May 15, 2025 • 33 mins
Too many business owners build themselves into a corner—chasing clients, doing all the work, and hoping one day they can “sell and walk away.” But most never get there. Why? Because they never design their business to become a true asset.
In this episode of From Crisis to Justice, Parag Amin sits down with Stephanie Hayes, a business and exit strategist, to break down the real reasons small businesses don’t sell, how to build an asset-based business model, and why alignment with your values is the key to both sustainability and success.
Stephanie is the founder of Assets to Exits and brings over two decades of experience in business architecture, financial strategy, and entrepreneurial transformation. Whether you're planning to exit in 3 years or simply want more freedom, this conversation will reframe the way you think about your business.
Key takeaways include:
- Why exit planning should start 3–5 years before you think you’re ready
- The biggest myths around selling a business—and what’s actually true
- How to turn your personal brand into a scalable, sellable company
- Why copying someone else’s business model never works
- The 9 types of assets you can build inside a service-based business
- How to shift from a “hamster wheel” income model to one that builds wealth
Whether you’re a solopreneur or scaling into seven figures, this episode is packed with strategy, mindset shifts, and practical steps to help you build something that lasts.
Learn more about Stephanie Hayes:
Website:
LinkedIn:
Download: The 9 Types of Assets to Build Inside Your Business at
Learn more about Parag Amin:
Business Law Firm:
Personal Website:
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi, I'm Parag Amin.
Welcome to my podcast.
From Crisis to Justice.
As a lawyer and entrepreneur, I'mpassionate about helping small business
owners successfully navigate situationsthat can kill a business.
As a kid, I watched my dad's dreamsof being an entrepreneur were destroyed
by an unethical businessman, and I don'twant that to happen to you or your family.
(00:22):
That's why I started my law firm.
I want to protect and defend businessowners and their legacies from crisis.
Welcome to From Crisis to Justice.
Welcome back to.
From Crisis to Justice.
I am your host, Parag Amin.
(00:43):
And today I am joined by Stephanie Hayes.
Stephanie is a businessand exit strategist
and she's the founder of Assets to Exits,where she helps small business
owners design exit strategies that turntheir companies into true assets.
With a background spanning innovation,business model, design, financial
(01:03):
operations and change management,Stephanie has guided founders
in nearly every sector,from public to private startup
to scaled through meaningfulstrategic transformation.
She also owns several businesses herself
and has is working onacquiring and scaling more.
(01:24):
So I'm excited to talk to youabout all of this.
Stephanie, thank you for joining me today.
Yeah, thanks for having me.I'm excited for our conversation.
So you call yourself a business architect.
How is that different from
traditional businesscoaching or consulting?
Yeah.
So the the coaching world is more about,
(01:47):
you know, helping people make decisionsand learn about themselves,
learn about their business,that sort of thing.
I am truly the architect.
My background is in business model design.
It is in business architecture,it is in organizational design.
At the higher sort of corporate level.
So my interest is in how we buildand design our businesses
to be more alignedwith who we are as business owners
(02:10):
to be more aligned with our purpose,to be more aligned with,
you know, how we want our businessto develop in the long run
and the structure in the organizationthat we need to put in place
in order to do that.
And that spansnot just our kind of corporate structure,
but also the structure of our teamsand the structure of our marketing
(02:30):
strategies and the structure of our offersand the structure of our systems.
So the way that we build our businessesand design our businesses
is really important to how we're actuallygoing to deliver the outcomes
and get to the goalsthat we've set for ourselves.
Wow. Okay. And so
what are some of the
keys or fundamentalsto designing a business?
(02:53):
So it it fits in that organizationalstructure that you're mentioning.
So it fits whoever the founder isor whatever they're trying to accomplish.
Like, what's the right wayto think about that or look at that?
Yeah, you know, a lot of people start outand they just kind of follow
what they know how to do. Right.
I was I in the corporate world,maybe I was an H.R.
(03:16):
manager and then I'mjust going to go off on my own
and I'm going to start up a businessconsulting around H.R.
or something like that.
And so they just start doing somethingright.
And then two years down the road,they often get to the point where they're
not feeling super motivated inside theirbusinesses or something's not quite right.
So what I always takeit back to is alignment.
So alignmentwith who you are as a business owner.
(03:38):
And we go right backto understanding who they are
and what they value and what they arelooking for and where their passions lie.
As a business owner, not passions likeI have a, you know, a cause, but more.
Am I most motivated by the peopleI'm trying to serve
or I am most motivated by my offers?
Am I most motivated by the skillsthat I bring to the table,
or am I most motivatedin the way that I want to work?
(04:00):
We go all the way back to that
because all the decisions that we makearound our business going forward from
there has to tie back to that sort of corebecause if you build a business that is
does not align with who you areas a business owner,
you can have a really hard time
growing it and wanting to put your energyinto it, that sort of thing.
So I think we're taughthow to build businesses
(04:21):
in a very sort of textbook waythat doesn't account
for all of the nuances and differencesthat I have learned
are really relevantand really important to a business owner.
So we go all the way back there,then we start building from there.
So what does the businessneed to do for you?
What do you value?
What needs to be true in everythinginside the business?
Then who do we want to work withand who's that ideal customer?
And then we can start talking about whatwe offer them
(04:43):
and what our servicesor our products or whatever it might be.
And then we talk abouthow we're going to sell them
and how we price them and what we deliverand how we deliver them.
And then we talk about what the back
end of the businesslooks like to be able to support that.
And we talk about our marketing strategiesto be able to support that.
So it all builds upon each other,whereas, you know, when most people start,
they just kind of go straightto what I'm going to offer
(05:05):
and they try to build an offer and then,you know, like you have to do your time,
you have to kind of get to a pointwhere you feel
something about your businessone way or the other,
and then it's the right time to go backand start
talking about alignment,that sort of thing.
So, you know,most importantly is to understand
yourself as a business ownerand what you want.
And I think, you know, we don't get thereuntil we've been in business for a while.
(05:25):
We start to feel frustratedor out of alignment or what have you.
But knowing yourselfand what you want is the very
the most important thingand what your purposes.
And then building it from there,we can make decisions, tactical decisions
about the business structurein the business
architecture that supports whatever it isthat you really want to build.
So let
me ask you, so, you know,I was having a conversation about this
(05:47):
with a friend of mine about businessand entrepreneurship in general.
And one of the challenges that I foundand this touches upon
something you just said is,you know, ideally
you want to build an organization,a business that
it values what you value
(06:08):
and it accomplishes
whatever goal or goalsyou're trying to accomplish.
And part of that, though, is
building the system so that
everything is
is trueto the extent that you want it to be.
Meaning it is it is
(06:30):
is helpingyou accomplish your personal goals.
It's helping you accomplish the missionyou've set out to accomplish.
It's accomplishing it ideally in the waythat you want it to be accomplished.
But I think the biggest challenge
and maybe maybe the biggest myth,at least as I see it, is that,
you know, all those things
(06:51):
can be true at onceand that they sustain forever.
Meaning I thinkone of the bigger challenges is that in
any business, that scaling that's growingthings are constantly breaking.
And I, I think that there is kind of thismyth that one day, you know,
everything will be perfectand you can come and go from the business
(07:13):
as you see fitand it all will just run itself.
Do you think that really is a myth
or do you think thatthat that's a real possibility?
I think you have to break that downinto two separate things.
Can you create a businesswhere you don't need to be constantly,
you know, doing stuffand being the practitioner?
Absolutely.
And that's what we workwith our clients on
(07:34):
because they often come to us
and they they think what they need to dois sell their business.
But what they really want to dois create an operational exit
where they still own their business, butthey've taken themselves out of that role.
And there is a there is a point in timethat all business owners get to
where they've they've grown enough,but they're still associating their value
in the business with the doing of thingsand the operational.
(07:56):
And once theythey start to take themselves out of that
and really workto their most powerful work,
then they start to reach a new levelof skill and a new level of growth
and then new opportunities
because now they can see themrather than being so tied down by the,
you know, the stuff that needs to get doneinside the business.
So taking yourself out of the businessis a worthy goal
(08:16):
and it's something that you can createthat is sustainable.
The other part of your questionis that, you know, we're always working
towards having reached somethingthat's not real, that's not true.
And it'sone of the things that keeps people
so frustratedis because they always think, Oh,
I should have gotten somewhere by now,and it should just be like
in this homeostasis,this sort of like nothing changes.
(08:37):
Well, that'sif nothing's changing in your business,
you're on the road to like to demisebecause it's
it means that you're not growing.
You're not you're not evolving.
So once you stop this, stop
thinkingthat you need to have arrived somewhere,
then you can get into this real creativeflow inside the business.
And yes, we want to create some stabilityand that sort of thing.
(08:59):
And you can keep working on those onthose building blocks inside the business.
But no, the business never reaches a statewhere it just sits there,
because if it does, it's it'ssort of like it's going to die right.
You have to always be evolving.You have to.
And why wouldn't you want to either?
That's where you get your creativity from.
That'swhere you find your new opportunities.
And because the world around you evolvesall the time, you kind of need to as well.
(09:23):
So once you lose that expectationthat you should have arrived somewhere
and you look backand see what you've actually done.
Like that'sa pretty interesting perspective
because it's so easyto get caught up in like, Oh,
I haven't gotten to this placethat someone thinks that you should be at,
but actually
look at all of the thingsthat I have achieved and look at all
the look at where I've gotten to, right?
(09:46):
So I think it's a it's a tricky placeto get into.
It's a placethat a lot of people get stuck.
So shifting that that perspectiveon your business to it being a living,
breathing entity that constantly evolvesand constantly changes.
You know,I'm not talking about chaos, right?
I'm not talking about constantlybeing in a state of unrest,
but that always evolving.
(10:07):
That's a healthy thing for your business.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think life and business,
they both are the never endingclimb, right?
Yeah, for sure.
So what do you thinkthe biggest misconception
is that business owners have about exits,
that that exits are only availableto, you know, tech pros or, you know, VC
(10:31):
backed companies that are in the SiliconValley or whatever.
Right.
There are marketplaces for $500 businessesyou can buy
if I've bought a $500 business.
So, you know, the fact that you can sell
and that there is a marketfor whatever you've created.
It starts a conversationthat nobody's having right now.
(10:53):
And when we've started talking about exitsfor this particular,
you know, type of business owner,which is oftentimes, you know,
very small businessesor what I call micro-businesses
or these solo entrepreneurs or,you know, their early seven figures
or even like somewhere in the six figures,those are all sellable businesses.
(11:14):
And so that justknowing that that's a possibility for them
that they could selland that they could take make an exit
is like a huge new wayof thinking for people.
And this is where the whole asset basedbusiness models started to come from that,
you know, my interestis not just in facilitating an exit,
which I certainly can help my clients doand have helped my clients do.
(11:35):
But my whole perspective on exitsis if you don't if you start to
look at your exit strategy,you know, five, ten years in the future,
you can do a benchmark valuationand figure out like,
what would I get for my business right nowif I wanted to sell it?
But then if we start working backwardsfrom there, now you have a growth strategy
that is built based on the gapsyou saw in your valuation
(11:58):
or the opportunitiesyou found in your valuation.
So where I might have a valuation of a,you know, selling
my business for $1.3 million right now,if I do these things to fill
the gaps that showed up in my valuation,
I can now double the value of my businessin five years
when I ultimately want to sell itrather than just getting to an exit.
(12:19):
When you feel really burned out
or you don't like your business anymoreor whatever.
So the work that we do with our clients
actually is more aroundthe growth strategy and,
and looking at your business as an assetas opposed to just an income vehicle.
So we will work with our clients for,you know, 3 to 5 years
being the custodianand of the generation of that value.
What that doesis it starts to change the energy
(12:40):
and the perspective from the businessowners, where they go from.
I'm just, you know,
I'm just doing this
until I'm not doing it anymore like I amjust in this sort of hamster wheel.
I don't see what I'm working towards.
That's when people get really burnt out.
But when they start to seethat they've got something to work towards
and that they're actually contributingto a bigger wealth
event for themselves in the future,
(13:01):
their energytotally changes inside their business
and they start thinking aboutnew strategies and we start developing
growth strategies that actually are tiedto the development of that value.
So yes, if you're going to grow revenue
inside your business,that's always going to be helpful for you.
But so oftentimes they get into this realstuck pattern of like, well,
the only way for me to grow more revenueis to just buy more ads, right?
(13:21):
And then that's not entirely profitable.
What we want to do is we want to look atdiversification inside your business model
and are there new revenue
channels, Are there new dowe need to diversify your customer base?
Like what's going on? Because that's
those are all risk adjustmentsinside of a valuation exercise.
If I have all my dependencyon one particular
(13:42):
revenue channel,do I have all my dependencies on
a particular type of customer,that kind of stuff?
There's like 80 different,you know, assessments
we would do on a on a valuation.
And that's where all the gold is.
That's where I can figure out how to build
a much more valuable businessand give myself the time to do that right.
There are going to be people who show up
and they're just like,I just need to sell right now.
(14:02):
Okay, great.
We'll connect you with buyers,will connect you with, you know,
private equity firms will connect youwith an investment fund,
whatever it might be.
But I'm more interestedin the people that are like, okay, I know.
I want to exit.
I know I want to sell,I know I want to make an operational exit,
whatever it is going to be,and sort of 3 to 5 years,
let's make that business as valuable
as we could make it between nowand then and create like an asset.
(14:26):
And then there's people who just realizeafter that conversation
they don't really want to exit,they don't really want to sell
their business or take themselves,
but they want a different role
inside their businessand they really want to grow it
with an asset focus.
So we'll sometimesjust do the work with them.
They're kind of the same work,but with a different end goal in mind.
(14:46):
So just starting the conversation aroundexits
is opening up this whole other perspectivefor these business owners
that they never knewthat they could even pursue.
Right.
And I think that
a common misconception for business owners
is that
the day you want to sell,you should be more
(15:09):
or less you'reyou're prepared to sell said differently.
I think that
a lot of people don't realize
and they haven't gone through an exitor participated in an exit
or learned about exits,that there is a preparation process
to get the ideal exitand the ideal valuation.
And I think a lot of business owners,especially small business owners,
(15:31):
unfortunately realize thatthat a little bit too late,
meaning that they're ready to sell now,but they haven't put in the groundwork
or the preparationto be able to sell at a higher value.
And so couple of questionsas it relates to that.
One, what kind of time period do you
would you say thatbusiness owners should take
(15:55):
if they're preparing their their businessfor sale?
And to what kind of thingsdo you think they should be doing
during thattime to get ready for the sale?
Yeah, I mean,ideally you start thinking about this
3 to 5 yearsbefore you really, truly want to exit.
(16:16):
You're totally rightthat if if my decision to exit is like,
I need to do it now, you're going to haveto just sort of get what you get right.
And there's very little substantial changethat you can make in your business
in a short period of time like thatto substantially affect valuation.
That's going to be more aroundmarketing, right?
It's going to be more about
(16:37):
how you message and set up your businesswith the offer letters and the,
you know, the memorandumsand all that sort of thing.
But if you give yourself, you know,get 3 to 5 years, you have the opportunity
to to make substantial impactson the value of your business
and again, I come back tothis is why we do an exit roadmap
and an exit strategythat where we do a benchmark valuation
(17:01):
and we we do thatrisk assessment on your business.
And what I mean by riskassessment is like, if I was a buyer,
I wouldn't just
do a nasty evaluation and say, Well,that's what we're going to buy it for.
You're going to start therebecause that's all numbers,
and then you're going to start goingthrough all of these questions
about the business.
And that's where you getyour buying number from, right?
(17:24):
How much risk is there from nondiversification?
How much risk is therefrom external markets?
How much risk is there from blah,blah, blah?
There's likelike I said, there's like 80 questions.
So what I always suggest iswe start there in terms of figuring out
what you're going to do in that3 to 5 years, because that's entirely
(17:44):
tied to like those answersto those questions directly
affect your valuation and what a buyerwould pay for your business now.
Is it perfect?
Is it
can I accurately predict what someone'sgoing to buy your business for in three
or five years now?
But these are the same kind of questionsthat someone would ask
if they're going through a valuationexercise.
So back out of there and figure outhow many of those risk adjustments
(18:09):
could you address inside of your businessin the next
3 to 5 years to either,you know, grow your top line,
grow your bottom line, or offer,you know, fill the gaps
and fill the holes that were negativelyaffecting your valuation.
And therefore, that translatesto higher valuation, higher value.
(18:31):
Now, some of those strategies are goingto be, you know, going back to alignment.
Some of those strategies are things that
this business ownerwould just never take on.
So we don't do them right.
Like, it doesn't mean you have to take on
everythingthat comes out of the valuation. And,
you know, I, I had a client I was workingwith that, you know, she would have
increasedher valuation by a significant amount
(18:52):
if she was able to do thisone thing and address this one thing.
But for her, it was like a no go.
That would mean taking on a whole otherline of business
and that she really didn't want to doand was
like not well aligned to her valuesand who she was as an individual.
Well, we're not going to do it right?Yeah.
Could it could it increase your valuation?
But it wouldn't be in alignment with heras a business owner.
So you we developed that growth strategyout of your exit roadmap
(19:16):
and now you know where you're going,right?
But in order to prepare,
it's it's about tyingthose two things together.
It's about understandingwhere the business is
currently affectedby either risk or lack of opportunities,
and then putting a work plan togetherthat enables you to change that.
You have to be realistic.
It's going to take you a few years
(19:37):
to really make those changesand really get the benefits of them.
So I would saystart having this conversation early
and give yourself a chanceto change the profile of your business
from just a sort of hamster wheel, incomegenerating business, totally dependent
on ads or something like thatto something more diversified
that's going to be more attractiveto investor.
(19:58):
The other piece here that I hear a lot is
businesses that have a personal brand.
So they've all been you know, it'sbeen created around a an individual
and there's a lot of those outthere are a lot of my clients have that.
And so that gives you the timeto sort of neutralize the business
and turn it into something that'sgoing to be easier for someone to take on.
One of the businessesthat I bought was a personal brand.
(20:19):
It was totally tied to a personal brand,so we had to spend a lot of time
not just sort of neutralizing the brand,
but also a lot of the audience was
very attached to this individualthat used to own the business.
And so we had to almost retrain thatand develop that trust with the new team.
So there's a lot of stuffto talk about for sure.
(20:42):
But all those things are things you canaddress if you give yourself the time.
Mm hmm. Yeah.
And you know, a lot of businesses today,you hear a lot about the importance
of personal brandingand the need for that.
But maybe ironically,I can adversely affect the exit.
If you don't have the exit in mind.
(21:02):
So can you talk a little bitabout how one goes about if they've built
a personal brand or a businessaround their name or their personal brand,
what should they be doing if they'relooking to potentially make an exit
to make it valuable for an acquirersuch as yourself or somebody else?
Yeah, I
mean,especially for these types of businesses.
(21:25):
You know,if there's programs or, you know, coaching
programs, that kind of thing,it is very much tied to the individual.
And people are always goingto want to know who they're buying from.
So having a personal brandor at least having a personal presence
in your brand is always goingto be beneficial for these businesses.
So that's where the conundrum comesin, right?
(21:45):
If you tieit much too much to the individual,
then you knowit's going to be a hard sell, right?
And then sometimes there's an arrangementwhere,
you know,somebody will buy the personal brand
and there's some type of agreementwhere the the individual stays on
and just be like sort of the figureheaddoes some marketing, whatever.
But most of the time what you want to dois you want to prepare for that
(22:05):
neutralizing the brandso you're not selling, you know, Amy.
Amy X Right?
You're selling like a product nameor a program name
and, you know,like you're probably going to have to
redo some videos or what have you.
But over time,as you start to neutralize the brand, you
(22:27):
turn it into a new brandthat is more outcome specific.
And you put a team in place, right?
That team can transitionand develop the relationships like I have.
I've put a team in place.
My community manager is the onewho has relationships.
All I do is come in and do coaching,but I could definitely,
you know, I'm preparing for my teamto be doing some of the coaching
(22:48):
now inside of the business as well,and then I'll keep moving along.
But this business is no more,no longer built around me.
It's built around our team and what we
what we provide as a service as opposed to
you're getting me and my experienceand who I am.
So there's a just ayou know, there's just a process for
(23:09):
doing that over time and how you do itreally kind of depends on your audience
and the relationship you have with themand how you've created your products
and your services and your your programsand that sort of thing.
So like, it's all doable, but it'syou just need the right kind of strategy
and the right understanding of yourexisting community and existing audience.
And you need the time to be ableto make that transition.
(23:31):
Mm mm hmm. And
so when it comes to building businesses,
what are some common blind spots you see
maybe early stage,maybe mid-stage or even late stage owners
make that can lead to problemslater on down the road?
Well,I would say one of the biggest problems
people have is trying to replicatewhat other people have done
(23:55):
and convert convertlike they're there are results
and compare them to the results of othersthat they consider to be in their space.
And there's just so much you know, there'sso much difference between one
individual and another and what they valueand how they approach things.
You don't seea lot of what happens behind the scenes.
(24:15):
So trying to build a businessbased on like hacking,
what someone else hasdone is going to be so limiting.
And I think a lot of people buy in.
Even those business ownersthat are like aware and kind of tuned
in to the fact that thesethese promises are often,
you know, not they don't see them through.
They still like the idea of someonecoming to them and saying,
(24:38):
I'll give you my five step framework
and you're going to build a businessthat's successful, but it never works.
I have so many clientsthat have come to me
because they got into thesemastermind programs or these high ticket.
You know, someone'sgoing to teach me the way to do that.
And it never works.
It's and it's not that theirtheir model wasn't good
or they didn't have good information. It'sthat it wasn't them, right?
(25:00):
It wasn't they're that business ownerand what they want and what they need.
So I think that's one of the big blindspots is that I try to build my business
based on what other people have done,and it just never works.
So you've got to be clear on who you are,what you want,
what your business needs to look like,and your own plans and your own unique,
(25:21):
you know, brand of business
as opposed to just trying to shoehornin something else that has worked
for some other personbecause that's just a source
of massive frustrationand a waste of money.
Right.
I'd like to clarify that with you, because
there's two different concepts
that I think would bewould benefit from from the clarification.
(25:44):
So, you know, on the one hand,there is the aspect of of being unique
and not trying to imitate somebody elsebecause like, you're never going to be
that other person and the market alreadyhas that other person.
So the market doesn't need
a copycat of that personor a wannabe copycat of that person.
So that's on the one hand, you know,but on the other hand, there's this idea
(26:07):
that success leaves cluesand you want to replicate
some of the successand some of the good steps
and smart decisionsthat somebody else has made
because they've already kind ofpaved the path to a certain extent.
So what are your thoughts on those two?
Yeah, don't get me wrong.
(26:27):
I think that learning from other people isI mean, I'm constantly
listening to books and andbut you need to be able to take the pieces
out of that of that knowledgeand that that experience
that are relevant to youand leave the pieces that are not.
It's when people try to replicatea strategy.
You know this worksfine for tactical stuff, right?
(26:50):
I want the I want a new frameworkfor building a funnel that is a webinar
funnel.
Great by the chorus, by the step by stepframework.
That works great, right?
I've done that a bunch of times.
Codified knowledge. Awesome.
But when you're talking about designingyour business and designing your strategy,
it doesn't work because you are
(27:10):
you are a different individualwith different experiences, different
skills, different team, different journey,different everything.
And when people try to adopt these
sort of five stepframeworks to your business
strategy, like it doesn't work,it just doesn't and it never does. So.
Learn from others.
Absolutely.
(27:30):
Like those relationshipsthat you create with peers, those
you know, the listening to othersexperience is and,
you know, getting their storiesand their narrative awesome.
There's tons of great stuff there.
But when you know, and so many peopletry to sell you this, this, you know,
the $30,000 mastermind whereif you just follow these steps,
(27:51):
you're going to have the perfect business.
No, you're not.
You're never going toyou just going to get frustrated.
And that's whyso many people come out of those programs
and they're dissatisfied,
they are frustrated,they spent all that money, etc., etc..
So that's that's just for clarification.
That's kind of what I'm talking about,because I believe truly that,
you know, each business isis its own little entity and
(28:12):
and needs to have a heart and a souland a heartbeat that is very unique,
just like fingerprint SAAnd that's when you become successful
and you find your opportunitiesfor growth.
Am I like that?
You know, and speaking ofopportunities and, and growth
and success,
I one of the thingsyou really seemingly harp on is,
(28:36):
is having assets based
businesses,even in service based businesses.
So can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, I think
where it came from, I wasI was down in Texas
few years agoand I was working with a client where
just, you know, orchestrating a big launchfor her that week.
(28:58):
And then we decided to take a dayon our own to, like,
work on our own businessesand sort of mastermind those together.
And I was just looking at this big wallof all of my experiences
and all of the stuff that I've doneand all of the things, and I just thought
and I'm not really building anything,like I just continue to chase
(29:19):
new clients and is thatwhat my life is going to be like forever?
I'm a service based business owner.
Am I just going to keep chasing like what?
There's got to be something more to this.
And I kept thinking back to having lostmy real estate,
my property in my divorce, and thinking,how can I get that back, get an asset
back in my life when I won't be ableto afford real estate here again?
(29:42):
I live in a very expensivepart of the world, but I want that.
I want that asset in my life.
And I.
I started to think, well,I can buy businesses, I can invest
in businesses, I can build businessesbecause I have that skill set.
And then I started thinkingabout my own business
and I started thinking about how can Ilook at my own business as an asset?
How can I change that mindset to be,you know,
(30:05):
from being so dependent on the incometo building
something that has value insideof my business of thinking about this
and I started thinking about this
in the context of my own clientswho are all service based business owners.
I start to realize thatthere are all these things in our business
that would be valuableto someone that you could sell. And
(30:27):
the business that I bought a couple ofyears ago, I didn't buy the entity.
I actually bought the assetsof a business.
So got me really thinkingabout where we have
value inside our businessthat we don't even recognize.
And I created this small,you know, document.
There's nine types of assetsyou can build inside your business,
and those are all correlated towhat would be valuable to someone to as a
as a buyer. Right.
(30:48):
And there's no reason you couldn't createthose assets and sell them on their own.
Like you.
You create a retreat every yearand it's a big it becomes a big brand.
It becomes a big thing.
You could tell that like that
that would be an asset, that you could buyit be built inside your business.
It would grow in value as you asyou build it out.
All the stops you createfor your digital marketing agency,
(31:08):
you can bundle those upand sell them to other agency owners.
All the creative workyou do in your business for marketing
curate those and they become somethingvaluable to another buyer.
The partnerships you create
inside your business,those are all valuable
and those become assetsinside your business.
To the audience.
You build the your brand that you build.
(31:28):
Like all these things have value.
And I started to really thinkabout businesses in terms of assets.
So even the little business owners
who don't necessarilyhave some big exit strategy,
they have adopted this asset focusand they feel so much better
about their business
knowing that they're focusingon building things inside their business
that grow in value, that aren't just like,I just need to keep getting clients.
(31:51):
Like that's always going to be a partof your business for sure.
But those assets give us a new perspectiveand make us feel like
we're actually building somethingas opposed to just chasing clients.
And so that's really changedthe perspective
of a lot of my business owners.
And they they now have these sort ofthey make decisions really differently
inside their businessnow in terms of what they're investing in.
Mm. I love that.
(32:12):
So if listeners want to find outa little bit more about you
or even the nine types of assets
that they can build insideof their business, how can they do that?
Stephanie.
Best to go to my website.
Stephanie Hays. Dot biz.
I can also be found on LinkedIn.
I'm quite active there and those areprobably the two best places to find me.
You can download the nine types of assetsinside my website and
(32:36):
it's just like it's good food for thought,right?
It's good a good mindset shiftin how you think about your businesses
and I've seen it make a huge changefor even people who are just kind of happy
to run their little lifestyleto sell businesses,
but like the opportunityto build something more, right?
It's always nice to have options.
And so ultimately, ifif you build something that you can sell
(32:57):
and exit, it's far better than having tojust shut it down for for no income.
Yeah, that breaks my heart.
I'm like, There's so much value insidethat business. Don't shut it down.
Right, Right. Well, good.
Speaking of value, Stephanie,I appreciate all the value
you've shared withme and the listeners today.
You've
been an incredible guestand offered some great insights.
(33:17):
So thank you for that.
Thanks for having me.It was a pleasure. Yeah.
And to the listeners,if you found value in this and
found it helpful,make sure you like and subscribe
so you know when the next podcastepisode is dropping.
Thank you for joining me on From Crisisto Justice.
Until next time. Oh.
Hi, I'm Parag Amin.
Welcome to my podcast.
From Crisis to Justice.
As a lawyer and entrepreneur, I'mpassionate about helping small business
owners successfully navigate situationsthat can kill a business.
As a kid, I watched my dad's dreamsof being an entrepreneur were destroyed
by an unethical businessman, and I don'twant that to happen to you or your family.
(00:22):
That's why I started my law firm.
I want to protect and defend businessowners and their legacies from crisis.
Welcome to From Crisis to Justice.
Welcome back to.
From Crisis to Justice.
I am your host, Parag Amin.
(00:43):
And today I am joined by Stephanie Hayes.
Stephanie is a businessand exit strategist
and she's the founder of Assets to Exits,where she helps small business
owners design exit strategies that turntheir companies into true assets.
With a background spanning innovation,business model, design, financial
(01:03):
operations and change management,Stephanie has guided founders
in nearly every sector,from public to private startup
to scaled through meaningfulstrategic transformation.
She also owns several businesses herself
and has is working onacquiring and scaling more.
(01:24):
So I'm excited to talk to youabout all of this.
Stephanie, thank you for joining me today.
Yeah, thanks for having me.I'm excited for our conversation.
So you call yourself a business architect.
How is that different from
traditional businesscoaching or consulting?
Yeah.
So the the coaching world is more about,
(01:47):
you know, helping people make decisionsand learn about themselves,
learn about their business,that sort of thing.
I am truly the architect.
My background is in business model design.
It is in business architecture,it is in organizational design.
At the higher sort of corporate level.
So my interest is in how we buildand design our businesses
to be more alignedwith who we are as business owners
(02:10):
to be more aligned with our purpose,to be more aligned with,
you know, how we want our businessto develop in the long run
and the structure in the organizationthat we need to put in place
in order to do that.
And that spansnot just our kind of corporate structure,
but also the structure of our teamsand the structure of our marketing
(02:30):
strategies and the structure of our offersand the structure of our systems.
So the way that we build our businessesand design our businesses
is really important to how we're actuallygoing to deliver the outcomes
and get to the goalsthat we've set for ourselves.
Wow. Okay. And so
what are some of the
keys or fundamentalsto designing a business?
(02:53):
So it it fits in that organizationalstructure that you're mentioning.
So it fits whoever the founder isor whatever they're trying to accomplish.
Like, what's the right wayto think about that or look at that?
Yeah, you know, a lot of people start outand they just kind of follow
what they know how to do. Right.
I was I in the corporate world,maybe I was an H.R.
(03:16):
manager and then I'mjust going to go off on my own
and I'm going to start up a businessconsulting around H.R.
or something like that.
And so they just start doing somethingright.
And then two years down the road,they often get to the point where they're
not feeling super motivated inside theirbusinesses or something's not quite right.
So what I always takeit back to is alignment.
So alignmentwith who you are as a business owner.
(03:38):
And we go right backto understanding who they are
and what they value and what they arelooking for and where their passions lie.
As a business owner, not passions likeI have a, you know, a cause, but more.
Am I most motivated by the peopleI'm trying to serve
or I am most motivated by my offers?
Am I most motivated by the skillsthat I bring to the table,
or am I most motivatedin the way that I want to work?
(04:00):
We go all the way back to that
because all the decisions that we makearound our business going forward from
there has to tie back to that sort of corebecause if you build a business that is
does not align with who you areas a business owner,
you can have a really hard time
growing it and wanting to put your energyinto it, that sort of thing.
So I think we're taughthow to build businesses
(04:21):
in a very sort of textbook waythat doesn't account
for all of the nuances and differencesthat I have learned
are really relevantand really important to a business owner.
So we go all the way back there,then we start building from there.
So what does the businessneed to do for you?
What do you value?
What needs to be true in everythinginside the business?
Then who do we want to work withand who's that ideal customer?
And then we can start talking about whatwe offer them
(04:43):
and what our servicesor our products or whatever it might be.
And then we talk abouthow we're going to sell them
and how we price them and what we deliverand how we deliver them.
And then we talk about what the back
end of the businesslooks like to be able to support that.
And we talk about our marketing strategiesto be able to support that.
So it all builds upon each other,whereas, you know, when most people start,
they just kind of go straightto what I'm going to offer
(05:05):
and they try to build an offer and then,you know, like you have to do your time,
you have to kind of get to a pointwhere you feel
something about your businessone way or the other,
and then it's the right time to go backand start
talking about alignment,that sort of thing.
So, you know,most importantly is to understand
yourself as a business ownerand what you want.
And I think, you know, we don't get thereuntil we've been in business for a while.
(05:25):
We start to feel frustratedor out of alignment or what have you.
But knowing yourselfand what you want is the very
the most important thingand what your purposes.
And then building it from there,we can make decisions, tactical decisions
about the business structurein the business
architecture that supports whatever it isthat you really want to build.
So let
me ask you, so, you know,I was having a conversation about this
(05:47):
with a friend of mine about businessand entrepreneurship in general.
And one of the challenges that I foundand this touches upon
something you just said is,you know, ideally
you want to build an organization,a business that
it values what you value
(06:08):
and it accomplishes
whatever goal or goalsyou're trying to accomplish.
And part of that, though, is
building the system so that
everything is
is trueto the extent that you want it to be.
Meaning it is it is
(06:30):
is helpingyou accomplish your personal goals.
It's helping you accomplish the missionyou've set out to accomplish.
It's accomplishing it ideally in the waythat you want it to be accomplished.
But I think the biggest challenge
and maybe maybe the biggest myth,at least as I see it, is that,
you know, all those things
(06:51):
can be true at onceand that they sustain forever.
Meaning I thinkone of the bigger challenges is that in
any business, that scaling that's growingthings are constantly breaking.
And I, I think that there is kind of thismyth that one day, you know,
everything will be perfectand you can come and go from the business
(07:13):
as you see fitand it all will just run itself.
Do you think that really is a myth
or do you think thatthat that's a real possibility?
I think you have to break that downinto two separate things.
Can you create a businesswhere you don't need to be constantly,
you know, doing stuffand being the practitioner?
Absolutely.
And that's what we workwith our clients on
(07:34):
because they often come to us
and they they think what they need to dois sell their business.
But what they really want to dois create an operational exit
where they still own their business, butthey've taken themselves out of that role.
And there is a there is a point in timethat all business owners get to
where they've they've grown enough,but they're still associating their value
in the business with the doing of thingsand the operational.
(07:56):
And once theythey start to take themselves out of that
and really workto their most powerful work,
then they start to reach a new levelof skill and a new level of growth
and then new opportunities
because now they can see themrather than being so tied down by the,
you know, the stuff that needs to get doneinside the business.
So taking yourself out of the businessis a worthy goal
(08:16):
and it's something that you can createthat is sustainable.
The other part of your questionis that, you know, we're always working
towards having reached somethingthat's not real, that's not true.
And it'sone of the things that keeps people
so frustratedis because they always think, Oh,
I should have gotten somewhere by now,and it should just be like
in this homeostasis,this sort of like nothing changes.
(08:37):
Well, that'sif nothing's changing in your business,
you're on the road to like to demisebecause it's
it means that you're not growing.
You're not you're not evolving.
So once you stop this, stop
thinkingthat you need to have arrived somewhere,
then you can get into this real creativeflow inside the business.
And yes, we want to create some stabilityand that sort of thing.
(08:59):
And you can keep working on those onthose building blocks inside the business.
But no, the business never reaches a statewhere it just sits there,
because if it does, it's it'ssort of like it's going to die right.
You have to always be evolving.You have to.
And why wouldn't you want to either?
That's where you get your creativity from.
That'swhere you find your new opportunities.
And because the world around you evolvesall the time, you kind of need to as well.
(09:23):
So once you lose that expectationthat you should have arrived somewhere
and you look backand see what you've actually done.
Like that'sa pretty interesting perspective
because it's so easyto get caught up in like, Oh,
I haven't gotten to this placethat someone thinks that you should be at,
but actually
look at all of the thingsthat I have achieved and look at all
the look at where I've gotten to, right?
(09:46):
So I think it's a it's a tricky placeto get into.
It's a placethat a lot of people get stuck.
So shifting that that perspectiveon your business to it being a living,
breathing entity that constantly evolvesand constantly changes.
You know,I'm not talking about chaos, right?
I'm not talking about constantlybeing in a state of unrest,
but that always evolving.
(10:07):
That's a healthy thing for your business.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think life and business,
they both are the never endingclimb, right?
Yeah, for sure.
So what do you thinkthe biggest misconception
is that business owners have about exits,
that that exits are only availableto, you know, tech pros or, you know, VC
(10:31):
backed companies that are in the SiliconValley or whatever.
Right.
There are marketplaces for $500 businessesyou can buy
if I've bought a $500 business.
So, you know, the fact that you can sell
and that there is a marketfor whatever you've created.
It starts a conversationthat nobody's having right now.
(10:53):
And when we've started talking about exitsfor this particular,
you know, type of business owner,which is oftentimes, you know,
very small businessesor what I call micro-businesses
or these solo entrepreneurs or,you know, their early seven figures
or even like somewhere in the six figures,those are all sellable businesses.
(11:14):
And so that justknowing that that's a possibility for them
that they could selland that they could take make an exit
is like a huge new wayof thinking for people.
And this is where the whole asset basedbusiness models started to come from that,
you know, my interestis not just in facilitating an exit,
which I certainly can help my clients doand have helped my clients do.
(11:35):
But my whole perspective on exitsis if you don't if you start to
look at your exit strategy,you know, five, ten years in the future,
you can do a benchmark valuationand figure out like,
what would I get for my business right nowif I wanted to sell it?
But then if we start working backwardsfrom there, now you have a growth strategy
that is built based on the gapsyou saw in your valuation
(11:58):
or the opportunitiesyou found in your valuation.
So where I might have a valuation of a,you know, selling
my business for $1.3 million right now,if I do these things to fill
the gaps that showed up in my valuation,
I can now double the value of my businessin five years
when I ultimately want to sell itrather than just getting to an exit.
(12:19):
When you feel really burned out
or you don't like your business anymoreor whatever.
So the work that we do with our clients
actually is more aroundthe growth strategy and,
and looking at your business as an assetas opposed to just an income vehicle.
So we will work with our clients for,you know, 3 to 5 years
being the custodianand of the generation of that value.
What that doesis it starts to change the energy
(12:40):
and the perspective from the businessowners, where they go from.
I'm just, you know,
I'm just doing this
until I'm not doing it anymore like I amjust in this sort of hamster wheel.
I don't see what I'm working towards.
That's when people get really burnt out.
But when they start to seethat they've got something to work towards
and that they're actually contributingto a bigger wealth
event for themselves in the future,
(13:01):
their energytotally changes inside their business
and they start thinking aboutnew strategies and we start developing
growth strategies that actually are tiedto the development of that value.
So yes, if you're going to grow revenue
inside your business,that's always going to be helpful for you.
But so oftentimes they get into this realstuck pattern of like, well,
the only way for me to grow more revenueis to just buy more ads, right?
(13:21):
And then that's not entirely profitable.
What we want to do is we want to look atdiversification inside your business model
and are there new revenue
channels, Are there new dowe need to diversify your customer base?
Like what's going on? Because that's
those are all risk adjustmentsinside of a valuation exercise.
If I have all my dependencyon one particular
(13:42):
revenue channel,do I have all my dependencies on
a particular type of customer,that kind of stuff?
There's like 80 different,you know, assessments
we would do on a on a valuation.
And that's where all the gold is.
That's where I can figure out how to build
a much more valuable businessand give myself the time to do that right.
There are going to be people who show up
and they're just like,I just need to sell right now.
(14:02):
Okay, great.
We'll connect you with buyers,will connect you with, you know,
private equity firms will connect youwith an investment fund,
whatever it might be.
But I'm more interestedin the people that are like, okay, I know.
I want to exit.
I know I want to sell,I know I want to make an operational exit,
whatever it is going to be,and sort of 3 to 5 years,
let's make that business as valuable
as we could make it between nowand then and create like an asset.
(14:26):
And then there's people who just realizeafter that conversation
they don't really want to exit,they don't really want to sell
their business or take themselves,
but they want a different role
inside their businessand they really want to grow it
with an asset focus.
So we'll sometimesjust do the work with them.
They're kind of the same work,but with a different end goal in mind.
(14:46):
So just starting the conversation aroundexits
is opening up this whole other perspectivefor these business owners
that they never knewthat they could even pursue.
Right.
And I think that
a common misconception for business owners
is that
the day you want to sell,you should be more
(15:09):
or less you'reyou're prepared to sell said differently.
I think that
a lot of people don't realize
and they haven't gone through an exitor participated in an exit
or learned about exits,that there is a preparation process
to get the ideal exitand the ideal valuation.
And I think a lot of business owners,especially small business owners,
(15:31):
unfortunately realize thatthat a little bit too late,
meaning that they're ready to sell now,but they haven't put in the groundwork
or the preparationto be able to sell at a higher value.
And so couple of questionsas it relates to that.
One, what kind of time period do you
would you say thatbusiness owners should take
(15:55):
if they're preparing their their businessfor sale?
And to what kind of thingsdo you think they should be doing
during thattime to get ready for the sale?
Yeah, I mean,ideally you start thinking about this
3 to 5 yearsbefore you really, truly want to exit.
(16:16):
You're totally rightthat if if my decision to exit is like,
I need to do it now, you're going to haveto just sort of get what you get right.
And there's very little substantial changethat you can make in your business
in a short period of time like thatto substantially affect valuation.
That's going to be more aroundmarketing, right?
It's going to be more about
(16:37):
how you message and set up your businesswith the offer letters and the,
you know, the memorandumsand all that sort of thing.
But if you give yourself, you know,get 3 to 5 years, you have the opportunity
to to make substantial impactson the value of your business
and again, I come back tothis is why we do an exit roadmap
and an exit strategythat where we do a benchmark valuation
(17:01):
and we we do thatrisk assessment on your business.
And what I mean by riskassessment is like, if I was a buyer,
I wouldn't just
do a nasty evaluation and say, Well,that's what we're going to buy it for.
You're going to start therebecause that's all numbers,
and then you're going to start goingthrough all of these questions
about the business.
And that's where you getyour buying number from, right?
(17:24):
How much risk is there from nondiversification?
How much risk is therefrom external markets?
How much risk is there from blah,blah, blah?
There's likelike I said, there's like 80 questions.
So what I always suggest iswe start there in terms of figuring out
what you're going to do in that3 to 5 years, because that's entirely
(17:44):
tied to like those answersto those questions directly
affect your valuation and what a buyerwould pay for your business now.
Is it perfect?
Is it
can I accurately predict what someone'sgoing to buy your business for in three
or five years now?
But these are the same kind of questionsthat someone would ask
if they're going through a valuationexercise.
So back out of there and figure outhow many of those risk adjustments
(18:09):
could you address inside of your businessin the next
3 to 5 years to either,you know, grow your top line,
grow your bottom line, or offer,you know, fill the gaps
and fill the holes that were negativelyaffecting your valuation.
And therefore, that translatesto higher valuation, higher value.
(18:31):
Now, some of those strategies are goingto be, you know, going back to alignment.
Some of those strategies are things that
this business ownerwould just never take on.
So we don't do them right.
Like, it doesn't mean you have to take on
everythingthat comes out of the valuation. And,
you know, I, I had a client I was workingwith that, you know, she would have
increasedher valuation by a significant amount
(18:52):
if she was able to do thisone thing and address this one thing.
But for her, it was like a no go.
That would mean taking on a whole otherline of business
and that she really didn't want to doand was
like not well aligned to her valuesand who she was as an individual.
Well, we're not going to do it right?Yeah.
Could it could it increase your valuation?
But it wouldn't be in alignment with heras a business owner.
So you we developed that growth strategyout of your exit roadmap
(19:16):
and now you know where you're going,right?
But in order to prepare,
it's it's about tyingthose two things together.
It's about understandingwhere the business is
currently affectedby either risk or lack of opportunities,
and then putting a work plan togetherthat enables you to change that.
You have to be realistic.
It's going to take you a few years
(19:37):
to really make those changesand really get the benefits of them.
So I would saystart having this conversation early
and give yourself a chanceto change the profile of your business
from just a sort of hamster wheel, incomegenerating business, totally dependent
on ads or something like thatto something more diversified
that's going to be more attractiveto investor.
(19:58):
The other piece here that I hear a lot is
businesses that have a personal brand.
So they've all been you know, it'sbeen created around a an individual
and there's a lot of those outthere are a lot of my clients have that.
And so that gives you the timeto sort of neutralize the business
and turn it into something that'sgoing to be easier for someone to take on.
One of the businessesthat I bought was a personal brand.
(20:19):
It was totally tied to a personal brand,so we had to spend a lot of time
not just sort of neutralizing the brand,
but also a lot of the audience was
very attached to this individualthat used to own the business.
And so we had to almost retrain thatand develop that trust with the new team.
So there's a lot of stuffto talk about for sure.
(20:42):
But all those things are things you canaddress if you give yourself the time.
Mm hmm. Yeah.
And you know, a lot of businesses today,you hear a lot about the importance
of personal brandingand the need for that.
But maybe ironically,I can adversely affect the exit.
If you don't have the exit in mind.
(21:02):
So can you talk a little bitabout how one goes about if they've built
a personal brand or a businessaround their name or their personal brand,
what should they be doing if they'relooking to potentially make an exit
to make it valuable for an acquirersuch as yourself or somebody else?
Yeah, I
mean,especially for these types of businesses.
(21:25):
You know,if there's programs or, you know, coaching
programs, that kind of thing,it is very much tied to the individual.
And people are always goingto want to know who they're buying from.
So having a personal brandor at least having a personal presence
in your brand is always goingto be beneficial for these businesses.
So that's where the conundrum comesin, right?
(21:45):
If you tieit much too much to the individual,
then you knowit's going to be a hard sell, right?
And then sometimes there's an arrangementwhere,
you know,somebody will buy the personal brand
and there's some type of agreementwhere the the individual stays on
and just be like sort of the figureheaddoes some marketing, whatever.
But most of the time what you want to dois you want to prepare for that
(22:05):
neutralizing the brandso you're not selling, you know, Amy.
Amy X Right?
You're selling like a product nameor a program name
and, you know,like you're probably going to have to
redo some videos or what have you.
But over time,as you start to neutralize the brand, you
(22:27):
turn it into a new brandthat is more outcome specific.
And you put a team in place, right?
That team can transitionand develop the relationships like I have.
I've put a team in place.
My community manager is the onewho has relationships.
All I do is come in and do coaching,but I could definitely,
you know, I'm preparing for my teamto be doing some of the coaching
(22:48):
now inside of the business as well,and then I'll keep moving along.
But this business is no more,no longer built around me.
It's built around our team and what we
what we provide as a service as opposed to
you're getting me and my experienceand who I am.
So there's a just ayou know, there's just a process for
(23:09):
doing that over time and how you do itreally kind of depends on your audience
and the relationship you have with themand how you've created your products
and your services and your your programsand that sort of thing.
So like, it's all doable, but it'syou just need the right kind of strategy
and the right understanding of yourexisting community and existing audience.
And you need the time to be ableto make that transition.
(23:31):
Mm mm hmm. And
so when it comes to building businesses,
what are some common blind spots you see
maybe early stage,maybe mid-stage or even late stage owners
make that can lead to problemslater on down the road?
Well,I would say one of the biggest problems
people have is trying to replicatewhat other people have done
(23:55):
and convert convertlike they're there are results
and compare them to the results of othersthat they consider to be in their space.
And there's just so much you know, there'sso much difference between one
individual and another and what they valueand how they approach things.
You don't seea lot of what happens behind the scenes.
(24:15):
So trying to build a businessbased on like hacking,
what someone else hasdone is going to be so limiting.
And I think a lot of people buy in.
Even those business ownersthat are like aware and kind of tuned
in to the fact that thesethese promises are often,
you know, not they don't see them through.
They still like the idea of someonecoming to them and saying,
(24:38):
I'll give you my five step framework
and you're going to build a businessthat's successful, but it never works.
I have so many clientsthat have come to me
because they got into thesemastermind programs or these high ticket.
You know, someone'sgoing to teach me the way to do that.
And it never works.
It's and it's not that theirtheir model wasn't good
or they didn't have good information. It'sthat it wasn't them, right?
(25:00):
It wasn't they're that business ownerand what they want and what they need.
So I think that's one of the big blindspots is that I try to build my business
based on what other people have done,and it just never works.
So you've got to be clear on who you are,what you want,
what your business needs to look like,and your own plans and your own unique,
(25:21):
you know, brand of business
as opposed to just trying to shoehornin something else that has worked
for some other personbecause that's just a source
of massive frustrationand a waste of money.
Right.
I'd like to clarify that with you, because
there's two different concepts
that I think would bewould benefit from from the clarification.
(25:44):
So, you know, on the one hand,there is the aspect of of being unique
and not trying to imitate somebody elsebecause like, you're never going to be
that other person and the market alreadyhas that other person.
So the market doesn't need
a copycat of that personor a wannabe copycat of that person.
So that's on the one hand, you know,but on the other hand, there's this idea
(26:07):
that success leaves cluesand you want to replicate
some of the successand some of the good steps
and smart decisionsthat somebody else has made
because they've already kind ofpaved the path to a certain extent.
So what are your thoughts on those two?
Yeah, don't get me wrong.
(26:27):
I think that learning from other people isI mean, I'm constantly
listening to books and andbut you need to be able to take the pieces
out of that of that knowledgeand that that experience
that are relevant to youand leave the pieces that are not.
It's when people try to replicatea strategy.
You know this worksfine for tactical stuff, right?
(26:50):
I want the I want a new frameworkfor building a funnel that is a webinar
funnel.
Great by the chorus, by the step by stepframework.
That works great, right?
I've done that a bunch of times.
Codified knowledge. Awesome.
But when you're talking about designingyour business and designing your strategy,
it doesn't work because you are
(27:10):
you are a different individualwith different experiences, different
skills, different team, different journey,different everything.
And when people try to adopt these
sort of five stepframeworks to your business
strategy, like it doesn't work,it just doesn't and it never does. So.
Learn from others.
Absolutely.
(27:30):
Like those relationshipsthat you create with peers, those
you know, the listening to othersexperience is and,
you know, getting their storiesand their narrative awesome.
There's tons of great stuff there.
But when you know, and so many peopletry to sell you this, this, you know,
the $30,000 mastermind whereif you just follow these steps,
(27:51):
you're going to have the perfect business.
No, you're not.
You're never going toyou just going to get frustrated.
And that's whyso many people come out of those programs
and they're dissatisfied,
they are frustrated,they spent all that money, etc., etc..
So that's that's just for clarification.
That's kind of what I'm talking about,because I believe truly that,
you know, each business isis its own little entity and
(28:12):
and needs to have a heart and a souland a heartbeat that is very unique,
just like fingerprint SAAnd that's when you become successful
and you find your opportunitiesfor growth.
Am I like that?
You know, and speaking ofopportunities and, and growth
and success,
I one of the thingsyou really seemingly harp on is,
(28:36):
is having assets based
businesses,even in service based businesses.
So can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, I think
where it came from, I wasI was down in Texas
few years agoand I was working with a client where
just, you know, orchestrating a big launchfor her that week.
(28:58):
And then we decided to take a dayon our own to, like,
work on our own businessesand sort of mastermind those together.
And I was just looking at this big wallof all of my experiences
and all of the stuff that I've doneand all of the things, and I just thought
and I'm not really building anything,like I just continue to chase
(29:19):
new clients and is thatwhat my life is going to be like forever?
I'm a service based business owner.
Am I just going to keep chasing like what?
There's got to be something more to this.
And I kept thinking back to having lostmy real estate,
my property in my divorce, and thinking,how can I get that back, get an asset
back in my life when I won't be ableto afford real estate here again?
(29:42):
I live in a very expensivepart of the world, but I want that.
I want that asset in my life.
And I.
I started to think, well,I can buy businesses, I can invest
in businesses, I can build businessesbecause I have that skill set.
And then I started thinkingabout my own business
and I started thinking about how can Ilook at my own business as an asset?
How can I change that mindset to be,you know,
(30:05):
from being so dependent on the incometo building
something that has value insideof my business of thinking about this
and I started thinking about this
in the context of my own clientswho are all service based business owners.
I start to realize thatthere are all these things in our business
that would be valuableto someone that you could sell. And
(30:27):
the business that I bought a couple ofyears ago, I didn't buy the entity.
I actually bought the assetsof a business.
So got me really thinkingabout where we have
value inside our businessthat we don't even recognize.
And I created this small,you know, document.
There's nine types of assetsyou can build inside your business,
and those are all correlated towhat would be valuable to someone to as a
as a buyer. Right.
(30:48):
And there's no reason you couldn't createthose assets and sell them on their own.
Like you.
You create a retreat every yearand it's a big it becomes a big brand.
It becomes a big thing.
You could tell that like that
that would be an asset, that you could buyit be built inside your business.
It would grow in value as you asyou build it out.
All the stops you createfor your digital marketing agency,
(31:08):
you can bundle those upand sell them to other agency owners.
All the creative workyou do in your business for marketing
curate those and they become somethingvaluable to another buyer.
The partnerships you create
inside your business,those are all valuable
and those become assetsinside your business.
To the audience.
You build the your brand that you build.
(31:28):
Like all these things have value.
And I started to really thinkabout businesses in terms of assets.
So even the little business owners
who don't necessarilyhave some big exit strategy,
they have adopted this asset focusand they feel so much better
about their business
knowing that they're focusingon building things inside their business
that grow in value, that aren't just like,I just need to keep getting clients.
(31:51):
Like that's always going to be a partof your business for sure.
But those assets give us a new perspectiveand make us feel like
we're actually building somethingas opposed to just chasing clients.
And so that's really changedthe perspective
of a lot of my business owners.
And they they now have these sort ofthey make decisions really differently
inside their businessnow in terms of what they're investing in.
Mm. I love that.
(32:12):
So if listeners want to find outa little bit more about you
or even the nine types of assets
that they can build insideof their business, how can they do that?
Stephanie.
Best to go to my website.
Stephanie Hays. Dot biz.
I can also be found on LinkedIn.
I'm quite active there and those areprobably the two best places to find me.
You can download the nine types of assetsinside my website and
(32:36):
it's just like it's good food for thought,right?
It's good a good mindset shiftin how you think about your businesses
and I've seen it make a huge changefor even people who are just kind of happy
to run their little lifestyleto sell businesses,
but like the opportunityto build something more, right?
It's always nice to have options.
And so ultimately, ifif you build something that you can sell
(32:57):
and exit, it's far better than having tojust shut it down for for no income.
Yeah, that breaks my heart.
I'm like, There's so much value insidethat business. Don't shut it down.
Right, Right. Well, good.
Speaking of value, Stephanie,I appreciate all the value
you've shared withme and the listeners today.
You've
been an incredible guestand offered some great insights.
(33:17):
So thank you for that.
Thanks for having me.It was a pleasure. Yeah.
And to the listeners,if you found value in this and
found it helpful,make sure you like and subscribe
so you know when the next podcastepisode is dropping.
Thank you for joining me on From Crisisto Justice.
Until next time. Oh.
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