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by Colleen Kowalski on May 11, 2022
The Exit Planning Summit welcomed 500 exit planning advisors, business owners, and professionals, to Scottsdale, Arizona last week. During the three-day conference, attendees engaged with thought leaders, learned from experts in leadership, marketing, and exit planning, and left energized to implement 90-day action plans in their business. We closed the Exit Planning Summit with six influential speakers during our highly rated Power Sessions.
The six speakers shared exit planning lessons in the Summit theme of EPI or Experience, People, and Innovation. EPI President, Scott Snider, shares, “Experiences, People, and Innovation are three components that are useful in every industry, but especially in exit planning. Exit planning advisors work holistically with business owners to ensure their business, personal, and financial needs are met. Utilizing the E-P-I concept will create transformational client engagements.”
The Power Session Speakers
Scott Snider
Scott opened the Power Sessions to discuss the importance of finding your personal purpose. He shared, “I found that my purpose is to help create significant experiences for those around me. I think it relates directly to my role at EPI both internally with our team and externally with our EPI Community. Internally, at the highest level, I am in charge of attracting and retaining great people, developing them, and creating a great culture that everyone here loves.”
He continued, “You don’t just achieve that without providing your people with transformational experiences, surrounding them with other great people, and giving them the ability and challenge to stay creative. Looking at our members, it’s the same. In order to arm our CEPAs with the right knowledge and skills, we need to provide transformational educational experiences. In order to build effective exit planning teams, we need to have great people. And for CEPAs to remain on top of the market, we need to innovate and evolve always.”
Linda Ruffenach
Linda is a self-proclaimed Bourbon Badass. Her Power Session discussed how to build your confidence and create interesting ways to engage your clients. Linda shared, “By creating interesting and different ways to engage business owners and demonstrating the importance of exit planning in a meaningful way, business owners are more likely to ask questions, reach out for guidance about how they get started on their journey.”
She elaborated by saying, “The secret to good brand building is understanding your customer, what is important to them, and where they are on their journey. You must think about their wants, needs, and fears. Create customer personas and then design an experience around what they want versus what you want.”
Joe Slatter
Joe led a powerful session on the importance of next level listening. He shared, “ If we want to get more information in less time, we might consider setting our judgments aside and fully engaging curiosity for a little bit. Take a lesson from Kaldi, the goatherd who discovered coffee.”
Joe shared the story of Kaldi for the Summit attendees and emphasized the importance of listening, discovering, and understanding something before you make your final judgment. He continues, “Curiosity draws people forward toward something of interest and creates space for new ways of thinking and acting to emerge. The focus is on interesting things that might propel us forward. Action follows attention. Would you rather have people focused on what you want, or what you don’t want?”
Luci Gabel
Luci’s Power Session discussed the importance of healthy eating habits that can make a leader more effective in their business. She shared, “If you are a leader, you’ll be watched by many, and affect the lives of those you may not even know are watching you now. This is important to keep top-of-mind when making decisions for your business.”
She continued to describe the positive impact feeding your brain with nutrient-rich foods can have on your mental capacity. She shared, “You know your food choices are connected to your health, but did you ever think about how your eating habits affect your leadership success?”
Ali Nasser
Ali shared a powerful message about the pressure owners face to both grow and exit their businesses. He said, “Business owners had a plan for growth, but they didn’t have a plan for what came after. It made me hyper-aware that wealth is a means, not an end, and in order to be able to enjoy your success, it’s important to begin with the end in mind.”
Ali spoke about an owner’s three dilemmas. These are The Re-Investment Dilemma™, The Legacy Dilemma™, and The Exit Dilemma™. He shared that these answer the questions, “How do I re-invest my success?, What is it all for?, and What is my best exit strategy?”
Mike McGrann
Mike discussed the impact a family can have on the value and success of a business. He refers to this factor as “familiness.” Mike shared, “This resource, “Familiness”, can create a unique competitive advantage for our clients. Yet if we do not help our clients identify and transition this resource, it can limit the final sale value of our client’s firms.”
During his session, Mike provided real-life examples from family businesses he has worked with and how their “familiness” impacted their success. He shared, “Familiness impacts every exit option – however, the impact is sometimes enormous and sometimes small. In addition, when the familiness influence is great, it must be managed proactively, or it will significantly impact the exit value.”
These inspiring and innovative speakers provided our Exit Planning Summit attendees with a unique approach to bring to their next client meetings, business engagements, and exit planning process. Stay tuned as we release each speaker’s full Power Session in the next few months.
