Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPLive: Planning Your Exit Strategy with Sharon Letcher | Uncut Version

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

Join Hala for a live Young and Profiting Episode with Sharon Letcher on Clubhouse!  Sharon Letcher is the New York Times best-selling co-author of Rich Dad Poor Dad and fourteen other Rich Dad books. She is also the woman behind the revamped Napoleon Hill Think and Grow rich series, and has advised 2 US Presidents - George W Bush and Barack Obama - on the topic of financial literacy. Sharon co-authored her latest book alongside Michelle Seller Tucker, Exit Rich, to help entrepreneurs build their business the right way, as well as fix their existing business so they can exit smart and exit rich! In this live episode Hala and Sharon are going to be covering how to know when to sell your business, how to assign a valuation, how to leverage Sharon and Michelle’s 6Ps to account for the added value of a business, how to target potential buyers and so much more! Sponsored by - BrandCrowd - Check out brandcrowd.com/yap to learn more, play with the tool for free, and get 73% off your purchase.   Mint Mobile - To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, and get the plan shipped to your door for FREE, go to mintmobile.com/yap  Jordan Harbinger - Check out jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations Constant Contact - To start your free digital marketing trial today, visit constant contact dot com. Woven Earth - Make Woven Earth a part of your night routine and save 20% on your order with code YAP20 on WovenEarth.com/YAP  Social Media: Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Follow Hala on Clubhouse: @halataha Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com Mentioned In The Episode: Sharon’s Books: https://amz.run/5HeL Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey everyone, it's Hala host of YAP, a young and profiting podcast, a number one self-improvement podcast across all apps and a place for you to listen, learn and profit. I've interviewed the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Seth Godin, Charles DuHig, Dave Asprey, and so many more bright minds of this world. You're tuning into a live episode of Young and Profiting Podcasts on Clubhouse in the Human Behavior Club, the biggest club on the app. And today, we're primarily discussing exit strategy, and we're joined by Sharon Lecker, financial,

literacy expert, and CEO of Pay Your Family First. Sharon is also the New York Times bestselling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad and 14 other Rich Dad books. She's the woman behind the revamped Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich series and has advised two US presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, on the topic of financial literacy. Sharon co-authored her latest book alongside Michelle Zeller Tucker Exit Rich to help entrepreneurs build their business the right way as well as fix their existing business so they can exit smart and exit rich. Planning your exit strategy is something we haven't yet covered

on yet and so I'm very excited to get into this topic and it's a super important one because according to Forbes, eight out of ten businesses will not sell, leaving many owners to close their businesses, or even worse, file for bankruptcy. And we young and profitors with our own businesses, or who are planning to start their own companies, eventually, don't want to be one of those eight who don't sell. And we'll learn why later on. So here's how today's session will work. I've spent a lot of time reading Sharon's book, Exit Rich and Preparing.

And so the first hour will be guided questions primarily by me. But if you do have a relevant question based on what we're talking about at any specific moment during the interview, feel free to raise your hand and then DM me your question. If it makes sense to what we're talking about in the moment, I'll bring you up to ask your question.

And I'd love to make this as interactive as possible so long as we can stick to the topic at hand. At the end of the session, we'll dedicate 20 to 30 minutes of Q&A with Sharon, where you can ask her any question that you want. So we're going to be covering a ton today, including how to know when to sell your business, how to assign valuation, how to leverage Sharon

and Michelle's six-piece to account for added value of a business, how to target had a leverage sharing in Michelle's six p's to account for added value of a business, how to target potential buyers and so much more. So without further ado, I'd love to welcome Sharon Lechter to the stage. Hello, Hala. I'm so happy to be with you guys. I appreciate you

the invitation and excited to have everybody with us. Sharon, it's super great to have you on the show and to be doing this live with you. I'd love to start with a little bit of your career story. You've been in this game for a really long time, nearly three decades in financial education, and you've written over 20 books. You've even been the advisor for two presidents. You are by every definition of the word and expert when it comes to finance. So I'd love to start with how you first became interested in the world of finance and entrepreneurship. Well, it's probably not

that elegant of a story, I'll quite frankly, I would really graze in a very lower middle class home and wanted more, wanted better. And I saw my parents, I grew up in a little house between my mom's beauty shop, my dad's used car wash and we owned rental properties that had to scrub out between tenants. And I swear I didn't want to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to be a sophisticated professional. So I was one of the very first women in public accounting and was quickly rising through those ranks.

But at the ripe old age of 25, I realized I wasn't in control of my own time that I was working incredibly long hours. And all of a sudden, my parents looked a lot smarter, and I realized that I had been given an incredible education that most people don't get. And that's understanding that instead of exchanging your time for money, which we are taught to do,

that we need to invest our time in buying, building, and creating income-producing assets. And so that dawning of recognition came up very early for me, and I started my entrepreneurial career. I started in Soldabumans magazine. I started, I met the inventor of the first talking children's book,

helped build that around the world with partners like Disney, Warner Brothers, Sesame Street. And then in 1992, my oldest son went off to college and got an Acredicard status first semester. He came home at Christmas asking us to bail him out and I was so mad at him. But I was even more angry with myself. And that was the moment, December of 1992, that I promised myself and dedicated the rest of my career to financial literacy, financial education, and entrepreneurship education. And I am still as passionate about it today as I was then. So, passport a few years, I launched the Rich Dad brand. Was there for 10 years, made the decision to leave that company, and that's when I had the call from President Bush.

And so I had the honor of serving the two presidents, as you mentioned, and then I also got the call from the Napoleon Health Foundation, which was a huge honor, because I had read Thinking Burritch when I was 19, and to be asked to step into the world's largest personal development brand after just having finished into the world's largest personal development brand after just having finished building the world's largest personal finance brand was incredibly just awesome. And so I've had four books with a foundation. They have three feet from gold out winning the double thinking for rich for women and success in something greater.

And it's just been an incredible relationship. And during that process, I continue to see how many people, they say they want to build a successful business, but they don't do what they need to to make it happen. And so all of my mentoring, all of my teaching, all the experience I've had, so we need to put something in a tool that can help people understand how to build a successful business. And that's when we partnered with Inc. Magazine to write Exit Rich. And it's just been an incredible journey.

And the book itself is just, as my friend Steve Forbes has, a gold mine for entrepreneurs. But I really, at the end of the day, somebody starts a business, you ask them. Number one, are you starting your business to work until the day you die one, are you starting your business to work until the day you die? Are you starting your business to build something successful that will be financially supportive of you and get your time back?

Well, everybody says that's what they're building, but very few people do what they need to to make that a reality. Instead, they end up creating a job for themselves, and that's what I'm dedicated to helping people understand what they need to do to create the systems and the foundation of their business so that it truly is an asset that's working for them. And it's not depending on you being the asset. Oh, I love that. So you mentioned exit rich, and that's really today's topic. It's all about fixing, growing, and exiting our businesses.

So I'd love to hear your experience and background in relation to building buying and selling businesses. Well, I think every business, even a piece of real estate, is a business. And the issue is, in real estate, your profit is on the buy, not necessarily the sell. If you get it right, and it has the right right cash flow and then you can appreciate over time, you have a double bonus. And I think it's really important for when you start something to understand how you're going to get out of it.

All right, particularly if you're going to business with someone else, talk about the divorce before you get married to them. And it's really important when we started the woman's magazine, it was always in the intent that we would get it to the point where a bigger magazine would want to purchase it. Same thing with talking books. We got it to incredible success. And then we had someone else come, they could take it to a higher level. When we were building the Rich Dad Company, we were publishing the Rich Dad books through my company, Tech Press, a company

of my husband and I owned, and we had such incredible demand. We had to start making a decision. Do we build a bigger publishing company or do we align with somebody who's already in that market? And so we align with Warner Books through a joint venture. So your exit strategy doesn't have to be walking away. Okay, what we did was we exited from the daily grind of getting the books done and partnered with a company that had those systems. And so we were able to focus and concentrate on the things that were really important to us. So you want to first, the first thing you want to exit is everything that you're doing because as an entrepreneur,

you're the jack of all trades. And you really have to make sure you have people on your team who are strong when you are weak and be able to delegate so that you can still be the one with your foot on the accelerator, driving and building the business. Totally agree. And I know that's one of the six pieces people, which we'll get into in a bit. But first I want to get into some introductory material to kind of get everybody warmed up to the topic. And if you guys are new to the room, you are tuning into a live episode of Young and Profiting

Podcast. We have Sharon Letcher on the stage. She is the legendary co-author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, as well as so many other accolades. And I'm joined with a bunch of my podcaster and clubhouse influencer friends who, if they have a question, they'll flush their mics, so I know to kind of turn it to them. And if you're in the audience and you want to ask a question, feel free to raise your hand and DM me your question. If it's relevant, we'll pull you up as well. So I thought a really good place to start was generational wealth.

a really good place to start was generational wealth. Generational wealth, I learned from your book, is most often created when a business owner sells his or her business at the right time to the right buyer at the maximum price. So I'd love to kind of understand the relationship between exiting businesses and generational wealth, and what typically happens to families when businesses exit or?

Well, that's a great question because what happens is very few people actually sell our business at the price they think they should get. And that's why it's so important to have the right advisors, the right mentors, the right people on your team to help you position your business to make sure you have all your systems documented, to make sure all your agreements are aligned. And that's what we go through in the book, excerpts, the things that you need to do, to really position yourself to get the highest price.

And many businesses never sell, because they're not structured appropriately. They haven't done what they need to, to really be a separate entity. They might have a separate legal entity, but they haven't done the systems. They haven't created the business so that it doesn't rely on me on the founder. And that's what's so important.

You create general generational wealth when you have a business that's running and it's going on, but you don't have to be there. It's continuing to generate revenue. And then you can get it to the point where you can position it and find the right purchaser that gives you that generational wealth is money that you can then reinvest where you want to be and have it set up as a foundation of wealth for your family, for your children, and your grandchildren, and that's generational wealth.

Yeah, and I know that when an owner goes out of business, they don't only lose their business assets. A lot of the times they lose their family assets. And I think something else that's really scary is that a lot of people are looking to sell their business towards the end of their business when their business is dwindling or their industry is kind of fading out and their approaching retirement

thinking they're gonna sell their business, but then it kind of goes all wrong. So can you talk about the problem with not having an exit strategy, especially when you're getting close to retirement age? Well, if you don't have an exit strategy, if you don't focus on something, it doesn't come to reality. And what happens a lot of times,

and it makes me sad, they're business owners that expect their children to become part of the company and love it and take over. And it's wonderful when that happens, but a lot of times kids don't want to take over the business and you've had this this wish and hope and dream that this business is going to stay in the family and it's shattered and you haven't you don't have a plan B. And so that's why it's so important to really think about what the exosstrategies could

be to support you. Some people start a business and their plan is to do an IPO. Well along the way, they have an opportunity to bring in an angel investor and they can make more money by not going public. And so you have to understand what your strategic plan is and be able to adjust it based on what's happening in the economy or within the four walls of the business. But is invariably an issue in families,

blood and money is a very difficult subject. And so it's really important for people to be honest and open and clear communication about what their plans are and what they want to create. And that's something that seldom happens in family businesses. And so the expectations, And that's something that seldom happens in family businesses. And so the expectations, and that's the word, that's one of the most dangerous words out there,

your expectations are not gonna be realized if you're not clearly communicating and having everybody driving the ship in the same direction. Totally, I totally agree. So I'd love to understand the benefits of going into the business with the end in mind. Because typically when everybody starts businesses, all you're concerned about

is pleasing your clients, driving sales. A lot of people are just going with the day-to-day motions and never thinking about what their exit strategy is. So why is this actually an important thing to do, especially when you first start your business? Well, those businesses are jobs. They're not really businesses. If you're actually truly building a business, you understand that you want to build the systems that go along with that business so that you can scale, so that you can move into different industries, you can move into different geographic locations because you've established the systems and you're not you're not building a business around personalities. And so a lot of people go into a business and where they

are using their expertise. And so their expertise can be in digital marketing. Well then you have to elevate yourself to becoming an authority and having people that are trained in what you can do so that you can leverage their talent alongside yours in order to scale. You have a system that you've created. Well, that system becomes your intellectual property. And the vast majority of valuation of businesses today is in the intangible assets, intellectual property, things that you develop online programs, books, systems, that you've documented that make you unique. Anything that is the essence of your competitive advantage is intellectual property. And that intangible asset can take you

to where you want to be in evaluation and the business. But when you go into a business and you don't think about how you want to exit, then you're just creating a job for yourself. Because you want to put a plan into place is to how, as you become more successful, how are you going to be able to leverage that success so that you can get some of your time back?

100%. It's so true. You just end up being a firefighter, worrying about the day to day, instead of looking at the long-term plan and having an end goal and being able to exit rich like you talk about. In your book, you have a very alarming statistic. You say that 90% of businesses listed for sale will not sell. So I'd love to understand some of the reasons why businesses don't end up selling.

Well, there's quite a few reasons and the one is usually people like, it's your baby, right? And so you think it's worth $10 million and the one is usually people, it's your baby, right? And so you think it's worth $10 million. And when somebody comes in to look at it, they realize that you don't have all your documents in order, so that drops the price. That a lot of the systems or a lot of the clients are there because of you as an individual,

not because of your business, so the price drops. And so what happens is that you end up seeing that you know your business isn't worth 10 million. Nobody's going to pay you more than a couple million for it. And so you choose not to sell. And a lot of times businesses that want to sell are at the end of their business cycle and they have not continued to innovate. As a business owner you have to continue innovating so that you are always on the cutting edge of your industry. So obsolescence is another reason companies don't sell.

Having a mess within the company as it relates to employees and agreements and not having that structured is another reason business is wrong sell. And so the whole concept of, and it's not just you know, exit rich is not just selling your business. Exit rich is creating something that can sing and operate without you. And so that you have employees in place. And what you're doing is you're exiting rich with your time. You may still own the company, but you've created something that's living beside beyond you and gives you your time back You may still own the company, but you've created something that's living beside

beyond you and gives you your time back. And so you truly have created the ex the exoplan can be an exit for you or for selling the business as well or giving it as we said to children or to employees taking over. Those are always for you to exit a business. Awesome. So I'd love to understand the flip side. What makes a business attractive for purchase? Well, the same things that make your business available for sale and attractive is what makes it available to purchase.

A lot of times you'll have buyers that are looking to expand in your geographic region. They might be competitors, but they don't have a footprint where your business exists. They may have a technology that they want to offer to your clients, so they see your database as being a very attractive purchase.

They may see that you're a different industry than they are, but what they have developed and what they sell is appropriate and can basically leverage it and scale into your industry. They can see a bottom line revenue that can add to their revenue to get them to where their innate goals are. They can see synergies between the two databases

so that they can merge the databases and have a larger footprint. And so it may very well be that is that you have a larger footprint. So it may very well be that you have a Hispanic company and they don't have a penetration in Hispanic markets. So it gives them the opportunity to spread their distribution. So all of these things are reasons for people to buy. Now, some people have found the cash.

They have the money, but they're looking for an ongoing operational company that checks the boxes for them in particular industries. And then they'll come in and they'll want to do their due diligence to see if you offer a business that is well run with the right people, with the right legal agreements with the right intellectual property protection, then that's something that they can be more interested in and the multiples will go up and the price that you get for your business. Thanks for explaining that. So I'd love to really get into your STGPS exit model. This was a

model you had in your book that you co-authored with Michelle Seller Tucker. It's called Exit Rich. And you outlined five steps. So the first step is determine your destination or desired sales price. The second step is to know your current location or the value of your company. The third is to identify who your buyers will be. The fourth is to know your time frame. The fifth is to determine your why. So I'd love to begin unpacking step one, the determine your destination. I'd love to understand why it's so important to really understand your desired end game and what your future sale should look like at the start. Why is that the first step?

Well, you have a vision for your life. You're gonna have a vision for your business. And so your destination is you want to work and build it for 10 years and then exit. Do you want this to be something that you build over 20 years, or maybe you wanna do an IPO, or maybe you wanna get to the point

where your children can take over. So you're gonna bring them up within the company. That's really determining where you want to go, and that's that vision, and being able to work towards it. Because if you don't have the vision, then you're going to be all loose, egoosey all over the place. It's really important to understand where you want to end up, and sometimes that changes, and then just certainly COVID had a lot of people

that were business owners. But it's really important for you to have that strategic plan, because that means you're serious about building an asset. Your business is an asset. It's a separate legal entity from you. And therefore, you need to understand what's the vision of where that interface kind of go. Couldn't agree more. And next, I want to talk about valuation because this is a topic that I get a lot of questions about and a lot of people that listen to my podcast want to learn more about how to evaluate a company. So let's spend a lot of time on this.

First things first, what is the industry standard way to price a business or to assign a valuation to a business? That depends on your industry and that depends on the purchaser because you can have a strategic buyer that's probably willing to pay a little higher value for your business. You can have a competitor that wants you to go away, so they're going to have valuation. And you can value your company. There's different valuation models. There's your book value. There's the intrinsic value. There's a present value. There's the discounted cash flow based on your revenue models. So all of those things determine what your industry looks for.

So you want to see what comparable companies within your industry are being sold for and what valuation methods are used for those. Got it. So I've always heard that it's three to four times the amount of EBITDA. Does that actually vary by industry? Yes, it does. I mean, with Brandon Dawson, part of Cardone Ventures, so this business of I think 71 times EBITDA. So you have all of it. It depends on so many different factors.

Obviously, sometimes the purchase price is based on sales, top line revenue. Sometimes people have no income whatsoever. The companies losing money and yet the value is in the billions of dollars because of the database and the technology. And so a lot of the faster and hard rules are flowing out the window based on the current market that we're in. Yeah, and I know there's so many different aspects to valuation. And that's why I want

to spend so much time on this topic. So let's talk about the intangible ways that you can assign valuation. What are some of the intangibles that might not be so obvious when it comes to evaluation? Well, the biggest one, if you think about 40 years ago, Fortune 500 companies were 85% value down. Bricks and mortar, 15% and tangible. Today is completely reversed. In fact, closer to 90% of the valuation is intangible, 10% bricks and mortar of Fortune 500 companies. And that's what really has allowed us to level the playing field and compete against the big guys. Because to level the playing field and compete against the big guys, because it's really important to understand that if you think

about Uber, one of the largest transportation companies owns no cars. Airbnb, one of the largest hospitality companies owns no hotels. And so the value of their companies, which are in the billions of dollars, is from the systems that they have, the technology. And the market share, you know, VRBO, Airbnb, incredible market share. And it continues to grow, but their value is totally intangible. If you have a new technology and you have patents, patents, or tremendous intangible valuation, copyrights, trademarks, your reputation, your goodwill, you heard the term goodwill.

Well, that's your reputation within the industry. Your competitive advantage can be a huge value piece in your determination of the intangible value of your business, your database. So many people today, and most of the people on this call, you have a lot of, you get really excited because of the number of followers we have on Clubhouse, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and that's fantastic, but you don't own those names. So what inherently important for you to invite them home, to entice them to come into your database because many times companies will sell simply

because of the database. And the footprint that you have within your customer base is highly attractive to other companies. And so you have to, part of that valuation is understanding who your potential customers can be and to make sure you position yourself to be as attractive as possible. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. and be, and to make sure you position yourself to be as attractive as possible. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.

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Well, for instance, if you have patents, copyrights, trademarks, those are definitive property that shows that you have patents, copyrights, trademarks, those are definitive property that shows that you have ownership within an industry and that goes a long way for a potential buyer that shows that you've taken the necessary steps to protect your innovation, to protect your position, to protect your competitive advantage. And so that's one of the first thing people want. I want to see what, you know, what intellectual property do you have that happens to be one of my superpowers.

I help people understand the value of intellectual property, not just to create it, but to protect it and then to leverage it. You can potentially I grew the rich debt organization around the world based on licensing, interested in, had 5,000 people working for me, but only 17 on my payroll because I was working with companies, Warner Books, Time Life. And so that type of valuation really spikes because you're using the leverage of other people's money, other people's time, other people's resources. And those license agreements are exceptionally valuable.

Okay, so my follow-up question to that is, how do we know when we have something that needs to be patented or a registered trademark? What are the signs that say that we should do that? If it's something that is uniquely yours, that you solve the problem, or you've, If it's something that is uniquely yours that you solve the problem, are you, you know, any time you solve a problem, you create an intellectual property. Anytime you create a document that's, you, is copyrighted, you have the opportunity to protect those things. But it's a, one of the greatest responses to your question is having the right mentor,

having the right people on your team. We work with all of our business owners that we mentor to your question is having the right mentor, having the right people on your team. We work with all of our business owners that we mentor and help them identify their intellectual property, help them identify how they can best protect it and then leverage it. Awesome. So my next question is really about branding. So I'm a marketer. I run a marketing agency called Yap Media and I get a lot of clients who own these big companies,

they're nearing IPO or planning to sell their businesses, and they come to me to level up their CEO's personal brand so they can exit at a higher valuation. So I'd love to understand the relationship between really good branding and market recognition in relation to having a higher evaluation. Well, certainly you want that recognition as it's just good PR, but at the same time, when you have not just an industry leading company, but an industry leading authority behind

that company, you tend to have a little bit more opportunity for public exposure. A lot of times, those CEOs are trying to get their personal brand up because they do plan to exit and they want to know what the next chapter is. And they've been spending all of their time devoted to raising the brand of the company. And then all of a sudden, they realize, what's next for me? You know, I'm only known by having led this company. And so a lot of times they'll come to you to want to elevate their personal brand, not so much for the company, but for themselves to establish the next chapter of their lives

and position themselves as an authority. We're all experts. Nobody's had your wins or your learning opportunities along the way, but we want to elevate you to become authorities in your field. And those authorities, and we want you to become an authority, then more doors are going to open. I love that. Okay, so I want to move into your six P's. So your six P's are the most important factors to consider when evaluating and preparing your business for sale. And it's really the engine of your business. It's the cylinders because

they drive value. And many businesses don't operate on all cylinders. Instead, they're sluggish, they waste fuel, and they break down. So you can avoid this inefficiency by tuning up your business and using the 6p's method. So, the 6p's are people product, process, proprietary, patrons, and profit. I'd love to talk about product. You guys talk about niche. When you talk about products, and really it's all about if your product has a niche. So, what's the important of having a product with a niche? And how do we know if we're in a niche. So what's the important of having a product with a niche and how do we know if we're in a niche that has staying power? Well, that's a very good question.

I'm part of that as being on top of what's happening in your industry and staying relevant and staying innovative. You may be innovative this year, but everybody else goes right past you. If you think of Polaroid, right? They did not stay innovative, so they lost their company. So it's really important to continue driving and cutting the edge of what you're doing. And a product, if you think about your product, you may be in love

with your product, but if you have someone else from the outside, they can come in and they can see how that product can be fine-tuned into a different nature, a different industry. And so instead of one product you end up with three products. But it's really important to understand you clearly define what is your product, who's the target market is going to help you find potential purchasers. Have you protected that product? Have you leveraged it? And how can you build the brand on that product? But also, how are you keeping it relevant and keeping it cutting edge? That was so good. So I'd also like to talk about patrons because I thought this one was really interesting. You guys are basically saying that your client base needs to be diversified.

Can you talk about the risk of having too much concentration in one type of client base? Well, certainly. I mean, I had a client two years ago. They came in and they had incredible sales, they were over 50 million, but 30 million of that 50 was coming from one client. That's not going to be attractive for a purchaser. That's high risk unless they want access to that client. They can't get it any other way. And so it's really important for you to review your database. And this is the same thing that I shared just a moment ago.

You may not have been focused on building your database. And you think you're hot stuff stuff because you got a million followers on Instagram. The problem is Instagram is many of you know people experience Facebook and Instagram can turn you off and you have you lose access. So it's really important to use those social media platforms as a lead generation tool but to invite them and encourage them to come into your database because your patrons are your lifelong blood and so as a business are you just selling making transactions or are you serving your customers and therefore creating a lifetime relationship with those customers?

So from a outside perspective you want to make sure you don't have high concentration in one or two clients if you definitely want to sell because what happens if one of those clients goes belly up, the ripple effect is going to hurt you. I try to keep my mentoring clients to not have any customer more than 20 to 25% of the revenue so that you have the ability to bounce back. avenue so that you have the ability to bounce back. But in addition, you want to continue to nurture and know what that customer journey is. People, some people call it funnels. Is they really a customer journey and best intellectual property? That's an intangible asset of how you're nurturing the nurturing sequence, how you're keeping people involved and growing. But

understanding the demographics is essential. Somebody wants to come in and buy sequence, how you're keeping people involved and growing, but understanding the demographics is essential. Somebody wants to come in and buy you, they went and they say, well, tell us about your customer, everybody's our customer. That doesn't go over well. You need to show, based on the data, this is a world of data, not just sales techniques. Your data will tell the potential buyer,

where are your customers coming from, what niches, what age, that helps them to have a better idea of how that your company will work into their company. So the other P I want to talk about is profits because I think this is a really important one. A lot of people think they can sell their business based on the revenue they're generating, but it's really all about profits. So can you explain that to us? Well, certainly. And one of the things that Michelle and I talk about in the book is people really do just kind of focus on products and profits. And when your profits aren't where they need to be, it's usually an indication that you're not paying attention to all the other piece because you probably have not positioned yourself correctly with the people on your

team. You probably don't have the right processes. You probably don't have the right proprietary protection and therefore it's impacting your profits. And so when your profits are down, you have to find out and diagnose through a SWAT analysis, where what are we not doing within the structure of the business to be able to scale and have that profit go up? You know, many times companies will, in today's world, all right? So people, many big companies may be selling for millions and billions of dollars and they're, they don't have any profit. But what they offer is forward looking technology, what they offer is a tremendous huge database of patrons. And so the value is there even though they're not generating

cash flow today. So you can still sell, hi, if you've got valuation and other areas that aren't necessarily profit. So it's really all, all these different factors, right? It's not just one thing, which is what we're learning about all today. So the next thing I want to talk about is identifying buyers. So this is step three in your STGPS exit model. It's to identify who your buyers will be. And in the same way,

that business owners invest their money and energy and resources to target their ideal customer. You have to do the same thing when it comes to selling. You need to cater to your buyers needs. So Sharon, I'd love to hear from you about why we need to know who our ideal buyers are when we're building our business and why we need to build the business to suit those buyers' needs when we wanna exit rich. Well, this is so vitally important, because what happens if you may determine you wanna sell your company

and all of a sudden a competitor comes in and tells you they wanna buy you. And if you don't take the right procedures to protect your property, your intellectual property and your processes, they may just be on a fishing expedition. So you want to know if they're serious, if they're qualified buyers. And there's different types of buyers. It's like a first time buyer. Somebody's looking to buy something to be their very first business.

That's, you know, somebody you're going to have to educate them related to your business. You want to make sure that they're qualified to purchase because it can take a lot of time and energy to go through the due diligence process. So you want to have a procedure to be able to pre-qualify those potential buyers. And then you also, you know, you have opportunity for buyers

who are trying to bolster their position within the industry. And that's something that is really important to understand how you add what the piece of the puzzle is that you can add to what they already do. You can have strategic buyers. I mentioned this earlier, somebody that's in a geographic location that doesn't have a presence in your geographic location. So that's a strategic buyer.

Then you have companies that want to buy you and put you under because you are a competition. So you want to make sure in those cases that you don't have long-term payouts, because you may end up being sitting there with nothing in the future. So it's really important to understand who the buyer is, what their intent is, and what the intention, the impact can be for you. That's why it's so important to have a business broker or to have a mentor to help you through that process. Yeah, and it goes back to kind of understanding your plan and why you're exiting rich and

what your end game is. Because for example, if you're trying to build a legacy, you don't want to sell to a competitor who's just trying to put you out of business because then your legacy is gone. That's correct. And it's so important to know, and we don't know what we don't know. And so if you're not in the business of buying and selling product companies, then you probably need to bring in somebody who is so that they can support you and go through the right questions.

Because as I said, one of the most time consuming things that you can do is try and sell your business. When we sold the talking book company, I had six or seven all the major toy companies and several major publishing companies That we did do diligence with all of them and it was exceptionally time consuming I had to bring in an entire team to work with them to go through the process and the financials and Forward thinking models so that we can determine who you know, which one would be best suited to purchase us. And that's something that you wanna bring in that expertise to make your decision more sound.

Yeah, and could you explain what happens when a business buys you out, but then they keep you as management? I feel like a lot of people don't realize that somebody can buy your business, but they may keep you as CEO of your business. Yes, that, and then we all probably should mention stock versus asset sales. Many times, there needs to be the first P people in the six P process. The people on your team, your management team,

a potential shooter, a purchaser is going to want to know what the employee agreements are with the top executive level people. They don't want to buy it and then have everybody leave. So they want to have some sort of continuity in most cases. And if you are a very well-known CEO of the company or founder, they may want you to stick around for a couple of years for that transition. They may even put provisions within the sales document. They can say, you know, this is your earn out. I'm going to give you this price up front for the business.

And then you're going to be able to, if you can continue keeping the revenues growing for the next couple of years, you get a piece of that. That happens a lot of times so that there's a best, maintain continuity in the transfer of ownership in the company. And I know you mentioned you just wanted to kind of break down the difference between, I didn't catch it like a stock valuation versus something. What did you want to mention at the end there? Yeah, when you sell your company, you can sell the stock, all right, so that basically

the purchaser buys the entire entity. Many times and quite frankly, most times in smaller businesses, the purchaser is going to come in and just buy the assets. They don't want to buy your liabilities. They don't want to buy the skeletons and the closet. And so an asset purchases a little different, but it's still a way to exit your company. And so that's, again, very important to have the right people on your team to help guide you through that process.

This is awesome. I think this is a conversation that I feel like not too many people are having. I've had maybe 300 episodes on my show. We've never talked about exit strategy, but we talked so much about entrepreneurship. So I'm very happy we're having this conversation. I guess my next question is about doing research to find out who our perfect potential buyers could be. Because like you said, we really need to start

to build our business to suit those buyers. So what's the type of research we should be doing to try to find those potential buyers? Well, that's a multi-answer to that question, because hopefully if you are within a business that you are successful and you are also involved in your industry associations, so that you would be have your ear to the ground and find out similar companies to years that have sold and who the potential buyers were. And they would be kind of almost a first round to see if they are looking at expanding further because they've established the system of purchasing other companies. Sometimes as a strategic buyer, as I said before, one of the things you don't want to do is tell the world you want to sell your company. Because all of a sudden, your employees are going to start getting fearful and they're going to run away.

So you want to keep it highly confidential. Even through the process, you want to go through with potential suitors. It's very important that you understand the need for confidentiality is high to protect your ongoing business. Your customers may flip out. They find out you're trying to sell a business. You may lose your customers. And that's something that people lose lips, think ships.

They've heard that phrase. Well, that's what happens when you're thinking about buying. Same in real estate. You have a tenant and piece of property and you decide you want to sell the property, you need to make sure you understand what the terms of the leases on that property. But more importantly, when you own a company, you've got strategic people in place, your CFO deciding they're going to need to be involved because you're going to need to get financials. And so it's really important to have those conversations and give them incentives to stay through the entire process

so that they don't leave. And same thing with the COO, cheap operating officers, strategic positions need to be enticed to stay through the process so that they don't cause disruption within the company when the process is settling. That's such a good point that I think a lot of people don't think about is the fact that these people are thinking,

well, I'm going to lose my job. So what's the point of sticking this through? And they may try to sabotage it. So that's a really, really great point. So I'd love to understand the use case of a business selling to multiple buyers. Can you give us an example of that? Well, certainly. So if you have a business that has different products and different industries,

you may have multiple buyers. And that's why it's so important to be very careful about your financial documents and understand and your accounting. So that if you have different divisions, those divisions can easily be separated so that a potential shooter can see the properter loss of that division. You know, a company, when we had the talking book industry, we had a division of our company that was the sheet music, completely different world, completely different industry. And so the division of the company of the sheet music was sold to one purchaser while the talking book portion of the company was sold to someone else.

And so you have to be able to delineate what the profit and loss for each of those divisions are. And it happens quite often. Yeah, it really does. So I want to talk about determining timeframe. Step four in the model is determining timeframe and timing is everything, but I kind of think that timing is relative in most instances.

So can you talk about the right time to exit a business in your opinion? Well, there's different aspects of doing the timing. The timing, obviously you want to be able to sell while your business is at the highest valuation, many times people wait until they're on the downward turn, and that's something that is very difficult. But it's also, you definitely don't want to string out a potential process of a purchaser for a year, because that just drains your resources, it drains your energy, and it drains your optimism. And so it's very important

to set a time frame with your attorneys, with the people that are working with you on how to process through these. If you have multiple suitors, you understand what the time frame is to get back to them. But as far as time, sometimes you know, you get an offer, it's all your business that you weren't expecting. And that's, that is always good news. Sometimes it's a surprise.

And so you have to sit back and say, is this the time in this correct? Obviously, when you're looking at your personal life outside the business, where are you financially? Where are you on a state planning? Where are you in running the business, are you ready to sell? So those things are all, it kind of connects with the first one, what's your vision, what do you want? But I'm always up the mind that if somebody's interested, I'm always going to listen and see, because that helps me understand how my business is being viewed from third parties. It's very, very good information.

It also tells me things that I might need to strengthen, things that I might want to emphasize more. Businesses are successful because they solve problems and serve needs, and what greater feedback can you get from a potential suitor about why they want to buy you. It elevates your respect for yourself and for your company and you can highlight the value that your company provides. And so timing is very important but timing is totally subjective. If you try and force timing to be objective and you're trying to force buyers and sellers

to come together, it usually doesn't work out very well. But you want to at least encourage a timeline of expectation so that both parties can know what they're getting into. Yeah, and I think this really does go back to planning because if you plan to sell, you're more likely, I think, to sell when things are going well rather than like when things are desperate, right? And you're more likely to sell at the maximum price when you have that in mind.

And you don't just wait until there's nothing else or you want to retire or there's declining revenues or something like that. Well, and you will find that if you have a successful company, people in your history are going to recognize that you're successful and your phone's going to start ringing when people see the opportunity to potentially purchase what you have in your success. There's no greater complement and that's something that may trigger a sale prior to what your plans were or it may very well make you realize that there's so much more for you to do. You're just getting started. Yeah, so I want to jump back to valuation really quick because I know part of that STGPS exit model is to know your current valuation. How often should we be re-evaluating the

valuation of our company? Well, that, and that's exactly what Michelle Seller-Tucker's company does. The Seller-Tucker Group does valuations for people so that you get it a, it's just like when you need an appraisal for a house, when you're buying a house or you're selling a house. You're business based on your industry, they will look at other businesses within your industry within your status, the size of your revenue, the systems. They'll come in and analyze your business from the top down.

And it's probably a good thing to do. If you're thinking about selling, it might be a good thing to have a bit of evaluation review done so that they help you identify your weak spots so that you can get dressed up for the party and make sure you understand what things that maybe some agreements that need to be strengthened. For instance, one of the things Michelle and I was talking about, she had a client that was thought they were going to sell for millions of dollars but then when the company that wanted to buy and came in and started looking through the documents, all of their contracts with their customers clearly stated they were non-transferable. And so that valuation went from, let's say, 70 million to 10 million because all of those

contracts had to be renegotiated. Now, luckily, she'd come in and she identified that. So they were able to go back through all those clients and get those contracts adjusted so that the company could sell the price it wanted to. That's such a great example. All right, so we're going to move it to Q&A in a bit. If you guys are in the audience and you want to ask a question

to Sharon Lechter, please raise your hand. We'll bring you up on stage. While we're getting some hands raised here, I did want to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question.

I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question.

I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you a, but I thought that was only for IPOs. So when it comes to the private sale of a business,

is there some sort of organizational structure that you absolutely need or doesn't out matter? Well, I absolutely believe that every business should have a board of advisors. An advisory board gives you the higher reputation. So a potential purchaser is gonna see that you're bringing in the advice of people that are well-respected within the industry. To have an actual corporate board of directors

is wonderful, but it also provides, there's a lot of liability to those directors. So you have to make sure you're big enough to justify paying them or covering E&O insurance for them. So a corporate board of directors, they have a fiduciary responsibility, so there's much higher commitment on their part, but an advisory board of directors typically

and sometimes they get paid, but they're there to support you, to bring their expertise, to help you, basically steer around pitfalls, and then also open doors of opportunity for you. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. You hear that sound, young and profitors? You should know that sound by now,

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So we're going to move it along to Q&A. I know that Dimple on stage, my podcast or friend, has a question for you. So Dimple, what's your question for Sharon? Thank you so much, Hala. Hi Sharon, great to see you. Hi everyone, I'm Dimple. I'm the host of the Mesmerizing Marketing Podcast. And one of the things that I'm noticing lately

is when I'm working with a client, we have been talking a lot about, you know, positioning their law firm or positioning their company so that it becomes an asset that they can sell down the road and they can retire and building up their personal brand and just positioning it where it's not just a law firm that they open and they close, but they can sell it down the road. So when it comes to that, I also know that you annotated one of my favorite books, Outweeting the Devil by Napoleon Hill.

So what I wanted to know is, is there an important takeaway or lesson from that book that you can apply to someone who is positioning their business, you know, to sell it. And then they have to deal with, like, let's say, competitors, they have to deal with other people that maybe they're not really experienced in dealing with, like, what's a great takeaway from outweeting the devil that you think would be useful to someone who is not experienced in selling and buying

companies, but this is their first go at it. Well, thank you, Jumple. Nice to meet you and I appreciate that question. I mean, the essence of outwitting the devil is how to get through your, get out of your own way and how to get past the fear to achieve the success that you deserve. And so when you're looking at establishing a company as a leader in your industry, it's very important to get out of your own way and to establish your reputation. And so in Outweeting the Double, we talk about deafening this to purpose, having a focus on what you want.

What is your end result? Just the same thing as an ex-eritch. What is your plan? And then mastery over self is a second one, which means focus, focus, focus on establishing good habits and always building and moving towards a future. Third one is learning from adversity. So understanding that in business, you're going to have ups and downs and make sure that you learn from them. And you have people that are on your advisory board or mentors that helps steer you around the pitfalls. And then this is controlling the environment. And when you talk about lawyers or accountants, those are personal service companies. And so they're very hard to sell without the individual unless you build them so that

they have a lot of legs, a lot of people in it, a lot of customers that are loyal so that you build that track record and that environment is what is your reputation? What's that power of association? Are you bringing in the leading thought leaders in that particular field? My husband was considered a thought leader in intellectual property in one of the top licensing attorneys in the world. And so he established that reputation which helped drive the value of anything that he was part of. And then understanding the controlling your time. So if you're building your law practice, you need to say, okay, how much time am I still... I need to be the rainmaker, bring in clients.

I need to have time where I'm managing and overseeing, but let me bring in somebody else who's a better manager than I am. So I can free up that time. And now I'm looking at potentially building this as an exit. So what's the best way I can provide an exit is bring in other name partners, bring in additional offices around the world. What is the strategy to create and build the valuation and the foundation of that company so that it is more attractive to a potential buyer. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. Thanks, Stimple.

A great question. And I'm going to pass it over to Dragon who has a question. Hey, Sharon. How are you, my friend? Fantastic. Wonderful to hear from you. I just came up with a new one. I said every time I hear Sharon,

lecture speak, I exit rich. And also I looked up, I refer to Sharon. Sharon's just an amazing individual. And I've had the opportunity to share in a stage where there are also a speaker bunch of times. And I refer to her that as the nightingale of empowering humans to greatness in mindset and financial freedom. I looked up nightingale of empowering humans to greatness in mindset and financial freedom, I looked up nightingale and it says Sharon, nightingale after Florence nightingale is a woman who is very kind to someone who is ill. So I would say the world is pretty ill when it comes to

finances. So I think it's fitting. Well, I can't tell you how much it meant to me when I first heard you say that and it has just, it still, it still makes me walk a little taller, but I appreciate that. You should, you deserve it. So I have a question, it's such a fascinating frontier right now and you're just like, you're like a Somali A of finance and, you know, like a historian of sorts too. And I've just read all your books and I just love every, I love the way your brain works. I would love to know what your thoughts are. We're talking about exiting rich,

but you're really letting people know that, like even when you're starting a business, you should be thinking about this. But here we are in this new frontier with cryptocurrency and NFTs and all that stuff. I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Well, thank you, Dragon. I think, same thing with cryptocurrency or NFTs, what is your excess strategy? It's the same. I collect loose jewels, right? And that's something that

my intent, wherever I travel, is my brings back whatever the jewels are in that country as part of my collection. It's not something that for generations any cash flow, but it's for me, it's my plan is that I'm gonna have this collection of fine gems that I can leave to my children. And so this is the same thing. What is your strategy in FTs? All right, are you just plain? If so, make sure you're using money that you can lose

because you need to, whether it's crypto or NFT, you've got to become a student of what you're doing, not driven by drama and emotion, but driven by data. Very hard because our world is humans. We are driven by drama and by social media and get in and the emotions get high, the phomo and cryptocurrency is here to stay, but it is still going to be a roller coaster ride. And so it's really important to understand

that you are taking a risk if you are not educating yourself along the way, getting the data to lessen the drama. Yeah, and what's fascinating, that's so good. What's fascinating about it is we're in this new frontier where people are kind of like skipping the whole working hard thing. And you know, gaining access to potentially the first hill or valley of their roller coaster, but sometimes hitting it big.

So do you see a lot of turmoil coming from them because the drama is another way of saying that is the hype, the urgency that's created and you're gonna miss out on this, just as a historian and just looking into the future, perhaps what's your prediction of what's gonna happen? Well, I just say bless their souls that they've been successful. And may they be smart enough to reinvest their profits

in a position that they can continue living the life they want to. But I think it's really, there was a post on social media that came across today, which you just triggered. One was, you know, somebody's in their Ferrari, investing in cryptocurrency today. And then next year, they're writing the bus. So, is, are you doing, are you educating yourself? Are you paying attention to what you're doing? Taking money off the table so that you're still playing with house money is a really safe thing to do when you get a big gain, pull out part of your initial investment so

that you are still even with where you started and that most people don't do that. They want to take it. And again, the risk factor is very different if you're young and just getting started or whether you're in your 60s and you have kids and family. So every individual is different. My question is always can you go to sleep at night? Are you going to toss and turn? Are you worried about financial crash? The financial economy right now is a roller coaster. And you need to do whatever you can to position yourself so that you don't lose everything.

But as I said, crypto is here to stay. What it's going to look like next year or in five years, you need to stay on top of it and educate yourself. And yes, there are a lot of young people that have made a lot of money. Good for them. I hope that they understand the value of that wealth and the need to share that and be generous and be grateful for the opportunities. It's like, you know, lottery winners that end up losing everything within five years

because they didn't educate themselves and they became targets. You know, they had, I talk about loud money versus quiet money. And when you have loud money, you attract a lot of new friends, and you get very emotional about your wealth, and it's real easy to spend extra zeros because you have so much. The question is, will you still have it in five to ten years? And are you doing what you need to to make sure you deploy it and let it grow? That's why I'm a proponent along with grants of real estate investing because of something that can continue supporting you on a monthly catch low basis. So good, so good.

Thanks Sharon and and Hala amazing questions and interview rules. Thank you, dragon. Thank you. Sharon dropping bombs right now. It's getting juicy at the end of the show. I really enjoyed that response and dragon. Thanks for that great question. We're going to move it along. We've got a couple of attendees here in the session who want to ask a question. Kate, what is your question for Sharon today? Hi, yes. First of all, I just wanted to thank you, Sharon and Holler for such a valuable conversation

so far. So my question is, Sharon, you've mentioned throughout tonight's conversation, every individual is different, every business is different, but is there ever a point where it becomes too late to sell your business? Well, that's a great question, Kate, and obviously every situation is unique. It's never too late to sell your business if you can find a buyer interested in purchasing it. You know a lot of times people wait so long that they have been made obsolete and their products are obsolete and that's when it's very difficult to find anybody to purchase it. But then you have to

look at it. Sometimes you have to change the lenses and reframe. You may have an obsolete product, but you may have a very large database. And so what you're potentially can sell is the your client list, as opposed to your entire company. Somebody may be willing to pay you for that. But again, you have to check the buyers, figure out which buyers are appropriate, and what you have to sell. And you know, the best majority of people do, I think, probably sell at the wrong time. They don't sell soon enough, but at the same time, if you've had the wealth coming in during that time, then maybe that was the right decision. Amazing. Thank you so much. You're welcome.

Thanks, Kate. Great question. So we're going to move this along here and if you're in the audience and you have a question raise your hand. Megan you're up next. How can Sharon help you today? Good evening Miss Sharon. Yeah, well, my dear. I'm well and I was so pleased to see you here. I speak about you probably every day, and today I was recording a unique leader's live, and I think you know I asked the same question at the end, which is your success formula.

And I share what it is, and a little history of three feet from gold, your book with Greg Reed, but I always ask the individual, what is their passion and what is their talent? I thought maybe it would be interesting for the guests here to hear your success formula. But I would love to hear what your passion and your talent is, Sharon. Well, thank you, my dear Megan. I appreciate you and um, thrilled that you're here with us tonight.

The personal success equation, which was released in my first book with an appalling health foundation, is a formula that doesn't have numbers in it, so don't freak out. But as P plus T, your passion plus your talent. Now, my passion came from being mad that we weren't teaching kids about money in school. My talent was many years more than I want to admit as a CPA and many years in publishing. And so we normally combine that, your passion and your talent, and we normally stop there thinking we have to do everything on our own. But true success, and you've heard this through my comments tonight about exor-rich book, is through the power of association, having the right people on your team, having people that are strong, or weak, having the right mentors, having the right strategic partners that can help you leverage your business and help you leverage your success.

And then times A for taking action. How many times do you know what you're supposed to do? You just don't do it. You know, it happens to all of us. And so you're passionate and you're talent, times the right association, times taking the right action. And then it's all based on having faith plus f for faith. Faith in yourself, faith in what you're doing,

faith that is needed, necessary, faith that you will succeed. And in most cases, that F is actually fear. It holds people back, they sell sabotage. They prevent themselves from taking the action they need. They're afraid to make new associations. And when I start working with a new client to which Megan Kenna test, I always walk through that formula with them, personal success equation, because it's usually the power of association and the faith in themselves that need the most work. And they go hand in hand, because when you have the right people around you and you have a bad day, they're not going to let you stay down, they're going to pull you up. So you're passionate and you're talent, I want you to be sure to think about this, what is your passion, What's your talent? Who do you have in your world?

Who are you listening to? What mentor do you have? Do you have a mentor? Not just a coach. A coach keeps you accountable, but a mentor actually opens doors for you. They help steer you around those pitfalls. They've been where you want to go.

Their success can rub off. So you're passion your talent times the right associations by taking the right actions and having confidence in yourself. That's how you accelerate your success. It happens every single time. Every success story you can look at it and dissect it. Passion talent, association, action, and faith. And all of you can, if you go to personalsuccessequation.com, personalsuccessequation.com, I have a free

download that you can just exercise book that takes you through determining the things that you can do to strengthen your personal success equation. But thank you, Megan. Thank you, Sharon. And I actually was going to message you, and I saw you on Clubhouse this evening with Hala. So I did send you a little message in the back channel. So thank you so much. Thank you, Megan. Thanks, Megan. I appreciate you attending and having the courage

to ask your question. And we're going to move it to Cameron, who is the last question of the night. How can we help you? Yes, hi. So I've seen a bit about your exit model in Formula and obviously heard about it tonight. So in your exit model, step five is knowing why.

So my question is, why is it important to determine your why for wanting to sell your business as well as knowing the price you want in the right time frame? Well, part of it is knowing your why is also you know it ties right back into the number one. What is it? You know what's your your vision but your why is what do you want out of life? Do you want to be tied to your business forever? You know what is your why? What do you want your life to look like? And so that's all part of determining your future. Now a lot of the why is also it have you tied your ego to your business. Can you separate yourself from your business?

You know my husband was an intellectual property attorney for many, many years, partnering for you. Still is actually still is, but he was a partner in major law firms and it was his identity when he decided to retire Take a step back from the firm. It was a rough road for him because it's like he was no longer in the corner office He no longer had 15 people at his back in call every second of every day And so it was a huge adjustment But at the same time it allowed him to pursue his why we own a ranch chair Creek lodge here in Arizona And so people today when they ask him what he does he says he's a cowboy now He's still an intellectual property a famous intellectual property attorney

He still works for companies to help them strategize and build their licensing strategy But his ego is no longer tied to that definition, and he loves the ranch, so he basically will tell you he's a cowboy. And that's the why. His why is not to go to the office every day. His why is to live on the property and be able to do what he wants to

with each every moment of every day of his life, having that power of choice. And so in order to have that, why, that helps drive you to implement the elements of the Exit Rich book and put it together. One of the things this weekend, for those of you that are wanting to come to Miami, I'm speaking with the Lannock Cardona to next ladies on Friday and Saturday. And our topic is real, my topic is why not? You know, so many women particularly are afraid. They don't want to take the risk.

And so we want to give you the reason, the will and the desire and the energy to really take the leap to create the life you deserve. And that's something that that's that why. What do you want your life to look like? Not your business, what do you want your life to look like? And how can your business be used as a method to create the life that you want? Thank you, Cameron.

Thank you. Thank you. That was a great way to end the nights. Thank you so much, Sharon. This was an insightful conversation. Thank you, Dragon, for connecting us. And Sharon, I'd love for you to share where our listeners can learn more about you. Well, thank you so much.

I appreciate that. Yes, you can follow. Certainly, on my bio on Clubhouse, I have a bunch of the particulars. But you can go to 10xlates.com, forgelesssharing. If you want to join us this weekend, you can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. My website is shareonlector.com, and if you want to reach out to me, and I'll see how many of you actually do this by email info at shareonlector.com.

I will see them. And we want to support you. My drive, my why. Let's talk about my why. My why is still that I am fed by having people find that one thing they can do to create a better life for themselves. And if I can do that for any of you, it would be my joy and would be my purpose

and life to support you creating the greatest success possible. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us for everybody who tuned in live. I hope it was enjoyable and you enjoyed the conversation and with that we're going to close out the room. Thanks everybody and we'll see you on the next YAP Live. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you so much. and we'll see you on the next YAP Live. Thank you. Thank you so much. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier,

more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science,

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