“They have to build some value.” — Scott Snider, President and Co-owner of the Exit Planning Institute (EPI) and the Operating Partner of Snider Premier Growth. In this episode, Scott offers his expertise on how to best prepare for your ripcord moment from the perspective of a lifelong entrepreneur who has worked with his father to create a formal training program called the CEPA (Certified Exit Planning Advisor) within the Exit Planning Institute.
At a recent national summit for the Exit Planning Institute, Scott spoke about the impact of finding his personal purpose and the impact that this has had on his business and succession planning. He believes that finding your personal purpose as a business owner is crucial to aligning your business, personal, and financial goals.
The Exit Planning Institute recently released their purpose as a company, which mentions working with business owners to create companies of significance rather than just success. When considering the purpose of the company, Scott thought about what the company meant internally to employees and externally to its members and the surrounding communities. He says he considered how many business owners have seemingly successful businesses, but when selling their business, they don’t end up getting what they want for their company or the sale takes much longer than expected. He believes this issue boils down to a focus on success and growth instead of a focus on building value and significance.
Scott discusses who he turned to for coaching and mentorship when constructing his personal purpose and the purpose of his company. He says he went through transformational leadership training with InitiativeOne Leadership Institute, a program designed to bring teams together to create a better communication system and make better decisions across a company.
He talks about the importance of knowing your personal purpose before selling your business, because an exit can leave business owners wondering, “Who am I?” This is critical for not allowing your business to define your entire being and being able to separate yourself from the business.
Scott tells us that 78% of owners don't have a board of advisors and 63% of owners have not sought out any advice about exit or transition planning for their business. He stresses the need for business owners to surround themselves with a strong external advisory team to create accountability and allow the owner to be more of the strategic visionary.
Lastly, he shares two action items for owners:
1. Find your purpose, write it down, and begin to live by it immediately. It'll change all aspects of your life—business, personal, and financial.
2. Understand and know the value of your business by conducting an annual discovery event, which is like a diagnostic of your entire company. It will change the way you operate and will create a more successful company today and a more significant one when the time comes to exit.
Disclosure: Information presented herein is for discussion and illustrative purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by the speakers are as of the date of the recording and are subject to change. These views are not intended as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities, and should not be relied on as financial, tax or legal advice. You should consult with your attorney, finance professional or accountant before implementing any transactions and/or strategies concerning your finances.
“They have to build some value.” — Scott Snider, President and Co-owner of the Exit Planning Institute (EPI) and the Operating Partner of Snider Premier Growth. In this episode, Scott offers his expertise on how to best prepare for your ripcord moment from the perspective of a lifelong entrepreneur who has worked with his father to create a formal training program called the CEPA (Certified Exit Planning Advisor) within the Exit Planning Institute.
At a recent national summit for the Exit Planning Institute, Scott spoke about the impact of finding his personal purpose and the impact that this has had on his business and succession planning. He believes that finding your personal purpose as a business owner is crucial to aligning your business, personal, and financial goals.
The Exit Planning Institute recently released their purpose as a company, which mentions working with business owners to create companies of significance rather than just success. When considering the purpose of the company, Scott thought about what the company meant internally to employees and externally to its members and the surrounding communities. He says he considered how many business owners have seemingly successful businesses, but when selling their business, they don’t end up getting what they want for their company or the sale takes much longer than expected. He believes this issue boils down to a focus on success and growth instead of a focus on building value and significance.
Scott discusses who he turned to for coaching and mentorship when constructing his personal purpose and the purpose of his company. He says he went through transformational leadership training with InitiativeOne Leadership Institute, a program designed to bring teams together to create a better communication system and make better decisions across a company.
He talks about the importance of knowing your personal purpose before selling your business, because an exit can leave business owners wondering, “Who am I?” This is critical for not allowing your business to define your entire being and being able to separate yourself from the business.
Scott tells us that 78% of owners don't have a board of advisors and 63% of owners have not sought out any advice about exit or transition planning for their business. He stresses the need for business owners to surround themselves with a strong external advisory team to create accountability and allow the owner to be more of the strategic visionary.
Lastly, he shares two action items for owners:
1. Find your purpose, write it down, and begin to live by it immediately. It'll change all aspects of your life—business, personal, and financial.
2. Understand and know the value of your business by conducting an annual discovery event, which is like a diagnostic of your entire company. It will change the way you operate and will create a more successful company today and a more significant one when the time comes to exit.
Disclosure: Information presented herein is for discussion and illustrative purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by the speakers are as of the date of the recording and are subject to change. These views are not intended as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities, and should not be relied on as financial, tax or legal advice. You should consult with your attorney, finance professional or accountant before implementing any transactions and/or strategies concerning your finances.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:24:18
Joe Seetoo
Welcome to The Ripcord Moment. I'm your host Joe Seetoo. Today, we're joined by Scott Snider. Scott is the president and co-owner of the Exit Planning Institute. He's responsible for strategic direction, overseeing the company operations and chapter development. I've known Scott for a number of years. He's a lifelong entrepreneur. In fact, he started his first business at the ripe old age of 17 and actually had sold it by the age of 24, believe it or not.
00:00:25:18 - 00:00:49:11
Joe Seetoo
Scott, welcome to the podcast. You partnered with your father to acquire EPI, the Exit Planning Institute, where you and Chris, your father, have created this formal training program called the CEPA, the Certified Exit Planning Advisor designation. It's something I've actually gone through and really bringing this sort of formal methodology to the space of business and succession planning. So excited to have you today.
00:00:49:12 - 00:00:50:18
Joe Seetoo
Looking forward to our discussion.
00:00:50:24 - 00:00:53:16
Scott Snider
Yeah, man, thanks for having me. Really excited to see this and be on the show.
00:00:54:08 - 00:01:12:15
Joe Seetoo
So, you know, we just had a national summit where we had, I think five, 600 CEPAs. You talked a lot in one of your keynote speeches around personal purpose at the summit. How has finding your purpose really impacted your business and how you think about succession planning?
00:01:13:12 - 00:01:44:22
Scott Snider
What a great opening question. So yeah, this is obviously something top of mind. And if you saw me kind of speak at the summit, I kind of got a little vulnerable, right? Kind of sharing a little bit of my entrepreneurial journey, particularly over the last couple of years. And I think that made a pretty bold statement and certainly in front of my dad too, who created this methodology. I said, look, I think that one of the things for owners to really get activated inside of the value acceleration methodology, a big part of that and maybe even one that, I went as far to say, I think one of the missing components is that
00:01:44:22 - 00:02:06:16
Scott Snider
owners need to find purpose. It's something crazy. Like when I started doing research for that very speech, something like 70 to 80% of Americans walk around with no sense of purpose or meaning in life. And I think that it's a critical piece to the overall methodology. So, as you know, we believe in having three things align, right, business goals, personal goals and personal financial goals.
00:02:06:27 - 00:02:25:09
Scott Snider
And really to me, if you don't really understand personal purpose and vision and your core values, it's actually kind of hard to get all three aligned because I think that as a business owner, we're operating in all three of those elements as well. And I think it helps us drive the way in which we run our companies as well on a day to day basis.
00:02:25:09 - 00:02:32:11
Scott Snider
So I think it has like short term impact and I think it has impact on long term value both on a personal side and on a business side as well.
00:02:32:20 - 00:02:55:24
Joe Seetoo
Yeah, I love this concept. I mean, thought leader Simon Sinek has gotten out there and talked about, you know, finding your why. I'll tell you that for us as an organization, one of the things we did during the pandemic was worked on our personal lives and at our company annual holiday party, we actually shared them, and it was really compelling to hear each of our whys.
00:02:55:24 - 00:03:20:12
Joe Seetoo
And it's I love the fact that you're bringing this really into the fold as well. I think your company if I think I saw correctly released their purpose and mentions talking about helping to work with creating companies of significance rather than just success. So talk to us a little bit about what you know, why that is critical, mission critical for you.
00:03:20:25 - 00:03:20:25
Joe Seetoo
Yeah.
00:03:21:19 - 00:03:41:24
Scott Snider
Yeah, I think just kind of leading in from finding purpose, right. Once I found my personal purpose, it has actually impacted our entire business and we did the same exercise at the end of, I guess, what, same kind of kind of time frame in the heat of the pandemic. We kind of came together that fall of 2020. All 20 of us at EPI working on a personal purpose.
00:03:41:24 - 00:04:00:08
Scott Snider
And it was shocking, actually. Not only did I not have a clear personal purpose, but there was, I think, maybe one or two people at EPI that actually had one. But once we did that, and I think it's a kind of I'll mention that story because it led into okay, now that we have all these personal purposes and vision, what kind of company do we want to be?
00:04:00:21 - 00:04:23:22
Scott Snider
So it led us to actually look at the personal or the company purpose and really who EPI was both internally and externally to all of our CEPAs and really all of the community. And we said, look, if you know of EPI and we understood maybe the past ten years since Dad and I bought EPI, the purpose of EPI has been a lot of we call it, change the outcome.
00:04:24:10 - 00:04:41:28
Scott Snider
And to me, you know, what does that really mean, right? What outcome are we actually trying to change that makes you peel the layer back? And what I think it really boils down to is that at the end of the day, a lot of business owners have very successful companies. If you talk to them about it, most of them would feel pretty successful in their entrepreneurial journey.
00:04:41:28 - 00:05:05:11
Scott Snider
They seemingly have great customers, great employees. They have, you know, good they have good cashflow. They have a nice PnL or maybe even a solid balance sheet. But then when they go to sell their company, what they find is that they either got to take a haircut so they're not getting what they want for their company, or it's going to take much longer to sell their company because they have to build some value or unfortunately, sometimes not even sellable or salable at all.
00:05:05:24 - 00:05:26:28
Scott Snider
And they're kind of slapped in the face. And what do you mean, Joe? Like, I have a really great company. Nobody wants this thing. So they only focused on likely income generation and not value creation. They only focus on being successful year over year and hitting a growth plan. And they didn't think in terms of, okay, how does that eventually affect the strategic value of my company?
00:05:27:04 - 00:05:44:28
Scott Snider
And then how does it relate to me personally and what I do in the next act of my life? And so, yeah, we looked at our company and we said, look, we obviously for EPI, our purpose is to drive more significant companies, and we chose to do that through educating folks like all of you and bringing you guys together in a community that are all like minded advisors.
00:05:44:28 - 00:06:02:19
Scott Snider
Because as a business owner myself, it's kind of like this rising tide raises all or it's kind of like that saying about it takes a community to raise the kid. Right? And I think that business owners, myself included, need guys like you because we certainly don't know it all. We know our craft for me is professional education, content and events.
00:06:03:06 - 00:06:18:00
Scott Snider
But all these other components that go into exit strategy are so complex, honestly, that it takes a team of experts. So, so yeah. So we really looked last year and really two years ago at changing our purpose. We've been trying to live it in 2021 and into this year.
00:06:18:13 - 00:06:34:13
Joe Seetoo
Well, maybe we could actually pivot the conversation there to like we know the technical proficiencies, you know if you need to get your books cleaned up, you either get a CFO hired or maybe you're leveraging your CPA. When you tackle the estate planning component, we know there's somebody that wears that hat. Your financial planner, right,
00:06:34:13 - 00:06:56:21
Joe Seetoo
we know how to model out creating a financial roadmap for a client. When you you know, you bring in any of us, make all those. But who would you look to? Or maybe who did you look to as your coach, as the facilitator, as that expert who helped you craft your why? Because it's such a it's a vulnerable thing and it's something that yeah, it's a bit unique.
00:06:57:15 - 00:07:17:01
Scott Snider
It is. So there's a couple of things. So what I knew at the time, so I didn't really know that I didn't really know my personal purpose. Right? I, I'm pretty. I feel like I was in tune and everything but I didn't... we preach at EPI writing stuff down, written strategies. I didn't really have a written set of core values or a written vision.
00:07:17:18 - 00:07:38:23
Scott Snider
And although we had a really nice pivot during the summit, our company had a really nice pivot. I kind of step back and I looked and you could just tell, right, being the leader of a company, you could tell something was kind of off. And so I fell into this call, this transformational leadership training through a group called Initiative One Leadership Institute, that a gentleman named Fred Johnson, who we met at the summit.
00:07:38:29 - 00:07:39:08
Joe Seetoo
Yeah.
00:07:40:00 - 00:08:00:04
Scott Snider
And his program was to help teams come together, have a better communication system, and to make quicker and more informed decisions across the entire company. And I said as a business owner, I'm like, yeah, that sounds like exactly what we need. When I got into the program, it was instead, before we could tackle anything like that, we had to step back and look at who we were.
00:08:00:21 - 00:08:16:22
Scott Snider
So he said, look, I can give you all the systems, all the process. I give you all the training. But we have to understand who you are first in order to be a better business leader. And so that's how I fell into finding my personal purpose. And I went to the extent that I'm a pretty extroverted dude. Sitting around by myself, I start to go crazy a little bit.
00:08:16:22 - 00:08:29:09
Scott Snider
I love human interaction. And so for the first time in my life during that time period, this would have been 2020, 2021. I went away into like a personal reflection trip. I literally got a cabin here in the woods in Ohio.
00:08:29:12 - 00:08:30:14
Joe Seetoo
Sabbatical type, right?
00:08:30:14 - 00:08:51:23
Scott Snider
Yeah. Just like just by myself, legitimately turned it off, turned off the computer and just and just started to write. I hiked around, I took a backpack for the day and hiked around to different cool locations in the park, which is like, you know, that overlooked the lake at one point and just had a nice quiet time. I just started jotting down what I wanted to do in life and kind of trying to again, kind of connect the dots right.
00:08:51:23 - 00:09:11:05
Scott Snider
I'm a big bucket list guy, too, but like, what kind of meaning did that have in my life? And what I found is that whether it was in the business and my personal life as a family man, as a friend, as a mentor, my life was been all about driving experiences for people and helping them get to their experiences and bringing experiences into my own life.
00:09:11:05 - 00:09:32:19
Scott Snider
So I found that I exist to really be a catalyst for experiences for people, which was shocking to me, because we're in a business that drives transformational experiences for professional advisors and owners. Yeah. So I found that, you know, going back to your original question, I found that simply by getting myself into a professional program that allowed us to kind of spend time on that on a regular basis.
00:09:32:19 - 00:09:43:19
Joe Seetoo
But I want to pause real quick there. And this is not something I mean, you I'm guessing you may not have gotten to the same conclusion had you just done it on your own like you actually got
00:09:44:01 - 00:10:00:03
Scott Snider
I think it's just like exit planning, Joe, or it's like financial planning or anything else. It's like, again, as a business owner, I think one of the things that we could do as business owners is, is realizing that we should relinquish some control and that we don't know everything about everything. Again, I know I can tell you about professional education.
00:10:00:06 - 00:10:17:16
Scott Snider
Yeah, I can tell you how to put on a great event and I can tell you how to create really good, inspiring content. But I couldn't tell you how to find my personal purpose. And I think that once you kind of relinquish that control a little bit and again get a little vulnerable and say, man, I really don't know about this, but there's people out there that do.
00:10:17:18 - 00:10:37:22
Scott Snider
So let's invest some time, money, resources and make it happen. So the pandemic, as bad as the pandemic has been for many people, there is some kind of silver lining in it that I think it made a lot of people think a lot differently in life. Yeah, for me it was about personal purpose and it was just seeing my people on my team and in the office just acting a little differently
00:10:37:22 - 00:10:49:24
Scott Snider
that made me say, Look, I think there's something missing here that we need. And so, yeah, it was a formal program that we were able to go through that really gave me structure, just like the value acceleration methodology of structure and exit planning.
00:10:49:24 - 00:11:12:19
Joe Seetoo
Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you from my experience and having done the CEPA in 2018 and working with the number of owners, you know, I became an owner myself of Morton in 2014 as a second generation owner. When I'm having the conversations with people that the business aspect and the technical stuff around the personal financial planning is relatively well fleshed out.
00:11:12:21 - 00:11:37:11
Joe Seetoo
There's a lot of material out there where I think, and I would agree with you and what I took away from the summit was the personal aspect for the owner is one where I think our methodology could improve collectively across the board and needs to incorporate more professional training coaches like a Fred or whoever else Simon Sinek type, to help those discussions and to help that along for the owner as well.
00:11:37:11 - 00:11:39:18
Joe Seetoo
So I'm excited to see where this kind of goes.
00:11:39:21 - 00:11:59:18
Scott Snider
So am I. Me and my dad were laughing after the summit too because I think it could be one of my contributions to the overall methodology. Along the way is that I do if you look at the training program, if you looked at the book and Dad's down in Florida right now writing a second version of Walk into Destiny, which includes some of the stuff that we're talking about today.
00:11:59:18 - 00:12:19:06
Scott Snider
Because, again, I think that particularly for the baby boomer generation, right, these folks that are in their sixties and early seventies, you spent a lifetime really being a business owner and you spent almost a lifetime certainly with hobbies and stuff, but very disconnected. Remember, 70 to 80% of Americans cited that they don't have a clear sense of purpose or meaning in life.
00:12:19:21 - 00:12:38:15
Scott Snider
And I think this is one of the problems. Right, is that we spend a lot of time on personal financial planning. We spend a lot of time on business growth, but we never find any time, like on ourselves and saying, like, well, what is a meeting and why am I here? And I think once you unlock that, it gives you different goals and objectives in life and it gives you different goals and objectives in your business.
00:12:38:15 - 00:12:54:06
Scott Snider
And it kind of makes all these three things kind of come together. So I truly, I do believe that it could be the missing piece to really unlocking a more of a value acceleration centric lifestyle that helps you get to this significant company. I think it will be an interesting next few years to see how it all comes together.
00:12:54:19 - 00:13:02:17
Joe Seetoo
Why do you think most owners don't have a detailed plan around this personal aspect of their life? As part of their plan.
00:13:03:22 - 00:13:20:08
Scott Snider
I think a little bit of it's generational. So, Joe, you know me, I love talking about generation, so I think it's a little bit generational. But I also think for anybody across any generation as a business owner, I think that your business owner's like another child for you, it's your baby.
00:13:20:21 - 00:13:29:03
Scott Snider
I think that business owners love running their company. Like I love, like I was away for a week in Disney World with my family last week.
00:13:29:18 - 00:13:31:12
Joe Seetoo
00:13:31:12 - 00:13:46:22
Scott Snider
Honestly, as much as I enjoyed that, it was the first time in a long time that I truly kind of shut it down so I could be with the family and be present. But I could tell you by like, we were there for seven days, by day five, I was actually like missing my people. I was missing hanging out with guys like you, Joe, and I was missing
00:13:46:22 - 00:14:09:21
Scott Snider
like, if you look at my desk right now, I have the Colorado State of Owner Readiness survey, the data all sprawled out on my desk as I author the report right now and there is a massive lack of planning inside of this Colorado State of Owner Readiness, inside of that personal side as well. So I just think that owners don't concentrate on it because again, I think most people would consider
00:14:09:23 - 00:14:28:06
Scott Snider
The most owners would consider themselves pretty successful. They have nice things. They have a good business. They do probably cool stuff, take good vacations, might drive a nice car, second home, a boat, an RV, they have cool stuff. And it's kind of like what I said at the summit. It's like, unbeknownst to you, it feels really good, right?
00:14:28:06 - 00:14:46:08
Scott Snider
Your flight seems good. But if you're operating in kind of a disjointed way, don't really know it until you actually find purpose in it. Just for at least for me, it provided so much clarity and just like a, like a moment where you're like, man, if I let this purpose and these values kind of guide me a little bit.
00:14:46:08 - 00:15:05:21
Scott Snider
Like saying no to more is easier and saying yes to the right things is easier and you don't feel bad. You're just like, I'm going to say no to that because it just doesn't fit and this doesn't fit. It doesn't fit for me. But I think that most people are like almost blinded or like cloaked by a relatively successful life and company.
00:15:05:28 - 00:15:26:26
Scott Snider
They don't feel that they need it until they lose their company because they sold it and they go, who am I? I have identified for 20 years as an entrepreneur or as like this company that hangs behind me. That's what I found back then. My landscaping company was my first company. I ran that for almost ten years.
00:15:27:06 - 00:15:50:03
Scott Snider
And when I sold that, I felt accomplished as a 24 year old guy. But then I spent like the next six months, like, well, who the hell am I if I went to horticulture school? I loved getting out there with the guys and I was busy year round, plowing snow in the wintertime here in Cleveland. And then it was all gone one day and you're like, shit, I let my business define who I was.
00:15:50:13 - 00:15:51:27
Scott Snider
Who am I without this?
00:15:51:27 - 00:16:19:17
Joe Seetoo
Yeah. I mean, in some ways I think I'm hearing two things from Scott. One is it's like your perception of reality shifts when those things that you define as real out there are no longer there. And they were real, but now the circumstances around them have changed. That asset is owned by somebody else or it's, you know, and the business itself has been sort of the level which people put their identity on, and that is their purpose.
00:16:19:26 - 00:16:39:09
Joe Seetoo
And it sounds like you have been able to go to a deeper level within yourself to craft a purpose that while EPI is, I guess in alignment with it. Yeah, if EPI didn't exist hypothetically, you could take your purpose and apply it to something else and still find fulfillment.
00:16:40:09 - 00:16:49:17
Scott Snider
100%. And I do. Right. So like I'm certainly a business owner, but I'm an avid soccer player. Still play very competitively now and I coach.
00:16:49:24 - 00:16:50:06
Joe Seetoo
I didn't know that.
00:16:50:06 - 00:16:55:02
Scott Snider
Yeah, I'm an avid soccer. I mean, I'm the old man of the group now, Joe. So like Thursday.
00:16:55:18 - 00:16:56:28
Joe Seetoo
At 30 or 35.
00:16:57:11 - 00:17:12:27
Scott Snider
36, going on 37. But I'll tell you, man, we played pretty competitively. So I got these like young bucks coming out of college that yeah, like don't go pro or anything, but they want to play in a highly competitive league. So I get pretty beat up but I play indoor, I play arena soccer. So it's like five. It's you guys down in
00:17:12:27 - 00:17:31:03
Scott Snider
Southern California you get like the San Diego soccer. You have your big major league, but anyway so but I could apply it to there and I just think that you're right. What I shared with people at the summit is I'm an ordained minister as well. So like I shared in that aspect of my life.
00:17:31:15 - 00:17:53:11
Scott Snider
And so yeah, if, if EPI didn't exist tomorrow when I woke up, I could, I have, I have a more purposeful life in many aspects of who I am as a person. And I think that again, I'm glad I got maybe blessed to find it at 36 years old. Right. Because I think many owners don't find it until they sell their company.
00:17:53:21 - 00:18:13:01
Scott Snider
But I also sold a company fairly young at 24, which made me start to think a little bit differently. And honestly, I know the audience that's listening is going to say, Scott, you're probably biased, but I really want to know for the owners particularly listening, surrounding yourself with really good advisors like Joe, who really help you to think differently.
00:18:13:08 - 00:18:43:11
Scott Snider
And that's why it's so critical when I'm sitting here reviewing this data, Joe, there is 78% of owners don't have a board of advisors. 63% of owners have not sought out any advice about exit or transition planning. And something like 44% have no formal advisory team really at all. They have an attorney and a CPA that they meet with on a quarterly basis.
00:18:43:11 - 00:19:10:00
Scott Snider
They meet their what, their attorney when they need something some something of a legal matter. And so the other thing that I have the bias towards or I have the early blessing with is that my dad created the value acceleration methodology. So I've been running a business like this since I was a kid, but I can tell you there is I know it's going to come off as biased, but I would love to drive home to owners that surrounding yourself with a really good and outside advisory team.
00:19:10:00 - 00:19:14:21
Scott Snider
It makes the difference because they push you to do things just like, see Fred Johnson.
00:19:15:03 - 00:19:29:17
Joe Seetoo
I think there's a level of accountability. I think it helps too, with a couple of clients I've been working with where we do that on a regular basis, I see them. I saw the best quote. I was going to forward it to you maybe a couple of weeks ago and it said, Are you a business owner or a firefighter?
00:19:29:17 - 00:19:51:05
Joe Seetoo
Yeah. And it's great because through the owners who don't operate with some sort of strategic framework like the value acceleration methodology. If they're doing it on a day to day basis, all they're doing is putting out today's firefights and playing in this sort of this field. Yeah, I want to try to get owners thinking up at a strategic level so they can start to plan ahead, anticipate, be proactive and drive value into the company.
00:19:51:05 - 00:20:01:06
Joe Seetoo
So I agree with this 100%, and that's where a formal structure or a formal board of advisors can certainly help facilitate that and take the company and the owner to the next level.
00:20:01:24 - 00:20:27:00
Scott Snider
Then I think that they provide great advice and stuff that you're not. It's stuff that you're just not thinking. Almost to your point, allows you as an owner to kind of step outside of the business, be a little bit more visionary and strategic and ping things off people that you might think are more peers. Yeah. And so I just I think that one of the other things when you kind of ask me like how were you able to find that? Certainly it was a formal program, but it was also the use of really good advisors
00:20:27:00 - 00:20:37:08
Scott Snider
that said, Scott, I think there's something missing for you. And if you try this training and you kind of, and I'm not a big like clouds in the sky kind of guy. So it was very
00:20:37:08 - 00:20:37:26
Joe Seetoo
No, you're not.
00:20:37:26 - 00:20:57:08
Scott Snider
It's very hard for me to be vulnerable and say, okay, let me really start to peel away the onion back, ask why a lot and keep trying to find it and I'm telling you, people are just going to have to believe me that when you found it and it was written and then a new sense of core values came out of it, it's just you could see it.
00:20:57:14 - 00:21:02:17
Scott Snider
I've never been more passionate about my business and just generally about life. It just changes who you are.
00:21:02:29 - 00:21:16:04
Joe Seetoo
I mean, as an outsider, right? And we see each other a couple times a year, whether it's on Zoom or in person summits. And I will tell you, your presence on stage, your message was hands down, substantially different.
00:21:16:04 - 00:21:16:13
Scott Snider
Yeah.
00:21:17:01 - 00:21:23:11
Joe Seetoo
This time around than in years past. Not in years past. You were great, but this time it resonated just on a deeper level.
00:21:23:20 - 00:21:41:23
Scott Snider
Yeah, it was, it was. And I would say that it was. And I think that's a good observation because it's all it was also almost like less rehearsed. It was literally like it just came out and I was like, Hey guys, I want to share this with you. So here it is. And it was. Yeah, it was. I appreciate you saying that, because it was certainly a different summit for us this year.
00:21:42:03 - 00:22:02:20
Joe Seetoo
Good. Well, Scott, you know, I call this The Ripcord Moment because I'm a firm believer that when owners go to exit their businesses, most of them only get one shot. You may be in that rare company and that plan, that parachute can't fail- that ripcord's got to work, which is why we got to have the advisors, why they've got to use the value acceleration methodology.
00:22:02:20 - 00:22:17:24
Joe Seetoo
And so I always ask our guests for two pearls of wisdom, two action items an owner should think about, sooner rather than later that they do if they're contemplating a succession event. So what would be your closing words of wisdom to our guests?
00:22:17:28 - 00:22:39:18
Scott Snider
So I have two, one on the business side, one on the personal side. So the personal side is going to be what we just talked about. Find your purpose, write it down and begin to live by it immediately. It'll change all aspects of your life, business, personal and financial. My last thing for business owners, I would say you should begin to understand the value of your business, not just know it.
00:22:40:03 - 00:23:02:27
Scott Snider
And if you don't know it, you definitely need to know it, and then you're going to need to begin to understand it. And for me, every owner, whether you're approaching harvest of value in the exit or you're maybe younger like, like me where you still have a long runway before you want to exit. Knowing the value of your business will create a more successful company today and a more significant one when the time comes of exit.
00:23:02:27 - 00:23:13:14
Scott Snider
Understand and know the value of your business by conducting an annual kind of discovery event which is like a diagnostic of your entire company. It will change the way you operate for sure.
00:23:13:24 - 00:23:23:27
Joe Seetoo
Yeah. Great pearls of wisdom, Scott. I'll go and wrap it up today. Thank you again for your time and we'll go and sign off. This is Joe Seetoo, from The Ripcord Moment and we'll catch you next time.