Freedom to Build, Risk, and Begin Again: A Fourth of July Message from Julie Keyes

Speaker A: Poised for Exit is the weekly show for business owners and advisors who want smarter strategies, stronger companies and better exit outcomes. I'm your host, Julie Keys, Award winning certified Exit Planner speaker and lifelong entrepreneur helping private company owners build value, plan well and exit on their own terms. Every exit has real stakes. That's why Poised for Exit brings in top experts to share practical insights that help owners grow value, reduce risk and create stronger outcomes. Now, let's jump in.

Speaker B: This is Andy Cosemba, President of Calhoun Companies. We understand that selling your business is a big deal. Since 1908, Calhoun Companies has been confidently connecting buyers and sellers from small family shops to large corporations. Our expert brokers walk with you and guide you every step of the way, whether you're looking to retire or simply for a fresh start. If you're curious what your business could sell for, or if you're ready to start the process, head to CalhounCompanies.com for a free and confidential consultation. Calhoun the Confident Choice for Buyers and

Speaker C: Sellers My name is Todd Crowell and I'm the President of the Twin Cities Exit Planning Chapter. If you're a business owner and advisor and want to learn more about the world of exit planning, you're invited to visit the Twin Cities chapter of the Exit Planning Institute. You can expect top level education delivered by subject matter experts at every monthly meeting. Grow your network and draw from the learning that could be a game changer for your business or your practice. There's no pressure to become a member, so come and see what the buzz is all about. Our meetings are held the second Wednesday of the month, 7:30 to 9:00am See the show Notes for more information and registration links.

Speaker B: Exiting your business is a big deal, both financially and emotionally. I'm John Marque, Certified Exit Planning Advisor with TrustPoint. We help business owners transition smoothly on on their terms. Our focus is on maximizing value, minimizing stress, and giving you confidence in what's next. Whether you're selling or passing the torch, we make the process seamless. Start planning today@uh trustpointinc.com that's T R U S T P O I n t I n c.com

Speaker D: Most business owners wait too long to plan their exit and it can cost them. By the time they're ready, tax saving opportunities may be long gone. The CPAs at Josh Knutson Co. Help you plan early so you can maximize value, minimize taxes and exit on your terms. With over 100 years of guiding ownership transitions, including Buy, sell, succession and ESOPs, we know the best outcomes transpire from planning ahead. If exiting your business is a future possibility, start now. Visit jakcpa.com that's jakcpa.com hello and welcome

Speaker A: back to Poised for Exit. This episode is going to be a little bit different. After six years of weekly episodes and countless conversations with business owners, advisors, entrepreneurs, uh, founders, buyers, sellers and experts of every kind, I thought it was time for me to sit down with you one to one, and just share some reflections of my own entrepreneurial journey and maybe some lessons that I've learned and things I've learned from other business owners in a, uh, little short episode here, as I also reflect on what the 4th of July holiday actually means for me. Because as we approach as a country, our 250th birthday, I find myself thinking a lot about freedom. Not really freedom as a slogan, but freedom as a, uh, responsibility as an opportunity. Freedom as something we inherit, something we benefit from, and something that we're called to protect. And for those of us who have started businesses, built companies, hired people, taken risks, made payroll, served customers, failed and tried again, maybe even sold or prepared to sell a company, we understand a very specific kind of freedom. The freedom to take an idea and do something with it. The freedom to say, I see a need, I think I can solve that. The freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail and the freedom to begin again. And that's really not something I take lightly. I would have to say that I've been around in all of those categories and all of those places in life many times and, and, and it's okay, right? So I just want to talk about business ownership. I want to talk about why I became a business owner and about the fact that I believe that it's motivation, belief, integrity and ambition that have really buoyed me through this many year process, really, as well as being an independent thinker. One thing I've learned that is about life actually, is that it's more of a journey than it is arriving. I remember being at an event once a long time ago. I was like in my 20s and the speaker said, life is a journey, it's not a destination. And how many times have we heard that? Right? Uh, a gazillion times. But it hit me because I'd never heard it before. Like I said, it was a long time ago. So there's no arriving. Right? But we're always trying to arrive. What are we arriving at? So that is a question that I have been asking myself. And when it comes to business ownership, that's a journey too. So When I look back, I can see that becoming a business owner was not just a career decision. It was a way for me to capitalize on the ideas that I had, the work ethic I had, the motivation that I had, and the desire to do something impactful on my journey for our employees, for our family, our customers, our community, and our vendors. And we did that. And I've been thinking about why, um, I became a business owner in the first place. And like I said, I think that belief has a lot to do with it. I had to really believe that my skills and my capabilities and my willingness to work hard could create some value. And I'm sure that every entrepreneur knows that same feeling, right? You know, um, that moment when you're standing there on the edge of the unknown and you know that there is no guarantee. You're doing everything you can to weigh the risks, make a good risk mitigation, uh, decision about whether to m. Move forward or not, but you can't ever guarantee it. You can do what you can to eliminate, uh, some risk and make good, calculated decisions, but you'll never guarantee. And that's kind of the excitement of it, right? There's really this question of, do I believe enough? Do I believe enough to take the next step? Do I believe in myself enough? Do I have the motivation? Am I okay with not having all the answers before I move forward? Am I okay, as, uh, Zig Ziglar used to say, without all the lights being green before I leave home? That was always a line of his that would stick with me over the years. Motivation is another thing. I think that it's an interesting thing because I think it changes over time. And I think that my initial motivation in becoming a business owner was actually driven more by a desire for independence than anything. And I am still an independent thinker. However, I'm also a collaborator, as many of you know. And I learned the importance of that over time and in many different situations in my life. So evolving all of this into, like, an enterprise, right? I had to prove something to myself that I could do it, that I could do something that most people would never do, and that even those who had most would fail. Because we know what the stats are. Most people never start a business. And that's okay because not everybody's cut out to be an entrepreneur. Not everybody is wacky enough to be an entrepreneur. Right? Um, but also have a staying power. That is tough. That is really tough. I would say, too, that some of the motivation for me, because I formed more than one company, there was another company that, uh, more than one company that kind of came together and. And they. They fed off of each other, if you will. But it. But it was born out of a, uh, dissatisfaction I had over the competition and how they were handling this particular service that was related to what we were doing. So we owned two different title insurance companies. And, uh, I was in the mortgage banking business for many years before we founded our title insurance companies that we ran for about 23 years. And I was seeing what was coming across the settlement desks of the closers that we had working for us. And I did not like the lending terms. I did not like the way they were gouging people in fees. I thought that we could do a much better job. And I had this background, so. So I just said, okay, we could do a better job. We are going to. We already have a captive audience. All these builders we're working with and realtors and, you know, uh, investment property experts and things like that in several different counties. And we were having a good run. So I said, let's figure this out and do something that relates to what we're already doing. So we did, and it was successful. And our clients that we were already working with were happy that we did because we gave them a better alternative. And so there's this thing called integrity, right, that you do what you say you're gonna do. So I didn't just, like, put it out there that I was thinking about doing this thing. I actually went and did it. And that particular endeavor was successful, but not every endeavor was successful. So, you know, you can lose money, um, and you can make it back. You can lose a customer, you can find another one. You can make a bad hire, and Lord knows I did. Um, but then you can correct that, learn from the mistakes and hire better. But if there's one thing I know that if you make a mistake such that you lose trust, the road back is really long. And I don't believe that I ever lost trust from any, like, client or customer. Um, in. In the business world, I don't know that I ever lost trust, but I probably did in my younger years with, you know, not really aligning with integrity, like when I was in high school and things like that, like, yeah, I'll be there, and then not show up, that kind of thing. But there's people that still do that today in the business world. Right? So it just, you know, underlines the fact that we don't ever want to go there. It's. It's integrity is so important. That it's just about like landing on your principles, sticking to your principles regardless. Right? So not cutting corners just because nobody's watching, uh, paying attention to the small compromises before they become larger ones. And, and then when it comes time to exiting a business, making sure that you're doing it for the right reasons, not just because you want a liquidity event, but because you have a family that you're trying to support. You have families who, of employees who work for you and so on. Right. Because we've talked about this before. The ripple effect of a good or bad exit is far reaching. And those buyers out there who are buying your company are not just buying your revenue, they are buying the story behind your revenue, your story. They're buying your systems, of course, but they're buying your people, your relationships, your customers, clients, vendors, the community that you're in, your reputation. We talked about the intangibles numerous times. That's where all the value of your company is. They're, they're buying the quality of your financials and they're also buying the trust that you've established in your industry. So if that foundation is shaky, then that means the exit planning process is not going to be so good. Now, I would have to say that for me, in my exit experience, I didn't have the best advisory and I didn't know that. I didn't know that. So I definitely could have had a better experience had I known, but I didn't. So that was one of the reasons why I became an advisor. Started out as business coaching and then expanded to exit planning and then expand it to larger companies and now developing AI for many of our clients, which is amazing. But of course, ambition has a lot to do with that, right? To get up and get moving and keep going regardless. And so I think ambition, blind ambition, of course, probably need a little bit more calculation around that. Um, I've never been a fan of that term, blind ambition, but sometimes if we know everything about what might happen, we might not take action. So sometimes a little bit of ignorance is okay, because if we knew then, right, maybe we wouldn't have taken that step. Maybe we wouldn't have taken that action. I mean, I look back on the things that I lived through in my years as an entrepreneur. Whoa. Um, yeah. And as they say, many times the situations that we have in our personal life or our, uh, professional life, our problems, if you want to call them that, our issues are so many times self inflicted, self created because we didn't do enough of our own due Diligence or because we second guessed what our gut was telling us, Whatever, right? So when it comes to ambition, for me, it doesn't have anything to do with the ego or being greedy. Um, it's really about the willingness to build something, um, using my innate ability to do that. Well, like everyone has. Every single human being has innate abilities, whatever, they are right. To grow, to improve, to take responsibility, to see possibilities where other people see limitation. Ambition, when it's paired with integrity, is super powerful. And I paired that myself with being an independent thinker. Collaborative independent thinker. Business ownership, I believe, requires all of that. And I was also never one to be a follower. I didn't like to follow the crowd. In fact, when I was in high school, I just detested the clicks. I couldn't stand that there were all these groups and they were so exclusive. Um, and I did my best to make them unexclusive, if that is a word. I kind of had friends in all the groups. So I had friends that were jocks because I was in sports. I had friends who were burnouts. I went to the parties. I had friends on the honor roll because I was on the honor roll. I had friends who were nerds. Cause I was a nerd, you know, I mean, I was all those things, and I didn't care. It didn't really make sense to me to segregate myself. Um, and I think that that's really how I became collaborative. Because I learned that I needed to learn from people who knew things and knew how to do things that I didn't know how to do. I was hungry to learn. I wanted to be around people that were different than me so I could learn from them. And that has really served me well in the work that I do now, of course, but even before that. But I've always been attracted to people that know stuff, that know things that I don't know. I want to follow around the smart people. And that has been a good practice for me. And I'm. The older I get, the more I realize what I still need to learn. Um, what I still don't know. Right. And so I consistently will ask the questions that I've asked for years, like, how can I deliver better? How can I deliver better service? How can I continue to remain profitable and competitive? How do I manage cash better? Um, how do I recover when something doesn't go as according to plan? Which has happened lately over the last 12 months or so, both personally and professionally? So, like I've always said, I'm like a cat however you throw me, I'm going to land on my feet. And it may not be pretty, but I will land on my feet. And when we talk about the, um, numbers, right? When we talk about how to run a successful business, grow a successful business, it's the numbers that tell the story. And if you don't know the numbers, then you're flying blind, right? That cash flow is oxygen. Um, another lesson that I learned in my years in business was that you don't have to pay cash for everything. I just hated carrying debt. But I learned a tough lesson when I had a dry spell and I didn't have a lot of cash left. So then I had to go out and get a line of credit. People, this is. I'm in business for 10 years at this point, and I did not have business line of credit. I didn't want to have the debt. And my husband at the time wasn't really leading the company. He was the practitioner, he was the lawyer. He, you know, he was doing the technical work. And so he just let me kind of. Kind of run the company. And I didn't always make the best decisions, but he wasn't always very helpful at helping me make decisions either. So we were a pair. Um, but we did some of the right things. We had a good run. I mean, you can't be in business for 23 years and be doing it all wrong, Right? One thing I learned also was just having the right team. And in fact, I could underline that and emphasize that with every single client that I've worked with since I started consulting 13 years ago or 14 years ago. Um, having the right team is everything. Our people are everything. I had good employees, but I also had people that drained my energy, confused my clients, um, didn't put a good foot forward for our company. And it's really tough to unravel that and get that trust back. But that's what it's about when you're a leader, right, you're never going to have all the answers. You're going to do the best that you can, make good decisions, learn from the decisions. Right? Um, and take responsibility. So. But not necessarily responsibility over what you don't have control over. That was another tough lesson. I felt like I had to have responsibility for everything. But you can't take responsibility for the actions of another person, even if they work for you. You can apologize, but you can't own it. On the flip side, though, you know, if we are facing reality and we are trying to become better leaders, because leaders create followers Then we have done something good by the foot forward that we lead with, by our example, by doing what we say we're going to do. I was thinking about this not too long ago. When it comes to followers and, and being in a leadership role that you. Things that you can't control, like I was just saying, well, you can't control your followers, right? They are following you voluntarily, and you must be doing something that gives them the impetus to follow you in the first place. So if you're doing things and you're trying to become a thought leader and you're trying to do something that's trailblazing and you want people to follow you, then do things and say things that give people the desire to want to follow you. And it's usually a match in the why. If you've ever watched the Simon Sinek video, um, that he recorded, I think it was 2009 at Puget Sound. It's one of the most downloaded videos of all time. On it was a TED Talk. One of the most downloaded TED talks, I should say. Amazing. Watched it a gazillion times, and I learned something from it every single time. But it's really about matching my why with your why. Why do you get up in the morning? What is your purpose? Why do you believe what you believe? You and I, if we have that same shared belief system and same motivation and same purpose, then we're going to do great things together. But when it comes to exit planning, of course we talked about collaboration. It isn't just about me or just about you. It's about us. Accountants, attorneys, dealmakers, exit planners, bankers, business consultants of all stripes. No one does it alone. No one builds a practice alone. Not successfully, anyway. No one builds a business alone. And no one can exit alone. We need our team. That was a tough lesson for me. That was a really tough lesson. Um, you know, I didn't know what I didn't know. And if you're a business owner and you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, gosh, I can relate to what Julie's saying, because I know that I need to get started. I just don't know how to get started. It's really one step. And what could that step be? Well, one step is just listening to the show. That's a step. Reaching out to some of the people that I've had on the show as guests, reaching out to me. Downloading my ebook, um, ordering it on Amazon. The full third edition is on Amazon right now. You could order that. Um, connecting with the guests, the specialists that I've had on the show, those are all really good steps. But the number one thing for you, if you're a business owner and you're listening to the show, is to assemble a really solid team. Your advisors are everything. And a successful exit is not an accident. You really got to have the people who can direct you, right? Um, get you ready for that buyer, get you ready for the market and the timing so that you're prepared. Your financials are cleaned up, your processes are documented, your leadership is developed. And yeah, it's like the biggest financial decision and transaction many times of your life. But you're not only selling your assets, right? You're also letting go of a chapter in your life. And one of the most overlooked, as we know, as we've talked about in the show, is next act planning. What are you going to do next? It's underestimated the amount of emotion that goes into the exit of a business, and I would not discount that at all. If you're an owner and you're thinking about it or you're getting ready yourself, what's next? Right? So not only spend time, like, determining what is your business worth and figuring that out with the help of your advisors, but who are you going to be when you're no longer the owner of the company? That question matters more than anything, really. That's going to drive a successful exit for you. Why? Because you're going to have something to look forward to for what's next. Because you're an entrepreneur. There's going to be a, uh, next. There has to be. You've acquired all this knowledge, all this wisdom, all these capabilities. What are you going to do with that? Who could benefit from it? You're not going to benefit from it if you're not sharing it, but you want to share it in such a way that it jazzes you m. That it gives you something to look forward to, something to get up for in the morning.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker A: The goal of being poised for exit, which is why I named this show Poised for Exit, is to not only be ready for that transition, but also to be ready for what's next, to be ready for life, life after business, whatever that is going to look like for you. I learned some things about myself, and I think that entrepreneurship has probably been one of the toughest teachers. I've mentioned some of those lessons already, but what it did is it really taught me that being vulnerable is important in allowing yourself to be vulnerable, not to be weak, because they're not the same Thing, but to be vulnerable, to allow people to see in and not have a wall around you, um, to be able to reach out and ask for help when you need it, which is really tough for people that are trailblazers, right? You're an entrepreneur, you're a trailblazer, you're an independent thinker, you've done a lot in your life. Why would you need help? Because you do. And it's okay. Smart people ask for help, right? We know that we're good at these things, but we can't possibly be good at everything. So, um, building the confidence and being able to do that and having the humility to do it I think is essential. That's where you really separate, um, a decent exit from an outstanding, significant exit. Okay. And I learned a lot about growth and a lot about letting go. And one thing that I've had a problem with in my life is I have a lot of ideas and they're not always good, but I'm going to keep having them. And sometimes my ideas are good and sometimes I have too many good ideas. And so deciding and working with my team and the people who know me best and work with me to decipher what stays and what goes, what goes in the parking lot, what do I wait on, what do I move on right now, right? What's that calculated risk? And how do I derive that? So those were, I should say, I'm way better at it now. Um, but in the beginning, uh, that was really tough to know, like what path to take and you know, a squirrel comes by and oh boy, there's another good idea. So, um, reflecting on this, reflecting on life, um, the whole arrival thing, you know, the next milestone, the next goal, the next chapter, all those things really matter. But uh, it's the juice of life in the people and in the relationships and in the hard earned wisdom that has really made my story and given me a feeling of accomplishment and success. And am I a multi millionaire? No, I'm not. Um, but I'm doing okay. And I think about the value of the things that we have in life that we never paid for. The most valuable things that we never had to pay for are the things that, um, that we take for granted, right? Things like the, the freedom that we enjoy in this country. And I feel this deep sense of gratitude for being, being an American and, and being able to start something, right? We have the capability of starting something. A product, a service, a company, a movement, a non profit, a family business, a side hustle, um, that kind of freedom is Pretty extraordinary. And it's not common as we know. I think it's easy to forget about the gift of freedom and how hard won it's been, how important it is for us to protect it. Because in our country, we still have division, we still have injustice, we still have problems that need to be solved. So I'm, um, not saying that my gratitude does not involves, um, you know, like, truth, because I know that we still have work to do, but human beings have work to do. There is no perfect human being, there's no perfect country, there's no perfect life, and there's no perfect business. Um, we can love our country and celebrate freedom and still work to expand its blessings, right? We can honor the past and we can still learn from it. We can be proud and we can be humble at the same time. And in fact, I think we have to be proud and humble because we're unfinished and we've come a long way and we still have a long way to go. And that is not a contradiction, honestly. Like I said, it's a human condition. That's who we are. We're flawed, but we're trying. We do our best. Um, freedom gives us the room and the space to be able to get up again and move again and try again. It gives entrepreneurs the room to risk and citizens the room to speak and to vote and build and go to church and serve and disagree and start over. So it has to be protected, this freedom thing, not just by the military, not just by lawmakers and institutions, but. And they matter huge, right? We wouldn't be where we are without the protection of the people who have given everything for us to have this freedom. But it also has to be protected by us as citizens living with integrity, by business owners who keep their word and leaders who tell the truth, entrepreneurs who create opportunity, the trailblazers who shaped this land. So I just want to touch on really quick some people that, uh, have gone before us, women actually, who have made some amazing strides and left their mark on America. And I was reminded of these people and I knew them before, but I was reminded of them through the Hallow app. I have the Hallow app, if you are familiar with Hallo. It's a prayer app. And it's the most downloaded prayer app in the world. It's amazing. And they did this special American Heroes Week, um, on the Hallow app. And so every day they feature a 10 minute snippet on the life of a hero. And one of them was, uh, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, native Ah, American woman. Amazing story. Mother Cabrini. Mother Francis cabrini. Italian immigrant. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. She was the first born American, um, Saint canonized here and so many others. But I wanted to feature a few of the ladies just because I think it's cool that, um, what they did. Their names are certainly worth remembering. Um, and they were faithful and they were builders. They didn't necessarily build big companies, but they built lots and lots of value through schools, hospitals. Um, they built bridges across cultures. Um, they built lives of service. They built groups and communities of people who served. Um, Saint Kateri reminds us that the story of this land did not begin in 1776. She was a Native American. Um, she became religious and her own people abandoned her. Um, but she plowed through. She stayed faithful, um, and faithful in a lot of different ways, and was a hero, um, the native peoples, you know, with their families and traditions and languages and communities and all of that sacred dignity. Right. Um, her life reminds us that we need to remember that freedom, um, must include the reverence of the stories of people who we often overlook or misunderstand. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding in the world right now. I think our society could use a dose of understanding and a dose of empathy. Mother Frances Cabrini from Italy. So she, um. If you saw the movie, great. If you didn't, I'm gonna just give you a snippet on her too, because she's amazing. She was Italian, like I said, and she really wanted to be a missionary. Like, her whole life she wanted to be a missionary. She had no money. Um, she had a small group of friends. They were all nuns, and they wanted to go to China, and they wanted to evangelize. And she went and got permission from the Pope, and the Pope said, no, I want you to go West. He said, there's a lot of our Italian, um, family. Right. Um, that are being mistreated in America, and I want you to go take care of them. And so she did. So she came to America and she served the poor. Poor, poor, poor, vulnerable, marginalized, living in the slums. Italians who are immigrants who came here to try and find a better life. And, um, so she. She's amazing, too. She built, um, some amazing hospitals and schools and, um, you know, with lots and lots of opposition. And she wasn't even 5ft tall, and she was really sick herself. Okay, another really cool story. Elizabeth Ann Seton, um, perseverance, conversion education. Like, she founded numerous schools. She lived through enormous loss. She lost children. She lost her husband, she lost her wealth. Um, she raised her kids by herself and then she helped to shape education in the United States like no one else. She reminds us that one life rooted in faith and action can ripple far beyond what everyone else might be able to see. And that's really true for entrepreneurs too, isn't it? We may never really know the impact that we make in this world in the businesses that we have founded and run and operated and grown, but we have. So it isn't just about the exit and having good ripples there. It's about the startup and the growth and all of that that goes along with being an entrepreneur and facing, facing the music. Sometimes it's wonderful, sometimes not so wonderful. But when you have a team that can back you up and have your back through the whole process, not just exit, then you really have something. So it's been six years since I launched this show. Maybe you already know that. Weekly episodes. I'm feeling super grateful. I'm grateful for the listeners, I'm grateful for all the super guests I've had on this show, the wisdom that they've shared, the entrepreneurial stories that have been shared, um, lessons learned that people have shared. It's really been super valuable, which is why I believe you're here, why you listen to the show, why you share it with your clients and with your colleagues. And I really, really appreciate that. Please keep doing that. I'm grateful for this journey and it's going to keep going. And I'm grateful for the American experiment. We are still an experiment. After all. 250 years is nothing compared to the countries east of us who have been around for thousands of years, not hundreds. So let's not fall into a trap of thinking that we're invincible, because we are not. You know, we know, we all know that there are plenty of adversaries out there who are working every day to take our freedom away from us. We don't want that to happen. I love free enterprise. I love working with business owners, and I'm happy that you're here. Um, we remember, as we celebrate with gratitude, 250 years, we remember all those founders, the immigrants, the natives, the entrepreneurs, the workers, the families, all the people who helped to shape this country. And I hope that we can recommit to protecting our freedom that has allowed us to dream and build and risk and fail and begin again and create something of value. So to every business owner listening today, I say thank you for, for taking the risks. Thank you for creating jobs, solving problems, carrying responsibility that most people will never see or understand. And when the time comes for your next chapter, I hope that you are not only prepared financially and operationally, but that you are prepared personally for that next act. Because the exit is not the end of the story. It's actually the beginning of another one. This has been poised for exit. Thank you for joining me, and happy birthday, America. Sam.