big. I had a 6,500 square foot restaurant called Willie Max. And it was a big restaurant. It was my biggest headache. So I was like, okay, what can I do to get myself out of this more? What would make this more valuable? What would make it attractive to a buyer again? When I was building, I never thought about those things. I just thought, what will bring in more money? What will get me more business? What will make this maybe where I don't have to work as much? I never thought what would make this attractive to somebody else. You know how when someone sells the house and they get somebody come in and stage it, right? It's this idea of what would make this house sell but also sell for more. And so that's what I did. And I kind of just started to meet. Okay, what can I offload? I found a few things what could make this easier for me. I found, like, one of my girls that was in the kitchen, she knew how to do liquor inventory. I didn't know how to do that. And so I gave her that job. And after the first two weeks, she Found all this theft, all this stuff. So all of a sudden, I could find. I didn't even know I had a problem. She found a problem. I fixed it. I set up systems and inventory controls, and all of a sudden, now I'm not spending as much. I'm making more, right? Less theft, more profit. So all of a sudden, that one choice of giving her that job changed the value of the business, the dependability of the business. So all of a sudden, like, I started to see, like, how I could do one thing and it would impact the bottom line, the value, but also give me time back. And so I got really into it. Like, what else can I do? What else can I do? And so bottom line is, three months into this process, someone, one of my customers approached me and wanted to buy it. So I went from not being sellable to being sellable in three months. And he had never owned a business. So that was an interesting process. But it struck me that, wow, I consider myself relatively smart. I'm not a genius, but I'm smart. I'm running four businesses. I have 42 staff. I'm capable enough. Why didn't I understand this? Like, how did I miss this? Like you would think, especially if you're building to sell it someday. How did I miss this? Very simple thing I should have seen, which is building for exit, and whether an exit can be getting yourself out of it completely or building it so that you could transfer it to somebody else to make it attractive to somebody else. And so I just started thinking about, gosh, if I didn't know this, right? Does anybody know this? And what I realized is that most people don't know this. 85. They estimate of small businesses never sell. 85. Like, it makes your head explode when you think, like, all these people are building businesses and they don't sell. And so that is my Everest, is to help a million small business owners to develop and implement exit plans so that they someday can sell if they want to. Because what happened for me as I went through that process on business number one, is that I realized after a month or two, like, I didn't hate it as much. It wasn't as big of a pain. I had eliminated a lot of my pain points by shifting my focus to being exitable. And so I thought, gosh, let's do that with the next one and the next one. And so, yeah, so, like, at least thinking about what that looks like, what the finish line looks like, what kind of money I want to make at the finish, what does it even look like who might want to buy it. All of those things are things you shouldn't think of when you're selling. You should think of them years before. Because some of those things, if you implemented even from the start, you would be very efficient in what you're building and you would never go through that moment that I went through of, hey, your business isn't worth anything. Which it really wasn't true, but it certainly felt it at the time, right? And I could have listened to him. And that's what I think a lot of owners do is that they think they're going to sell. They try to list it themselves or they hire someone, the brokers don't bother, or they list it and they do nothing with it for a year. It languishes on the listing. And then all of a sudden, now that we're up for exploration and are like, crap, what do I do? Can I fix it? Can I not fix it? And they're like, at that point, they don't even know where to start. Like, my broker didn't even tell me. He just said, it's not worth it. He didn't tell me why, he didn't give me any direction. He didn't give me any thoughts, didn't refer me to anybody. Like, hey, I know somebody who could help you fix some things. And I'm just going to say that first business was doing like almost 800,000 a year in sales. It was in year two, so it wasn't. It was still new enough. Wasn't like we didn't have sales, didn't. Wasn't like we didn't have staff or processes. So again, it depends, right? Somebody, if they were wanting to buy that business, let's just say, and they were a restaurant chain, wanted to get into my area. They don't really care about my systems. I wouldn't have to necessarily fix those because they have their own. But I was selling to someone who's brand new. But like, by identifying the buyer, you really can ship and really target them and then fix the things that they're going to care about or enhance the things they're going to care about it. And it just really opened my mind to, like, how much, like we. I didn't think about the end, how much I didn't think about, like all of this effort and injury I was putting, putting in, thinking I was smart, thinking I was ahead of the game by having systems, by not having to run everything, that I still wasn't sellable was just so surprising to me. And then as you Start to delve into what the stats really are. It's really surprising. And so, yeah, that's how I wound up having that Everest. So we'll go back to candy lady part. So the long story short is, like, the one business I found the buyer, my second restaurant, My landlord decided during COVID to not renew my lease because they wanted to control my hours. And I told them no. And so they didn't renew my lease. So that business, they basically took from me. So I just liquidated that one. And then my candy store, I had a partner earning in, which is, again, a different way to exit. And she was great, still friends. But what happened? After a couple years, she had undone all the systems that I had put in place because she was there every day and I was never there. So she didn't quite understand why things were in place as they were. And so, long story short, I wound up with the candy store again. So I had exited all of them. And then she handed the candy store back, right?

And.

But she handed.

Oh, yeah. Merry Christmas.

Not working right. Because again, she quit because she was burnt out, because she was working in it all the time, which I had. The only reason I was able to run restaurants and start other businesses is because I wasn't working it and I had built that way. So anyway, long story short, I went back in, tried to fix it after Covid. A lot of businesses probably will relate to this. It's not the same. Staff is not the same. Costs are not the same. The businesses are markedly different after and pre. But I got at least running. And I thought to myself, okay, I still want to go to Charlotte. I still want to get out of here. I still don't want to be here anymore. I want to be near my babies. Like, how do I mesh these two businesses? This idea of helping people exit, and my own. I still have this one. I still love it. It's still my favorite and my first. It's 18 years in. What do I do? How I. But I don't want to be here. And how do I maybe prove a point? And so I decided that I was going to take what I knew 18 years and prove that anybody could exit. So I this idea of undercover billionaire where they take them and drop them somewhere and like, they have their million 30 days without their name and without their. So I was like, what if I took my business, everything I love and don't love about it, fixed it, fix the model for exiting, not just existing, moved it to a completely new city with all of the great factors like growing extra money, high median income, lots of opportunities, not a lot of competition. What if I took that, brought it here and gave myself like a deadline? I set another date, two years to develop a chain of stores to be able to exit for 5x and proof for my exiting piece that anybody can do. If I can do it from scratch in two years, you certainly can go into your business and fix a few things so you can sell it instead of just quitting. Life is Sweet is now my business, but it's my case study proving a point I've challenged myself. So the goal is to have 10 stores by the end of this year, plus a warehouse, a whole system, and then have it operational for a year and work out all the kinks, make a working model, and then decide do I want to exit or not. Because again, sometimes when you get yourself out of it and you have something working really well, you don't want to sell it. It's like how many people want to sell the house? That's cash flowing hard for them. Nobody, right? You don't want to get rid of it. Why? If it's painless and it's giving you money, why would you get rid of it? So that's like how the candy store and exitable kind of work together. And then I take the profit from that and I throw it into real estate. So. So that's where I'm at. That's like my big overarching plan, my devious empire building plan. Building exitable while building an exitable business at the same time.

Amazing. You might have to adjust your Mount Everest goal though, because mine is to help 2 million people become business owners. So we can't have a 2 to 1 ratio. We got to have a 1 to 1.

I love that. Well, because the thing is like, people, people don't understand. Like, it's hard. Yours is harder. Right? Getting them to leave their comfort zones and starting from scratch. I like, I feel like all small business owners are superheroes. Like they leave their comfort zone to head off into the unknown. Like they don't have a cape. But they are superheroes because they're giving themselves the hardest job ever, which is to own a business and run a business depending only on themselves. Like serving the community, serving their customers. It's often a very thankless job and hard. And so my thought is you do the hard part, mundo. Like you do that and I'll do the exiting part. Because my thought is like, you probably need to be able to sell to retire. You need to sell to do whatever New thing you want to do. But not everybody needs to do a startup business. You see what I'm saying? So, like, my thought is, maybe mine will be easier, but I'm gonna do 2 million now. You changed my mind. I didn't know you were doing that. That's amazing. I just love. Oh. We have a lot to talk about, but I think you should think about introducing however you are going to do it. And then you're gonna have to come on my podcast and tell me your story. But this idea of starting with the exit in mind, it's like most of us don't go on vacation without a plan. If we were driving from New York to California, we would at least have some kind of sense of where in California we're going instead of just, I'll figure it out. But that's what we do with our businesses. And it's our greatest investment of time and money and energy. And yet we don't think about where are we going. Like, most of us start with a plan, but very rarely do they have a new plan once it's working.

Yep, exactly. Yeah. A good example is. So I own a 167 unit with pace and was talking with their team when we were visiting it a couple months ago and was interesting. Which I never even thought of. They are intentionally renovating 85% of it to leave 15% unfinished for the exit. Exactly right. So if you go in and renovate 100% of it and there's no upside for a buyer, why would they want to buy it? They're going to buy it at the peak price with no potential to increase the bottom line. So that's a great example of thinking of the exit. And not because initially, especially for high achievers, are like, oh, I want to clean it up. I want it to look perfect and pristine. And it's thinking a little bit differently with the exit.

I mean, it's so true. And again, we don't do this in any other place in our lives. Right. The idea. And again, we're smart people. Business owners are really smart people and courageous and scrappy and hard working. And yet they have like, if you asked a hundred business owners, I would say 99, have no idea what their business is even worth or how to figure it out, which is crazy. Most of us know what our house is worth. Most of us, it's just, we don't. I don't know why it's not on our radar, but maybe it's because we're so involved and we're just tired like, and we're. And we haven't exited all the pieces. Right? We, like, I'll give you an example. Like, I'm now running a candy store in Chart in New Hampshire, a Candy store in McAdaville, a CO branded one. And I'm slated to open my third here in July. And I'm looking at new ones. Okay. But all yesterday, everybody was sick, having the vomiting virus at both locations, different state. I'm on the fly 18 years in now, trying to arrange who's opening, who's closing, who's not, who's this, who's that still, like, how the heck am I back here? Like, I would have thought that after 18 years, I would have solved this problem or teaching them how to close the register. We were short $170 last week total at the one in New Hampshire. And I was like, but I haven't put in checks and balances because I outsourced my bookkeeping, which is what I used to do to give me a trigger of where there was a problem. But because somebody else is doing that, I don't have alert and alert system anymore. And so now I have to refigure out that piece, which is great. It's a great opportunity. Before I have 10. That's helpful. Let's not lose money at all 10 at once. Let's just lose it at one and figure out the system. But I was like, gosh, like, if I was very hard on myself, which I sometimes am, I would think, like, why haven't you figured this out yet? Like 18 years and you haven't figured out this problem. But when you're dependent on people and people come and go, especially entry level, it's a harder. It's just a hard thing.

Yep. Yeah. As the business owner, you're wearing literally all the hats, or at least at some point in time, you probably had to wear all the hats. And there's things that come up, like closing the register that just seem so obvious. You take someone who totally. You take maybe an entry level person that doesn't know or they just don't care because they don't own it like you do, it becomes very frustrating, right? Because you're the owner, and at the end of the day, it's you on the line. And the employee doesn't necessarily feel like that all the time. And that is a challenge, right. Because you try to delegate, be like, hey, take this over. Cool. That's off my plate. And they're like, wait, how come you're not doing this? And this? Like, it's common sense, right? And then you have to go back.

And then they leave because they get another job somewhere else for more money, for a dollar more. And now you got to start all over again. And that's part of the problem with RET or restaurants even worse. Which is why ask me how I know. It's like the restaurant I would never do again. And I still get tempted. I still have shiny object. I'm like, oh, that could maybe. And I start to plan and think about how it could because I love that part. I like the 0 to 1. I like the build and getting everything working and figuring out all the systems and getting it. I'm not as good at the continuation. Now do it. But it's not my. It's not my dream to be in the systems of the everyday and hiring and firing and all that nonsense which makes you want to hate people. All of that part is not my dream position. And so again. But the next piece of this will be hiring somebody, which I planned. Now. So again, sometimes your pain points teach you. Okay, If I were to do it like I call it my do over, right? If you went back to high school knowing everything you know now, you would have a very different experience because you already know. You know the things, you know the traps, you know all those feelings that you went through in high school. Same thing like I know the pain points of staff. So I came here, I simplified my model. I'm going to have one integrator that oversees everything, plus the warehouse and a whole system to do it. Not Tracy, but I have to be involved at the beginning because I understand the thing, understand where the weak points are, right? And so I'm in that building phase, which is often the most painful phase, but also the most exciting, right? The less profitable stages, because. But you're building something for what's for the end. Like, I think about it like your children, right? You love your kids, but you're exhausted the first year because they need you for everything. And as they grow, you kind they become more independent. And some of the trouble could be bigger, but it's in between. You have rest in between, right? But eventually they go off into the world like mine have done. Mine are all grown and gone and they just do their thing that you've raised up an independent entity that can go off and serve the world and do good things and that's what you hope for your business. Business, right? And so that's how I see it. So I'm in year one, right? The pain year of exhaustion, right? Going from problem to problem, working out all the details of why it's not working, why is it working, where is it working, what needs to be changed. But again, I like that part. But not every day. Some days I just think, that's enough, I'm done.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's good that you have, you've been there, done that. Obviously you have the experience and you have a road map and you know what the end picture looks like or what it should look like with you being removed. When you mentioned the year one of being painful for some people that aren't educated or just don't know that year one is like year one through 30, because I never figured out.

They never become exitable. They never. What I find with most of the clients that I work with for the exitable business is that most of them have had their businesses 30, 40 years, but they haven't raised prices. They haven't. They're just comfortable. Like, my husband is a perfect example of this. He's been a builder for 40 plus years and he really struggles with charging more because he just, in his head, it's too much. But I'm like, you have boneheads who have only been carpenters for two years charging 100 plus an hour. But he can't see it because he's, it's just not. It doesn't feel right for him. And so when I work with these business owners who have had businesses for 40 years and they've created a comfort level for themselves, they're not doing the things they hate. They're doing the things. They oversee it. They're still steering the ship, but they're still involved. They could probably go on vacation, but not for months. They're making enough. They probably have bought their house. They. They're comfortable, but it's not growing. They're not. They're not. They don't have that passion for, like, when it's starting, you want to economize and make more and be excited. They've just gotten very comfortable and they're just in the routine. It's the homeschool. I Homeschool for 14 years and people be like, how do you even do it? My kids would make me nuts. And I said, my kids are with me. They've been with me every day the last 14 years. I taught them not to do the things that make me crazy. Like their annoying behaviors, I got rid of. Now, that doesn't mean they're not annoying to other people, but the things that bother me, they stop doing the things that are okay. With me, we move on. It's not perfect, but, but I made it comfortable for myself to be able to exist in that ecosystem. And that's what business owners do, right? They get rid of, they outsource the parts that they hate. They focus on the parts they like. Eventually they get pretty comfortable. They get tired. They have enough money, they have enough money that they just stop growing it. They stop paying attention to like raising prices and being really intentional about where they're going. They stop budgeting, they stop, stop setting a goal for this year because everything's just running. But the problem with that is that when, that now they think, oh, I'll just sell. And they recognize that, wait a minute, I'm not going with the business. I'm going to have to sell this to someone as a job because someone's going to have to come in and do this job. I can fix it and spend a year or two fixing it and replacing me and professionalizing. Even with fractional, even with AI, even with automations, even with eliminating pieces that are not profitable, some people are just doing things they've always done without any rhyme or reason of why they keep doing it. Like it's not even. There's a story years ago about this guy. He's now the CEO of a big company, but when they started, he always went and bought the snacks for the break group. He just. And so one Saturday he got a text like, oh, we're out of, I don't know, whatever, Fritos. Right now he's a CEO of a multi, multi million dollar business and he's still orchestrating the snacks. He just never delegated it. And he's, this is ridiculous. And it took him like, oh, why am I still doing this? But he just was so comfortable doing it. He just always did it. And so there's a lot of things for owners, especially after 34 years, that they're just still doing that don't even serve them anymore. They're just, it's just part of their routine. And so when they start to think about selling, they have to start thinking about who would want to do this. Because most of the time they don't want to do it. Most. Nobody's going to pay them to take over their job. But they would pay them for consistent profit. They would pay them for a finely working machine that had consistent flow of customers, consistent delivery, consistent cash flow, and, and was growing. They would pay for that. And so shifting from, I'm comfortable in my business and it's given me a nice life to Something somebody would want requires some changes. And I think that's often why a lot of people still will decide after they start to become educated about exiting, they start to think, oh, I don't want to do all that. That sounds hard. I'll just close it. But the problem with that is we have this silver tsunami coming and we're in the process, right. Of all of these baby boomers who are in their 70s, who have had all these businesses, I think the estimate is 12 to 15 million of them. They all are going to need to sell to retire. And if they all close, what happens to our country? What happens to the community, the corner store that's been there for 50 years, the legacy candy stores? Like, all those things, like, what happens? Because once you close, it's like it never existed. It leaves a vacuum. And so that's what kind of gets me excited about talking to people about this and encouraging them that it's not that hard. Like, especially with AI now, you could automate so many things. Like, it doesn't have to be this laborious thing that's going to take you a decade. It doesn't have to be. I did in three months. And so I love that. I don't know, I just love the idea of it. And I love that, like, Cody Sanchez's idea, right, about connecting, like, people buying, becoming owners again, that it doesn't have to be that hard, but how much easier it is to sell when it's fixed. It should have some value add. You don't have to fix everything, but it shouldn't be a job.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's awesome. You mentioned Cody. So the reason why my goal is 2 million is because there's a million. And I doubled that goal because I just, I love her content so much that when, for me, it's a subliminal message to myself that when I watch her content and like how she delivers and markets to people and brands herself, that I have to be twice as good or put in twice as much effort to even remotely come close to even trying to make the impact that. That she's making. So that's why I said it 2x, because every time I see your video.

I'm like, wow, time to step it up.

Amazing. Okay.

I need to step up. That's right. Exactly. Well, and I want to be Cody on the other side. Like, I. I was in Russell Brunson's program for a few years and I. One of. One of his directors I was meeting with about exitable and stuff, and he just said, you want to be Cody Sanchez. But for sellers, you want to say hey, and whether that's connecting it. And I have the great opportunity that working with all these business owners who have businesses and that when they make them even more valuable, I could connect them with thousands of buyers in the community. Like what if the end prep them for creative terms? The reality is most people do not get their full amount up front. Creative is very natural in this world. And so what if you could prep them in the interim for that so that they can have a guaranteed sale. Right. And that they could set the price or the terms, but they can't set both. What if you could teach them that as part of the process as they're building it up again, not like you said, not to fix everything to leave some opportunity for improvement, but to make it at least not a job that piece. And so. And what if you could guarantee that I'll find you a buyer 100%. Would you do it then? Some people are comfortable and they don't want to and that's okay, that's their business and get the right to that. But at least make an educated decision about it. And your people could be buying these businesses, your 2 million, right?

Absolutely, yeah. When I think about a lot of businesses that I look at because I'm actually a CFO and we've done three acquisitions last year and a half and a lot of different companies that I look at, some of them are mom and pop businesses that do really well. But if you look at especially like a non asset based business that's like service based. Let's just take an H Vac company for example, where they don't really have a whole lot of assets. It's really more performing a trade service. If that company is one or two employees and that company is generating, let's say 200 grand of profit a year, that seems like an attractive opportunity for someone to buy. But the entire value of that company is in the seller who's now leaving. So what is going to happen to the company exactly after you step in?

It's hard to find replacements for them. I just was actually looking at one this week for somebody just to like someone in the owner's club community. And I won't say his name so I don't blow him up. But he was. He's really interested in this H Vac. But it had three brothers who own it and they inherited it. So they didn't even build it. The dad did. They inherited it. 3. And I said they're comfortable. They grew up in it. So they know stuff. How are you going to replace those three key positions? You're going to at least need two per person. And the value is in their connections, who they know in the community, who they know with the other businesses, who they've been friends with and playing golf with for 50 years. When they go, how can you be sure it's going to continue? Right. And I would have done a hard pass on it just because it's too risky and finding people who in the trades to replace them is difficult. Staffing is huge right now.

Yeah. I think one thing that you could do, you mentioned talking about prepping them for creative terms. Like if you have a mom and pop company like that, one thing you could do is say, hey, you need to be realistic about you're probably going to have a major earnout tied to you selling the company and you're going to have to stick around, whether that be a consulting role, something you're not going to just walk away and be like I'm out, see ya. You're going to have to stick around for two years.

It depends how good of a job actively help. It depends on how good of a job they do, right. If they professionalize, like the easiest way you go from 1x to 4x is just make it professionalize. In other words, have a fractional C suite that runs it like it doesn't have to and you still own it. But replace yourself, get it stabilized like again, you still have the connections but you integrate somebody new to help. You integrate fractional people at least part time to help with that. It's very difficult when people are used to dealing with you. Like you said it, it's going to not translate. You have to be really smart on who you pick because if they don't like them, they're out their loyalties to you. And but if you professionalize over a couple years and they acclimate while you're still there, the likelihood is that you can start to divorce yourself from it. Right. You don't answer every call, you don't set, you don't show up every time. You still could be in the community. Right. Still have golf with them. But maybe you're not owning it, right. But you write, you have to be so strategic about it and you're right, it is going to be earn out. Especially if you're involved in any way you're going to be there. But the other part of that is wouldn't you want to because your money coming your seller, finance, that's only dependable if the business exists, the business continues to make profit, then you should get your money. But if you like mine, where my partner, like she broke the systems, I had to go back in and fix it. Right. The money stayed about the same, but the systems were broken. Right. So they sell to somebody seller finance. And they don't set them up and they don't help them to make sure have the benchmarks of what has to be. And they don't have the experience and they don't help them to see what. Where it's broken, what the red flags are. Then likelihood of them getting paid long term is pretty small. Nobody wants to sell it on seller finance and have it implode.

Yeah. And it's not like real estate. You don't have an asset you can take back. You're. And you have a promissory note. Maybe you have a UCC1 filing. But if the business has gone to zero, what does that UCC1 filing worth?

Absolutely nothing.

And then if you have a personal key, if they've now imploded the business. Is that word correct?

And that's. Did you ever hear that story about barstool sports, Dave Portnoy? It's a big Boston thing.

I vaguely heard of that.

Basically he sold it for like hundreds of millions of dollars. Barstool sports was like a commentary. But he was the main personality, whatever. But he sold it to some big conglomerate. They spent a billion, I don't know, half a billion or something ridiculous to buy them out. And a couple years later, they had just virtually destroyed the company. So they gave it back to him. So not only did he get the money on the front end, but then he got it back. So he owns it again. This happens in seller finance a lot. It just. You have to be really smart. You can't just take any offer. Which is why most owners. I want all my money up front. I'm like, good luck. That's a. We all want that. But that's a very nice dream. And if you built a better business, maybe that could happen. But also I'm, I have one client right now that is selling. She has a very nice business. She built it herself when she was 56. She's in her early 70s. She's tired. But it's a very nice like she profits really strong and. But she really wants her customers to be taken care of. So she doesn't want to sell to private equity because she'll see that they'll just destroy it. So she really wants somebody to come in like she is to Introduce them to everybody, to connect. And so she, her exit plan is more strategic. Yes, she has to get herself out of a lot of the details, but the reality is she has to find somebody that's going to be likable like she is because she's the deal maker. She's the one who goes in and solves all their problems. She's the one who goes in and figures out how to make it work. And that skill is with AI could be transferable. But what if she chose to sell to somebody that wasn't very likable? And because personality is much a part of it, she just has to work a little hard and she has to be a little more patient about who she's going to replace with her place herself. And she knows she's going to have to do some seller finance, but at least she's being smart about it, is my guess, my point. Like, she recognizes I need to sell, I want to sell, and I also don't want to see it get destroyed. So I'm going to be smart and plan. And that's the thing. Most of us just get to a place like something. The reasons people sell is like divorce, health, right? Retirement, change of passion. A lot of people just sabotage their own businesses because they're excited about something new and they stop paying attention to it. Right? So there's a lot of reasons people sell. It's not all retirement. It's just a third of the current small businesses are the ones that are going to be. Those are all the baby boomers own most of them. And why you should have no problem with your 2 million is that there's so many for sale and not enough people to buy because their generation's the big generation and ours are just getting smaller and smaller. So it's an interesting. We're just at an interesting crossroads and I find it all fascinating. And seeing AI and how it's changed things is such an opportunity for sellers and buyers really to automate. That's how Google and all these big companies have been able to have record profits and lay off hundreds of thousands of people because they just replace them with AI and whether that's right or wrong, listen, if I could replace my candy girls with a robot, I sure as heck would. They don't get sick, they count money, they show up, they don't cost me, they're not pains in my neck, they're not mean to my customer. Wouldn't we all? I'm not so tied to. I like that when you find a great one, they're great and they make everything easy. But when the finding that one, at least for me, over 18 years, has gotten harder and harder. You know, when you think about all these mom and pop Main street kind of businesses, they're the ones that will strike, struggle, right? I don't know. I don't have all the answers, but I sure as heck hope to help at least a million of them. So maybe two.

There you go. How can people help you the most?

I. Number one, if you have a business, let's talk about your business and what you could be doing to plan ahead, right? Because my goal is to help them develop and implement exit plans. Not be the seller, not be the broker, not any. I just love to see business owners win. Because the thing is, you might want to sell right now, but if you fixed your business and it was giving you 4 to 500,000 a year plus, would you sell it? I like this idea of playing in this in between zone, right. It's already started, it's already foundational. They have consistent customers, they have systems, at least some, right. They're making money. What could you do with that? How could you keep it, enhance it, scale it, all that good stuff. So if you know somebody, we all probably know somebody who's thinking about selling in the next few years, whether they're your parents, whether they're your neighbor, whether it's a local store that you love that you don't want to see. Because what's going to happen is that all of these Main street businesses that people love are going to just start disappearing. They'll just retiring, sale, whatever, liquidation closed. And a lot of them close just quickly. Like one month they're there and you re you see them and they're like, how's business? It's great. Everything's great. And the next minute they're gone. And you're like, what happened? And it's often shame, right? They don't share it, but they just. Or they just get tired or somebody. Like where my candy store is now in Mecca Ville. This is my first one in Charlotte Metro. The lady that I was looking at her space, she got cancer. And she was a florist shop, had been here a long time, but she was single, didn't have employees, didn't have anybody. Like she got really sick quickly and that was it. And so the record store where I am went into that and I took over the record store. But like it happens, we just think we all feel like we're invincible, but we're not. And things happen. We have a Car accident, we, whatever. So how can they help me if you know somebody send them my way. Have a lot of free resources. The biggest thing is to make some plan. If you don't have a plan, you are planning to fail. And so the other statistics. So I love these two statistics because it just makes your brain hurt a little bit. Number one, up to 85% of listed businesses never sell. 85%. So if it was 15,000, that would be, I don't know, 12 million never sell. Okay. That's the listed. Sometimes the broker's the problem. Most of the time though it's a job. So those are your statistics. But the other one that pay shares a lot of is that 92% of small businesses in this country never reach a million in revenue. Never. That doesn't mean over time, that's annual. So if they, let's just say they made the million, their value is probably, if they're lucky, 15% profit. Their value is probably 150 to 200,000. It's not a lot of money for a life worth of work and. But most people don't know that, right? When we think, most of us think business owners are rich, right? They just do. Oh blah blah, blah, right? They have staff or they went on vacation or whatever. But the reality is they're just scrappy and are figuring it out. And most are not rich, which is sad. So anyway, those two statistics I think are really helpful for people to think about. When they think about businesses that they love, businesses that they support, businesses that are in the family or neighbors or whatever, it's just something to think about. They probably won't listen and that's okay. But you never know where the opportunity is. And the other side of it now, like I started working with Benjamin a little bit and other OC members who are looking at businesses is I can help you decide whether or not to buy the business. Right. Whether there's inherent problems, whether where the opportunities are. Because again I'm still doing that, right. I'm proving my case study. So I'm still in it. I can tell you where things are hiding for sure. So reach out. That's my big thing.

Awesome. Awesome. How can people reach out and get in contact?

Known as the Tracygun everywhere I'm in on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, all the things, right. My candy store is called Life is Sweet. I would love it if you would like and follow along and watch the journey. I did that this year. I never thought most owners are or operators are independent. Like we don't think who can we partner with? We don't normally think who can. Who could solve my problem. We just know we have to figure it out. And so for this year, like, I raised funds. We're hopefully closing in fractional this week. Like, I raised funds to help me to go faster. That was brand new for. I've never asked anyone. Like, how cool is that? And then finding partners to help me run things, like, I've already hired people but never asked or looked for partners. That's a different. It's just a different mindset. And that's one of the things in this community it has helped me. I was sharing with Casey the other day. You're slowly breaking my brain of my independence. Right? Because it all falls down. Right? Everyone's throwing up. I have to figure it out. Nobody's stepping in to figure that out. I had two managers before I moved to Charlotte. Guess what? Both of them left. So guess what? I'm back managing long distance. Right? On the phone at 10 o'. Clock. That's what happens when you own things often revert back to you. Things don't always get fixed forever. You hope that they will, but if there are people related, probably not. So anywho, so you can follow along on Life is Sweet, which was really fun and I was grateful for the opportunity and that people wanted to follow along and buy into this dream I have. That was validating. Right? Sometimes as entrepreneurs you're. You don't get the like the report cards saying you're doing a good job or the annual review saying yay, good job. Right. You got all 10 stars this year. Usually you're just like in it and you're like, this sucks. And then you feel have a good day and you feel woohoo, I'm awesome. You're doing this. But there's not usually a grade which is helpful. So that was really nice for me this year for between Pace and Matt saying they wanted to invest and then all these other people who did invest. Like, it was just really nice to see and, and feel. So I'm really grateful. So follow up.

Amazing. That's awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I really enjoyed it and looking forward to seeing how you and I can.

Match up our members. I love that. And I'm gonna have to change my. I'm gonna have to change all of my documentation everywhere now to be 2 million so match. Because you know what? You can help them start and I'll just help them finish. That's all. I just found my lead flow right here.

Awesome. Thank you so much again. I appreciate the time. And hopefully a lot of people got a lot of value out of listening to you and your all your experience. That's amazing.

Thank you. I really, this was really fun. I got to learn a little bit about you, too, so thank you for that. And I'm looking forward to being able to help people be able to exit their businesses. So thank you so much for the chance to be able to share. This is my little. You can tell I get excited about this. Like, this is my passion project, and that's what it never should be. Yeah.

So exactly. Yeah, you should be passionate about it. So that's amazing.

Thank you again. I really appreciate the time.

Likewise. All right, we will see you next time, everyone. Thank you for tuning in.