ExitReadiness®️ PODCAST

Whether you're raising growth capital or preparing for an eventual exit, the financial discipline you build today determines the options you'll have tomorrow. In this episode, Pat and Walter dig into what sophisticated investors and acquirers actually look for when evaluating a privately held business — and where most owners fall short. From clean financials and accurate reporting to the metrics t...

Incentive compensation is one of the most powerful — and most misunderstood — tools a business owner has for retaining key employees, aligning performance, and building transferable value. Elizabeth Mower, former President of the Business Enterprise Institute (BEI) and founder of entreVector, brings deep expertise in exit planning and business enterprise systems to this conversation. Elizabeth and...

Customer concentration and customer dependency are well-known exit risks — but customer feedback may be the most overlooked value driver in a business owner's toolkit. Eli Portnoy, serial entrepreneur, Harvard Business School Executive Fellow, and founder of BackEngine, has achieved multiple successful exits totaling over $66 million in value. A self-described customer obsessive, Eli joins Pat and...

Empathy is often dismissed as a soft skill — but for employers who understand it, it's one of the most powerful tools for reducing litigation, improving retention, and building a business that runs well without the owner. Marc R. Engel, employment attorney at Lerch Early & Brewer and founder of the Employment Alliance Group, joins Pat and Walter to make the business case for empathy in the wor...

A cyber breach during a due diligence process can kill a deal — or dramatically reduce a purchase price. And yet cybersecurity is one of the most consistently overlooked exit planning topics for privately held business owners. Brian Guenther, CISSP, CCP and founder of Exceed Cybersecurity & I.T. Services in Frederick, Maryland, joins Pat and Walter to explain what cyber resilience actually mea...

There is no substitute for the perspective of someone who has actually been through it. Wayne Cates joins Pat and Walter for a candid, first-person account of selling his business — what he got right, what he wishes he had done differently, and the surprises that caught him off guard in the process. This is the kind of unfiltered conversation that only someone who has lived through a business sale...

A podcast isn't just a marketing tool — when done right, it builds the kind of thought leadership, brand equity, and audience trust that makes a business more valuable and more transferable. Joe Ennis, founder of Podcasts By Joe and the production talent behind the ExitReadiness® Podcast, joins Pat to share how business owners can leverage podcasting to build authority in their niche, reduce owner...

Transferring a business to a key employee or family member sounds straightforward — until the legal complexities start surfacing. Paul Schwinn, Shareholder at Shulman Rogers and Co-Chair of its Startups and Emerging Growth Companies Practice Group, joins Pat and Walter to walk through the legal do's and don'ts of internal transactions. From deal structure and equity mechanics to the mistakes that...

ESOPs have long been the dominant employee ownership exit route in the U.S. — but a newer vehicle, the Employee Ownership Trust (EOT), is gaining serious traction as an alternative. Loren Rodgers, Executive Director of the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) and one of the nation's foremost authorities on employee ownership, joins Pat and Walter to explain the key differences between ESO...

Receiving a Letter of Intent (LOI) feels like the finish line — but experienced M&A advisors know it's actually where some of the hardest work begins. Todd Taskey, M&A advisor at Potomac Business Capital and host of the Second Bite Podcast, joins Pat and Walter to demystify the critical period between the LOI and closing. Todd explains what buyers are really doing during this phase, the mo...

More than 80% of businesses that go to market never successfully sell — and the reasons are more preventable than most owners realize. Christine Nicholson, UK-based award-winning Business Mentor of the Year and author of four books on exit planning, joins Pat and Walter to break down the three primary reasons business sales fail. Drawing on decades of experience helping owners get exit-ready in th...

The Japanese concept of Ikigai — finding the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for — is at the heart of one of the most important and overlooked dimensions of exit planning: what comes next. Joe Markovitch, Certified Exit Planner and Senior Business Advisor, joins Pat and Walter to explore how Ikigai provides a blueprint for business...

What should a business owner actually be doing right now to build their ExitReadiness®? Pat and Walter close out the year with a practical, actionable checklist of exit planning priorities for 2025 — covering goal-setting, business valuation, financial gap analysis, transferable value drivers, succession planning, and personal readiness. Whether you're 10 years out or closer, this episode gives yo...

A business owner's ability to give honest, effective feedback to employees is directly tied to the transferable value of the business — because management teams that only perform with the owner in the room aren't truly independent. Sarah Goelitz, leadership consultant and founder of Sarah Goelitz Consulting, joins Pat for a focused conversation on what effective employee feedback actually looks li...

An earnout looks simple on paper — get paid more if the business performs. In practice, earnout disputes are one of the most common sources of post-closing litigation in private M&A. Scott Taylor, Shareholder at SmolenPlevy and a returning ExitReadiness® guest, brings 20+ years of M&A and business succession law to a deep-dive conversation on earnout strategy and structure. Scott walks Pat...

A management buyout feels like the cleanest possible exit — your trusted team takes over, the legacy is preserved, everyone wins. But when partners and co-owners haven't built strong interpersonal foundations, MBOs carry a risk most advisors don't put on the table: the deal can blow up not over financials, but over relationships. Dr. David Gage, clinical psychologist, founder of BMC Associates in...

Selling a mid-market business is not the same as selling a small business — the complexity, the buyer pool, and the stakes are all different. Richard Phillips, Managing Director at Oberon Securities, one of New York City's leading mid-market investment banking firms with 70+ senior professionals and 300+ closed transactions, joins Pat and Walter to share what he sees in the sell-side process week...

Non-compete agreements are in a state of flux — and what you don't know can cost you at the closing table or in the courts. Marc R. Engel, Esq., employment attorney and Shareholder at Lerch Early & Brewer, rejoins Pat and Walter to break down the current legal landscape around non-competes, non-solicitations, and other restrictive agreements. With federal and state-level rule changes creating...

There are tens of thousands of small industrial manufacturers in the U.S. whose owners are ready to retire — and very few successors stepping up to take them over. Jules Brenner, founder of Industrial Succession Group and operator of multiple metal fabrication businesses in Southern California, is building the solution to that problem one acquisition at a time. Jules joins Pat and Walter to share...

Every business owner needs to be able to cast a compelling vision — to employees, partners, potential buyers, and successors. But most owners have never been taught a proven framework for doing it persuasively. Vinca LaFleur, Executive Director and COO of West Wing Writers and former White House speechwriter to President Clinton, joins Pat and Corby to introduce the Monroe Motivational Sequence —...

SBA financing is one of the most powerful and most misunderstood tools in the exit planning toolkit — both as a mechanism for funding business growth and as a vehicle that buyers will use to acquire your business when you're ready to sell. Jarred Ricks, SVP and Regional Manager for M&T Bank's Greater Washington Business Banking Group, joins Pat and Walter to demystify SBA lending for business...

A business with weak internal controls and unmanaged risk isn't just exposed to fraud and operational failure — it's also exposed to a significant discount from buyers during due diligence. Mac Lillard, CPA/ABV/CITP, CIA, CFE, Senior Manager of Risk & Advisory Services at GRF CPAs & Advisors and a CPA Practice Advisor 40 Under 40 honoree, joins Pat and Walter to explain how risk management...

Employer risk, HR compliance, and the ability to compete for top talent are not just day-to-day business concerns — they are exit planning concerns. A business that can attract and retain quality employees, manages its employment liabilities well, and has HR infrastructure that runs without the owner is a more transferable, more valuable business. Andy Schuman, Certified Business Performance Advis...

Most sellers prepare for an exit from the seller's point of view. But the buyers evaluating their business are thinking about entirely different things — and the gap between what sellers focus on and what buyers actually need to see is one of the primary reasons deals fall apart or close at disappointing prices. David C. Barnett, former Sunbelt business broker, private transaction advisor, author,...

Nick Fogle spent years building Wavve, a bootstrapped SaaS tool for podcasters, while working day jobs, paying off a quarter-million dollars in student debt, and teaching himself to code from scratch. When acquisition offers started coming in, he had to figure out — in real time — how to evaluate them, negotiate them, and ultimately choose one. In 2021, Wavve sold for a mid-7-figure sum. Nick join...