Exitwise Productions

Dan Bauer Podcast Episode_4.txt
English (US)

00:00:00.000 — 00:00:51.280
You couldn't have built a successful business if your heart and soul were not in it. And having invested that heart and soul, extricating yourself needs to be done wisely and carefully. Dan Bauer sold his company to a former client, not a strategic acquirer, not to a P firm, to a guy who had actually hired Dan for advice years earlier, who then joined his company as a consultant and ultimately walked in one day and asked to buy the whole thing.

Today we talk with Dan about why and how you should run your business like it's always for sale. The lessons from his dad's HVAC shop that shaped his business decisions in the months between Loi and clothes that he calls a magical mystery tour. Dan is part of the exit wise Exit Founder Marketplace, where entrepreneurs who built and sold their own businesses are now helping the next wave of founders do the same.

Find out how you can work with Dan at exit.

00:00:55.120 — 00:07:44.330
If first hand founder stories are your thing. Make sure you subscribe wherever you're listening to Exit Wise Productions. Welcome everyone to the Exit Founder podcast, A reminder. Exit wise helps business owners navigate their exit journeys with guidance from founders who've successfully exited themselves.

So on this show, we get to hear from the incredible exit founders currently listed on our marketplace. They've built and sold their own companies. They're here to pay it forward to the next generation of founders. And we have such a person here today with us on the show. We have exit founder Dan Bauer. So again, my name is Stephanie Horowitz.

Roubini from exit wise. We have Todd Sullivan here from exit wise. Say a nice greeting. Let's go. Thank you for allowing me on the podcast today with me. It was questionable. Apparently my past performances have had me benched, but we will try as many sports analogies as we possibly can today. It's perfect.

It's good because that's how we're going to start. So first of all, Dan, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. I'm really excited about this and eager to see where we go. We're going to go and we're going to learn a lot from you and we're going to have a good time. And it's so good because Todd already prepped the audience and we prepped ourselves about the sports, the sports, the sports.

So my team at Exit wise is all about the sports. Everyone is constantly making sports analogies. I know you, Dan yourself, you're really into sports doing consulting, I believe for you did for the NBA. You have post-game careers, which we're going to talk about. Give me your best sports analogy that relates to M&A.

Let's start off that way okay. So M&A is like um, two new teammates who meet in the locker room. They realize they've got to play together. They want to win together. They come from different backgrounds. One of them might be in they're coming down from a major league career. They've had ten years in the in the big Show.

The other one's a rookie or maybe a couple of years in triple A. They've got to make it happen. They've got to make it work and they've got a win together. And, uh, it's all about that process. So that's what I love about it. There's my sports analogy. I actually love that because it's like somebody getting traded into the locker room.

That doesn't. It just doesn't snap, right. There's culture which is an enormous fit. And then there's also personality threat. Right. These new people coming in. How does that change where you know. My job my role. Everybody in both company. Damn perfect I love that analogy. That's great. Yeah, that was really good.

And, Todd, I know you have a million up your sleeve, but for today, your mood today, where you're at today, give me, like, your best. Just you don't drop the ball, okay? As good as it's so often we're handing you the baton. Please do not drop the ball. That's all I got to say. I'm calling an audible. I'm calling an audible right now on this podcast.

All right, so we got a little bit of the sports out of the way, but we're going to come back to it. And you can never really escape it with these guys. And also with you Dan. But it's fine. You're still welcome here. So let's start at the beginning Dan because I'm wondering, did you always think about being an entrepreneur?

I know you had a very successful senior corporate career. You were VP of National Marketing at Citibank, SVP of Global Marketing at Mastercard international. And then you became this successful entrepreneur. So can you just share a bit about how that happened? When did you take the leap as well? So I was and am a third generation entrepreneur and the dad of an entrepreneur.

So it's always been there. It's in the DNA. But I also had a vision early on, even as a teenager and then into college, a of a corp getting some corporate credentials and experience. And so my first passion in love was the ad agency business. I was reading AD Age when all my buddies were reading Sports Illustrated and maybe some other adult magazines.

But, uh, AD Age was my go to, and I really became fascinated by that whole world media and strategy. And it just spoke to me. And so that's what I pursued in the ad agency business. Then I went to the client side. This is when I was living in Hawaii. I went from Ohio U, which was where I undergrad, to Pittsburgh with an agency there.

And then one night got a call from a mentor that said, hey, I got a great job for you. It's in Hawaii. You know, it's 25. Nothing to lose. Didn't own a stick of furniture. My wife said, let's do it. And so off we went. So went from the ad agency side to the client side. I was head of marketing for Bank of Hawaii, then decided to get an MBA in my 30s.

Then with two little kids and my job and my wife's job, it had a count. And so I said, oh, right. Harvard is the place. If I get in, I don't know why I got in, but I'm going to do it. And so I did it. That led me back in the corporate track. Now I had the ramp to get into some big companies, and so I went to Citibank and then Mastercard, as you said, frankly, in my 40s.

Then I was realizing that the corporate scene, the bureaucracy, the turf, the BS, frankly of it, I had enough of that. Clearly, it was not just one's merits or the opportunity that was driving success. There was other games being played and I just had enough of it. And so I looked within and said, okay, Mr. Entrepreneur, what are you going to do?

What are your passions, what are your strengths? And so on. So I drew from this marketing and strategy background that I had developed and learned, and also from that education at uh, at Harvard Business School, where that opened me up to all kinds of avenues and disciplines that I had avoided or was not aware of before.

Along the way, after I got out of business school, I was working the admissions as admissions interviewer, so they had trusted me to be kind of the gatekeeper for Harvard. And so I learned a lot about the admissions process and what they looked for and who's successful and who isn't. And I said, okay, this is the intersection of what I'm going to do the marketing, the strategy, and the appreciation and insight into higher ed.

So I started a business in 96 called the MBA exchange, which was a career in education advisory business. It was myself, a laptop and a back bedroom classic, you know, version of a lemonade stand. Kind of. That was my beginning into entrepreneurship. And so over the next 20 years, I grew it. I grew it to 100 advisors in 11 countries.

We had 5000 clients from every background, and I loved it. It was a fabulous business and I just kept scaling it organically as the clients came, and I was leapfrogging with adding capacity and adding clients and back and forth. So we made the Inc. 5000 2016. One of my colleagues comes and says, I'm going to surprise you or shock you.

I'd like to buy the business. So I said, all right, I'm going to shock you. Let's talk about it. So that became the end of that 20 year journey. And you know, I can go on from there. But maybe that's a good stopping point. Yeah. Yeah, really good place to start. And first of all, I have to say I don't know if you know, but there's a Harvard Yale, uh, rivalry situation on this call right now.

00:07:45.450 — 00:35:41.390
Yeah. But, um, I heard a little bit. We can all be friends. Yes. You know what? I do love Dan. That at the beginning, you pointed out that, uh, entrepreneurship was kind of in the family expected. And I think a lot of us take that for granted. I came from a family of entrepreneurs too, so that was a career path that was absolutely open.

I'm really glad that you mentioned that we should dive into this exit, because we always asking these business owners, okay, why are you thinking about selling? And in your case, right, it's somebody knocking on your door. And it happens to be somebody that knows a lot about your business, right? Which is very let me let me add just a little bit of color.

I had started the thought process about exiting about a year before that. Okay. It did not think about the likelihood of a management buyout, you know, within the company. So I had engaged a investment banker. We crafted a book and we talked about targeting. So I went through that, let's say more traditional front end process of preparing a business for sale, which is so key.

Right. So you're getting a little bit more exit ready. They're probably pushing and pulling on different assets of the or facets of the business. You know, it was sort of at the point where that part of the journey was not working out for me. I there was reasons why I didn't like who the potential buyers were.

The due diligence was more adversarial than I wanted. They weren't being clear about, you know, that that brand was my legacy, and they weren't being very clear about the stewardship of it and all the people I had brought in. So that was, you know, part of my reluctance to go down that path. So it was really serendipity that my then colleague approached me for the for the buyout.

That's great. Yeah. Can you share a bit more about that process and why was it smoother in that way? How did that feel like that was the right fit for you? Kind of. Sure. Let us lean into that a little bit and understand what the situation was and how it felt for you. As someone who you built this over a span of 20 years.

Like, safe to say this was your baby. Absolutely. Absolutely. So what's interesting, it goes back even further than a colleague because he was a client of mine in this business. And so that process gave me such insight into him and he. And to me, that doesn't happen very often. So it's like selling to a, you know, a customer.

Right. So we learned a lot about each other that then when he graduated from business school, I brought him on as one of my consultants because he had really embraced the IP and the process that we used. And I felt he could be an advocate and an agent for it. And so he joined me as then as a consultant over several years.

And so by the time that he took on more responsibility in the business, we really knew each other well. This was, you know, very compatible, complementary work styles, backgrounds and so on. So that builds a trust and a knowledge and an insight and a comfort that told me in my gut this was the right way to go.

And so this goes back to your initial make a sports analogy, right. You brought him into the locker room. You played a season with the guy. You knew how he played. He knows how you played the cultures there. And so if you're going to turn over the baton, Ray, you know who you're giving it to and where it's going to go.

Right. So the perfect analogy at the beginning, and this is what happened when you ran the process with the banker. I always tell business owners, you got to lay out what your happy place is. Do not show me a buyer that is going to treat my brand like crap. I want that Randall asset. Whatever your request is or your requirements are, your banker needs to respect that and bring buyers that will respect it as well.

So I hate hearing that you go down some path and the wrong buyer is sitting in front of you. But founders need to know, right? You got to know what you want and demand it in your M&A transaction. And the first aspect of that is your engagement with the banker. You've got to assign someone that whose persona and style and track record is compatible with you, because you're baring your soul to them, and you're kind of giving them the keys to the, to the car.

And so that's the first trust level and comfort that has to exist. One question comes out of it is because you went through that process, you probably had a sense of what the market would bear for the business, the value of it. Right. So did that knowledge then was that helpful in a transaction with somebody that is a known entity, somebody on the management team?

Yeah, it helped a lot. Good. The sort of intimacy of the industry that I was in. I knew my competitors. I knew my major competitors. And so I could have a good sense of the scale of their business and the margins in their business as well. So I had a feel for what was realistic and so on. The banker did not surprise me with a multiple.

That was very far from what I thought it would be. So that was that was good. The other day, Dan, you said to us that your philosophy is run the business as if it's always for sale. So can you say that when you were in your own shoes, if you will like, did you take your own advice or when did you start taking your own advice of running the business as if it's for sale?

Was it just the year before when you started thinking about a sale? Or how does one apply That philosophy, actually. Sure. So it happened. Actually, before I started the business, I knew that the name of it could not and should not be Dan Bauer Consulting. That was number one, and that's why I did it, is because I knew that someday I would want to salable and fighting that tendency that some founders have of, hey, this is about me.

You know, the glory of me. And I want everyone to know I'm the guy, right? Did you. Did you go to Bauer Consulting? Because then you just, like, lean right into sports. Big Bauer brand. I saved that for the marketing consultancy. Great. Okay. Right. So that when I did, maybe I didn't follow my own advice on that one because I didn't believe that one was salable.

That was more me. But I knew that the I wanted to build a business that would be salable at some point. Maybe it's a lesson I learned in a way from my father's business, which was the one that I grew up with in my house, which was HVAC business, air conditioning and heating. It wasn't Bauer Air Conditioning and heating.

And so I saw how that added a sort of a luster and a and a enough of a corporate feel to his business. That was a good thing to do. So not for one moment that I think I would try to make this, you know, literally my baby with the same name. So that's when that started. Then as I scaled it, I realized the importance of having IP and prioritizing components of the business with using the brand, but also a functional product name.

So there's a lot of TMS and SMS on the components of the business, because again, I wanted it codified and commercialized. That would make a sale more attractive and could be perpetuated under a new owner. It wasn't some mysterious technique or, you know, process that that sounded like it was made in a back bedroom, you know, with a sheet of paper and a pencil.

It had to be productized and branded and co-branded and sub branded. And so that was part of my motivation there as well. Have substance that you're selling, not just your own balance sheet and goodwill that you've built. So I structured it to have substance, breadth and depth that would be salable and viable.

Dan, I think people are going to get such a benefit if they get you on their team on that growth side of it, because you're aware of all of these components of what drives value in a business beyond just the financial metrics. And you ran the playbook for yourself. And I know you run the playbook for others.

So it isn't just that you can help with M&A, right? You can help a lot earlier on. And that preparation drives real value. Absolutely. I'm drawn to that. I cannot look at a business without saying, here's some adjacencies or some add ons or things you should cut, make it more valuable and raise the top line.

That's what I'm drawn to. Yeah. You know, some folks are more driven toward cost cutting and that sort of thing. I'm an opportunity guy. You know, making a smart investment in adding a person. Adding a line of service. A strategic alliance. Rebranding or better communicating. These are all positive things for the business from the operating side as well as the exit.

So I have this call with this with this guy and he's like giving advice to founders. And he said, I tell them, build a business like you're never going to sell it. What's your opinion on that? I was like, well, I understand, like your heart is in the right place, but I actually say the opposite. You build a business as if it could be sold any day.

You have all of those pieces, all those operational engines, not customer concentration, not reliance on business owners. There are all of these attributes that you can do that actually drive value. And the reason he said this is he talked to an investment banker when he went to sell his company. And the banker said, all I care about is how much EBITDA you have.

I don't care about your brand. I don't care about your people. I don't care about your IP. How much EBITDA do you have? And is the absolute. That is the lazy answer. Yes, yes, there is a multiple on EBITDA in every industry, but what is special about your business and if you position it correctly, it is adds true value.

So do not listen to somebody that says it just has to be a multiple of your EBITDA in your industry. And I appreciate guys like you can bring that value out. So I will I will ride the bench for absolutely. One of the things enough of this riding the badge I can't it's really insane. I'm just outnumbered here always.

But it's good. But also Todd, don't ride the bench here. Yes, it's a full court press. Dan I played positions four and five at Jewish day school basketball, so I think I'm entitled to. I have a voice here. Thank you. I'm gonna. I'm gonna look, but I'm gonna look for my referee's whistle here in another minute.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, okay. You talked a bit about founder dependency and how intentional you were about not naming the business after yourself. And founder dependency is something we talk about so much at exit wise. And it's something? It's like a huge pain point, obviously. Yeah. For a lot of the clients we're working with and potential clients and business owners that we're talking to.

So something I'm just thinking about and I don't think there's a black or white answer, but to me, it's so interesting that this was your company that you built. You said it was just you, a pen and paper, a laptop. We used all the trademarks and we did all the sub branding. So it didn't seem like that. But it was you for 20 years you're working on this thing.

You were intentional about separating yourself from the brand. Anyway. It just makes me think about what the transaction and the exit process looks like for someone like you. Like that kind of founder who on the one hand has been there for 20 years. But on the other hand, you were very intentional about separating yourself from the business.

And then we talked to and work with other founders who have built and sold the company in 18 months or 2 to 3 years. And perhaps they're not intentional about separating themselves from the business, but they've only been there for two years. So how integrated really is the founder in that company. So it's just kind of an interesting thought I have.

I don't know if anyone has any interpretation or thoughts or anything. Let me add to let me add to it a step that can happen regardless of whether it's year one or, you know, one month away from exit. And that is by segmenting the business into identifiable pieces and naming someone as the manager. Or I would think of them as the owner of that piece of business.

With my business, I would add new service lines and I would always identify one of the consultants, one of the folks on the team, to own that and be the point person on it and be visible as the point person on that. They were driving the PNL on that service offering, so that when it came time for exit, it was I could name names over who was running, what piece of it, and that added to the honest view that it was not founder dependent, that there was a team of responsible senior managers each that had a piece of it, and then collectively it became the whole.

So that that helped in the transaction. It also helped in running the business and growing it. So that would be advice. Regardless of where a founder is on the timeline, to think about how to split up the business and have sub owners of pieces of it, you know, that convey the reality that it's not founder dependent.

Dan, can I ask a second question? Is your answer the same? If you had the crystal ball and knew you were going to sell to a strategic or a financial buyer, or versus private equity firm, one really valuing the team, one maybe saying, oh, we have crossover already have CFO, I have head of marketing, I have X, Y and Z and they're looking to cost cut.

Is the advice still the same? Yes, the advice would be the same as you said that. Todd I'm thinking back to why I wasn't happy with some of those earlier suitors because they were not thinking of it as strategic. They were thinking it more financial. As an owner, at least in my case, I. I could not view it strictly as financial.

That might have cost me money. It might have cost me a deal. But I believe that a founder who's truly wedded to the business cannot put aside that strategic aspect in terms of how they grow the business, how they position the business and how they sell the business, and even a financial buyer. They're short sighted.

If they're not seeing the financial value of that strategic trajectory that the company is on, it'll cost them money once they have bought it. If that's not in place. And so maybe that's the overlap between strategic and financial buyers is there's a piece of each. It's not strictly strategic, not strictly financial.

But they there is should be in the right buyer some appreciation or both. The reason I ask is I know you have substantial experience working on the other side with private equity. Right. And what what they do, their game plans, knowing what those game plans are. So it's a great answer. I don't know if you want to elaborate, but certainly your experience, I would say that in my experience in marketing consulting, especially in the last ten years since I sold my business, I've seen a quite a variety of mindsets and behaviors in founders.

Shortly before, shortly after, and maybe a year or two after, a PE firm has bought them the controlling interest, the dance that they go through. I've seen it be very painful for some of them because their vision, their baby is not being, you know, honored and treated right. Others are greatly relieved that, wow, the day to day stuff that I had to wrestle with.

I'm so happy with that. They honor my legacy. They respect my employees, my customers, my brand. So I've seen that full spectrum of it. But I would say in almost every case, those who had built a structure that was not all about them were more content, less prone to second guessing than the more owner dependent and founder dependent companies.

So I think it's just smart from a mental health standpoint, as well as from financial standpoint to, you know, structure under yourself, wisely and confidently, with good people who you know and trust. It makes a big difference. I love that the answer is tactical here because you hear about concentration or reliance on on the founder, but that really puts it into context.

Thank you. I feel like talking to you, Dan. It kind of feels like Dan knows you have so much experience, like he knows he knows how to build the business. He knows how to sell the business. But what do you wish someone told you that you didn't know? Because I'm hearing you talk and I'm thinking, you really do know.

You know how to set yourself up for success. You've been on kind of all different sides of this story, but when it was time for your exit, what did you not know and what do you wish someone told you? This will sound like cliches, but in in over til it's over there's a journey from Loi to Deal Done that is its own magical mystery tour and causes a lot of introspection and restless, if not sleepless nights and a lot of lawyer expenses that one doesn't count on.

So I would say that's kind of it. Was that what I didn't know about or had not projected myself into? Was that period between Loi and Deal being done, the actual, you know, transaction prepping for it? I got and post was no problem. I loved it, but it was that period of several months, maybe six months, I think it was that, uh, I wish, you know, by osmosis, I had learned about that and knew about that better.

I wouldn't have had it wouldn't have been quite as, uh, distracting or stressful. Not that it was bad, but it was just I was unaware that that would happen. Dan, I think your point now, like one of the biggest values of an exited founder on your M&A team, is because they've been through all that before. They understand the ebb and flow of due diligence, the stress of due diligence.

They can help you as a business owner, as a seller, make better decisions because they've been through it. And and to just add a little context, not knowing, you know, once you sign that Loi Most founders don't even realize that the buyer is likely borrowing some money. Yes, and now bringing in another party.

And there's a lender and there's a lender, and those guys can change their terms on a dime. Yes. And typically typically a buyer I found a buyer has more soldiers in his or her army than the seller. And thus more reasons or sometimes excuses to to play with that Eloi. It's not me, it's them. Right. So at least in my case, because I was not aware of an organization like Exit wise, and I knew that my banker had some self-interest as well.

Let's not kid ourselves. They're not Mother Teresa. They're I mean, they're in a business as well. So I tapped my own personal network of friends who had sold businesses and bought businesses. So I had sort of my kitchen cabinet, in a sense, up against a more formal team on the on the buyers side, so that was a learning curve for me.

But having some trusted ally who knew the ins and the outs and the ups and the downs, that was very helpful to me in that exit period. So that's that was kind of the way I that's the, you know, weapons race kind of thing that we described of, you know, all of a sudden there's more folks, there's lenders, there's, you know, other investors and so on.

There's a need for that on the seller side, too. And and it's got to be trusted, smart, skilled folks. And that's why I'm drawn to exit wise. I just feel like you've got that brain trust there that I wish I had had when I was selling. Obviously we love hearing that, and that's what we hear over and over. Some of the smartest exits that happen are because the founder reached out to somebody that had been through it themselves, or called somebody they knew that sold to the company that they were selling to.

It is the inside baseball way of, of for, for creating great outcomes. But it's got to be someone who's objective enough and has your trust enough to tell you when you're really dead wrong. Yeah, exactly. I think we can see very clearly the value that you do bring to exit wise and who we work with. But I'm curious, from your own perspective, where do you feel like you're most valuable for founders who are on their exit journeys?

I would say probably two areas. One is from my marketing and strategy consulting background. I feel like I, you know, can bring objectivity to their business and their deal that might otherwise not be there. My background is not in finance. It's in marketing and strategy and competitive analysis and customer research and so on.

So I that's one level that I, I cannot help it bring to a deal. But the other is the human side. Understanding a company culture their own as well as that of the buyer organization, the persona of the founder and the buyer. Those are factors that will impact the negotiation. The price, yes, but also the negotiation process.

It's not something someone wants to go through too many times. Even if it goes great, it kind of takes over your world and it's beyond empathy. It's it's scar tissue and finding the joys in it. You know, the day you get that big check. I still smile, and I think about that first check that I never thought I'd have in my hands before.

Then the realities of I for another two years I was the chairman. Do they need to do what I say? Do they need to hear me? Should I shut up and let it happen? So the human side of that journey is very important. It really was important for me. And so I really feel like I can bring that to to a founder who's about to begin that, that journey.

And I enjoy it and I'm raring to go, you know, for that. Yeah. You can. It's just very clear with you that this is in your blood. I mean, basically your whole life you've been advising and mentoring and this is very clearly who you are and what you love to do. And it's so funny because the idea of what happens after and who am I after the exit?

We also talked speak to this a lot. This identity crisis. What should I do with my life? Or what defines me or my job is me and I love that. While you yourself went through that process and whatnot, one of the things you're doing today, in addition to working with exit wise, is the post game careers, where you're helping athletes who are retiring figure out their next chapter of their lives, and they probably feel like, oh my God, this is who I am.

This is my identity. What do I do next? So it kind of takes it's all really related. It's all kind of it's not the same, but it's a very similar experience that everyone's going through. We know you're working with a lot of different founders today. You're doing a lot of different projects. I'm wondering, I don't want to say this AI landscape and the reality in which we find ourselves where everything's changing like this, which it's annoying to say, but it is the truth in every company in business, and founder is struggling with it.

I guess I'm curious who you're working with right now. Like, what are some of the pains they're feeling? what mistakes are they making? Or what advice are you giving when it comes to handling this ever changing reality? Like trying to build, grow or sell a business in this crazy reality we find ourselves in?

Well, I guess a couple of things that I have done and am currently doing with this career coaching. Because you're right, the analogy is there. These athletes have ended a very intensive career. Maybe it's, you know, five years as opposed to the 20 that I did. Given the nature of sports. But what I focus on with them is setting a realistic, attainable goal, having them articulate it so I help them find it.

They know they want to do something else, but what is it? What will give me satisfaction? Hopefully financial success, but what's going to feel right? And I it's a natural segue for me. So I do that to a great extent with them, but it's also mining what they've done and what they've achieved to help them understand the relevance and the transferability of that.

And so that's what I do. That's what I do with the MLB, you know, rookie who's playing Double-A baseball or an NBA player. That is their career is over and they didn't finish college. And, uh, the world is not beating a path to their door. So again, goal setting and mining and drilling down into what you've done, what you've learned.

Both of them are necessary steps. And those are the really the two that I focus on, whether I'm advising a founder or an athlete. They're extensions of this coaching and mentoring thing that I've been doing for 30 years now. So it's a I see the exit wise role the same way. It's a very personal thing, very personal thing when you're thinking about in selling a business and anyone that tells you it's not, it's not transactional.

It cannot be. You couldn't have built a successful business if your heart and soul were not in it. And having invested that heart and soul, extricating yourself needs to be done wisely and carefully. Oh he's wisely. That's great. Stephanie passed the puck over here. Okay, because I want to ask follow up.

So, Dan, part of what study is very smart question. And I realize why she's been elevated is that she's asking about AI in your industry consulting world. Right. You got companies like McKinsey buying AI companies and transforming how this this industry is going to work. And can you talk a little bit of where you think the puck is going here?

Yeah, I think AI I'm, I'm a big student and fan and user of it. So, uh, you know, no caveman here being old enough to have experience in my career, the.com bubble in the 90s. I really see a lot of parallels to it. There was a lot of Chicken Little going on then, and it proved to not, you know, be sustainable or true.

It did impact and change business. The whole concept of e-commerce and all that didn't exist before. But there's still people working with people and people selling to people and people managing people and hiring and firing. So that cannot be replaced. What I see happening, as well as the inroads and the new ground that AI is breaking, there's also a commoditization of things happening.

Words and numbers are being run through the same conveyor belt at warp speed through AI. And they I'm finding they're coming out sounding a lot the same these days. And so differentiation comes back to the person and the people side of it. So if you can harness it as opposed to being steamrolled by it, it's magic.

And that's what I try to do with my businesses and my advisor in my advising if it can save me labor, you know, roll up your sleeves kind of hours, which gives me more time for thinking and feeling and assessing, then that's a good use of AI, and that's what I'm an advocate of. Every time we get a chance to talk with you, you paint a picture that is so familiar.

Just the idea of saying, if you if you're going to build a great business. Your heart and soul is into that. That is a human element for sure. Selling that business, transferring it to another human, that is human interaction. And I like to call it trust and validation. And yes, we, the banking and the analysis and the legal forms all may get more efficient, faster, whatever, through the use of these tools.

But this is still a human business. And for us to feel comfortable transferring assets, it is a human to human contact, and having people in the middle that have been through it are just invaluable. Yes. So I appreciate like we're we're saying the same thing every time we talk. We just feel like you should be on this team and now you are.

So thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you again. And to Claude. Claude. You're great. We love you. We work with you, Claude. But, Claude, I'm so sorry. You don't have a heart and you don't have a soul. I'm sorry to break it to you. And that is why this is invaluable. And it is priceless. And this cannot be replaced.

We're so happy to have you here. We're so grateful to have you on the team. Thank you so much for sharing. Any last words? Anything. Obviously, folks can connect with Dan in the show notes. They can visit his exit founder profile and learn more and see if he's a good fit to work together on your exit journey.

Last thing I would say was, I've never met an industry or a market that I didn't like, and I love the immersion in a new one. I almost challenged a founder to find something in his or her industry that I have not touched in some way, and so I'm eager to put that breadth of experience to work for any founder that you know, who my comments today resonate with.

We can do some great things together and I would welcome that shot. Amazing. Thank you Dan. Thank you. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of The Exited Founder Podcast. For business owners who are looking to sell or want to ensure their exit ready. Our team is here to help you maximize your outcome.

So connect with us at exit Wired.com today.