Join host Laurie Barkman, The Business Transition SherpaⓇ, as she celebrates four years of inspiring conversations and life-changing insights on the Succession Stories podcast.
With over 4.5 million companies and $14 trillion of business wealth at stake in the next decade, Laurie’s mission to guide entrepreneurs through their succession journeys has never been more crucial.
Laurie unveils The Endgame EntrepreneurshipTM Masterclass, designed to guide entrepreneurs through the complexities of business transition. This comprehensive online course offers video lessons, exercises, and a supportive community to help you maximize your business value and plan for a meaningful future.
With millions of businesses at a crossroads, there’s an imperative to go beyond exit strategies. It’s about creating meaningful legacies and embracing the emotional journey of letting go.
What’s your entrepreneurial endgame?
Explore how to maximize your company’s value, plan for a fulfilling future, and achieve your own inspiring succession story.
❤️ Show us the love on Rate This Podcast: https://ratethispodcast.com/successionstories
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BUYERS BUY ON THEIR TIME, NOT YOURS. WILL YOU BE READY?
Learn more about the Endgame Entrepreneurship Masterclass and build with your exit in mind.
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My Links:
🌐 Website: https://TheBusinessTransitionSherpa.com
⏰️ Meet With Laurie: https://thebusinesstransitionsherpa.com/connect/
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📘 THE BUSINESS TRANSITION HANDBOOK:
Get a free digital copy of “The Business Transition Handbook: How To Avoid Succession Pitfalls and Create Valuable Exit Options” by author Laurie Barkman:
https://thebusinesstransitionhandbook.com
TRANSCRIPT:
“Welcome back to the Succession Stories Podcast. I’m your host, Laurie Barkman. Each week, we explore how founders and CEOs are managing from transition to transaction.
The show is sponsored by The Business Transition Sherpa, a strategic transition and exit planning advisory for entrepreneurs and founders. This is a special solo cast. I’m super excited to share a couple of announcements.
The biggest one being the announcement of The Endgame Entrepreneurship Masterclass and Community. So, so excited to talk about that with you. And also to celebrate the four-year anniversary of Succession Stories.
Whew, that’s a lot to pack into an episode. If you’re a listener of the show, you’re probably thinking, hey, wait, where’s the music? Where’s the introduction?
And this is a solo cast kind of unplugged. I thought I’d be a little bit different today and just strip it down. I was thinking about the old MTV when Nirvana went on and how good that was and how unexpected and a vibe that was just authentic.
And here we are. So it occurred to me that would be a little bit fun, a little bit different for you. And I hope that you can feel the excitement that I have sharing these two things with you.
So again, why are we here? I wanted to share two big milestones for us. The first one, of course, being the show’s birthday and achieving top 2% of all podcasts across the globe, which is super cool.
And to thank all the listeners and all of my guests for helping to make that happen. And my production team, of course, it takes so much effort to put the show together. And it means so much when people reach out and let me know how much the show has helped them and connect.
So with the Succession Stories unplugged, I also want to recognize that there’s kind of a learning we can all take from what we’re doing. It’s good to take a pause, take a look at the big picture. And we all like best of lists.
So I put together a best of top four lessons learned on this journey doing the Succession Stories podcast. Over 170 episodes at this point. You know, I’ve asked everyone for their favorite quote.
You’re probably used to me asking that towards the end of the show. And I would say for the majority of the years doing these interviews, the number one quote has been from Teddy Roosevelt, former president Teddy Roosevelt. And it’s known as the man in the arena.
And what’s really interesting about this quote, I think, for entrepreneurs in the context of how it’s mentioned is it’s kind of like a battle being an entrepreneur, how tough it is. And people don’t really understand, it’s easy to criticize, it’s easy to critique. But until you’re bloodied in that arena, you don’t really know.
Gosh, that feels kind of negative, doesn’t it? It feels like there’s this weight on their shoulders. And what I started to notice in the last year was a bit of a pivot on the favorite quote.
And it’s coming from Maya Angelou, which is that it’s more emotional based. People will forget what you said, what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. Wow, what a contrast.
So on that note, taking it to Succession Stories and my lessons learned, here again are the top four things. And I’ll recap after the four. So the first one is listening.
Listening is a skill that we all need to practice. In school, we learn how to write, speak. You know, stand up in front of a group, play instruments.
But how often do we take a class or learn how to listen? And I think doing this show has helped me learn how to be a better listener. And I’ve applied it in so many different ways.
It’s a muscle to exercise, right? And I think doing these interviews, talking to people, really trying to understand and empathize at the same time, being entertaining and having a good show for you, I’m learning and I’m trying to apply that. So that skill, I’m using with family, with friends, I’m using a course with clients.
I think it’s made me a better and more empathetic listener and active listener. And so I want to ask you, what can you do? What can you learn?
How can you apply to be a better listener in your life and really show that empathy and ask questions to gain clarity? The second top thing that I’ve learned is that diverse stories inspire diverse learnings. And as a show host, I’ve really seen so many different types of experiences, talked to so many different types of people from all over the world.
And my roster of conversations is diversity of thought as well as backgrounds. And I think being intentional of having a diverse group of people, men and women, and again, a global footprint of guests has been really exciting. It’s helped me learn so much and I think bring content to you from all over the world, helping to share different perspectives.
One of the things that I wanted just to share as a fun fact is that the podcast has listeners in over 30 countries, which I think is pretty cool. Shout out to Canada, Ireland, the UK, and Australia for some of our top countries outside the United States. The third thing that I’ve learned is that the topic of business transition is resonating and growing.
Over the past four years, I’ve seen so much growing interest in business transition planning and it’s no wonder. Over the next 10 years, over 4.5 million companies representing $14 trillion of business wealth are at stake. $14 trillion.
That’s a huge, huge number and 4.5 million companies. So there’s a lot at stake and as we’ve talked about in the show, so many entrepreneurs are not prepared for their succession or they’re prepared for their future transition. So I’m on a mission, right?
I’m on a mission to guide entrepreneurs to create their own life-changing succession stories and many people have reached out to tell me how much they appreciate the show and my book, The Business Transition Handbook, and their videos and different things that we’re doing to put content out in the world and help educate about why this is important and what work we can do now. We can’t do exit planning when it’s isolating, it’s too late. Along those lines, I definitely see some patterns and themes.
One is the importance of having a transition mindset. The other is looking at your company through a buyer’s lens, taking that outside in view, punching above your weight class when you want to be acquired and having that story really nailed down about why you should be punching above your weight class. Having the right advisors by your side, not doing this by yourself, you didn’t build your business by yourself, you’re not going to transition it by yourself, but definitely creating that team around you.
As I said, and I’ll say it again, so important, you can’t do exit planning when you’re exiting. It is just too late. There are definitely mistakes to avoid.
There’s opportunities to capitalize on. Again, the biggest thing that I’ve learned from entrepreneurs on this show and off air is that everyone wishes they had started sooner. It’s a big reason why I do this show.
It’s a big reason why I wrote my book. Now it’s a huge reason why I’ve created a masterclass course. It’s an online course called Endgame Entrepreneurship, and it takes the book to the next level.
It is strategic transition planning in video form, and it’s hopefully something that’s going to help so many entrepreneurs and founders around the world, certainly in the US and around the world. It’s designed to be your Sherpa, right? I am with you along the way.
I like to say that on this show, and it’s another example of how we’re doing that. The course is comprised of three different courses. I should call it the masterclass is comprised of three different courses.
And the content flows is everything we’ve covered on the show, but so much deeper and broader. And so the three different courses are going to help you understand that personal transition, the financial transition, what to do to maximize value, how to understand what are those risks and opportunities in your business, and then ultimately planning for your future transition. There are over 70 self-guided videos and more than 40 exercises and 10 different assessments that you can download and customize and use for your own learning.
So I’m super, super excited about it. The other thing I wanted to mention about the masterclass is that I realize it’s not just about the course and the education and the tools. It’s a big part of it.
Don’t get me wrong. But as I said earlier with the Maya Angelou quote, it’s how you feel. And I want you to feel supported.
And so with the masterclass, we are including a community. So you have a community of peers to ask questions. And I’m staffing it with experts so that we can be with you along the way if you have questions.
It’s also included for your first year with the masterclass is group advisory. And the group advisory is a huge value. It’s bonused in for this first year, it’s a $6,000 value.
And we’re bonusing it in because I want you to have that support, that extra support of group advisory sessions. And we’ll meet monthly to answer questions and take deeper dives. So super, super excited to introduce you to other business transition experts and to be supported by community of fellow entrepreneurs who are building with the exit in mind.
How do you learn more about the masterclass? You can go to my website, which is the businesstransitionsherpa.com/course. And I will, of course, have that link in the show notes.
So that was a big number three. A lot of learnings there. The fourth and final learning is that I want to inspire action and connections.
All of the episodes on Succession Stories are typically about action. And certainly, the Business Transition Handbook and The Endgame Entrepreneurship Masterclass, it’s all about action. What to do?
What should we do? Having a strong bias for action is the ethos of this show. So one of the things that I want to do better, though, is I want to connect more with you, my audience, the listeners.
“nd podcasting is obviously a one-way channel. So I really want you to reach back out to me. I’m excited to put good in the world and even more excited when good comes back.
It’s kind of like big connection boomerang. So I want to make sure that you have a way that you feel there’s a way to connect back with me. The best way to do that is on my website because I have all kinds of different options of how to connect with me.
So if you go to thebusinesstransitionsherpa.com, connect, click that big green button in the upper right corner. You’ll see there’s all different ways to connect with me, including scheduling time if you want to talk one on one. So where are we?
In summary, I’ve shared four things that I’ve learned over the past four years as the host of Succession Stories. One, listening is a skill that we all need to practice. Two, diverse stories inspire diverse learnings.
Three, the topic of business transition is resonating. And four, I want to inspire action and connections. So it takes a big intention for you to prepare your business and yourself.
There’s no one magic wand to maximize business value. It takes us rolling up our sleeves and working on it. But if you really do work on it and work on your meaning, working on maximizing your meaning and your purpose after the transaction, you will experience, I think, more of a likelihood of feeling success versus feeling regret.
And that’s the other side of all of this, is creating life-changing succession stories so that you can transition on your terms. Going back to the Maya Angelou quote, as listeners, I hope that you feel appreciated. I appreciate all the positive reviews, newsletter signups, social media follows.
All of those things are amazing and awesome and I thank you. I’d love to hear from you. What questions can we tackle on the show?
And what other feedback might you have for me to help improve the show for you? If you want to talk privately about your company and succession challenges that you’re facing, go to my website, thebusinesstransitionsherpa.com, slash connect and you’ll be able to schedule some time with me. So again, I’ll put all these links in the show notes for you.
I just want to say cheers to four years. I’m super excited to meet you in The Endgame Entrepreneurship Masterclass and Community. Let’s work together to create life-changing succession stories.
I hope that today’s episode resonated with you. What actions will you take as a result? If you want to grow, sell or transition your business, our strategic transition planning process provides clarity and objectivity on the big questions that may be weighing on your mind.
Make an intention and take the next step. Set up a complimentary consultation with me to discuss your goals at thebusinesstransitionsherpa.com. That’s thebusinesstransitionsherpa.com.
