The Influential Advisor

099: Scott Snider on Why Exit Strategy IS Business Strategy

• Paul G. McManus and Gabe McManus

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A $200 million exit — and the client who should have been celebrating, but wasn't. That's what started the Exit Planning Institute. And it's the same story Scott Snider has lived himself: a successful business sale in his mid-20s followed by two years of feeling completely lost. Identity, purpose, what comes next — these are questions the transaction doesn't answer. Exit planning does.

Episode Summary

In this conversation, Paul sits down with Scott Snider, President of the Exit Planning Institute (EPI), ahead of the 2026 CEPA Summit in Nashville. Scott walks through the founding story of EPI, his own journey as an exited business owner turned professional education leader, and the near-crisis moment in 2020 that forced him to rethink everything — not just his business model, but the culture he had been building around himself. He also breaks down the Value Acceleration Methodology in plain language and explains why exit planning isn't about selling your company. It's about running a better business right now.

About Scott Snider

Scott Snider is the President of the Exit Planning Institute (EPI) and Operating Partner of Snider Premier Growth. A nationally recognized growth specialist and lifetime entrepreneur, Scott launched his first business at 16 and sold it in his mid-20s — an experience that shaped his deep understanding of what owners face emotionally and financially in a transition. Since purchasing EPI with his father Chris Snider in 2012, Scott has scaled the organization from 120 members to over 11,000 CEPAs across 19 countries. He is also a former professional indoor soccer player in the Major Arena Soccer League.

What We Cover

  • How Scott's personal exit at 24 — profitable but emotionally unprepared — became the foundation of everything he now teaches
  • Why EPI pivoted its entire credentialing program to virtual in 45 days during COVID, and how that decision triggered 5x growth
  • The "brick wall moment" when all 11 employees told Scott they were looking for other jobs — and what it took to rebuild
  • Why the Value Acceleration Methodology applies whether an owner is 25 or 72, planning to exit or not
  • How EPI's new DriveValue.com platform meets business owners where they are — before they're ready for an advisor
  • What's different about the 2026 CEPA Summit in Nashville — including a festival-style exploration experience across seven live stages

Resources Mentioned

Connect with Scott Snider

Support the show

Welcome And The Big Promise

SPEAKER_02

Welcome to the Influential Advisor Podcast. Today I'm sitting down with Scott Snyder, president of the Exit Planning Institute, the home of the certified Exit Planning Advisor Credential and a community spanning 19 countries. Scott is a serial entrepreneur who joined his father to build EPI from 120 members to over 11,000 CEPAs over a 14-year run that's still going. In this conversation, we're going to explore what exit planning actually means for advisors and business owners, how Scott transformed EPI's culture after nearly losing his entire team, and why the Summit Exploration Experience EPI is introducing in Nashville this year is something the advisory world hasn't seen before. Scott, great to have you here today.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it, guys.

SPEAKER_02

I always find it super interesting because this is the first time that we've met. I call this in person, even though we're on a Zoom world, but this is the first time that we've met in person on Zoom. And we're excited to be a sponsor for the upcoming SIPA summit later this month in Nashville. Thank you for accepting our invitation to be on our podcast. And we're looking forward to deep diving in terms of what the Exit Planning Institute is, what the SIPA is, who it's for, what are some of the exciting things that are going on in your neck of the woods. I'm already excited to go to this event. Let's dive into it. I'd like to start and just frame things with a little bit about your backstory, who you are, what led you in the direction and the path that you're on today.

Scott’s First Business Exit Lessons

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, Paul, you put some frames around boundaries around me because we'll go down a rabbit hole. But I would think it's been interesting story, right? My story is basically I'm a serial entrepreneur. I started my first business when I was 16 at the seat of my geometry class. And I sold it in my mid-20s. So I had about a nine-year run of building a company. And what was the business? The business, believe it or not, gentlemen, I actually went to Ohio State and majored in horticulture. And the business that I own was a landscape and snow and ice management company here in Cleveland, Ohio, where we're from. And so I was able to, my when I was 16, though, I have a Craftsman lawnmower in the back of a Ford Torres sedan. And that grew into a seven truck, 20-person operation. And I sold to a synergistic buyer, a competitor, that said, Scott, we like your equipment, your customers, your process, your employees. We did something unique, at least at the time, that was more we used to say that we worked with people and companies that use their image to sell their product. So high image oriented properties. We got bought by a competitor and I had my first exit planning lesson, though I did not call it exit planning back then. I was just telling the story, man. I literally had a good we had a good business, so we had a good business exit, like not anything to not anything wild, but not anything bad. Like it was a what I thought was a good deal, felt good about it, and we made it happen. I was in my mid-20s, so I had the solid financial plan, not a lot of big expenses or anything. I didn't have any kids or anything like that. And so I always say I had a little bit more change in my back pocket than everybody trying to figure out graduating college, right? So I was like, okay, this feels good, but I had zero personal planning. I literally, what I realized in the two years after selling, that I was actually a pretty miserable guy to be around. I had lacked all, I had basically let my business identi I identify who I was, and without it, I was a real pain. I always say it's a high and low. I was able to play professional soccer, so I went and played in the major arena soccer league for two seasons, but at the same time of kind of living out this childhood dream of getting paid to play the sport that he loved, I also was going through a divorce. And both of them, I tell this story because both of them led to I didn't really know who I was, man. I was like hanging out on the weekends on a bus, driving to play professional soccer while I wasn't really investing into my marriage really at all. And it was because I really didn't know who I was. Oddly enough, my dad had just become a certified exit planning advisor. Okay, and so dad was certificate number 93. Now we have 11,000 SIPAs. And dad was also trying to figure this thing out. He that's why I had such a good business exit because dad was one of my business advisors. But when he went to EPI, he learned that.

SPEAKER_02

Did he charge you or did he give you the sun discount?

SPEAKER_00

No, he charged me for sure. I don't think I ever got a discount from dad ever, but it made me the man who I am. But I used to say dad traveled a ton for work back in the corporate days. And when I was probably like 11 and 12, he let me polish his shoes for five bucks when he would come off the plane. But he would only give me two dollars and fifty cents. And so the first time he did that, he had five pairs of shoes. So I'm like, dude, this is a for a 12-year-old, I'm like, that's 20, 25 bucks. I'm feeling pretty good about this. And the dad was like, here's two dollars and fifty cents. And I'm like, what? He's taxes, and so for every pair he would charge me 50% taxes. So the bank of dad teaches them investing. So I said, look, you have your checking account, which would be some play money that you want to go out and do fun stuff with. You have some savings, we're gonna save to family vacation because on that RV trip, you're gonna want to go to the local beach town and buy yourself something. And then you should have stuff that you just tuck away. So if you put it in the bank of dad, this is not open to anybody that's not family and un and you have to be under the age of 18. But if you're part of the Snyder family, you're under age of 18, you can invest in the bank of dad. If you can put in your money and you don't complain about it and you let it sit there for nine straight months, it doubles. Oh you put in a hundred bucks, no complaints. You're not gonna ask me, Dad, can I get 10 bucks back? Because I need to get that ice cream scoop that you and mom won't buy me. You can't do any of that. But if you just sit there and let it mature, every nine months it doubles. So my son's actually really good at it. He's totally playing the system. The kid's up till sixteen hundred bucks now. So I'm like, I guess this is gonna be his first car, right? Like he's only twelve, so if he keeps doing it, like quite literally, sixteen hundred bucks is gonna turn into like thirty two hundred dollars in like nine months, and I'm like, oh crap, what am I doing here?

SPEAKER_02

Every nine months, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Every nine months, if you don't complain.

SPEAKER_02

So at some point, you know, yeah, you know, because you got to do like$10 million.

SPEAKER_00

It's I got my friends trying to come into the bank of dad. I got my uncles trying to come in there. It's a cool way to teach them, but more of the story is gentlemen, that once me and dad started hanging out together in that business journey, we realized that we actually should be coaching professional advisors, not business owners directly. And the reason why was back then in 2010, 11, 12, everybody was showing up to the owner differently. The financial advisor was talking about financials, personal financials, the CPA was talking about your taxes, that you might have a business consultant or like a business coach that was trying to make your business more scalable, but no one was talking about how does it relate to value and how do we align your goals. The difference is by becoming a SEPA, Dad said, I'm gonna take these concepts and make them a methodology and practice so that we can actually go do this stuff. And so I said, Dad, yeah, I think you need to change the role here. I think we need to teach the methodology to own to advisors, not owners. And by doing so, we can unify a community of people that will all show up to the owner regardless of who they are in the same way. So we're not quite there yet, but certainly 11,000 SEPAs are showing up to the owner in the same way every time, and they're all leading the owner to get into the methodology. So whether I'm the estate planning attorney, the MA guy, the financial advisor, we all know a common language and framework that allows us to all work better with owners. And so that's my journey, and that's how I got into EPI. I have my own story with exit planning. I live exit planning every single day, as you can imagine, as a privately held business business owner, but we're also teaching the same methodology to our advisors. So it's a cool thing.

SPEAKER_02

I think if I understand correctly, you and your dad at some point purchased the exit planning institute.

Why EPI Teaches Advisors First

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's what we did. 2012. Peter Christman and Rich Jacob are the founders of EPI. They were investment bankers. Similar journey as my dad, just on the MA side. They said, just the story goes in a quick way. Some guy was sitting in their office. He had just sold, he had sold his company 90 days prior for$200 million. And the guy left their office, and Rich and Pete looked at each other, what the hell was that guy's problem? We just got sold as we maximized value and minimized taxes. This guy should be extant.$200 million is a lot of money. And what they started, so Rich, being the more academic of the two guys, started down a rabbit hole of research. And what he found is that none of their clients that they sold were happy at all. As a business owner themselves, as part of owning what was called the Christman Group, they said, that's not really what we're in business for. And so we then they said why? And when they started to ask why, they found a bunch of owners like me that either like me profoundly regretted selling their business because of lack of identity, or actually had to go get a job because they ran out of money. I didn't have an investment plan. So they were like, dude, I'm actually working at Home Depot right now because I'm just trying to get, or I had to go back in and I'm a COO for some other dude's company, and this is not what I envisioned for my life. Like, I wish I never sold. And so they created this concept that we teach today called the three-legged stool concept, this alignment of business, personal, and financial goals. They then wrote a book about it, and then everybody started asking, Hey, can you teach me that? So the entrepreneurs at Rich and Pete were they're like, sure. So we started EPI and started teaching it through the certified exit planning advisor program until we bought EPI with 120 members, and that was too big for Rich and Pete. They're like, dude, I have my investment banking practice. Now I got members with needs and all this stuff. Let's sell this thing. And so we're like, we'll buy it. It took two round, two, two, two runs for us to come to terms, but we eventually did. And here we are today. And so that's our story.

SPEAKER_02

Now we're in 2026, so it's been about 14 years, and the numbers is 120 when you purchased it, and 11,000 today. Above just in whatever makes sense. How did you scale that? That's the dream of many, right? It's like, how do I take this thing that's smallish in nature and turn it into this mega substantial organization business, etc.?

SPEAKER_00

It's a really cool story, so thanks for asking about it. We're doing pretty good between I always break it into two chunks, and maybe many business owners in their life break this in. There's a pre-COVID and post-COVID, which was very true for us. So we're going along at a good rate. We, I think in 2019, as we were entering 2020, Paul, we had maybe 2,000 certified exit planning advisors. So definitely more than 120 and a pretty good run. The problem that we were having in 19, I could remember at our executive retreat, we were all arguing about how we scale this thing. And I was upset because that year, 2019, I traveled 226 days that year executing CEPA programs, conferences, chapter launches, chapter meetings. And I was like, guys, I can't do this anymore. We either have to pause and clone me, or we got to think about better ways. But I'm, you know, at the time I wasn't thinking virtual at all. I was like, how do we do this thing? And so then COVID happened. As you can imagine, from a business owner standpoint, guys, like it was a pretty scary time. We had two months of zero revenue, March and April 2020. We had zero revenue but all the expenses. It forced us to deliver a program to the market that was a virtual program, but in our own way. So in 45 days, we pivoted this whole thing to produce a version of what you saw you see today, which is a three-layered learning process focused on the virtual classroom, the body of knowledge, then a an application of the body of knowledge, which is your self-study case study work, and then a live faculty meetup, the third layer where we could talk about practical implementation and get our questions answered. And so you go through this program now, and that allowed us to reduce costs that we then passed on to the customer. It wasn't as expensive to become a SIPA, and then it was worldwide. We have now SIPAs in I think 19 different countries. Okay. And so people can now come into the program from all around. So the product that is the credentialing program, Paul, became a lot more accessible.

SPEAKER_02

I was just going to ask 19 countries without giving us a list, just what are maybe one or two of the other countries that it's popular in?

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. I would say the top two are Australia. Okay. The government has a program there that subsidizes the fees of advisors if you can show that you're working with a certified exit planning and or not a certified professional in exit planning. The Australian government has realized, look, we need these companies to transition for economic stability. If they don't transition, what what happens to the system? And so obviously a way smaller country than the United States. I don't know how we have, I don't know how we could have that model here, but certainly something that makes gaining your CEPA credential popular in Australia. And then obviously Canada, they have similar problems that we have. So it's super easy to trust another North American company and and have it close to home. But we've seen people from we just had two guys from Singapore come through this past week. We've had, but all across the world.

SPEAKER_02

And for them, I'm guessing it's correct Pamar, but it's not they need the credential or licensing per se. It's more of a credential that they actively seek out because they see the value that they can, the body of knowledge, the education, and then ultimately the value that they can provide to their clients.

Scaling CEPA Through Virtual Delivery

SPEAKER_00

100%. Yeah, I would say that's maybe threefold. Number one, they understand the methodology approach. So now they understand how this all kind of takes place and they become a, I'd like to think, a more holistic and better advisor to a business owner. Uh two, they have we have a membership model, so they can gain benefits from EPI that allows them to scale their practice and have real impact with owners. So there's that benefit of becoming a SIPA. The only way to access the membership benefits that we have is to actually have the credentials. And then, yeah, I think that there is, even though there might not be anybody in Australia that's a business owner that knows what the heck a SIPA is, telling that story that look, when you're sitting next to your CPA, that person is not a SIPA, I am, and here's what that means. I think that becomes valuable to them too, to say to have the designation next to their name.

SPEAKER_01

I'm wondering, Scott, you said that in 2019, 2020, you're on the road all of this time and that you had to do a reset. So when you switched to that new model, what changed for you? Did you still fight yourself the bottleneck? Did you have to work yourself out of that where you still could get some balance? Or what how did your life change when you went to the new model?

SPEAKER_00

What's interesting, I'm actually writing a book on this now. I'm just like, you were to have 38,000 words typed. I feel like that's a win for somebody that really doesn't have much time to write. What I do, of course, uh I started on things like Thanksgiving time frame, and so maybe a few months we've been at it. But the biggest thing that happened in 2020 outside of the physical pivot of the program is what I call the brick wall moment. The brick wall moment I saw after we pivoted this program, guys, we should all be rejoicing. We're back on the revenue train, we've stabilized our business. And I understand that people might be tired, right? Because like, holy crap, that was a hell of a 45-day run here, guys. Quite literally through COVID, if you remember different things going on in our country, or just a crazy time for everybody. I think everybody should be excited. I look across at oh at the time I only had 11 people at API, and so I'm pretty close to everybody still. And something was missing. So I entered our team into what's called leadership transformation at a company called Initiative One Leadership Institute. I always say it's more like therapy than it is your traditional leadership coaching. It was trying to help high-performing teams know each other better so that you could scale better together. What I found as the owner of the business is that I created a company that was really about what I wanted and not about what we wanted. So it was about from the culture to the core values, was really stuff that I created, not what we created. And the biggest brick wall moment for me was quite literally one of our longest running employees said to us in one of these group sessions, You could tell Fred, who was facilitating our group from initiative one, you could tell that he was getting frustrated with our group because he wasn't pulling what he needed to pull out. People were holding back. And so I just laid it out one day because I got frustrated because I'm also paying at a time where I just regained revenue, gentlemen. I paid 165 grand to go through this program. Like we just had zero revenue for two months. I'm like, dad, I think we need this. And we get into this program. So I'm getting frustrated. And Jocelyn, I remember, she's our senior event manager. At the time she was our operations manager. She said to me, Scott, I'll just be straight with you because you're also a straight shooter. All 11 of us are looking for jobs. And now imagine I'm back on the revenue train. We have 350 CPAs signed up to come to programs. I have a whole business here, and I could potentially have no employees. Like we would have gone bankrupt. Like we would have just closed the doors. There's just no way we could have sustained it without having any employees. It made me realize that I had built an organization that was really about me and not about we. And so we cut it all the way down, and that was our revolutionary moment where we go, it wasn't just we revolutionized the way we delivered our product. We actually all became value creators. We all embraced the value acceleration methodology. And whether it was the part-time office assistant or a co-executive with me, we all started to adopt a more ownership mind, like an ownership thinking mentality, or what I would call a value creator mentality. And we started to build an organization that was really built by the people at a place that we all wanted to work, not just where I wanted to work. Once we got that down, we went from 2,000 SIPAs to 11,000 SIPAs in five years. We went from 11 employees to 52 employees, and of those 11 employees, eight of them are still here.

unknown

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

So I think that's a win-to.

SPEAKER_01

Scott, I feel like you must have said something a bit more than just dad, we need this to get your dad to go along and spending 165,000. That must have been a sales job.

The Brick Wall Culture Reset

SPEAKER_00

You can imagine, right? So dad goes from big corporate America all the way through. Dad's been around leadership coaching. Yeah. And so he's, I don't know if he's let me do the leadership coaching. These guys need help. Dad's also a baby boomer when dad would tell the story the same way. He goes, I'll quite get you guys. It's kind of like kumbaya, and let's just get some work done. But you'll see dad, and it to you'll see dad today teach that business is personal. There's that's not different. Dad used to say, Leave all that personal crap at the door, we got a business to run. Now we actually blend it all together. And it's true. If I show up at 8 a.m. in my office and I had a bad morning with my kids, everybody here knows it. And if I go home at five o'clock because I had a bad day at work, I'm not showing up being a great husband or father either. And so why don't we just communicate about it and give us our give each other some grace and understand that we're people with different we all wear different hats at different times. And so, anyways, we teach now at EPI that business is very personal, particularly even for an owner trying to trying to exit, it's powering their entire lifestyle. So it's actually very personal for them. And yeah, no, it wasn't as like, Dad, I think we need this. It was a couple of conversations around show me the metrics. And I was like, okay, this is gonna go south because I don't even know the metrics. I just think we need this. I think we like I met Fred, he was actually the keynote speaker at EPI's conference in 2019, and it resonated with me. I was like, man, I hired him because he has a good message that I thought our sepas needed. And then I found myself listening to his keynote saying, I think we need this. And it wasn't until 2020 where we got slapped in the face that I was like, I don't know what else to do. I'm gonna lose everybody. There's something missing, and it was, in fact, I was about to lose everybody. They were all looking for jobs. What Fred was able to bring that out, allowed us to develop a communication style, trust accelerators, core values that would develop by 11 people, not just one guy. And Dad finally, that was also another revolutionary point where dad let off the reins a little bit, and that's where we put together a decentralization plan for dad. And so we went on a three-year run to remove him from the business, focus on thought leadership, and allow the team to power the operational operations of the company. And so it was those three things. Your original question is how did we do it? It was scaling a product, it was scaling culture and people, and it was decentralizing the business owner. It was really those three things.

SPEAKER_01

They all became value creators, and that you were adopting that owner mindset all. What immediate changes did you see coming from the people that were working there? That what were they doing differently that was leading to that outcome?

SPEAKER_00

2021, we come through that program. Like the performance reviews in 2021, December of 21, my marketing manager, who's now our vice president of marketing and brand strategy, Paige, I gave her a performance review that was high mark, like total A player, our number one person on the team, no doubt. Everybody knew it. And I also gave her a raise in annual salary, and I gave her a pretty healthy bonus. I gave her like a$10,000 bonus to say thank you for helping us do this thing, which was at the time like a pretty good chunk of her whole salary. Like it was like holy crew, you could see it in her face. She's wow, game changer. But you could also see in her face, because it'd be funny when she listens to this because she's really bad poker face. I would never I would always play against her, never with her. But you could tell something was missing. And so I said, Hey, what's going on? Did I miss the mark? Did I not give you enough? Like we're doing what we can and we want to know that we what we love you. Like we want to grow with you. I hope that you spend the rest of your career here. And she's like you taught us how to. Be value creators. We've embraced the value acceleration methodology. And I kid you not, she slips a piece of paper across my desk and she said, This is all the stuff that I did to create value in your company over the last 12 months. She's like, Your performance review rated me on if I'm demonstrating and living our core values. It also talked about the responsibilities and the metrics of my job and how I did there, but you didn't talk about how much value we created. So I put it together for you. And I was oh crap, how do I pay you for that now? And but that was a mark where we got that mentality down. So she said, this isn't just like the X's and O's of my job and the income or for her in a marketing role. This wasn't just how much leads I was producing. This is also how that equated to value and the relationship with value. And so we started to scale that. And then we put a whole program around the mentality of a value creator employee.

SPEAKER_02

Do you have is are the 11,000 CEPAs, are these all advisors of some capacity that are looking to this to advise, or do you have many business owners that aren't necessarily looking to advise on these things, but simply embrace it for reasons like you just studied?

DriveValue And Owner Entry Points

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so EPI serves the professional advisor, and the professional advisor goes and serves the business owners. We don't at EPI directly, it's really an institution built for professional advisors. It's our training ground. Now, saying that, as you can imagine, with the market that we're in today, exit is all around us, right? The average boomer is 72 years old, so they're certainly coming to market. The Gen Xers look to blend and balance life, so they're trying to position for an eventual exit. And the millennials, I think, will be boomering exits. They'll hold a company for a decade, sell it, start another one, sell it, start another one, and so on and so forth. So exit planning is all around us. So naturally, as you can imagine, business owners, when you Google exit planning or Google value acceleration, EPI bubbles to the top. So we created another brand called drivevalue.com. So drivevalue.com is the four-step guide to value acceleration. It starts with changing your mindset, measuring value, driving value, and aligning goals. Once you can unlock that for yourself as a business owner, you can pair yourself with an expert advisor, which happens to be a certified exit planning advisor. And so we have rolled out that brand so that CEPAs can drive their owners into drivevalue.com. They can help educate the owner, intrigue, and empower the owner to move towards action. So more owners than not today are certainly coming into that world, but they're usually the owners are interacting around drivevalue.com. The advisors are interacting in the EPI community at Exoplanning Institute. And the common denominator with them is that they're all learning the value acceleration methodology. The idea over the next five years is to have both of them pair together. It's kind of like a matchmaking, if you will. And so the advisors learn their way. The business owners don't want the technical. They want to break down complexity. And so I have to give them value acceleration in a different way and give it to them. And I have to meet them where they are. Some owners are pivoting. Some owners are saying, Man, I want to change my mindset. I'm 72 years old. I need to extract value from this business. How do I more immediately do that? You have people maybe that are 40 that are saying, look, I need to, I want some more time with my kids, man. I spend 80 hours a week in my business. I'm looking for more personal freedom. So I'm exploring a little bit. So I have to drop a different level of knowledge on them because I want to scare them away. And then some owners are triggered. They're saying, regardless of age, I have a really good deal on the table, like I had in 2010, and I think I should take it. Or unfortunately, I'm struck by the five D's, these destroyers of companies, and I'm being more forcibly being forced out of my company. So the trigger guys are, I don't really need to get education. I need to get help. Now and so drivevalue.com kind of meets them where they are with a simple four-step guide, really around just understanding the relationship of value and how it aligns to your business, personal, and financial goals. So there are some, I say all of that, say there are some owners interacting with us, but they're really on the drive value side versus the EPI side.

SPEAKER_02

For someone like myself, I'm 50. I business owner. I have no plan to exit because for the foreseeable future, I enjoy what I do, although I really want that I might turn 60 and have a different perspective. And I've worked with enough finance professionals and enough CIFAS to know that if you want to start planning today, not wait until you're ready to exit. And so I have probably at least 10 years plus if things are going well, but I do have enterprise value on my mind. So for someone like me as a business owner who's not looking to exit, but simply wants to make sure that they are building their company to maximize enterprise value over time, what would be the correct move in terms of resources that you have?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, of course. So I would say you're an ideal client. So I actually love you're a Gen Xer. And so I would always lead with generational characteristics. It's not always true, but you'll probably find yourself in here. Gen Xers are between the ages of like 44 years old and 59 years old, so you're right there. The Gen X, you really believe in your time. You look for a work-life balance, you understand that there's multiple that you have multiple passions in life. You are typically a money saver. And I would say you're a work smarter, not harder generation. So you like to optimize time. So knowing all of that, I think it lends itself to business planning. So the three legs of the stool, I would move you into business planning because I think you're absolutely right. You should building, you should be building a business that allows you to do what you love every day, that is decentralized from you, and that optimizes your time so that you leave room for multiple passions that you might have. And so I would say your core advisor right now is likely a business consultant or coach that can allow you to build a scalable business that's decentralized from you, so that you have room for multiple passions in life and you're protected. And I would say protected, meaning that you could be struck by the five D's, right? If you get injured, just disabled, you get disease, you get a partner dispute, and you're forced out of your company. We want you to be able to navigate that with as much ease as you can. On the flip side, there might be a larger company that is finds that your process and approach and your clientele and your brand are attractive. And so they come in and say, Paul, we want to buy your company, man. Have you ever thought thought about selling your company for$20 million? And I don't know if that's right or wrong, if that fills your wealth gap or not, but you should know in case a good offer like that comes along. And so, whether for better or worse, and if it's a struck by the five D's or an opportunity to sell, whether you're ready or not, would twenty million dollars fill your wealth gap? Maybe you should take it. I think one of our SIPAs, I'll wind down with this mine, one of our SIPAs, Justin Goodbread, I think really says it well. Justin was not, he was about your age. He a couple years ago, he was not necessarily ready to sell his financial advisory company as a financial advisory firm, but his wife got sick and she was in the hospital, and he got an offer, a massive offer, just like that for something like$20 million. And his wife said, What's another million dollars? I know you might not be like ready, you're not, you're still you love being a financial advisor, you love supporting business owners. But if there's$15 or$20 million coming our way, should you take it? And for him, he goes, Yeah, the answer is yes, but he could only say that because he also had personal planning in mind. He knew what he wanted to do next. And so he was able to evolve in, and now he has a massive coaching business where he's actually coaching financial advisors to do what he does now. I would say the first thing that you need to do as a 50-year-old business owner is likely understand your gaps. You should understand your wealth gap, your value gap, and your profit gap. And I think with that you should understand what purpose is the business serving. So, yes, you're a passionate owner about the product or service that you have, but if that were to go away, what else makes you tick? And let's run towards that. Because the business is just another financial asset in our portfolio, it's serving an ultimate purpose for us in some way, shape, or form.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it it's amazing. Like just by generalizing about Gen X, I'm like, check. Check it out.

Building Enterprise Value Without Selling

SPEAKER_00

If you're following anything, some of that should be true. And I find that people that are your age, mostly your problem, your big business becomes so big that you're hitting the ceiling and you're like, I'm the sales guy, I'm the accountant, I'm the producer. And so, man, I find myself uh a little tired because I'm doing everything and I'm trying to scale. What you don't realize is that exit strategy is business strategy. There's nothing different. You're doing stuff every single day in your business that'll eventually affect the sale of your company. So why not do it right now? And if you do it right now, you actually gain more personal freedom and financial security. So now it's all I can get all of that by implementing the value acceleration methodology into my business. And the answer is yes. So I don't care if you're 25 just starting out or 72 trying to more immediately exit. This allows you to drive a more significant company, not just a year-over-year successful one. And so I think that's what we're both owners, right? I think that's really what we're after, right? I want a solid business, I want my financial needs met, and I want personal freedom so that I can go away for a couple of weeks and have some fun, but still come back to the business that I love and serve my customers and interact with my be you you said it earlier, which so it relates to everything that you said.

SPEAKER_02

And it's funny, like for me, my biggest fear of potentially selling would be lack of purpose. I think that identity factor, which you've touched upon multiple times, your own story as well as others, I think it's huge. It's a business owner by definition is not trying to generally escape the nine to five and get freedom away from the job. It's this is their passion, this is their baby, this is where they have purpose and meaning. And so the idea of selling it, it's like even for a big number, it's like, then what do I do?

SPEAKER_00

I am on hard reset gree. And so this is what when we go back to finding purpose, and that was part of this leadership transformation that I did in 2020. It's interesting. I was telling you guys the first company I owned was a landscaping company, and now I own a professional education company. I went from back in the day wearing like uh khaki pants and a green polo shirt planting a tree to the old days of VPI where I was wearing quite literally suits and ties every day traveling the country. And there was what I did not realize, what I found in 2020 by going through this program is I found my own purpose. And I would identify my purpose as something around I love I driving unique experiences for myself and others. Tell you this story because it relates to both businesses. So why go from owning a landscaping company to owning this business? And the answer is because it's on purpose. I loved landscaping a backyard, installing a pool and a sitting area, and then coming back and watching a family have some family moments. That was a super unique experience. But I also loved, we used to do we specialize in raised gardens at nursing homes so that people that were in wheelchairs can come out and garden. They didn't have to bend down. Like the cut flowers were right at this level. And so coming back while I was mowing the lawn in the back, watching all the residents going through a gardening program was super fulfilling work. Uh, this is also why, for example, on a personal note, like I own an RV, a big motor coach, and we travel the country with our kids, our friends, and it drives really cool, unique experiences for me, but also drives unique experiences for others. But it's also the reason why we bought EPI is that through our transformational education, we bring advisors together to go out and have unique experiences with business owners. It's like the summit, guys. We were talking off-air before we came on. It's why we said, let's do a summit exploration experience, because that's a really cool, unique experience that I'm gonna have that I'm gonna get joy out of, and then I'm also gonna participate in and get joy out of.

SPEAKER_02

I'd love to jump into the summits. Right now we're in early April. The summit, the SIPA summit is happening later this month. You were sharing with us a little bit before we came record. So I want our audience to know what is going on in Nashville later, what has you fired up and what should have all your attendees fired up?

Purpose Identity And The Nashville Summit

SPEAKER_00

It's always really cool, man. The Exit Planning Summit has always been like a baby of mine. My dad created really the SEPA program, the credentialing experience, and I got to create the fun part. So we I created my stamp on the businesses, the Exit Planning Summit. So the Exit Planning Summit is really an industry conference now, primarily driven by SEPAS. But about a third of the audience there is a non-SIPA. So if you're an advisor looking to learn more about exit planning, get exposed to people in the profession, it's a great time for you to come too. But it's become the largest exit planning centric event for professional advisors in the world. We'll have 1,200 people come into Nashville, Tennessee, where we typically say you're probably doing one of three things, if not all of them. You're driving some unique experiences, you're integrating with some different people inside of the industry where that you could do business with, and you're looking for innovative solutions to help scale your practice and drive more impact with owners. And so you have some traditional model, you have some traditional models that you'll see at conferences where we have keynotes, we have breakout sessions that are deep dive, usually 90 minutes long, but you have you also have something fun like Summit Exploration Time, where it's almost like a music festival. You could travel around to different stages across a three-hour segment, learn in different ways, get exposed to different people, build different relationships from meals and meetups to TED Talk style sessions to live podcasting to a dryvalue.com pit crew hub. You have all of your needs that you can met and really I would say build your individual ROI. What's most meaningful for you? Why did you get there? Why did you, or why did you come there? And how do you build that? But we'll spend two and a half days in Nashville together marching through different educational components, relationship driving components, and then innovative partners and solutions.

SPEAKER_02

I heard you mention on your recent 2026, I think you called it State of the Union.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, State of the United States.

SPEAKER_02

That last year, correct me if I'm wrong, there's some bumps in the road in 2025, whereas this year is a revolutionary year. So depend upon what you mean by revolutionary.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think if you read any good business book, it tells you that a business needs to evolve every five years. I actually think it's more extreme than that. I think it really has to have it has to be revolutionized every five years. New market, new products. You break down old models and put new ones in, and you're happy to connect, catch EPI in one of those big revolutionary years. I keep saying to everybody, it reminds me of 2020, where we said, look, we're not going to do in-person programming anymore. We're going to do this all online, and it's a really cool, unique credentialing experience that still brings a huge community of people together. And so the summit, obviously, being one of our marquee events or that kind of go-to conference for anybody involved in the exit planning world, we have to be bring revolutionary elements to the summit. I would say two major ones certainly stand out. Number one is that summit exploration experience. I don't know any other professional advisory conference that you're going to where you get a festival style experience from multiple options from seven different stages of live action to just that energy that you feel when you're at a festival style experience. I think that's going to be super unique, something that we've never done before, something that I think is new to the professional advisory industry at least. And I would say our sessions are different than ever. Our breakout sessions are more intentional than ever before. We are we've gone from 50-minute traditional breakout sessions to 90-minute interactive sessions. We have deep dive technical content. We have basics of value acceleration, and then we have practice management and business development, and then offered in three ways. You're either going to, over the course of 90 minutes, dive through a case study where you're dissecting a real life example and understanding why it happened that way. You're have a panel discussion where we're doing in 90 minutes, it's almost like a, I would say, like a massive group workshop on steroids where you're creating along the way in this interactive group panel. And then you have more lecture style where you're like, look, I want to really learn about this specific topic. So I'd love to learn from a subject matter expert. So I'm really excited about how we revolutionized our sessions into something I think that really speaks more to the professional advisor that's coming to the summit. So two things inside of the exit planning summit that kind of meet that theme of the year for sure.

SPEAKER_02

Is there any question that we haven't asked you that you think is important for our audience to know about EPI, about the SEPA summit, or anything else that's anything else that's top of mind?

Where To Start And Closing

SPEAKER_00

No, I think we're spot on, very thorough, gentlemen counts all around. So I think we're hopefully we have clarity for your audience of sitting here saying, that was a lot. Where do I begin? So I begin, gentlemen, is just go to earnsepa.com. It'll take you into the EPI website. You can see who we're about. If you happen to be a business owner or maybe even a business leader, a manager, an executive that's listening, go to drivevalue.com, poke around in there, and you can see what we're all about in a different way. But it all leads you to the value acceleration methodology. Or just follow me on LinkedIn. I post all kinds of random stuff every day about my journey in value acceleration as an owner. You can see me there too. Those are some simple ways to interact.

SPEAKER_02

Scott, it's been a pleasure looking to uh seeing you later this month in Nashville.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks. Really appreciate it for joining. Thanks. Thanks, Scott. Appreciate it.