233 – Joy Evanns asks, “Are you ready to exit your business?”

Karen Yankovich 0:00
You’re listening to the good girls get rich podcast episode 233.

Intro 0:06
Welcome to the good girls get rich podcast with your host, Karen Yankovich. This is where we embrace how good you are girl, stop being the best kept secret in town, learn how to use simple LinkedIn and social media strategies and make the big bucks.

Karen Yankovich 0:23
Hello there. I’m your host, Karen Yankovich. And you know, if you’ve listened to this show before, you know how immensely grateful I am for the amazing, amazing women in my shoes linked up program. And the woman that you’re gonna meet today is one of those amazing, amazing women. I mean, these are world changers. These are people that are changing the world and the topic. You know, I mentioned early on in our conversation, you’ll hear me say to her that when we first talked before she was even a client of mine when we first talked, I said to her, Oh my gosh, this what you do is one of the most important things and somebody needs to be doing a better job of this. And thank you so much for doing this work. So you absolutely need to block some time out and listen to joy Evans today. I’m so excited to introduce Joy Evans to you today joy is a recovering perfectionist. She is an award winning author, Joy had a 15 year career leading a marketing company that’s her fortune 500 companies prior to burning out by shifting out of the hustle and grind and by integrating more holistic, life honoring strategies like astrology, Joy made more money healed chronic asthma and back pain and now enjoys life and work like never before joins the founder solo line business strategist and LEED certified Exit Planning advisor at joyful abundance International. This is the place where overworked CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs get out of the weeds and into their soul aligned genius zones doing the work they love. Creating the systems to take worry free vacations totally unplug from the office and grow transferrable wealth in their business that will eventually support their next season of life, through his latest book achieve more by saying yes to less is available on Amazon. I am so excited to have you here today. Joy.

Joy Evanns 2:10
Thanks for having me, Karen.

Karen Yankovich 2:12
Yeah. Oh my gosh, this is such a convert. It’s such an important conversation. And I just think enough women have this conversation. And in full disclosure, Joy is a client and when I first talked to her, like, however many months ago, and she told me what she did, I was like, why are we not talking about this more? Why are more women not talking about growing transferrable wealth, they’re not talking about the exit plan. Like if you’re a consultant, consultant, or a coach or a therapist or a yoga teacher, we’re thinking about, like, what do we need for this month, right. But we’re not really thinking about a business that can only support us but can maybe support our next season of life. And I love that you talk about I’m trying to think of how you describe it, you talk about work optional, or work optional lifestyle, right that you want. Optional lifestyle. So tell me a little bit about the work that you do. And what made you get started on getting passionate about helping women on people, not even just women meet people, CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs, kind of get more aligned with their souls and have a business that is not sucking their soul out

Joy Evanns 3:17
of them? Like, that’s a great question. Because most of us didn’t just learn how to trade time for money. I mean, like that’s was part of the process. And so as we evolve in business, it’s not something that most people will kind of haul out of their operating system. And so it’s not a surprise that people aren’t operating from a work optional lifestyle, because the place that we grew up, while we watch most of us watched our parents do was certainly not work optional, it was like work is required in order to pay the bills and do the like, this is part of the process, right. And so what I love to do is help people get to work optional in three years or less. And doing that, I call it using soul aligned processes, essentially doing the stuff you love, and that you’re great at, and that’s in your genius zone, as opposed to following all the shoulds. And this is what I have to be doing. And like most of us get too many things on our plate that are really not healthy for us not supportive of our natural design. And, you know, the collective way that we’ve learned how to do business as a very, without being negative about it, it’s a very masculine model. And for those of us who have ovaries in a universe and other kinds of hormones is not particularly conducive to the way those of us with that kind of biology need to operate. First as a founder is

Karen Yankovich 4:36
so much to unpack there. So okay, so, you know, it’s interesting, because we just had I just had a conversation today with somebody about the concept of like, overcoming objections and how that in a sales call, right, and that that’s how we masculine way of doing things. And it’s and like, everybody was like, oh, yeah, we don’t wanna do that. I’m like, Well, hang on a second. Hang on a second. The end of the day, there are a lot of billionaire men. that are billionaires because they learn how to overcome objections. So I’m not saying that the masculine way of doing things are wrong, I’m saying there’s a way to do it, that can feel more feminine. That, you know, because overcoming objections isn’t trying to force somebody that doesn’t fit into buying something that you want. Sometimes, it’s about helping them have the courage, right to take that next step. And, and I love that you talk about it from a masculine, feminine standpoint, because I think that there’s no one right or wrong, it’s just a matter of creating, as you call it, a soul aligned approach, so that you are moving forward in a way that feels good to you. Yet, it doesn’t mean that that other stuff is wrong. It’s just there’s other ways to do it,

Joy Evanns 5:42
there’s 70,000 ways to like, reach the same objective. And so why is one way of doing things better or worse, it’s not, it’s like, if this is my way, and it works for me, then that’s great. If it’s your way, and it works for you. It’s not, it’s not even necessarily about the masculine or the feminine. While both of us have those energies, you know, all of us have those energies inside of us, of course. And if we can be in listening of what’s our unique design, what’s our unique way of doing something, then we can actually get to a place where a we feel good about what it is that we’re doing on a day to day level, the process of growing or being in a business, as well as the process of leaving a legacy or moving towards transferable wealth, where the the process of doing those things is an enjoyable thing, as opposed to, I’ll be happy when I get to a particular result where my business sells for $4.5 million, or whatever, you know, whatever they

Karen Yankovich 6:38
write, well, you know, this episode will be episode 233. So I’m 233 episodes into the good girls get rich podcast, but going back to the roots of it, the title came from, when you do what you love, and what you’re good at, and what lights you up, that’s where the abundance comes into your life. So so it’s fundamentally what the at the heart, like what you’re saying is at the heart of why I do the show, I want mostly women to understand that when you, you know, you don’t have to do the stuff you don’t like just to make a living now, listen, I’ve done I’ve done many, I’ve made that choice many, many times not knowing any better, right? And it’s not like even that, I think that I don’t look back with regret on any of that, right? I just didn’t know better. And here I am now, right? But now we know now we know we have options, we know that we can, you can build a business around anything you want. I firmly believe that I know. Right? It doesn’t matter what it is you love to do. You know, I think about I think about somebody that I know that I used to try to get her to cook for me, I love to cook, I happen to be a really good cook, but don’t have time. And I’m like, can you just cook for me and she’s like, you’re a good cook, you don’t need me to cook, I’m like I am offering you money. Just because I know how to do it doesn’t mean that you can’t build a business out of that. Do you know what I mean? Like you, I’m telling you, I’m willing to pay you to do this for me. And you’re arguing with me because because I know how to do it like, so so many women think well, because it’s this everybody knows how to do it kind of how to do it, you know, like and they don’t understand and understand the value of their skills and of the things that they love to do. Because it doesn’t feel like work, right.

Joy Evanns 8:06
And that’s the truth of it, most of us have learned that the way that you make money is by doing things that are hard or not enjoyable, or that feels like efforting. And the truth of matter is most people’s genius actually lives in doing the things that come much more easily and doing the things that time passes by, and they didn’t even notice, oh, like three hours went by really quickly because I was like, so engaged in in the process of a beat. That’s actually when we’re in that role in our business and whatever way that that is, we’re actually more engaged and more useful to the business in a way that’s operating from our overflow. And, to me, that’s kind of where we move into work optional, where we’re working in our genius zone. And we’re participating not because we have to not because the business depends on us anymore. But from a place of, hey, I’m choosing to participate in this way because it’s supportive and fulfilling to me out of soul, heart, you know, whatever, however you want to name that right kind of place. And you can move on to something else if or when you choose to. So your business is exit exit ready at that point?

Karen Yankovich 9:13
Well, let’s talk about that. Because that’s the piece I don’t think enough women talk about, and that is exit strategy for your business. And it’s really interesting, because I don’t have any immediate plans to exit my business. But a couple of maybe like a year ago, I was doing some, you know, exit strategy work in my life, like what, you know, do my wills doing my doing wills and you know, like health care proxies and things like that. And one of the things that I brought up to my attorney was my business. And I’m like, Well, I can like what happens like I have people that have contracts with me like if I dropped it tomorrow, what happens to all that? So basically, we just put something in there about you know, assessing the value of the business blah, blah, blah, but I I couldn’t sleep at night then because I’m thinking like, because you know I love you guys, I love my clients. I don’t want to leave anybody hanging So I say to my kids, I’m like, Well, you guys have to understand that I got a business, you got to figure that and then like, you’re dead. What are you talking about? Nobody? Nobody cares about your business anymore? Because you’re dead. I’m like, no, no, that’s not how it works. So like, I really started to stop and think like, what is the plan? You know, like, what is the plan? Like? How can I create a plan? That not I’m listening? I love my kids. And I do want to make life easy for them where I can, but it is really not about that, right? It’s really about being really responsible CEO, right? Being a responsible CEO and saying, you know, and if my kids get a benefit, because they’ve got somebody that understands the value, and then I’ve been working with somebody that that has a clear path to the valuation of the business, and does it get sold? Or is there somebody in place that can take it over? Or, like, what’s the plan? And it just never occurred to me to do that, until I started until I did my will? And was like, What am I going to do with my business? So and I can know that I’m not alone, because I talked to so many women, and I know, you know, that, which is why you do what you do. Right? So tell me a little like, how did you get started on that piece of this? How did that start to become something that you focused on?

Joy Evanns 11:07
Well, a couple reasons. One, because I had a life what I would call a lifestyle business that was very reliant on me when I was running the marketing company. And because I did not have the education that I needed, at the time, I didn’t have the experience, the exposure, the mentorship, like you name it, any of those things, I didn’t know that it would have been great for me to consider that an asset that I could transfer to somebody else I was searching, serving fortune 50 companies, like there was something definitely there. But I didn’t have the maturity or the wisdom to be able to do something with that. So when I was complete with that business, I let it die. I walked away from money that was on the table, I don’t want anybody else to do that I now look at, you know, what my parents have done, my dad was an entrepreneur as well. And he did the same thing with his business, you know, not a surprise that I that I did it with mine, I might, you know, the initial business that I have. And so like this next version of experience, I’ve had us up a couple businesses since then. And this next version of experience, there is a transfer planning process. And that’s not something that will happen again, to me, or you know, that I want to happen to anybody else, you know, my dad is in his 70s, and he’s still working more than he needs really needs to based on the opportunities that have been in front of him in his life. And that’s not because he wants to.

Karen Yankovich 12:27
Right, right, because he didn’t plan properly, as most people don’t. Like, it’s not like, nobody really teaches us that. And it’s so funny, I don’t come from a family of entrepreneurs, my family are teachers, so they all have pensions, and health benefits for life. And like, you know, there’s like, you could argue that, you know, entrepreneur, I mean, like a teacher is gonna get like a 2% raise or 5% raise, and they have a lot of security. And they don’t really have the opportunities that entrepreneurs sometimes have. Right? But but if you don’t take the opportunities as an entrepreneur, then you’re worse off than people like with the pensions, right. So, so I right now, like, and most people that are coaches or consultants or online marketers or, you know, whatever your business is, you know, therapists whenever you have an asset, right, you have an asset, just like a pension. But if we don’t treat it like an asset, then it’s not, then it doesn’t ever become you don’t ever get the value of it as an asset. Right? Does that make sense? And I had to, like think twice to, to really realize that, that this business is my pension, you know, it’s the opportunity to sell this business or, or even parts of it, or, you know,

Joy Evanns 13:34
well, I could be a business, right, I could be an asset. But most people don’t learn how to treat their business and look at their business, like an investor, like an asset. They look at their business, like a J. OB, right. And so when the business revolves too much around us, like we don’t have a plan for how to get out of that, so that it can be an asset, not a not a high paying job. The truth of the matter is, we’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. Like if the business is really dependent on any one person. That’s the biggest liability to any kind of transfer of wealth. Nobody wants to buy a business that’s dependent on one person who is going to leave.

Karen Yankovich 14:13
Right, exactly, exactly. So what are the so how do you get started with people? What are the things we should be thinking about? If we’ve shifted you know, if you’re if you’re listening to this, by the way, I’m sure there’s people listening to this saying, Hi, paying jlb a high paying job. I’m the last person that gets paid around here, right? So I mean, there’s there’s all different levels of people that are, you know, that are listening to the show, of course. So tell me a little bit about what the first steps we should be thinking about are when we are thinking about what you’re taught all the things you’re talking about here. So

Joy Evanns 14:41
like there’s a beginning stage of business, right, where we need to take on all the hats and we need to get good at being flexible about doing things so that you know we get by without a bunch of money. And we move to the next stage which is essentially bringing on team members to you know, support the process so that the business can scale i In an ideal situation, most of my people have some level of team that’s available to them, even if they’re starting with an assistant and you know, maybe a web designer or marketing person like that got at least a couple of folks. And then they’re in the stage of how do we like either they’ve got a team that they’re not utilizing fully, and they’re still involved in everything that needs to happen. Or they’re in a place where they’re not necessarily utilizing those people to their, to their fullest. And so from that spot, where originally the business had to revolve around one person, because there was no money to pay for anybody else, then there starts to be money to pay for somebody else. But the habits that have come on board, the operating system hasn’t changed. And so that switch, many, many people get stuck in that spot of the business is very reliant on them, because they’ve got all of the knowledge, all of the wisdom, all of the especially if it’s a service based business, the skill set to deliver what the product is. And so if they’re still wearing lots of hats, while having other people working for them, that becomes a liability in that next stage of scaling. So first step, essentially, is eliminate the number one liability for a business that if you’re trying to build transferable business wealth is eliminate that one liability. The first liability is one business owner at the center of the business. And the goal is make yourself obsolete.

Karen Yankovich 16:21
So okay, so I hear that and I get what you’re saying. But like, in reality, if you are many of you that listen to this art, shifting to entrepreneurism, they are, you know, maybe they’re sold, maybe their coach or consultant, or like I said, a yoga teacher, like all the things, right, an artist, whatever, how do you start to make the shift, to not be the center of your business’s universe? If you are the center of your business’s universe?

Joy Evanns 16:45
Yeah, great question. I think part of that is, you know, in terms of actually making that escalation, so that you actually have resources to be able to hire support. Yeah. And until we’re at that place where, you know, there’s the preliminary business stuff, where we’ve mastered sales, for example, like we have clients coming in, and all of that sort of stuff is happening, like that’s a stage one conversation, you need to get to that level before you can be at a place where the business probably can’t be about you. But we also can be in conversation, you know, from the beginning of Part of a business. So what’s the business model that you’re moving towards, that doesn’t have the business being about you for the rest of your life?

Karen Yankovich 17:25
So do you help people design that I can, it’s not the primary

Joy Evanns 17:28
place where I operate from, because typically, I’d meet people a little bit further along in their in their path. But oftentimes, you know, people will do a day with me to like reorganize, like if they’ve got a business model that’s out of sorts for them that they can’t get to that scaling place, if they’re trading time for dollars are not charging what they need to be charging, they need a business model that actually works, right, you can’t get to that stage of building transferable business wealth, unless you actually have a business model that works.

Karen Yankovich 17:57
Hi, it’s Karen and I wanted to just pop in here for a second and let you know that this episode is sponsored by she’s linked up in our she’s linked up family of programs are the programs that I talk about, on the show, Joy is a member of our she’s linked up family, it is where we are helping women build the kind of wealth we’re talking about today, in this podcast. I mean, we need joy to help us organize it and make sure that we are considering our exit plan. But there needs to be some money to be able to do that, right. And that’s what we do on our choosing debt program. We help you create opportunities and meet the kinds of people that can take advantage of those opportunities so that you are building generational wealth for your world, we’re not really creating your business, what we’re doing is we’re creating the people that around you, right where you are being intentional about helping you meet the kinds of people that can invest in your highest ticket opportunities that can have you speak at their events that can you know, so I mean, everybody’s got some different reason for joining us. And one of the very first things that we do when we have a new client that joins our program is I get to spend some time with them. And really get clear on what that big giant opportunity is. So that we know exactly what our target is, so that we can put a plan in place to help you get contracts for that target. So if you want to hang out with people like joy and some of the other amazing women in this room, let’s talk just grab a spot on our calendar, go to Karen yankovich.com/call. We’ll chat a little bit see if we think the strategies that we teach are a fit for you. And if we think they are then we can talk to you about what programs might be a bit what it might what might make sense for you. And if you think it’s a bit we can go from there. But either way, the calls are just hugely valuable calls we want to get make sure that you have some solid takeaways from these calls. Whether or not you decide to join us on the other side of it. Of course, you know, we love when people join us, Karen yankovich.com/call get you on the calendar. And I look forward to seeing your name there. Well, you’ll be happy to hear joy that we were going to journal for our she’s linked up program. And I was Yeah, I was I’m meeting with the people today. And I was like, take my name out of every out of everywhere, like leave it in some places, but like, don’t call it don’t say your call with Karen said your call with your strategy Coach, your call with your mindset coach, or your call with your profile, Coach, your call with your accountability coach, like, I don’t want my name to be anywhere in that thing. Because I mean, at this point, the calls are with me right, but more for the most part, but you know what, like, that’s not sustainable for the rest of my life. And nor is it sustainable to grow the business. Right? So but it makes me think differently, like, a year ago, before I did my will and all that, I probably wouldn’t have thought of that. I probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to say, Yeah, let’s not keep, you know, of course, you know, their strategy coach right now often is me. And they’ll know that, you know, maybe we’ll even put a structure a place in the beginning that says, here’s name, but what’s your strategy coach’s name? What’s your profile coach’s name? What you know, maybe we’ll put that in the front of the journal right? So that they know who that is. But so these are ways that I am doing that even though you know, at the moment, we’re not hiring new coaches to take over for me, but I do think down the road, that that’s going to have to happen, at least at least in some ways, right? So and for the good of my, my clients, right? Because if I, you know, if I get sick, or can’t do something who’s gonna was gonna step in to support them? You know, so. So I think as we grow these conversations, we think more about these things, right? So in your experience, what happens next? So now you’ve got this business? And I know, this is such an unfair question, because there’s businesses of all sizes. But, you know, are people like people selling their businesses? Are they selling off parts of their business? Like, what did you know what is typically what do you typically see with service based businesses as they’re building out their plan? Like, what

Joy Evanns 21:37
are the options for?

Karen Yankovich 21:38
Yeah, like, what options are there for?

Joy Evanns 21:40
Yep, there’s, there’s, there’s many and so the shortlist could be, you know, you sell to somebody else who is an expert in what it is that you do, essentially, if you had a business that was essentially built around the lifestyle business where it was a job and you had, you know, people that you were serving, and it was still based around you, it’s not that you can’t transfer it to somebody else. Like, if you’re a chiropractor, you see chiropractor, businesses, transfer businesses, to other chiropractors all the time. But they’re not gonna get top dollar for that business, because essentially, they’re trading a job. Whereas if so, if we use chiropractor as an example, yeah, if the chiropractor has a business, that they’ve got a couple other Doc’s working for them. And they’re essentially in the work optional lifestyle of like, Hey, I manage this business, or, you know, I’ve got clients that I see, you know, patients that I see once a week or you know, whatever they can be there or not be there, if they choose to, that’s a very different situation, because now they could sell to a company that’s going to roll them up into some other, you know, a bigger chiropractic practice, they’re going to sell for a higher price point is that because now you’ve got an investor who’s coming in, who’s not looking to replace, like, they’re not looking to do any work in the business necessarily. They just want to make profit off of the business. And so that’s a very different kind of transaction than if you are trading for a job. So this is like one side of the spectrum. You know, another way

Karen Yankovich 23:07
they’re like, but can I just tell you right there that I do want you to finish on that? Yeah, right there. Like, I hope you’re listening to this. Because when you look at your numbers, are you looking at Can I pay myself 10,000 or $20,000, this month? Or are you looking at? What is the profit, like the investor doesn’t care what you’re paying anybody? It wasn’t what the profit is, right? So it’s not about necessarily what’s coming into the owners bank account, it’s about the profit after you pay the owner. Right. And that’s the piece that I think a lot of people are missing. You know, they they’re getting well paid, like you said, well paid, you know, well paid Gob, you know, they feel like the business is really successful. And you can continue to increase your pay if you continue to increase your profits, but not, but when you think about it from the would an investor look at this and say, Where’s the profit, that’s a completely different mindset to approach to your business.

Joy Evanns 23:51
Profit makes a big difference. I mean, it’s the part at the end of the year that you pay taxes on, a lot of people are actually resistant to paying taxes. But if you’re paying taxes on stuff, that actually means you’re making money, this is a great thing.

Karen Yankovich 24:03
Right? So what other options are there, what other strategy options so you

Joy Evanns 24:08
can do things like you could transfer to, if you have a family member, you could, you know, create a legacy within your family and transfer something to them, you could transfer the business to employees, that’s an option. And essentially, like, if you’re transferring to other people who may or may not have cash to buy your business, then the profit is important, like the business needs to have the cash flow to be able to fund the loan that’s required to pay you. So essentially, the business takes a loan from the bank and it pays you okay, and then that’s how that that transaction actually happens.

Karen Yankovich 24:39
Interesting. I never would have thought of that. I never would have thought of that. That’s interesting.

Joy Evanns 24:43
So without getting into like, a lot of gory details about it, you know, there’s plenty of different other ways that but those are the main ones, family member employees, someone who’s an investor of sorts, or you know, somebody who is in a you know, your professional expertise who might be interested in your company,

Karen Yankovich 25:01
I love this. So I think the first step that I’m hearing is we need to remember that this is something we should be doing, we should be thinking about like are, you know, what is your exit plan? Are you just gonna keep working till you don’t want to work anymore? And then close the doors? And if that’s what you want to do, that’s okay. Right? But know that there’s an alternative, right? And you make a choice? Do you want the alternative? Or do you want, you know, you want to just dissolve the business at some point. But then what is the next thing that people should do?

Joy Evanns 25:24
Like a first basic step is essentially have a contingency plan, even if you’re not doing full blown Exit Planning, and you’re not working towards transferable business wealth? It’s like, Do you have a plan for what happens if you were in a car accident? Or if you had a family emergency, and you just weren’t suddenly not available anymore? Like, what would you do? And you know, would your spouse or assistant know how to cancel your cut? Like, what would be the procedure of that Cancel? Cancel your calls for the day, or whatever the case is? For me, and part of what I’m looking at is the real health of a business is how long can a business stay in business? If the owner were to step out immediately?

Karen Yankovich 26:07
Interesting? That’s a really good question. That’s a really good question.

Joy Evanns 26:11
And so like, a lot of the people that I work with, you know, they’re working 40 to 60 hours a week when they start working with me, because, you know, they’re still doing a lot of things, and they can’t take a vacation without their cell phone, you know, because the business just needs too many things for them. And the truth of the matter is, there’s no way to live first of all, without taking breaks and being unplugged, which so it’s impacts quality of life right now. But it’s really a problem if there was something significant that happened to them or their family member, or, you know, they had a natural disaster where they lived or whatever, like, what would happen to the business, if they have employees? How do they make sure that their employees get paid in the meantime, like, there’s like some, there’s some real contingencies that we want to develop. But bottom line is, if an owner cannot take two weeks vacation, or worryfree, two week vacation, without worrying that things are going to explode in their business, there’s something really off about this situation. And the cool thing is, in doing the work that I do with people, helping people get to work optional, a we get to take vacations, 100%, but it’s actually the way that we test. If I go away, do things fall apart while I’m gone?

Karen Yankovich 27:20
Oh, my gosh, that’s brilliant. That’s really, what a great way. Oh, I have to go on vacation to test my eggs. I’ll be I’ll see. And now I’ll let you know up from the beach in Maui. I’m not gonna get off the beach, I’ll let you know when I come back to New Jersey, if that worked or not. That’s brilliant. That’s so funny.

Joy Evanns 27:37
So it’s really cool, though, because lots of times what happens is, because we’ve set it up, and because we’ve tested it, we’ve run tests in advance, you know, so that their team has, you know, what they need happy in place for that. They can go and be on vacation and actually be worryfree. And oftentimes what happens is they come back, and they realize that they could step back a lot more than they thought they could.

Karen Yankovich 27:54
That’s interesting. I love that. I love that. So what did I not ask you about all of this that I should have asked you? Is there anything that you think we should know? Well, I

Joy Evanns 28:03
think it might be helpful to talk about, like, what kinds of things affect the value of shirts? That’d be great. Yeah. How do we calculate that? Is that? Yeah, so you know, obviously, there’s the the tangible things, like, how much profit are you making? Right? Okay, and you can’t substitute. So if you’re if we are playing a role in our business, and we would need to replace ourselves with a manager or somebody else in our role, we would need to have a salary that’s designated for that than the profit after that. So if you and your business like let’s just pretend that you pay your I’m making stuff up right now, maybe you pay yourself $200,000 or $500,000, or $700,000, but you could be replaced in your business for 150. Got it, essentially, you can roll the rest of that over into profit, essentially, we need to be able to have all of the needs of the business met and then profit after that. And how we calculate the the transferable business wealth is essentially there’s a number called EBITA, which is a fancy way of saying adjusted profit. So we back out this stuff of anything, that you’re overpaying yourself, rather than taking profit, anything that any expenses that you’ve run for the business that may or may not be necessary for the next owner or investor, and he taxes, that kind of stuff. So there’s a bunch of different technical stuff that we back out of that it’s a create a adjusted profit number. And then there’s something called a multiple we multiply that times it’s a number, that’s a range that’s determined, you know, in the time that you’re actually looking to have the valuation done or the business sold. And that can range you know, for a smaller business and in the service sector, you know, it can be somewhere between one and five. Don’t quote me on that because there are moves and the that multiple. So let’s just say that your business had a million dollars in profit in a year, just for easy numbers. We’re at a multiple of one that’s going to be a business valuation of one A million dollars, right? At a multiple of three. Now we’re at $3 million, which determines the multiple, that’s what we’re gonna come to next. That’s all the intangible stuff. Okay? So the stuff that most people focus on is the profit. What people mostly don’t focus on that actually determines for the same business, whether you get a million dollars in that same circumstance where $3 million, or $5 million, or whatever, you know, whatever the number is, is that multiple, so the multiple is going to be determined by a lot of things related to risk, the higher the multiple, the less risk. Okay, so things that impact risk are going to be like, what’s your customer concentration? Like? Meaning? Is all of your income coming from one customer or from five customers or from 500? Customers? You know, if it’s the high cost concentration in one place, that’s higher risk, so a lower multiple, is your business reliance on any one person, if they left? Would your business be able to survive? Like these kinds of things are really important? Do you have documentation for all of your processes and procedures have everything that you do from your marketing to your sales process to your accounting to, you know, every place that you have somebody in a role is like, is it systemized? You know, like, what’s your social capital? You know, whether that’s, you know, your LinkedIn stuff, like you talked about, or, you know, other social media is, you know, what’s your reviews look like on Google? Okay,

Karen Yankovich 31:29
interesting. Yeah,

Joy Evanns 31:30
you know, these things, all these things all matter? Right? What’s the nature of your equipment? Is it new and well cared for? Or is it old and needs to be replaced? or repaired?

Karen Yankovich 31:40
Got it. Got it. Interesting. So how does that who does the do you work with people on the valuation? Or do they work with accountants on that, like,

Joy Evanns 31:47
yeah, we have folks that help with evaluation for most people that I work with, because my niche is mostly in working with businesses whose owner is too involved in the business, those businesses don’t sell. Like, there’s no, there’s no transfer that’s really, really available from that point, unless you’re selling to another expert owner. That would be the chiropractor selling to the chiropractor kind of conversation. But most businesses, the reason why the difficulty route around selling a business and whatever respect is that only 20 20% of businesses that ever go up for sale actually sell really. So we need to actually be very proactive, because there’s too many choices, and there’s too much risk. So investors are very picky about what what kinds of opportunities they’re interested in looking at. Has your business been, you know, increasing sales? Or is the market shrinking? And because your engagement has been decreasing as well? Is your revenue going down? Like they’re looking at all of these factors? Right, right. And so when we actually get into the conversation, you know, it’s sort of like selling a house, you want your your business to have street appeal. Right, right.

Karen Yankovich 32:53
Right, right. I love that. I love that this is such a good conversation. And there are times that I’m hearing what you’re saying, and I’m like, Oh, my gosh, I can’t think about this. And then there’s other things that I’m like, I need to think about this like Right, like so. But that’s why we have you right? So tell us tell everybody here a little bit about how you work with people and how they can learn a little bit more about you and how they can learn about getting started, whether it’s with you or somebody else in because listen, if you are listening to this show, and you even are thinking about being an entrepreneur, nevermind, if you are an entrepreneur, you need to be doing this, you need to book a call with Joe, I’m not sure if your book calls with people joy, but you need to grow with joy, or you need to need to work with someone you might as well start with joy, because she’s, there’s so few people doing this for our community. I don’t know if anybody else to be honest.

Joy Evanns 33:42
Thank you. Yeah, the biggest thing for most people is, you know, start somewhere have you know, you wouldn’t enter into any other kind of investments, not real estate, not the stock market, not anything else without knowing how you were going to exit if you’re like leading with strategy. The same. Same goes for business. And even if we’re in a business that we think that we’re going to be in for a long time in our life, and perhaps until we complete in life, literally, you know, I’m in the business, right? Right now that like feels like a sole business to me. And so for as long as I’m able and available to do it, like I’m going to be participating in this in some way. And that’s great. And there’s also a difference between having to show up to work and wanting to show up to work and that level of freedom that most people never realize even and

Karen Yankovich 34:29
you know what I’ll say, you know, I’ve got a couple, maybe decades on you but a little bit older than you and here’s the thing I say the same things as you but the every year that I get older, more of the people that I know that I spend time with that I hang out with are retiring and they’re on vacation at the beach and I’m like, I know I can’t meet you for lunch. I have a call at noon. You know what I mean? So so even though I love what I do, as time goes on as years go on, you know, it isn’t just about doing what you like, I don’t want to do this and More, because I do want to do it. But it’s a matter of, you know, there’s other things to do now that there really wasn’t when everybody was working all day long, right? So there’s that too, just just kind of throwing that out there. So how do you work with people?

Joy Evanns 35:11
How can people learn more about you? Yeah. Great. So thank you for the question. The first, I do have calls with people, I’m happy to get on a conversation and start a conversation. I call it a transferable business wealth, roadmap session, and we actually look at where somebody is right now. You know, what their vision is, you know, whether that’s, hey, I’m looking to exit and, you know, eight to 10 years, a gentleman that came on with me earlier this month, was like, hey, you know, I’ve got eight to 10 years to like, get to this number. And here’s where we are right now. And how do we get there? Right, and then we put together the plan of like, what needs to happen right now for most of my clients that are in a spot where the business is too dependent on them right now. And so the immediate urgency, both from the standpoint of the biggest liability in their business, if something happened to them, as well as they don’t have the freedom in their life that they actually want. So going from and their business isn’t saleable. If they wanted to stop doing it, you know, if they turned around two or three years ago, and the priorities had changed, they couldn’t stop doing what it is that they’re doing, because they hadn’t made the choice to be able to strategize their way out. So we look at what it’s going to take to actually move from where it is that they are into that vision and really get them to work optional in three years or less.

Karen Yankovich 36:24
Well, first of all, who doesn’t want to have a work optional business in three years or less? So I know that sounds amazing. And I will say like, for one of the things that I said, my head of like, okay, what do I need to be doing today? If I want to sell my business in five years for say, $5 million? Like, what should I be doing today? It’s a whole lot. It’s like, it’s like graduating high school or college, and you’re a senior, and now you’re like, crap, how am I gonna get into college? Like, no, if you plan when you’re a freshman to hair getting into college, you’re gonna get into the right college? Why do you wait to your senior? It’s a lot harder, right? So don’t wait until the day before you’re ready to transfer your business or whatever they do it now like, what can I be doing now, to make that process easier to make that process more successful to make it and as you’re saying, Only 20% Actually even happen? So to make it actually even happen, right? So I love that you do that. So we have links to all your stuff in the show notes. But how? Like, what is the best way for people to connect with you?

Joy Evanns 37:16
Yeah, so you can jump on my calendar and sign up for that at more from joy.com more perfect joy.com. And there’s links to my other stuff there as well. And you can connect with me on LinkedIn and Aaron’s favorite modality.

Karen Yankovich 37:31
And she has great LinkedIn profile. I do say so myself, connect with joy. So you know how great her LinkedIn profile is? All right, listen, thank you so much for being here. This is such an important conversation, maybe one of the most important conversations we’ve had on the show in a really long time. Because I think that, you know, it’s easy for me to sit here and talk about strategies and all the things but if at the end of the day, if my goal really is that it’d be more wealthy women in the world, they need to be thinking like this, we need to be thinking like this, not just about how do we have more money in our bank accounts today? But how do we actually build real wealth? And this is one of the ways to do that. So thank you so much for showing up here today. And for sharing all of this with our good girls get rich audience.

Joy Evanns 38:12
Thanks so much, Karen. It’s been a pleasure.

Karen Yankovich 38:14
I am so grateful for joy for being who she is, and showing up in the world and making people like me step up as real CEOs, you know, just when you think you’re doing a good job with that, like something like joy comes into your life and is like, Yeah, but why don’t this you know, like, Ah, you write that. So I hope that she hope that you got some of those aha moments as well. And remember that at she’s linked up in our she’s linked up family, we create wealthy women of influence. And if you want to hang out with some of these incredible women, grab a spot on our calendar, the link is in the show notes. Or you can just go to Karen yankovich.com/call. And get on our calendar. If you’ve listened before, or if you love what you hear today, you know, we’d love to hear from you make sure that you’re following this show, wherever you’re listening, I love your reviews, it’d be amazing. If you leave a review that would be really helpful to me. And of course, I’d love for you to share this episode on social media, take a quick screenshot, and use the hashtag good girls get rich and tag me and tag joy. All of our links are below. And then we’ll be sure to share your posts with our audiences. And that’s how we all get more visibility, right? Remember in the shownotes there’s also a link for SpeakPipe where you can leave an audio message. I personally respond to every single one of those messages. So leave me a message tell me what you thought of this episode. Or maybe there’s a guest you think I should interview or a topic you’d like to hear me talk about Joplin voice message me and SpeakPipe I love to hear your voice. So this isn’t such a one way conversation all the time. So just go to Karen yankovich.com/ 233 You’ll see the blog for this page, you’ll see the link for SpeakPipe and that’s where we can have that conversation. Remember that a rising tide lifts all boats right I do this podcast to support you. It would be my absolute honor if you share this or left a review for us, helped me help you when you share this podcast and helps me Get clear on what episodes are resonating, and it gets in front of more people, right? And then I’ll share it with my audience and then you know, win win win win win, which is my favorite way of hanging out. So I hope this was valuable. I will see you back here next week.