This weekend sees the end of March Madness, the NCAA men’s basketball championship tournament.  From now until the final game is played on April 3, film crews will be capturing the most memorable moments – from the joyous to the heartbreaking – to craft into a video montage played at the end of the tournament over one of the most recognizable songs associated with college sports: David Barrett’s “One Shining Moment.”

The Championship games represent the final opportunities this year for these athletes to take a run at the work they love and have poured themselves into for years.  For some of them, it will also be their final time on the court.

Those who are graduating or not returning to the sport the following year will wake up on the morning of April 4 to grapple with some of the same questions about identity, purpose and belonging that the founders of businesses face when they sell their company and step off the court on which they, too, have been playing for years.

I wonder how many coaches and parents and fans are prepared to walk alongside those athletes as they find their new place in the world when March Madness ends?   Who will take that walk with you?

Retirement begins to loom over everyone once they reach a certain age. For athletes, that age typically comes much sooner than for the rest of us.

At some point, Father Time forces every one of us to make a decision: Go out on top, or try to hang on as long as possible. I’m sure you can name some of those athletes who chose the second path and tried to stick around past their expiration dates and saw their legacies take a hit.

Ask any rookie or mid-career athlete what their long-term goal is and they’ll likely tell you it’s to keep playing sports. No one wants to imagine their career coming to an end.

But here’s the thing: It will end eventually. It’s inevitable. And it could come sooner than they think if they’re injured, aged-out of their program, or simply get sick of the daily grind.

The same is true for every business owner.  Although I often hear clients say “I just love being ‘in the game,’” the reality is that, at some point, like every athlete you will leave your business – voluntarily or involuntarily.

So, ask yourself: What do you want to do when your run is over?  When it’s time to step off the court?

Do you want to head into early retirement? Drum up a second career? Or are you aiming to be like those old codgers who try to ignore the fans shouting from the stands “Retire Already!  Hang it Up, Old Man!” Really think about the answer, and then write down anything that come to mind. Your biggest successes may actually come after you exit the game.

Preparing for Retirement is Like Prepping for the Final Game of the Season

Think of retirement as the biggest game of the season. Retirement is a culmination of all the blood, sweat and tears you’ve put into honing your craft. It’s where all the hard work pays off.

But instead of having one season to prepare for the big game (your life after retirement), you have your entire career. There are no do-overs or resets. What you give is what you get.

With this in mind, it’s critical to put a game plan in place now that details how to set yourself up to live the life you want on the other side of the sale of your business.

It’s easy to think the score is marked just by the numbers in your account, or the size of the transaction upon your exit.  But, like the best athletes know, preparing well to transition into life’s next season with confidence and clarity and team mates you want to play with takes some special training.

It’s up to you what scenes are playing in the montage of your life.

Let’s get the conversation started.

The post In One Shining Moment 2023 appeared first on Denise Logan.

Last week I was listening to a great story on NPR about whether Founder CEOs have a shelf life.

It focused on the concept of transition as the Co-Founder of Peloton John Foley stepped down as CEO, and moved into the role of Executive Chairman. Foley led Peloton through its entire ten year existence and will be replaced by former Spotify CFO Barry McCarthy.

The story points out other cautionary tales of massively successful retail brands, like FitBit and GoPro, that both turned down opportunities to sell, because their founder wasn’t ready to let go. Eventually, FitBit sold to Google, but only after it lost market share to competitors like Apple, while GoPro went public only to see its share price become a third of what it was.

It made me think about what so many of our clients face when the founder hangs on too long, trying to keep leading when they should let go.

One client I worked with struggled to let go, even after having fallen ill and spending several months in a coma. While to outsiders it looked obvious that the interim leadership had successfully filled the gap left by his illness and there was no longer a role for him in the company, he struggled with the challenges of letting go when it wasn’t how he had imagined it would happen.

The very real question of “How do I let go?” isn’t one that is resolved in a single moment.  Like many significant questions in our lives, it is a process. He moved forward and then stepped back, again and again.

Listening to the NPR segment last week made me wonder and reflect about what that process had looked and felt like for Foley and for Peloton.

While the story that is presently being told about Foley’s transition makes it look like a smooth and seamless event, just a single moment of transition, it’s never quite as cut and dried as it seems.  One has to wonder how much back and forth Foley did behind the scenes that no one gets to see.  Like most founders, I wonder how he made the time to just slow down to even think about letting go, amidst all of the other responsibilities that come with running a company every day, and who his helpers were in coming to this decision.

On the surface, a founder’s reluctance to let go may seem that it’s about control, but sometimes control is what masks the bigger questions like “Who am I if I’m not the leader of this company?” “What if the company does better after I leave?” “What if the company struggles after I leave, will I be blamed?”

There are many public examples that affirm these founders’ fears. Bill Gates stepped down as CEO of Microsoft, only for co-founder Steve Ballmer to take the reigns. Unfortunately, Microsoft took a deep dive during Ballmer’s tenure as CEO, and it makes me wonder if another co-founder was the best person to take on the job of CEO. On paper, he sure seemed like the right fit, but it’s possible he was too close to the company to help provide the vision that it takes to grow. Being able to bring empathy to the unspoken fears founders struggle with as they contemplate letting go is what distinguishes you as a trusted advisor, instead of just another technician executing a transaction.

Bringing in somebody new to run a company can provide a unique advantage with a fresh influx of ideas. As companies grow, innovation is frequently what keeps the company afloat. When Microsoft was growing, their innovation was faltering, and the company took a great set back. Founders that created the company might think that they have the best ideas for the company-since the company was their idea in the first place-but we can remind our clients that sometimes innovation can also come from somebody else’s voice, with a different background and set of experiences.

Then there’s Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter who at one time was trying to be the CEO of Twitter and Square at the same time. How can we expect a founder to serve everyone well if they’re trying to do everything? As advisors, we can help our clients realize when they have spread themselves too thin. It’s common for owners to think they’re superheroes. However, it takes a trusted advisor to help them pull back when they’re overextending themselves.

It’s one thing to be a founder of a company, but it can be an entirely different thing to be a CEO and leader of a company. Our owners find out, sometimes the hard way, that they are not the ones best equipped to be in this position and it’s on us as advisors to recognize that there are a lot of feelings tied to that.

When you’re the best at one part of the job and you become CEO and then suddenly, you’re not the best at the job, how do you help them with the one identity that they have built? Sometimes they’re stuck finding that out themselves. How is it realistic to think that these people are going to come to these realizations on their own account?

Steve Jobs had to leave Apple the first time to be ready to be the leader it needed when he returned. He was a founder that found out the hard way at the time, he didn’t have the skillset the company needed to thrive. When he left, he gained more perspective and returned with a fresh vision for Apple that made it the global icon it is today.

Meanwhile, there are some leaders that have successfully managed the transition from founder to CEO. Examples like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos come to mind, but, like NPR noted, these leaders are a rare exception.

Another client I’ve worked with has been in the process of an orderly multi-year transition out of the role of leading his company and, even with that well-thought-out and structured leaving (he, too, like the founder of Peloton, has moved into Executive Chairman role) it’s been an emotional journey.

Founders really do struggle with these questions of “When should I leave?” and “How do I let go?” They deserve the careful guidance of advisors who recognize that stepping away from something you’ve given birth to – like Foley has done with Peloton and like many of our clients will do with their companies – isn’t a one-and-done decision … it’s a process. There are so many emotions involved when they are so entrenched in their business. Their companies are their babies, the people that work there are like families, and often they think that they’re the best equipped to handle what’s happening at the company.

As I wrote in my article about the similarities between business owners and parents of college freshmen, there is an art to letting go. Much like how we need to let our children grow up, we must do the same for our businesses. If we coddled our children like we sometimes coddle our businesses, they would never be successful. They need time to grow up on their own, without their parents, and make their own way forward. As advisors, we can help our clients realize when it’s time for them to let go, before it’s too late.

The Seller’s Journey is a great tool for you to use to help your clients find when it’s time to let go. I encourage you to share it with your clients to give them an example of an owner that’s going through much of the same emotional journey they are going through. Together, we can help our clients do what is best for them and their companies, treating the process like a transition, and not just a transaction.

The post Helping Clients Know When to Let Go appeared first on Denise Logan.

The Championship games represent the final opportunities this year for these athletes to take a run at the work they love and have poured themselves into for years.  For some of them, it will also be their final time on the court.

Those who are graduating or not returning to the sport the following year will wake up on the morning of April 6 to grapple with some of the same questions about identity, purpose and belonging that the founders of businesses face when they sell their company and step off the court on which they, too, have been playing for years.

I wonder how many coaches and parents and fans are prepared to walk alongside those athletes as they find their new place in the world when March Madness ends?   Who will take that walk with you?

Retirement begins to loom over everyone once they reach a certain age. For athletes, that age typically comes much sooner than for the rest of us.

At some point, Father Time forces every one of us to make a decision: Go out on top, or try to hang on as long as possible. I’m sure you can name some of those athletes who chose the second path and tried to stick around past their expiration dates and saw their legacies take a hit.

Ask any rookie or mid-career athlete what their long-term goal is and they’ll likely tell you it’s to keep playing sports. No one wants to imagine their career coming to an end.

But here’s the thing: It will end eventually. It’s inevitable. And it could come sooner than they think if they’re injured, aged-out of their program, or simply get sick of the daily grind.

The same is true for every business owner.  Although I often hear clients say “I just love being ‘in the game,’” the reality is that, at some point, like every athlete you will leave your business – voluntarily or involuntarily.

So, ask yourself: What do you want to do when your run is over?  When it’s time to step off the court?

Do you want to head into early retirement? Drum up a second career? Or are you aiming to be like those old codgers who try to ignore the fans shouting from the stands “Retire Already!  Hang it Up, Old Man!” Really think about the answer, and then write down anything that come to mind. Your biggest successes may actually come after you exit the game.

Preparing for Retirement is Like Prepping for the Final Game of the Season

Think of retirement as the biggest game of the season. Retirement is a culmination of all the blood, sweat and tears you’ve put into honing your craft. It’s where all the hard work pays off.

But instead of having one season to prepare for the big game (your life after retirement), you have your entire career. There are no do-overs or resets. What you give is what you get.

With this in mind, it’s critical to put a game plan in place now that details how to set yourself up to live the life you want on the other side of the sale of your business.

It’s easy to think the score is marked just by the numbers in your account, or the size of the transaction upon your exit.  But, like the best athletes know, preparing well to transition into life’s next season with confidence and clarity and team mates you want to play with takes some special training.

It’s up to you what scenes are playing in the montage of your life.

Let’s get the conversation started.

The post In One Shining Moment 2022 appeared first on Denise Logan.

I lived in another state and, like many of us who find ourselves with older parents to care for from afar, I needed to know that the professionals who were walking with them on a journey none of us had ever taken before were fully up to the task. The stakes were high, we needed to trust them, and we only got one chance to get it right.

The morning after my dad’s diagnosis, I flew to Detroit to be with them when they met with the surgeon. In the airport convenience store that morning, as I fished some money out of my purse for a bottle of water and a pack of gum, I noticed a book leaning against the cash register. What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Colorectal Cancer.

 “Ok,” I said to the cashier, “I’ll take the water, the gum and THIS book,” thinking it was obviously something I needed to read on my flight to help me get up to speed before this meeting.

When we’re faced with unfamiliar experiences, our minds naturally want to know what we’re up against and how to prepare for the obstacles we’re likely to encounter on the road ahead. Our business owner clients and their families desperately need that same peek into what lies ahead, not just the technical parts which they can wrap their intellectual minds around, but the things that no one else talks to them about – the emotional changes they’re headed for.

Certainly, what I read in one book on my flight to Detroit didn’t make me as knowledgeable as the surgeon (or even the receptionist at his office at that point, if I’m honest!)  But it DID give me enough of a framework of what we were in for and what he might not think to prepare us for because it was so routine for him.

Of course, our questions were probably ones he had heard (and answered) a zillion times before and probably came out in an emotional string of gobbledygook. I knew that’s to be expected when uncertainty plays such a big part in any significant decision-making. You know it, too, because there are plenty of times when your business owner or their family members seem to have just lost their danged minds!

But I wasn’t prepared for just how dismissive the surgeon was. How he kept checking his watch, impatient to move this all along and “get on with it already.” When my dad asked in a shaky voice whether he was going to have to live with an ostomy bag, the doctor sneered and replied something like “just be grateful if I save your life and stop worrying about things like that.”

Dr. Meany (as I immediately nicknamed him in my mind) wanted to schedule the surgery two days after our meeting. My parents were scared and asked if it needed to happen so soon, couldn’t they have a couple of days to think things through. Dr. Meany was clearly exasperated! His demeanor told us that he thought we were being ridiculous, and he had a busy schedule. Hand on the door, Dr. Meany blurted out, “Fine, it’s your life. Go ahead and roll the dice but time isn’t on your side. Call my scheduling assistant when you make up your mind and we’ll see how long it takes you to get back in my calendar.” And then he was gone, leaving my father trembling on the table in a paper gown and his black socks.

Sadly, many of you have walked some version of this frightful journey yourselves or with someone you have loved.

Some of you, in fact, have even displayed this heartless lack of “bedside manner” or witnessed a deal partner doing it to your own clients who dared to challenge the way you decree the process must go or when they expressed the need to slow things down so they can catch up to all the change that’s making their heads swim.

A good many of you have even said, “Time isn’t on your side, here, Mister” to hurry things along because your own fear about losing a commission reared its head. Or maybe you slammed out the door or abandoned a deal because you were exasperated with your client’s “ridiculous” refusal to just fall into line. You’ve left them metaphorically exposed and shaking in a paper gown and their black socks wondering what the hell just happened and what on earth they’re going to do now.

I have no doubt that Dr. Meany was technically proficient. He had come recommended by their family doctor. Someone they trusted. He probably had no idea what an egotistical cruel man Dr. Meany was because he was an “expert.”

It’s even possible that Dr. Meany wasn’t a bad man, perhaps he was just overworked or fed up with a system that made him feel like he needed to treat the people who brought their precious lives to him like one more cog in a system he needed to churn out. At one point, he might have been someone who cared.

When we met him, Dr. Meany only saw parts for him to mechanically operate on and move on to the next one. He had forgotten that these were people, with lives and loved ones who would be forever changed by their interaction with him. Much like some of you, who have forgotten that your clients think of their business as their baby. What feels like “a frustrating busted deal” to you, is a devastating loss to them.

Have you, like Dr. Meany, forgotten that we are not technicians, we are entrusted with the lives of the people who come to us at vulnerable moments in their lives?

I stayed up most of that night in my hotel room searching for a cancer team that would bring compassion to my family as we traversed one of the most frightening times most of us can imagine.

As the sun rose the next morning, I drove to my parents’ home to talk about choosing a doctor who could care about them. They hadn’t slept either. My parents were reluctant to look for someone else. They no longer knew if they could trust themselves and wanted to just rely on “the experts”. They didn’t know if we could find a caring and skillful doctor. The weight of making the right choice hung over all of us.

The surgeon I found for them to meet with next was just as highly credentialed as Dr. Meany and his website and the reviews seemed like his humanity was intact, but he was far from home. Dr. Meany practiced close to home, they offered. I reminded them so did the veterinarian, but we weren’t going to make choices based on proximity or speed with something this important.  They were worried about the travel distance to the new doctor in an unfamiliar hospital, they worried about starting over. Dr. Meany had terrified them out of being able to think for themselves. They were traumatized by the process and by the absolutely heartless way they were treated by someone they desperately needed to trust.

The new surgeon was part of an integrated cancer team. This team reassured my dad that they would treat him like a member of their own family. He joked with them, does that mean you’ll pretend to ignore me and roll your eyes at my jokes like my daughter does? I’m not saying whether I did or I didn’t roll my eyes at that moment, you’ll have to guess. They promised that they would care for him like he was their favorite uncle.

In fact, this team met once a week to staff all their patients’ cases. The oncologist, the surgeon, the radiologist, the pharmacist, the nursing team, the patient advocate, and lots of others we didn’t even know were “on the case”. Every one of them was fully dialed into the technical aspects of my father’s medical care, but even more importantly, they were equally tuned in to his (and our) emotional care.

What would it mean for your clients to feel like they had an integrated team of caring professionals where every single person was fully dialed in to their experience as they navigated this journey through not only the transaction you’re hired to handle but also the transition they’re undergoing?  Can your clients say they feel you care for them as if they were your favorite uncle? That you are committed to placing them safely on the other shore, that you will not abandon them mid-stream because things get rough and you have other deals that seem easier or more lucrative in the moment?

This new surgeon (who I think of as Dr. Caring) recommended they use radiation to shrink the tumor first, giving them a greater chance of avoiding a long-term ostomy. Of course, he shared the risks of waiting, but he took to heart what was most important to my dad. Do your clients feel like you truly understand what matters most to them in the outcome, even if it isn’t what you recommend?  Can you help them get what they need and allow them to make their own informed decisions?

The team encouraged my mom to involve her primary care doctor in the process, too. At first, she balked, she didn’t see the need. They gently coached her about preparing for the extra strain she might feel as the spouse of someone undergoing such a life change. Thank goodness they did and that her doctor was receptive to being part of a collaborative effort, because a wellness check revealed that she had a fast-growing and aggressive breast cancer.

Now the “team” expanded to also include those professionals who would address my mom’s surgery and recovery.

Together, this integrated team made sure that their surgeries and follow ups and chemo treatments were scheduled taking into account what the other spouse was going to be experiencing.  They made sure they each had support groups – people to talk to who had been through this – so they didn’t feel alone. They made sure they had knowledge and support before, during and after the process to help them make good decisions and make sense of the significant changes that they were undergoing physically and emotionally.

Dr. Caring wasn’t able to avoid a permanent ostomy, the cancer had spread too far for that.  He was aware of just how crushing that would be. He didn’t send someone else to break the news, he didn’t rush my dad to just “look at the bright side and move on” and he was actively involved in helping him grieve this loss. How do you deliver bad news to your clients?

All told, my family spent close to eighteen months intertwined with the many members of this team. Many of your clients will be with you for the better part of a year, or longer, and it’s going to get emotional. They walked side by side with us through what, to them, was undoubtedly at times the mundane and routine parts of their jobs. Through times when their schedules were hectic and they were worn out, too. They earned and kept our trust with every interaction, and they always brought their own humanity to the table with ours. No one person could do it all. But, together, they created a carefully woven safety net without losing the thread of what really mattered.

Think we remember their names? You bet. Think we tell everyone who comes to this fork in the road about the kind of care this team brought as they traveled with us through a journey that could have been even more treacherous than it was? For sure.

Ask yourself, which one are you – Dr. Meany or Dr. Caring? It’s a choice, you know. Have you created the collaborative environment with other caring partners who can attend to their unique piece of the transaction while offering comfort to the precious human being who has invited you into their life for this journey?

Are you applying The Favorite Uncle Standard of Care?

The post The “Favorite Uncle” Standard of Care appeared first on Denise Logan.

I recently met a wealth manager named Amy who had that very reaction.  She asked me why I thought that made her lucky instead of cursed.  I invited her to join me for lunch later that week and promised she’d see what I meant.

She and I met at a local restaurant for lunch with a lawyer, a banker, and an accountant – I know it sounds like the opening to a bad joke or, perhaps, the most boring lunch you can imagine depending on your perspective (and no we hadn’t just walked into a bar!) but keep reading.

The four of us first met as the team of professionals involved in helping our mutual client, Jeremy, sell his business and we have continued to meet for lunch or a drink every other month since then, even though Jeremy’s sale has long-since successfully concluded.  Amy was surprised to learn that it’s an appointment each of us keeps, no matter what else might try to intrude into our calendars.  She wondered why we continue to invest this kind of regular time with each other even when we’re not working on a current deal together.

Here’s what we told her.

“Amy, remember when I told you that you’re lucky if you’re spending half your time as a part-time psychologist with your clients?” I asked.

“Sure,” she replied, “but I can’t imagine why you think that makes me lucky.”

One of the others pointed out that, in every single deal he’s ever been involved in, he realized someone was playing that role of “therapist” and, most often was someone who resented it and wished the business owner would “just get a grip on their emotions” and “act rationally.”

“The reason Denise says you’re lucky if you’re the person the owner has chosen to bring their emotions to is it means you’re the person they feel most safe with in the deal. It means that the other professionals AREN’T making the owner feel safe enough to let down their guard and share with them what’s really going on inside,” my banker friend said.

“That’s right,” continued one of the others.  “Once I realized that I was the one person the owner felt safe with, I recognized it was an honor, not a burden.  But, I also realized that with that honor came a greater sense of responsibility.  If they were trusting me with their emotions, I knew I needed to dial up my own understanding about how I could help them better.  I began to look for ways to bring even more of that sense of emotional safety into the relationships I built with my clients.”

My banker friend added, between bites of his burger, “That’s right, while it started when Denise pointed it out in this deal with Jeremy, once I caught on, it happened for me in other deals, too.  Clients started to tell me what was really going on under the surface for them, instead of making stupid moves and unrealistic demands.  I began to see how much easier it is to solve the issues that used to cause things to inexplicably unravel at the eleventh hour and I started closing more deals.”

Amy said she thought that made sense but that she was worried she wouldn’t know how to handle it if her clients started to get too emotional.  Several of the others admitted that, at first, they were worried about that, too.  But that it got easier with practice and as they continued to learn more skillful ways to show up for their clients.  Especially as the other professionals in Jeremy’s deal were also learning these skills.  They each started to notice that Jeremy was sharing more openly with all of them and not just dumping all of his emotion on one person in the transaction. They didn’t have to wonder what was going on and the chaos and drama they’d been used to virtually vanished and everything got easier.

I told Amy how we had used, an intimate conversational-style dinner event, with Jeremy when we wanted to deepen his sense of connection and trust with the deal team.  We talked about how it created the conditions for psychological safety and how it transformed Jeremy’s relationship with us and ours with each other.

One of them shared that, although his partners had initially thought this approach was a bunch of hooey, as they learned more about what creating emotional safety for their clients meant, they realized that their clients actually seemed to crave that kind of deeper connection with them.  They started to see that the deals which had inexplicably fallen apart before had signs which now seemed obvious and fixable.

“Who knew,” I added, “such simple things could help clients bond to us and bring us into the fold as their most trusted advisors, the ones they come to early when they’re considering selling their business.”

Amy shared that she had been caught off guard a couple of times in the past year when clients of hers had sold their businesses and she only learned of it when the client was moving their accounts to a new wealth management firm.  She wondered whether some of these tools and experiences could help her strengthen the bond with some of her own clients.

Over the rest of lunch, we talked with Amy about the different ways we had learned to build trust with each other and with our clients and how it had radically changed each of our businesses.  She seemed especially interested in exploring whether she and her partners could learn how to do this with their own clients and the referral partners she had been trying to cultivate relationships with.

Lest you think we’re just a bunch of lazy bums with nothing else to do but lounge around over lunch or drinks, let me assure you that each of us have busy professional and personal lives, but we’ve seen just how important it is to create the ideal conditions for psychological safety and unshakeable trust for our clients and each other.

Our commitment to our client Jeremy in that deal ad beyond it has been to deepen our respect and rapport so that we can collectively be the safest nest for our clients in the future as we help them weather one of the most challenging transitions in their lives.

Guess what, since that lunch, two of the five of us are already engaged in a relationship with a new client together and that client is already sharing the kind of information that shows us he feels safe.  And every one of us is confident that this deal will close with ease.  As it should when an owner is surrounded by professionals who care about their client and each other

Most Advisors don’t believe me when I share they can
consistently close more deals with ease.

Then, they experience it for themselves.

Once you experience an inbox full of referrals and both you and your sellers expect a trustworthy sale process…you never go back to seeing the work as a numbers game.

Want to learn more about how YOU can find this same success with your clients and referral partners? 

Reach out – I’d love to show you how.

The Legacy Dinner is an intimate, conversational-style dinner event that helps you connect with your circles of influence and clients. Learn more about how best to utilize it for your business.

The post Do You Want to Know What’s REALLY Going on With Your Clients? appeared first on Denise Logan.

In The Seller’s Journey, the business owner protagonist Marty plans a trip across Glacier National Park with his banker, his lawyer, his wealth advisor, his accountant, and the private equity buyer of his company one year after the sale of his business. 

Often people jokingly ask me, “Which one of them gets shoved down a crevasse on the trip?”

 Not to spoil the ending, but everyone comes back alive AND even closer than they were before the journey. As they cross the glacier, the characters relate the physical challenges they’re facing to the emotional obstacles they faced in selling Marty’s business.

Can your clients imagine going on a trip into the wilderness with you?  What would it mean to your business to have clients who would?

Read on to discover 5 tips for how you can become the Trusted Advisor every client wants to work with:

1.  A Trusted Advisor invests in a relationship, not just a transaction.  Relationships develop over time and the Trusted Advisor is in it for the long run – right from the very beginning – investing time and resources into developing a relationship with the business owner, not just solving the immediate problem, or closing a deal.  The Trusted Advisor knows the impact of what they are providing for this client will live long beyond this momentary interaction.

2.   A Trusted Advisor connects emotionally with their client, listens well, and seeks opportunities to understand them, their business, and what makes them tick.  Yes, getting up close and personal with your client, being authentic and vulnerable allows your client to trust you with their most important issues before they become problems.  The Trusted Advisor knows that this is the single largest transition in their client’s professional career and that attending to those unspoken worries makes all the difference.

3.   A Trusted Advisor is trust worthy.  How do you become worthy of your client’s trust?  By being reliable, available and always putting the client’s interests above those of the advisor.  It seems simple, but are your engagements structured in such a way that your client doesn’t have to wonder where your interests lie?  Will you always tell the client and the others in the process the truth, even when it isn’t necessarily what they want to hear?  Can they trust you to not be the yes man in the room? Not to play hide the ball or take advantage just because others think it’s ok to do so in their practices?  Would your favorite uncle or your mother be proud of how you show up in your deals and with your clients?

4.   A Trusted Advisor anticipates needs not just wants and is generous with information and quality introductions thinking “Who or what might my client need to know?”  The Trusted Advisor is more than just a vendor or a technician. He or she is a channel to other trustworthy people for their client. The Trusted Advisor knows that understanding what their client is faced with helps them get the client and the deal across the finish line with ease and, most importantly, without regrets.  The client of a Trusted Advisor will know he or she can come to them time and again to connect to other resources.

5.  A Trusted Advisor creates peace of mind for their client and becomes someone a client looks forward to sharing with others.  Far too many business owners have been made wary of the process from the horror stories of how nefarious characters in our industry have taken advantage of others.  The Trusted Advisor knows that helping their client feel at ease through one of the most challenging chapters in the life of their business – the exit – serves others well and leads to the kind of referrals that makes their own work feel satisfying.  That sense of ease and peace of mind is priceless, for the Advisor, the client and their referral partners

I wrote The Seller’s Journey from experiences with my own clients and other Trusted Advisors so owners could see and feel what it’s like, to know it’s possible to sell their company with integrity, humanity and feeling understood by their advisors.

Send them a copy of the book and then be your own version of that Trusted Advisor your client is longing for – and watch how easy it is to close trust-filled deals with ease.

The post 5 Tips to Become THE Trusted Advisor Every Client Wants to Work With appeared first on Denise Logan.

We talked about how we had each heard similar stories from friends at the gym and even celebrities seemed to be posting about their angst on our respective social media feeds.  

I remarked how lucky we are to have a name for what we were talking about “Empty Nest Syndrome”.  He nodded his head and said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right, that IS what we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

As you read on, I invite you to think about the similarities our owners face when they sell their business and how our familiarity with the emotional journey of launching our children can help you to care for your client through this very similar moment of transition when letting go of their business. 

While much has been written about how to survive empty nesting and we’re all familiar with couples who, once the children are “out of the nest”, look at each other and wonder “Who are you?” and “Do I even want to find out again?” or “What the heck do I do with myself now?” Many of those relationships don’t survive the existential challenges of reframing the relationship when caregiving for children and mutual parenting responsibilities lay bare what remains of substance in their relationship. 

The same is true for our business owners.  It’s not a coincidence that so many of them think of their business as “their baby”.  They birthed this business, nurtured it through troubled times and watched it grow. When faced with the time to let go and launch it into the world, they understandably experience this same emotional arc of letting go and the concurrent question about their identity without it. 

One of the things that helps parents process the innate sense of disorientation and sometimes surprising sense of emptiness is knowing that it’s perfectly normal.  That what they’re feeling is what tens of millions of other parents are going through in the same moment and that others have survived and gone on to thrive in their post-acute parenting time.  Most people around them recognize what they are experiencing as a normal part of letting go of their children and find support in their family and friends as they work through these feelings. 

What if, as advisors, we helped to prepare our clients for this same perfectly normal period of adjustment.  Instead of ignoring it, shaming them for their feelings or telling them they’ll “get over it” – recognize the transition that they are experiencing.  Bring to your client conversations an awareness of how you have navigated similar emotions when your children launched (or if you haven’t yet launched children, you can draw upon your own experience of the period of uncertainty when YOU left home, or had to leave behind a favorite coach or even sold a home and realized you were leaving behind the oak tree you had planted all those years before).  Come to the conversation with empathy and help normalize the experience, validate their fears, anxiety and worries.  Help your client to reflect upon how they dealt with the similar experience when their children launched (or they left a home they loved, etc.) Because most parents know that what they are experiencing is “empty nest” adjustment, we can laugh about it when we come to the table with one more plate than there are diners that night.  “Oh, that’s right, she’s at college.” We remind ourselves or know to gently comfort our spouse who remarks, “It’s so quiet here now.  I miss him.” Even though just weeks ago he was shouting up the stairs, “Turn down the music!” or “Why can’t you remember to turn off the lights!”  Oddly now we feel a little lost longing for those same things that annoyed us so recently.  If we didn’t know this was normal, we’d feel crazy. 

That’s exactly what our business owner client feels when she finds herself about to turn into the parking lot of the business she already sold, when she was actually headed somewhere else.  Her brain was on auto pilot, going to work was such a part of her routine.  Of course, it feels jarring to suddenly find herself in the parking lot where she no longer belongs.  She might feel embarrassed and hope no one saw her.  Or she might want to just pop in and say hello to her former employees.   

Likewise, the owner who was absolutely fed up with all the employees’ shenanigans and swore they wouldn’t miss it one single bit needs our compassion when the nostalgia appears and they question “maybe it wasn’t really all that bad” wondering if they made a mistake in their decision to sell. 

As parents, we remember that it was always our goal to raise this child and launch them into the world.  That this was what we were working toward and is actually a marker of our success as parents.  We kept them safe until adulthood (or this reasonable facsimile of adulthood!) and instilled in them the basics to begin making their way into the world.   Such is true for our business owners.  Their goal was always to build something successful and sell it or turn it over to the next generation, a means to harvest the wealth from their labors to fund their future or that of their family.   

But, then again, we experience the emptiness of the space in our home and in our routine that the now-launched child or business used to fill and find ourselves surprised by the depth of conflicting emotions and loss. 

We, and they, let go of the roles and routines and step herky-jerky into our new not-quite-so-clear and definitely less comfortable routines and roles.  We begin to discover who we are, other than Drew’s mom or Tory’s dad or the owner of XYZ Company.  Perhaps we pick up hobbies we enjoyed earlier in our life or had deferred because of our parenting responsibilities or realize we have no outside interests and feel ashamed and worried we won’t find anything to occupy our time.   

We try to navigate friendships that were forged with the parents of our children’s friends or with our employees and business associates. We discover those friendships drifting and realize that they were based on common interests we no longer share and question if those friendships were even real.  As empty nesters and former business owners, we are faced with the prospect of making new friends as adults and it can feel scary. 

Years ago, a close friend confided that she and her husband were thinking of having another baby since they missed their daughter who had just gone off to college.  I remarked, “But you’re finally free!” to which she replied, “It doesn’t feel free, it just feels … well … empty.  We loved being involved parents with our daughter.”  Sound familiar?  How many of your business owner clients dive right back into another business within a few months to avoid the emotions involved in forging a new identity?  Metaphorically, having another baby. 

Make good use of this season of launching to notice how you and the people around you are practicing the art of letting go and bring those lessons and that empathy into your work with owners all year long.   

I know I say it all the time but it’s true – it really IS a transition, not a transaction – and when we treat it that way, everyone wins. 

The post The Art of Letting Go: What Parents of College Freshmen and Business Owners Have in Common appeared first on Denise Logan.

The Championship games represent the final opportunities this year for these athletes to take a run at the work they love and have poured themselves into for years.  For some of them, it will also be their final time on the court.

Those who are graduating or not returning to the sport the following year will wake up on the morning of April 6 to grapple with some of the same questions about identity, purpose and belonging that the founders of businesses face when they sell their company and step off the court on which they, too, have been playing for years.

I wonder how many coaches and parents and fans are prepared to walk alongside those athletes as they find their new place in the world when March Madness ends?   Who will take that walk with you?

Retirement begins to loom over everyone once they reach a certain age. For athletes, that age typically comes much sooner than for the rest of us.

At some point, Father Time forces every one of us to make a decision: Go out on top, or try to hang on as long as possible. I’m sure you can name some of those athletes who chose the second path and tried to stick around past their expiration dates and saw their legacies take a hit.

Ask any rookie or mid-career athlete what their long-term goal is and they’ll likely tell you it’s to keep playing sports. No one wants to imagine their career coming to an end.

But here’s the thing: It will end eventually. It’s inevitable. And it could come sooner than they think if they’re injured, aged-out of their program, or simply get sick of the daily grind.

The same is true for every business owner.  Although I often hear clients say “I just love being ‘in the game,’” the reality is that, at some point, like every athlete you will leave your business – voluntarily or involuntarily.

So, ask yourself: What do you want to do when your run is over?  When it’s time to step off the court?

Do you want to head into early retirement? Drum up a second career? Or are you aiming to be like those old codgers who try to ignore the fans shouting from the stands “Retire Already!  Hang it Up, Old Man!” Really think about the answer, and then write down anything that come to mind. Your biggest successes may actually come after you exit the game.

Preparing for Retirement is Like Prepping for the Final Game of the Season

Think of retirement as the biggest game of the season. Retirement is a culmination of all the blood, sweat and tears you’ve put into honing your craft. It’s where all the hard work pays off.

But instead of having one season to prepare for the big game (your life after retirement), you have your entire career. There are no do-overs or resets. What you give is what you get.

With this in mind, it’s critical to put a game plan in place now that details how to set yourself up to live the life you want on the other side of the sale of your business.

It’s easy to think the score is marked just by the numbers in your account, or the size of the transaction upon your exit.  But, like the best athletes know, preparing well to transition into life’s next season with confidence and clarity and team mates you want to play with takes some special training.

It’s up to you what scenes are playing in the montage of your life.

Let’s get the conversation started.

The post In One Shining Moment appeared first on Denise Logan.

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CLOSING THE BOOK ON 2021

1. What did I embrace in 2021?
2. What did I let go of in 2021?
3. What changed for me in 2021?
4. What did I discover about myself in 2021?
5. What was I most grateful for in 2021?
6. When did fear hold me back in 2021?
7. Where did I demonstrate courage in 2021?
8. What surprised me in 2021?
9. What made me smile in 2021?
10. What were my 3 most significant accomplishments in 2021? For each, list the following:
    1. The skills that helped me to make it happen
    2. How my life changed because of it
    3. What I learned about myself
    4. How did I celebrate/acknowledge (or, if I didn’t, how can I do it for future accomplishments)
11. What were my 3 most significant challenges in 2021? There may be more than 3, use the ones that come to mind first.  They may have tested my limits, my patience or may be big or small.  For each, list the following:
    1. How did I deal with this challenge
    2. What new tools or allies did I uncover that I could use in the future
    3. How did my life change because of this challenge (even if it’s not yet concluded, what would feel good from the challenge in the end)
12. What was my favorite moment of 2021? (Get in touch with the sights, smells, sounds, who was or wasn’t there, what was I doing, what made it amazing?)
13. What were the gifts from 2021? What really stands out and mattered to me?
14. Is there anything from 2021 that I need to still let go of, say goodbye to or forgive myself (or someone else for) or just need to empty onto the page?

Summarize 2021 in 3 words

***

OPENING TO THE STORY YET TO BE WRITTEN FOR 2022

1. What am I looking forward to in 2022?
2. What am I feeling apprehensive about for the year ahead?
3. What life lessons am I taking into 2022?
4. What area of my life do I most want to develop in 2022?
5. What part of myself do I long to nurture in 2022?
6. Fast forward to December 2022.  I’m sitting in a café, musing over the last 12 months, where do I want to be …
   1. … in my work and wealth
   2. … in my relationships
   3. … in my free time and my sense of meaning
   4. … in my body and my home
7. 3 unhelpful beliefs I’m ready to release
8. 3 duties or commitments I’m ready to let go of
9. 3 interests, skills or hobbies I’d like to learn or improve
10. 3 things about myself I positively love
11. 3 ways I could be kinder to my body this year
12. 3 dreams to bring to life this year (personal or professional)
13. How can I bring more of a sense of calm and grounding into my life this year?
14. My secret wish for 2022 is …

My Blueprint for 2022:

This year will be the year I finally ….

I will nourish myself with …

I will make more time for …

I will recharge my batteries by …

I will open my heart to …

I will pay more attention to …

I will learn more about …

I will release my attachment to …

I will say no to …

I will say yes to …

And, because of this, in 2021, I will feel …

I fully believe in the possibilities that await me in 2021 and all that it holds for me.

Signed: _______________

***

The post Reflective Questions to Contemplate as You Turn the Page appeared first on Denise Logan.

You know what’s scary?  Leaving.  Even when it’s your choice.  I know because last week I made a difficult decision to step away from an important relationship.  It was the right decision, and I didn’t make it lightly, but that didn’t seem to matter to my rollicking emotional brain.  In fact, it had me up at 3am – both on nights before and after I made and shared my decision. 

This experience reminded me of what our clients go through when deciding to sell and leave their businesses.  This monster is called Seller’s Remorse.  It kills way too many deals, but it doesn’t have to.

The monster under the bed: Am I making the right decision?

Change is hard, whether or not you’re the person who made the decision.  One person might be left wondering “What the heck just happened?”  Sometimes that person is also the one who made the decision.

Making decisions and adjusting to the change that follows can create a paralyzing fear that leaves us waffling, prone to indecision and often second guessing ourselves.  It’s our brain adjusting to what’s called Cognitive Dissonance.  You can read more on cognitive dissonance here but for our purposes it’s what happens as our brain is jumping back and forth between two different scenarios that it can’t reconcile.  At least, not yet. 

It takes time for our brains and our bodies to adjust to something new.  I’ve found myself waking in the night, doing the hard work of letting go of what was and aligning to what IS, without yet knowing what will be.  I’m missing the familiar and comforting routines, the regular contact, sharing news of the day and still reconciling to the reality that what I thought my future would look like will actually be different.

That’s what our clients go through, too.  If they’re not prepared for it, it can (and too often does) derail their deal.

Why the jitters?:  Cognitive dissonance is a very real effect of change but it doesn’t mean the decision was wrong.

I was talking with my college roommate on Saturday and heard a version of this same experience from her.  She lives in Texas and her daughter and son-in-law live in Colorado.  My friend and her husband have spoken for several years about moving closer to their kids. Their daughter had a baby this summer and the longing to live closer has become even stronger, as you might imagine.  Two weeks ago, they made an offer on a house near her daughter and the offer was accepted.  Immediately she was filled with both excitement and something she couldn’t quite name – maybe regret.

Within days of returning home, they had several offers on their old house.  It means they can get on with the good stuff in their new home right away.  But my friend is also sad about leaving the house that she and her husband put so much effort into making right for them.  She told me that she was struggling because she loved this house and can’t quite imagine not living in it.  She felt embarrassed that she was torn between being with her daughter and her grandson and the house she also loved.  “It’s just a house!” she tried to reassure herself.  Adding to her confusion is that she really likes the house she is moving to. 

This is classic cognitive dissonance in action – her brain is trying to reconcile two different scenarios … living in the house she thought they would stay in forever and living in the new house she also loves, closer to her daughter.  Her brain can’t yet reconcile the two different versions of her future.  The good news is that, eventually, and with enough care, it will.

Fear buster:  Letting go is a process, not a moment in time – even if the leaving is.

It made me remember a day more than two decades ago.  The last moving truck, filled with the furniture and files and things that had made up my law firm was loaded.  In my effort to spot the truck as it rounded the corner, I bumped my head against the window of my now-empty office.  I didn’t think I had hit my head that hard.  Then I realized it wasn’t hitting my head that had triggered the tears.  The business I had spent more than a decade building now belonged to someone else.  Someone else would care for my clients, my employees, the pieces of a business I had painstakingly curated over the years. 

“But, this is what I wanted,” I kept repeating to myself.  Yet I was still sad.  At the time, I found it hard to reconcile two conflicting feelings – relief and regret.  Even more feelings kept surfacing, demanding to be reconciled, creating even more cognitive dissonance.  Fear and exhilaration and sadness and uncertainty, sometimes even anger and shame.  I stood there second-guessing myself – even though one part of me knew with certainty that the decision was the right one – and the moving truck had already pulled away from the building.  The deal was done.

In the days and weeks that followed, I kept waking up in the middle of the night – confused and uncertain – having to remind myself that YES I had left my business.  I found the lack of routine, and the freedom it brought, unsettling – even though I had longed for those very things.  Some days I was thrilled and lounged about with my tea on the deck, so happy to not have to go anywhere or do anything.  Other days I roamed the house like a lost soul, or found it difficult to even get out of bed.

Thoughts of clients and employees drifted in and out of my head and I had to resist the urge to pick up the phone or jot a note about something to tell them.  Reminding myself that I was no longer responsible for them.  I wanted to just check in, see how things were, catch up with my peers.  But their lives and mine had gone in different directions and what we had in common was drifting.  They no longer needed or sought my input on things.  While I was glad I had exited my business, I was also questioning whether it had been the right decision.  Some days, I flat out felt like a crazy person as my brain whip-sawed between the two thoughts.

It took longer than I thought for this to settle down in my brain and in my body.  My body knew what time it used to get up, the route to the office.  It surprised me that sometimes I accidentally found myself driving toward the office that was no longer mine.  Recalling the rhythm of my old life, my brain and my body recalled that such and such date was when an industry conference always happened – one that I had enjoyed but no longer had a reason to attend.

Eventually, I settled into a new rhythm, a new life, actually happy – although occasionally one of those old thoughts would pop into my head surprising me. 

What Can You Do:  For the Owner, this is a Transition not just a Transaction

Because of my own experience, I remind advisors to stay focused on how this will impact their clients beyond just the economics and the importance of providing support as they transition.  I didn’t know that was what I would be feeling then.  In fact, it surprised me at the time that I felt what I did – and for so long.  Honestly, even knowing that this was likely, it continues to surprise me in the days after ending this recent relationship.  It’s likely that my friend will continue to be surprised by it in the weeks ahead as they pack up their house and move into the new one closer to her daughter.

One of the reasons I’m so focused on helping owners and their advisors remember that this is a transition even more than a transaction is because it’s so easy for advisors to close their files and move on to the next deal – leaving an owner all alone with these surprising feelings.  Too often, the advisors or family members and friends of the owner think that the enthusiasm and relief and accompanying financial windfall will be enough.  They seem perplexed by this emotional maelstrom that sets in, the malaise and ennui (and regret) saying “But I thought this was what you wanted!”

Yes, it IS what the owner wanted.  Just like my friend who wants to live close to her daughter and grandson.  Just like I wanted to sell my business and be freed of the pressures.  Just like you wanted your teenager to launch off to college, but still find yourself surprised that you need to set one less plate at the dinner table or miss stumbling over their lacrosse gear at the back door. 

If we’re not careful with this, when the 3am boogie man thoughts surface for our clients, they will accidentally kill their own deals to relieve the distress from the cognitive dissonance.  But they don’t have to stay stuck and we don’t have to let them navigate it alone.  We can do better – for them and for ourselves.  Feeling paralyzing uncertainty is part of the process.  Second guessing is natural.  Wanting to stay with what feels familiar makes sense, even when staying is the wrong choice. Feeling sad is normal.  Missing what was and forgetting that things are different now makes sense.  Yes, even when you’ve wanted what you got and got what you wanted.  All of that is true, and there is a gradual letting go … a reconciling of what WAS with what IS. 

I find myself missing my special person and know that, for a time, I am likely to still wake up in the night – surprised by the fact that I have forgotten that we’re no longer together.  Surprised by a sense of longing for what was and, yes, even surprised that I am surprised; sad while also knowing that it was the right decision.

How can you help? Endings matter, so prepare for it, stay connected – it’s in your interest, too

Normalize the experience, help your owners to expect it (and to also let them know that it’s normal to underestimate or even discount that they will feel this) just like it is normal to forget or to second guess a decision once it’s been made.  It’s a transition.  If you think it will help, give them a copy of The Seller’s Journey a business fable about how another owner navigated the emotions as he prepared for the sale of his business and throughout the year following his exit. Stay connected to them, help them and the people who will support them to also know what to expect – hiding the feelings or being ashamed of them leaves them stuck and alone.

Don’t forget that this cognitive dissonance also happens for our owners’ employees, customers, vendors, and family members, too.  Even for the deal team – there is an emotional process to go through to reach completion and closure – whether a deal concludes or crashes and burns.  Just closing the file, cashing the check or hosting a closing dinner doesn’t mean it’s “over” for everyone.  

Endings matter. Owners who get the support they need when things go bump in the night settle soundly on the other side and go on to live happily ever after and tell all their friends you can help them write their story that way too. And the advisors who learn how to navigate this process are rewarded with work that makes a difference in their clients’ lives and the referrals that prove it. Call me, I can help.

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