3 Years to Exit: A Masterclass on Preparing Your Business for Sale

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we're talking about how to build a business that creates real value and long term freedom with Scott Snyder. Thanks for joining us today, Scott.

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it, man.

Yeah, for sure. So can you take, you know, two minutes, give us a quick background of who you are, what you do?

Yeah, man. I would say that. Lifelong entrepreneur. I started my first business when I was 16 years old at the seat of my geometry class. It was a landscaping and snow and ice management company. We're from Cleveland, Ohio. You know, just a childhood dream. Right. So that turned out to be a real business and we eventually sold that business. Nine years later. We had like probably a dozen trucks and double that and employees. And I kind of wandered for a little bit trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. What I didn't realize is I was kind of having my first exit planning lesson. I had totally let my business identify who I was. And then I kind of came into business with my dad. He was a, he is a certified exit planning advisor. And what we realized quickly with dad is that he created this methodology that kind of united the professional advisory space so they could come around business owners and help them grow value, have more freedom and eventually, and eventually exit for high value. And so we ended up buying our company today, which is called the Exit Planning Institute. And we have 11,000 professional advisors that hold the certified exit planning advisor credential. And we help them go to business owners and at the end of the day, help business owners go from what we call very successful year over year to long term significance while by driving value into their companies and then aligning their business, personal and financial goals.

Wow, very cool. So you went through this sales process and they were like, okay, well what do I do now? I was a owner. And like, can you walk me through that? Because I think a lot of people don't realize that you have so much identity wrapped up. And then like after the fact, it's like we're builders, you know, like that's what we do.

Yeah, we're like. And I was like a craftsman, right? Like you're, you're very hands on, very owner operator business. 94% of American companies do less than 5 million in revenue right through the, the businesses that we use every single day. And that was me. And quite literally I had like a, I had, I had one job my entire life. I was a janitor at an all boys high school. And it was like it was like, I should have been on that show Dirty Jobs, right?

Yeah.

And that's when I threw the land, the, the lawnmower in the back of the trunk. And then 10 years, nearly 10 years later, I was by a synergistic buyer, so a competitor that said, scott, we like your equipment, your people, your process. Have you ever thought about selling your business? Now, luckily, this is what my dad did, right? So I was like, no, I haven't, because I was pretty young, right? I was like 24 years old. And I was like, no, I haven't. But I think this is what my dad does. So I leaned into dad and at the time, what's interesting is that today we know that it's an alignment of business, personal and financial goals that really get us that freedom and really is like the fulfilling part of exiting your company. Dad was just learning that side of it. At the same time I was going through my exit. So I had a successful business exit. But to your point, what I realized and kind of walking around as a 24 year old guy after is that I had totally locked up my identity inside of my business. And I was to the point, you know, where I had the name on the side of the truck. When the Snyder name comes off the truck, you're kind of like, man, you know, I went to school for this. I started this at the seat of my geometry class. Like I'm like really hands on. I like landscaping, like making something look beautiful, installing new landscape. Heck, I even like plowing snow. And then it was all gone. And so that was my first exit planning lesson, man, that I totally let my business identify who I was. And my dad gave me a good lesson back then. He said, scott, don't fall in love with that business. Fall in love with business. You're a natural entrepreneur. And so I didn't really know what that meant until we found our way into the Exit Planning Institute. And I was able to take really a passion for helping build, I would say, transformational experiences. So if we laid out a whole pool in somebody's backyard and then we came back six months later and saw the family enjoying it, that was to me a transformational experience for that family. And we did that work and we helped that all come around. Today at Exit Planning Institute, we're helping professional advisors have better, deeper and more holistic relationships with business owners. And now having and helping business owners successfully exit. So that's also a transformational experience. So whether it was the, you know, the khaki and polo shirt mowing lawns or the suit and tie and you know, educating advisors, you know, that was my passion. And business ownership and entrepreneurship was another. So yeah, it was a wild ride over those couple of years where I was trying to find myself, but once I did, it was a, it was a great experience.

Yeah, for sure. I love the. Don't get, don't fall in love with that business. Fall in love in business. It's the game of business is business and transformation happens all across the spectrum, whether it's landscaping or not. I'm curious. So you mentioned 94% of businesses are under 5 million.

Yeah.

So let's say someone like, like our audience is like 1 to 10 million. Home service, let's say someone's 1 to 5 million. What would you recommend to help them prepare their business to eventually exit at some point? Because you don't have to be a hundred million dollar business, you can be a 5, $5 million, $4 million.

You're absolutely right. Again, you're right in the, right in the American business owner. Right. Supporting our American economy and society. So I think if I'm owning, if I, and I can tell this from my own experience too because I've gone from $200,000 up to $30 million in revenue. And at that point I can remember the 1 to 5 and 1 to 10 days. And maybe the listeners can feel me on this a little bit. We're typically kind of hitting a ceiling, right. Like we're the jack of all trades. We know our craft, but we're also doing the legal work, the accounting work, the sales and marketing work. And you're feeling a little stressed and you're trying to figure out, look, look, I do want to grow, but like I gotta figure out how to relinquish some control and really optimize myself. So I would lean. My advice to them would I would lean hard into a concept that we teach called the four intangible capitals. So the foreign tangible capitals are this their structural capital. So that's all your standard operating procedures. It's your process, it's your how to. It's the thing that make your, makes your company run lean and optimizes your employees time, including yours. Then I would lean into customer capital, which is pretty straightforward, right. It's our customers. The thing at the 1 to $5 million base, and this was me too, where most of the companies were doing business with me, they weren't doing business with my company per se. Then you have your human capital, which is all of your employees. What we're kind of Asking there is, are they loyal to you or are they loyal to the brand, the service, the product, the customer? The culture, which is the 4C is called social capital, which is the culture and rhythm of your business. And when you think about that as a business owner, particularly even the 1 to 5 million, you go, yeah, man, I call that running a business, right? Like I care about optimize, I want to optimize, I want to scale. People are a critical component. Customers drive profitable revenue. And in a smaller company, I'm probably kind of the heartbeat of that rhythm and culture. But the problem with all of that is that it all relies on you. And so there's a short term win and a long term win. As you start to manage those four Cs, you actually decentralize yourself away from your company and get yourself into a seat where you're like, I love doing this. So if you're the plumber and you want to do plumbing work, well, we'll get you out in the field and do plumbing work. If you actually are more passionate about customer relationships and sales, we'll get you out of the plumbing work and you can start selling to people that need plumbing work, whatever that is for you. We're going to get you into that kind of right seat. You're going to drive profits up, you're going to retain more people and everything's going to start really moving along. However, at the same time, by running it that way, you're not only creating a more successful company, you're creating a more significant one. So 80% of a company's value is tied to those four intangible capitals. So when you think about it, you're, it's a compound, it's really a compounded win. You're driving net profits up so you're more profitable right now and we could all reap benefit from it while growing a stronger company that trades at a best in class multiple. So you have higher profit and higher multiple equals higher valuation. And so it's a win win. I think most people, man, don't, don't think that exit strategy is business strategy. There's nothing different. The stuff that we're doing today in our business every single day eventually affect the, the value and exit of our company. And so my 1 to 5 million dollar advice is start managing your business not with just income in mind, but with value in mind.

Definitely. So the structural piece, the SOPs, I think to get to like 3 to 5 million and depends on the industry you're in, but like SOP piece, hopefully you have that in place and there's always room for refinement. The customer piece, I think like one to three, you're stopped being the salesman and then you have to have a sales system and you can ultimately like get out of it. But you might still be firefighting a lot of the jobs or like problem customers and stuff. And so you need to figure that part out. The human capital piece, I was just, it was funny. I was just on a podcast yesterday. The guy, he did 1.3, stalled out, then he went to 1.8 million and he did a jump and he did Mike Michalowicz clockwork where he took five weeks off.

Yeah.

And he was like, when I came back from that. Exactly. What you just said is what fell flat was the culture piece. There was no one that was a drum beat of the business. Like the business was still running, but there was no one that was like setting the vision or guiding it. How do you coach people to like do that? Because that seems so challenging. And I'm curious for myself too.

Yeah, no. So this is the way, this is what I do, right. There's probably multiple ways out there, but this is how we define. So I'm out of those four C's. People and culture are certainly my thing. Which actually makes it hell of a lot harder for me to decentralize and let somebody else beat that drum. Right. I'm telling dude, the stuff that we're about to talk about, right. Is not easy stuff. That's why we got to start now. Right? So point being is, so I look at people and culture in, in four ways. Number one, every company has to have some type of mentality. What do they believe in? Two, they have to have vision both short term and long term. So we need like that big 10 year goal, we need that three year vision, we need that one year strategy. And then those 90 day sprints, right? And then I would even challenge that people should be tied into the P L. Of the company so they understand how the whole thing makes money and how we all reap benefit. So that's, that's, that's vision. Two, you need a rhythm. So what's your cadence? What's your rhythm? Are we having weekly huddles? Are we having quarterly renewals? Are we doing employee satisfaction surveys? How are we understanding the beat of the drum? And then last for me, competitive guys. So one of my pillars is performance, frankly, I can have those three things, but if we're not actually performing, it probably doesn't really matter, right? We're doing Those first three things so that we could be held accountable and perform to growth, whether that's 5% a year or 25% a year, some form of year over year improvement, and year over year and year over year growth. Now, I. I lay those out for you because then if those are laid out and methodical, then we can start training people to run them for us. So my company, my. My director of operations is the one that runs rhythm and performance. Right. So he's up there. Like, I travel a lot for our business. Today. We do Monday morning company wide huddles. We got 52 people that work here, and he's running the show now. He just came into me actually this week and said, scott, you're usually like our champion for the quarterly renewals. These are like a half day off site where we kind of renew the quarter and. And look and project forward. He goes, I want to take those over too. And that's kind of hard because that's my one connection back to my people. Right?

Yeah.

But honestly, the business can't grow and scale if it's just always dependent on me. So you kind of got to relinquish that control and coach him a little bit on and what we have to do. And then I would say from the mentality and vision standpoint, it's really. It's really the. I would say the multiple drumbeater, if you will. There is our executive team, and then our leadership team. What I realized, man, back I had profound experience in 2020 and 2021, is that I had created a company that I thought was cool. We had 11 people working at EPI at the time, and we all go through this massive pandemic and this shift in the way of doing business. And I'm like, dude, we like, totally pivoted our company. Like, shouldn't we all love this? And you, like, look around at the people and they're all, like, kind of down. And I'm like, wait a second, everybody's making money again? And I seemingly thought this was cool. And they're like, yes, guy, you think this is cool? And so I realized, I call it like the we, not me moment, where I had built a whole organization, including core values, around me, not collectively we. So the vision and then the mentality piece is built collectively by the organization that really is led by the executive team. Now saying all of that, and I'll end this, that. That question with this is that there are definitely things. So the owner's probably sitting here listening to me say this and go, well, what if I don't agree? And I go, yeah, I mean there's definitely things every single day, walk up and down these hallways that I wouldn't do it that way or I don't even like it. Right. Like that's just not what I'm about to. Yeah. But again, if I'm building an organization that's about we, not me. It's, it's about the community that is my company. There's no way that I have the same vision or same general outlook on life that 52 people do out here at EPI, but there's something cool about how we all come together for the greater good. And so yes, you're going to see things at your own company that you don't like or you don't agree with. But the question is, are you growing? Are you retaining people and are your customers satisfied? And if the answer is yes, why do you care so much? Right? So, and that was like a profound moment for me. I learned all of that during our pandemic and it's been a five year journey for me, man, where it's like, okay, well we grew by 36% last year. We're set to grow by 48 this year. So something's got to be going right. Even if it's not necessarily what I thought I would have built the way in which I would have done it. Right.

So, yeah, I think, I think for home service business owners listening, it sounds like from what I'm hearing from you is you gotta build a leadership team in your business so that way they can hold this standard and then, then you have to give them the permission to build out this sync in your business of communication and standards and be okay with their vision might be different from yours and that's okay. And it's the we. What is the big dream outcome for everyone? And not just like, I want a cool business, that's lifestyle kind of thing.

Well, that's what I'm saying, man. Like if, as long as you have the vision. So like I, I'm certainly part of our vision and strategy exercise. Yeah. So if I'm still ticking to the, the main goals and then like that, that long term vision that we have and if we still all agree on that, I don't know if I really care. Like the stepping stone path that I, that we all create to get there, I just want to, I want to get there and have satisfied people and satisfied companies satisfy people and satisfy customers and frankly make some money doing it right. So, so yeah, I think that the Other thing that would be on my mind as we talk through this, that question I get a lot when we jam on this kind of stuff is, well, doesn't it cost you money? Like you're going to promote all these people in these leadership roles and they're going to mess up and they're going to, you know, and it's going to probably cost me money. Right. I'm going to say absolutely, yes. Right. Yeah.

This is me. This is exactly like how I.

So all I did, I just started putting it inside of the operating expenses of our business. I dedicated like 1% of revenue to mess ups. So it just, it was just felt better. Right? It was already, it was already planned where I'm like, well, that messed up. That cost me a grand. Right. Or that was a big one, that cost me $20,000. Well, now we kind of have a, a little purse for it. And yeah, I mean at the end of the day, it's taking away in the short term from, from profits of the business, but long term, like we don't dip into it anymore. So we've gone from 11 people in 2021 to, to 52 people in 2026. And I don't know if we, I don't think we dipped into that like, oh, crap moment bucket at all yet last year. Right. Is because it, it needed to be there along the way to start teaching, but once it's taught and running, it's not there anymore. Yeah. So. So then it just falls to the bottom line.

Yeah, exactly. Don't you hire people and then let them do their thing, but don't be the one that oversteps in and build a business just to serve you. Build a business to serve them as well. And a, and a culture. So I love that how. Let's say someone's three years out from selling. What, what would you recommend to them to like make this the most attractive thing to someone that wants to come in and buy it?

Yeah. So I would say start now. There's a thing that we teach called the enterprise value assessment. So the enterprise value assessment looks at your business from the outside in, from the buyer's perspective. And so again, as a business owner myself, we know that our baby is the, is the prettiest baby that there possibly is. Right. It's like if I show you a picture of my daughter right now, you'll be like, this is a, this is a beautiful young lady. Right. And you're gonna go, no, man, she's ugly. That's gonna offend me. Right. But the Fact of the matter is these buyers that are coming in, they only can see from the highest level. Right. They're not in the weeds yet. So they're gonna start critiquing your business. So we need to know what they know. We, we do that by looking at our business from their perspective through an enterprise value assessment. So if you're three way, three years away, it's game time. It's, it's game, it's time to start. You need to know where your business lies on a range of value. Then how ready is the business to be sold, how attractive is it going to be in the marketplace? And then how personally prepared are you for this eventual transition? And so you do that, it's going to give you scores and it's going to line you up so you can see where you are today and where you could go. And then the work begins. Right. You kind of thrust yourself into what we would call a prepare gate of our methodology. And, and this is where we're actively working on growing value.

Yeah. So what I can say, I went through this experience. I was at a 3 million dollar home service business. We went to 5 million, sold the private equity and the only prepared for this was a private equity search fund guy reaching out to us and us going to lunch and that's it, right. We signed an loi and I wasn't like I wouldn't get paid from this. I was the, you know, the director of his development, like leading the charge. I didn't know what due diligence was. Okay.

Of course not. Right.

I go into due diligence and I'm like this is terrible. I'm not even getting, gonna have any outcome at this at the end. And they' like picking me apart for everything. And I think it's like knowing where your bodies are and like having all your stuff tight. That's what I'm hearing from you.

I mean I, I, the enterprise value assessment does tighten all that up like in that enterprise value assessment and like an action item from that would be to do a pre due diligence project so you're not blindsided, Right. That had to be a hell of an experience. But if you rewind even more though, what I think you're saying, which I think is actually really the catalyst point is to get educated. You said, look, I didn't even know what due diligence was. Well, let me teach you what it is, right? So then before we even get to enterprise value assessment, maybe we need to take a step back, slow down to speed up and learn a little bit more about what this journey is like. Right. What is, what's the glossary of terms? How are businesses valued? What would, what, what, what do buyers look for? Just educate yourself. And it's not that we just don't know what we don't know. Again, I think as a lifelong entrepreneur, most of my business mentors taught me how to run a really successful company. They didn't necessarily teach me how to run a significant company, which is one that's highly valuable, ready and attractive and aligned to the business owner's business, personal and financial goals. So we don't know. We don't know. Teach me how to have a significant company before I go to market three years from now. And when you go to market three years from now, you're definitely going to have success. But now you know how value is driven and how goals are aligned. So you're going to be dangerous, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. You're not going to just go in and take an LOI and do diligent and go through this whole thing. You're going to have like, this is who I'm looking and I think would be the best fit for this business. And here's what I think might be, do I do an earn out? Do I not do an earn out? Like another burning point for a lot

of people, you know, I'm saying you're going to know if you get approached by that private equity group, you'll be dangerous to know, hey, maybe you should talk to my advisor about that. Right? Like I should have some representation or maybe even before that private equity offer shows up, you actually already know your options. Exactly. You already understand your ideal deal structure. You know who your buyers might be. That's the beauty of it. Right? If we're working on our exit right now, even though we might be three to five years away from exit, we have freedom and options. So right now I could take my company to my employees as an esop. I can, I could likely sell it esop, if that's right for me. But I could likely take my company to private equity. It's really just about what price do I want, what are the net proceeds I'm looking for and then what terms do I want? Do I really want to be locked up in a two year employment agreement with private equity? Maybe that's not for me. Maybe I want to be able to leave a lasting legacy by selling to my, my employees and making it an employee collaborative or management buyout or, or something like that so. But yeah, I think it's. Maybe the real answer is probably let's take a step back, get educated so that you do know what due diligence is, you know what an ally is and you know what that private equity person is even about to look for. Not to say that they're going to take advantage of you, but you just don't know. You don't know. It's like kind of buying a house, though. Selling a business is much more complicated. Like you got to be able to have the dance, you got to be able to get in the dance and answer and ask the right questions.

Yeah, I agree. You've been alluding to the business, personal and financial aspects of selling the company. I think so. The example that I went through where I sold 3 to 5 million, he was not prepared for the other side of it. Like he was out, you know, looking for jobs and then maybe trying to start, you know, like it would. And, and it was an exit that was multiple seven figures. That was like life changing.

Yes.

And I don't think that people talk about that piece. So like how do, how do y' all coach people? Yeah. For through those things.

So you're right, they don't talk about it. That's where the identity crisis comes in. And so I always start talking about personal planning with my own story. Again, I sold my business, Right. I sold my landscaping company and I was like always say high, high, low, low. So the high high was. I didn't know what the hell to do, didn't want to go get a job. So I went and played professional indoor soccer. I was a goalie for the team called the Ohio Vortex. I got in two games my entire life as a backup goalie. Right. Really successful two year old, two season career. And it was great though. I had access to trainers playing professional soccer, getting played to play, getting paid to play the game that I loved on the same, same path. I'm going through a horrific divorce. And so high, high, low, low, both of them stem back to. I had totally lost myself. And I just think it's crazy. It's just crazy to think that like the company you were, you were with, you have a multi seven figure exit and then you hate it and you're like, man, I should have never sold. I profoundly regret selling my business, man. Yes. And that's it. We didn't have that kind of personal discussion. So it's a lot more complex than we can get down in a, in a podcast. But it starts with an envisioning exercise. What do you want to do in 10 years? And who are you outside of your business, which that that process will lead to? Oh, what is my personal purpose? Something crazy like 78% of Americans walk through their entire life with no sense of meaning or purpose. Not to say that they have a bad life. They just don't know what they're kind of tied to. There's no guiding light. There's no framework to say like I want to say yes to the right stuff. And so, so once you find all of that, it'll give you a kind of a guiding light. Like I'm already turning 40 this year and I'm already looking to stuff that I want to do when I'm 50 and teeing up stuff. Small example was me and my wife bought 14 acres of land. We're going to build this dream house, real life. This was literally like six months ago. And in looking at the goals that we have laid out in the 10 year vision, one of them was to, you know, really grow my company, be an intentional husband, be an active father and probably some level of personal health that makes this whole thing go. You overlay building a house on this thing. And if any of the listeners have done this before, it's going to take some time even if you have a good general contractor, right?

Yeah, even working the land, you know.

And so I said, hon, I think we need to park that for a while because it just doesn't fit the life plan. Let's buy a house that we can get our family into and settled, get them into high school and then maybe we can think about in the next phase of life doing that. But even that small example is something, is that guiding light. It allowed me to say no to something because it was not in personal path. And what I think the kicker is, what's going to be shocking for perhaps listeners is that you start thinking about your business as a, as the most powerful financial asset in your financial portfolio and you think less of your business as just an operating entity that I show up to every day to do a pro, to fulfill a product or do a service. It just changes your perspective. So now I know the things I need to do in my business because I know that I want to go do some other stuff. EPI is not my entire life. For the next, you know, 30 years or 40 years of my life, there's probably multiple exits that I will go through and my business is powering different passions that I have. But it takes a deep investigation of all that stuff. That's why I like that you said, look, if I'm three years away, what do I need to be doing? And this is the kind of work that we need to be doing as owners because you're, you can have a great exit. Man, we can make a lot of money.

Yeah.

And then can you imagine like making 10 million bucks or 5 million bucks and being like, man, I hate my life. I'm like, wait, what is, wait a second. We're supposed to have freedom now. You got $5 million. You were doing kind of anything you want to.

Yes.

So, yeah, so.

So it sounds like from what I hear from you, like the, like preparing the business piece is those, those structural capital, those types of things will help you like from a tangible perspective. The personal side, you got to figure out your purpose piece. And then the financial side, are there exercises to it probably goes hand in hand. You want this lifestyle, so what is that going to look like from a financial perspective? Because if your EBITDA is a million dollars and you're about to sell this thing and get 4% of that, that's only $200,000. So like what are you doing? Right.

Yeah, what are we doing here? Right. So I would say this is where the personal and the finance, personal, financial come together. We call it the wealth gap. So I find that a lot of business owners don't like this touchy feely kind of stuff. Talking about who I am and what, what really makes me tick and the ten year vision. So let's put some numbers to it. So like what do you want to do? If they, if they asked me, you could probably see this helmet over my shoulder. I think it'd be really cool to own NASCAR team someday. It's on that bucket list item. If maybe not 10 years, but 15, 20, I want to buy into or own a NASCAR racing team. So if that's, if that's the plan, I probably need a few hundred million dollars to go do that. Right. So if you put that out there and say, okay, we gotta, in order to get there, that's my wealth goal. Say it's 200 million. We know that Scott is worth 5 million outside of the business today. So now we know that the business, that gap needs to be filled and I need $195 million. Right. Is that realistic? Yes or no? If it's, the answer is no, then we have to rework the plan. Let's bring it a little bit more realistic. Like today, I honestly, I live in a, on like a little farm town in Western, like west, west Greater Cleveland area in Northeast Ohio. And quite frankly, the, the real goal is, you know, I got three kids, I have an rv, have a little hard hobby farm. Like that's the kind of stuff I love doing any $10 million to power my life. I have $1 million of assets outside of my business, doing well for myself. And, and that means that my wealth gap becomes 9 million bucks. The next question we have then is, well, your biggest financial asset is your business, Is your business worth $9 million? So we look at our value gap and we find that no, my, my business is actually only worth $4 million today. So the question becomes is, do we want to change some of the life goals that we have or do you want to keep those life goals, hold the business for three to five years and drive another $5 million of value into that company so that we have a $9 million asset. One plus nine equals ten. And so that's the financial planning aspect and that, and it's not just powered by the business. This is why I think the core advisors and owners need, whether you have a $1 million company or $100 million company, you need a good business guy. You need somebody that really understands how value is driven, how companies are scaled. You need a personal planner, an executive coach, a performance coach is going to help you think through life. And then three, you need a personal financial planner. And so when you get a financial advisor in there, they can make this kind of thing tick for you. And so these become like your three core advisors that help you run life and business. And, but that's how we look at, there's obviously a bunch of different things that you would do inside of the personal financial side, but I think it all starts with a wealth gap conversation.

Yeah, I really like that way that you frame the difference of the gap between what you want. I see a lot of times like 5 to 10 million dollar business owners, their EBITDA 1 million, $2 million that they're take home. But then they don't know what to do with the money from a personal side. Do I take it out, do I invest it back in what's going to be that lever? And then because they don't know what they're shooting for and they don't know what the options are, so they just like, well, I'll just reinvest it back in, I guess, or I'll take it out and pay a bunch of taxes or something.

Exactly. Right. So yeah, we're trying to, yeah, if you start planning now, you will understand different tax structures, structures, different avenues. So if we want to do some gifting to the next generation or our kids, our grandkids, we can understand, we can understand that if you want to start a charity, we could do charitable work. And then like, yeah, and then your story about like, hey, am I going to go back to work, man? Like, I don't know if that's really the case. Right. Like, depending on what generation, we can go down a rabbit hole in generational characteristics too. But frankly, I think if you're a millennial or gen X or so, 28 years old till about 60 years old, you don't want to work like your baby boomer counterparts. Right. We're not trying to look for the 60 or 80 hour work week. We want to make enough money so that we can power multiple passions in our life. And so. But you will be going back to work. Wouldn't that be a real kick in the butt where you go, man, I just sold my company five years ago for 5 million. I'm out of cash right now and I got to go work at Home Depot. And you're like, wait a second, that's not really what I was trying to do at 55 years old now. It wasn't right. So that's why planning is critical.

Yeah. So how does your company fit into the things that we talked about? Does you have the three different advisor or how does that work?

Yeah, so a couple of things that I would tell your listeners. So if you're interested in what we're talking about, go to drive value.com so drivevalue.com gives you the how to guide about how value is driven and how goals are aligned. Then we're going to connect you with an expert advisor. And that's where my core business Exit Planning institute comes in. EPI represents about 11,000 certified exit planning advisors across the country. Our core goal for them is really to help them provide the advisor with four things. One, advisor development programs so that the advisor is consistently developing value acceleration knowledge so they can go help the business owner. Two, is research. So we're researching business owners so that we can always fine tune our skill sets and the services that we're offering. Three is content, content that actually is actionable and impactful. And then three, what we would call ROI driven relationships. What's going on behind the scenes as a business owner with your advisory group is when we start changing the conversation from income generation to value creation. Well, value is driven across all different kinds of functional advisors. And so the relationships have to be in unison and in harmony with all advisors. Right. Whether it's the guy working on the personal plan, the lady working on the personal financial plan, the consultant, the cpa, the marketing person, we're all speaking the same language. So developing relationships with like minded advisors is key. So we do that so that the owner can call up and say, look, I need to go to, I need, I, you know, I need an estate plan or I need a financial plan or hey, I just want to do this enterprise value assessment and, and understand my weak points, that we have an advisor here to serve you. And so our business EPI is really focused on providing the right advisor community to business owners.

Amazing. And then I would imagine it's like, hey, I think it might be time to look at selling your company or how are you feeling about this? And then like, let's sell the company. Then you know, let's. How are we going to go to market? Are we going to find a PE company? Are we going to do the synergy thing? Are we going to roll this up? We're going to do ESOP and then let's. What does that look like? And basically like walking them through that whole process so they're not on it on their own. Just trying to figure it out.

No doubt. When I, when I hear certified exit planning advisor, I think of a person that could do like three to four things for business owners. One, they, they, they are educators. They. What I say, what I love about a SIBA is they understand me. They understand me as a business owner. I think business owners are looking for relationships, they're not looking for transactions. Exactly. So they're relationship oriented and they're educators. Two, they understand how value is driven and how goals are, are aligned. And then three, they're masterful at connecting people and collaborating. So when you start to venture down this path, what are my options, how much my business is worth? What financial plan do I need, man, I need a state or a trust, like what's going on there. These people can help kind of conduct that orchestra, kind of captain that team for us as business owners. And I think I'd like to think that once the business owner has engaged one of our certified exit planning advisors, that they become one of your most trusted and valued advisors as a business owner.

Yeah, I love it. You said the website was dryvalue.com drive value.com.

yep.

Awesome. Well, Scott, thanks man. This has been great. I really, really enjoy talking with you, appreciate the openness and candor and it's cool that you have the story and went through it and then you're building this for people, so, like, it's such a good alignment, man. So good job.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Yeah, man. All right. Take care.

You, too. Thanks.