Welcome to Close it now, the podcast that's revolutionizing the H Vac and home improvement trades industries. Get ready to dive deep into the world of heating, ventilation and air conditioning. We're turning up the heat on industry standards and cooling down misconceptions. And we're not just talking about fixing vents and adjusting thermostats. It's about the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement. We're the driving force, inspiring top performers who crave excellence not only in their professional endeavors, but also in fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all. This is Close it now, where excellence meets excitement. Let's get to work now. Your host, Sam Wakefield.

Well, all right. Welcome back to Close It Now. Sam Wakefield here. I am so stoked to bring you this guest today. I was actually just introduced to him last night, but by a very, very trusted friend of mine. He was actually on the EP on our podcast not too long ago, Mr. Rich Walker. And he connected us and I was so excited to hear his message and what he's bringing to industries actually around the world. And we're privileged enough today he had made time in his schedule to sit with us and have a conversation. He, this is Jerome. He is the founder of a company called Exodus. He helps founders of organism of companies exit to excellence. So I'm super excited about the conversation today. As you know, in our industry, the conversations all over the map about who do we do we sell the company, what's the exit look like, what you know, what is that down the road. And so I'm excited to hear him speak some. Speak some truth, drop some bombs and speak some life into that conversation today. So welcome to the show, Jerome. It's. I'm happy to have you, Sam.

So good to be with you, man. Thank you for having me. This was so serendipitous, if I said that word right, know, for Rich to come and hop on our show and then introduce me to you and then our schedules aligning so that we could do this in rather short form. I think it's a indication of what is in store for the listeners today. So I'm super happy to be here.

No doubt. I agree. So we always like to start out our interview podcast with give us, give everybody a highlight reel. How in the world did you get to where you are and you know, give us a little brief history of your journey and a little bit of history of your company and then also we would love to hear like Your, your mission and purpose for the company and just kind of how you live, like, how you believe.

Right, Man. So I, I can do the last part first because it's very direct. We're working to end suffering for founders who exit their companies, and I am deeply tied or attached to those folks because I had a bad exit. And I know what it's like to completely lose your identity, to step into a void where you don't have any certainty anymore because you'd lost your identity with the work that you were doing. You, the people that you talk to vanished when you stopped doing the work that you were doing. And your schedule also vanished when you stopped doing what you were doing. And for a lot of people, that can sound amazing, it can sound freeing. But I liken it to being in a ship in the middle of the ocean and not knowing how to drive it.

Wow.

So you're just kind of floating along, drifting along, and it's fun for maybe a day or two. And then you get lonely, and then you start to wonder how you're ever going to get back. And there's a bunch of things that creep in, like scarcity, because, sure, I run out of food and water, and for most founders, like, am I going to run out of money now that I cut my income stream off? And so that's the work we're doing, and that's kind of why we're interested in doing it. How did I get here? Is a much longer conversation. I'll try to make it short. So my last job in corporate, I built the $20 million division of a Fortune 550 company. I was employee number two on January 13th, and by the end of September, I had 175 people on my team. As I mentioned, 20 million in revenue, 30% profit margins. You would think that we conquered the planet. But I got a phone call on December 24th of that year that said, hey, Jerome, we're going to lay half the team off. And of course, I wanted to argue about that because I didn't think that was the right answer. And if we just dropped 6 millions of dollars of profit to the bottom line, we probably have some money we probably shouldn't be sending people on. Anyway, I lost that battle and got hung up on and was told that he was going to go spend the rest of the year with his family. He talked to me in the new year, and so I was spending my time figuring out who was going to stay and who was going to go between Christmas Eve and the new year. We came back Made the announcements. And for me, that was a traumatic experience.

Absolutely.

The way that I found my way through that, though Sam was giving my agency away. I said, they made me do it instead of I was actively participating in this decision. And so, you know, we did another $20 million the next year, but this time I was standing up in front of the team right before Thanksgiving. I said, hey, I don't know what's going to happen between now and the end of the year, but I don't want you to spend all your money on Black Friday.

Sure.

And I just felt all my leadership credibility oozing out on the floor because I knew that it wasn't my choice. And so while I had what I thought was all of the luxuries of being a founder or entrepreneur, building it from nothing, building it big, you know, we took it to the moon. The buck didn't stop with me. And I wanted more control, I wanted more autonomy. So I left corporate America and started buying apartment buildings. And that had all of its own struggles, but it wasn't fulfilling.

Sure.

And so that's what I see a lot of people do. They, they go and do things because they make money and then they realize that that's not what they're here for. I truly believe that we're here to serve others. And I couldn't figure out the service piece in buying real estate. Sure, yeah, sure.

We were there, right?

Yeah, we were providing housing for folks. Right. But there wasn't a direct connection for me. And so we, we're fortunate though. We were successful there. We built a multimillion dollar real estate portfolio. And you know, the property manager was managing, and we were managing the property manager as you're supposed to do when you have a portfolio. And you know, for me, the products, the apartments became the products instead of the individual units that we were leasing to the residents. And so I was like, I got, I got to get back to the people. I said, so what did I miss? Right? When I had this big team, what did I actually miss? And it was people walking in the office and saying, I don't know if I could have done that without you. Thank you so much for the guidance and the leadership. And over that, I don't know, it's probably four or five years. I had one coaching client, happened to be my financial advisor. He had let go of his coach and he was like, I don't know what I'm gonna do next. I said, hey man, give me a shot. And that turned into a ten year relations. But what happened There is like, man, this is the only place that I'm actually getting that feedback.

Sure.

That feedback of helping people avoid being blindsided and looking for opportunities that they can't see because they've got their head down, working. I wonder if I can do more of this.

Sure.

And so I took my focus off of the real estate and growing that portfolio and started focusing on consulting and coaching business owners. And we had some pretty fast results. It was really exciting to see, and I was finally getting feedback. And so we were in the space. We were working with founders. We were figuring. They were figuring out how to make more money. Sam. But they still. It didn't matter if they added another zero. Right. If they made their annual. Their monthly income.

Sure.

It didn't matter. They still had the same struggles. They still had the same problems. It didn't change anything. I was like, this isn't rewarding. Yeah. It's great for me to say, hey, how'd you live off of that last year? Like, I don't know how you lived out off of that, but that wasn't fulfilling. And what I found with the clients who had the most gratitude, they never talked about the money. They talked about all the other things, specifically how they. Their shifts positively impacted their home life and how other people in the community were looking up to them because of their increased leadership or the way that they were showing up in a very strong way and, you know, inspiring people to do things. So I was like, I wonder where I can do more of this.

Sure.

Now I'm standing in the back of a business conference, and there's a guy who just sold his company for $2 billion giving us a speech about how he created a double unicorn. It was seven steps to do a double unicorn exit or something. I was like, sure, whatever.

Right? What's this magic bullet here?

Right, right. This is all you have to do. Just follow the seven step plan. And so he's going through the presentation, and he just. He drops a word. He said, I was having an existential crisis and just kept on going. Like, he didn't say anything. I was like, what in the world? And so they do Q and A at the end. I said, are you ready? He says, oh, boy. I don't know where this is going, but here we go. And so I said, so how'd you get out of your crisis? And he said, I'll let you know when I do, along with a bunch of other things. And I was like, all right. So he's got all the resources. He's obviously really intelligent. He wasn't really self aware because his wife had to tell him that he was struggling or that she noticed that he was struggling. Most people know that they're struggling, but they don't think anybody else notices.

Right.

So his wife told him that he was struggling and I was like, so what is this? And then when he said he let me know, I realized that there was a gap in the marketplace.

Sure.

That founders who were exiting were stepping into a pure void if they didn't have something to do on the backside. And there's something to do on the backside is usually senior vice president of a division because your company becomes a division and something bigger. I also find out that most entrepreneurs that do that call that purgatory.

Sure.

Because they haven't had a boss in 15 to 30 years, depending on how long they deal.

Unemployable. And now you have to answer to somebody. You don't have all the decisions. Etc.

Yeah. Back to that agency and the buck not stopping with them anymore. So we, we started doing research and we found that there wasn't much data out there. There, there weren't any reports. There weren't people who were focused on this problem. I was like, what? Why? Why aren't anybody working on this? And as I dug in, I started to figure it out. Well, the main reason is you got to deal with feelings, Sam. Business people don't want to talk about feelings. The other thing is people aren't really empathetic to the wealthy. And so if you have an exit that looks like a lottery winning, most people think that you've got it all figured out. And unfortunately that is the farthest thing from the truth. You're probably in more pain than the people who are struggling to figure out how to make ends meet. Because that freedom, you know, floating on that ship in the middle of the ocean can become a cage. And then it becomes isolating and things can get really dark if you're not careful. And so that's how we got there. Because as we did more research, we realized that, you know, the psychologists aren't really the place that most of these folks are going to go to.

Sure.

Right. They're going to say that they don't understand, they never built a business, blah, blah, blah.

I don't need a therapist. That's the common thing, especially in our history. G's in the trades. They're like, no, nobody needs a therapist. What are you talking about?

But here's the big thing, right? There's nothing in the DSM that they're going to use. Right. That's the manual that they use to diagnose the people.

Sure.

They don't have a diagnosis other than what we call it, which is the founders exit paradox. And so the concept with the founders exit paradox is you should be happy for all intents and purposes, but you're not sure and you don't know why. Well, we know why, but you don't. And so the goal is to help people understand that. And so hopefully I answered those questions that you asked sufficiently.

You did. That's excellent. And that's an excellent context to kind of move this conversation forward a little bit. So in your realize, recognizing the gap, recognizing that there's really hasn't been much in the way of help for that specific person, you know, you start to put this together and so what, what does that look like? So clearly enter Exodus and you start forming your company. What are some of the first, maybe some of the first people you, you worked with? What are your big growth moments in like helping them, but also learning through that process that to put really has been able to help you put together what you have now.

Yeah. So if I start with somebody that we're working with right now, so she's a dentist and she's got multiple practices and the question was, well, do we sell all of the practices? Do we sell one of them at a time? Like what is the true access plan? And that question is truly answered by, well, what do you want on the back end? Like, what we found is strategic buyers and even financial advisor buyer. Financial buyers are going to make the process onerous. And when the process is onerous and people see light at the end of the tunnel, they're willing to settle just so they can be done right. I call it deal fatigue.

Yeah.

And so when we were going through one of the cells, making her aware of what was happening so that she could make a decision about whether or not she was going to settle versus settling inadvertently was the thing that I realized is the culmination of all of our work. Our goal is to make sure that people don't get blindsided when they're going through this rediscovery and redefining process.

Sure.

We see so many people who don't expect something to happen. They expect the first deal to go through. They expect things to be exactly as they promise if they decide to become senior vice president of a division. They expect that the money's going to change something when it hits the bank account and it feels good for about a weekend. But like time and Time again, what happens when people exit is if it closes on Friday, no later than Wednesday of the next week, the phone call comes and it's, hey, is this it? I was expecting there to be a little more.

Right, where's the fanfare?

And what we talk about in our book, you're next is it gets really quiet really fast. And if you're not ready for the silence and to sit in the space and get comfortable with who you are without the title or without being able to say you're the owner of X business, you probably should wait.

Sure.

Because getting the money is only going to amplify whatever things that you're uncomfortable with.

You know, that makes me think of this one word specifically of identity. And this is really interesting because the belief system is so much of what it's about. And in hearing this, and this is not like somebody stole your identity, you willingly got rid of it, not realizing that your identity was so tied into what you were doing, not necessarily who you are. So can you talk about identity a little bit with that and kind of how that changes?

Yeah, so identity is a word that gets used a lot. The word that we prefer is self image, and I guess it's two words, but it's got a hyphen, so maybe we can make it one.

We do anything we want on the podcast.

Yeah, I like to make up words too. But with self image, we look at it across four categories and hopefully I don't forget one of them, but the first one is self love. Right. And so you know, how. How do you treat yourself? Do you actually love yourself? Because I found that a lot of people are bullies to themselves. Like the talk that they have with themselves is violent, it's aggressive, it's condescending. It's things that they would never say to anybody else. And if that is the case, then there's a lot of work to be done because it unravels again when you add the money and the time. Because now all of that stuff is just kind of working on itself.

Right.

The other, another one that we look at is others perception. And so this one is a tricky one. If you're an empath, you can feel what other people feel. Unfortunately, we never know what other people are thinking. We know what we think that they're thinking, we know what they're willing to tell us that they're thinking, but we don't ever actually know what they're thinking. It's kind of like seeing yourself. You've never actually seen yourself. You might have seen a Reflection of yourself. You may have seen a picture of yourself, but you've never seen yourself. And so what is important for us here is are you proud of the way that you think other people see you? And if that is tied only to the business you run or how many people you have on your payroll or how much revenue your business has, or your Rolex or your car, if you bought that on the back side of the exit, then you might be in trouble.

Sure.

And so I think before we started recording, you talked about growing into being that person that folks want to buy from. Right. And I think it's growing into the person who is the best version of yourself.

Right.

If you got to the end of the journey and you met the person who you were supposed to become, are you that person yet?

Right.

And if you're not, you still got time because you're listening to this. Right. But the quicker that you can get there, the better off you're going to be. And so that just digs into from our perspective what others perspective is. So let's just pause right there and let's dig into those because I think That's a lot.

100%. Yeah. That's great. I love this conversation so much because it resonates so deeply. I've been through an exit and I had that same moment, you know, it wasn't, you know, multi billion exit or anything like that. But you know, I moved across this basically across the country and had three months of wow, I don't know what I'm going to do now. And so I basically just did the same thing again and because that's what I knew. And so I completely understand this conversation. So, so much so. But yeah, let's definitely dig in there. So.

It'S really interesting how founders who build big things have consistent experiences over the course of their life. And so we identify five things that usually will signal or they're kind of prerequisites for somebody to be in an apex performer.

Sure.

Most people have never heard apex performer. We adapted apex predator. But I think you get the point. Right? Sure. And so the first one is unfortunately being a people pleaser. And so when we talk about self image, like a lot of it is do they like me? And that is really roped into when we were kids, most of us only got love from our parents. If we achieved right. It was always accomplishment based.

Right.

They, they didn't love us. At least most of us didn't experience it because we were just us sure. They loved us because we scored a home run at a baseball game or we did some sport or we got a great grades on our report card. And it wasn't just our essence. And so getting comfortable with your essence is like one of those things that becomes really important. But being comfortable with your essence isn't the thing that's going to make most people strive. And so that being a people pleaser is like super high on what is common for a lot of people who become apex performers.

Sure.

Another thing that is probably a little dark, but since we went to, you know, achievements, let's go to the dark side. Usually there's some, I'll call it mental illness, but what I will really say is there's usually some suicidal ideation from the pressure to perform. Right. And so it's like, oh, they're only going to love me. And it kind of compounds. They're only going to love me if I do this next thing. They're only going to love me if I'm a millionaire. They're only going to love me if I got an eight figure business. They're only going to love me if the paycheck shows up, and so on and so on and so on. Sure, that is, from my perspective, terrifying. Right. But the reality is when you exit, when all the people around you vanish, that isolation amplifies those thoughts. If they were ever floating around in there with you, and most people don't actually want to do it, they just might say to themselves something scary like, oh, if I just ran off the road here or if I hit that tree, then, you know, nobody would know. And you know, in the past it might have been things were really bad in your business. You were struggling a little bit. So you're like, man, how can I get out of this without being a failure?

Sure.

And then another one is having the loss of somebody when you are young, somebody that you're really close to. I think that shows up for people because then it gives them a sense of urgency. Death is real. It was very close to me and it was at a young enough age where the person was really impacted by it. It wasn't just a part of life. It was like, oh my gosh, I was talking to them and now I'm not talking to them anym.

Sure does that. So are you saying that inspires like a, a drive to work harder, accomplish more, faster because kind of my just my time might be running out sooner or Is that the bucket you're talking about?

100%. Yeah, we, there's urgency. We got to get this done because we don't know when it's over. A lot of people just assume they're going to make it a. I guess people are talking about 130, 150 now. Right. And then if you see somebody close to you, just kind of check out, you're like, man, that's crazy. The last two, the first one is total financial ruin and then the other one is a near death experience. And so I've experienced all five of these. We found that if you have three of them, it's highly likely that you are apex performer. And the way that you know, if you're an apex performer, as bad as this is going to sound, everybody comes to you to get answers. Everybody comes to you to solve their problems. If your phone is ringing or you're getting text messages because people want your counsel, it's highly likely that you're apex performer. As sad as that sounds.

Yeah, this, I think that I have absolutely experienced every single one of those as well across, across the last probably 15 years, especially in maybe the last five to seven. You know, the journey of life and what we choose to do is so interesting how we'd make decisions. If we're making decisions based out of this scarcity mindset and any of these types of decisions, we don't always make the best decisions. And so lands you in a place you never thought you would be, doing something you never thought you would do, expecting it to get different results and not realizing we're in this downward spiral. And so when you come across that person, that apex performer, what are some of the, some of the ways to that when you're working with people, how do you help them get past that, how we get out of that? Because one of the things this podcast is known for is, you know, basically giving something that's actionable for people that they can implement like right away. And so just kind of talk us through what that journey looks like and the steps to start taking to maybe move out of that.

Yeah. So what we, what we call it in a book that we release in December is finding your next. So you end up in that downward spiral because you don't have a place to put the energy that you've been putting into what you were doing in the past. That in and of itself is terrifying, I think about apex performers like nuclear power plants. So if there's nothing to take the power off of the power plant, then it begins to self implode the other way. I've heard it described and I don't particularly love it this way, but it definitely illustrates the point. So if you've got a large breed dog and you don't exercise it, it's highly likely that that dog is going to choose shoes, dig holes in the garden and do other destructive things because they don't have anything to put their energy into. So our goal is to help people find their necks so that they're not sitting around idle. And next is a four step process. So the N is for nourish. This is something most entrepreneurs aren't good at. Nourishing is actually taking the time to reflect on who you are and what you've done. And then you kind of want to strip away all of the things of old and relish the things that you can carry forward with you, because there's a lot of skills that you develop along the way that are transferable regardless of what you're doing.

Sure.

Most entrepreneurs get uncomfortable when you start to praise them or talk about what's really good about them. And so they try to skip over this. But this is essential because when we, we talked about people coming to you as source.

Right.

They want you to give the answers and solve the problems. So usually what ends up happening is they're depleted.

Right.

They're empty because nobody was pouring in and they were just pouring out.

Sure.

And so this connects to, you know, why they're part of the reason why they're there in that low space because they've been completely depleted. The next the E is for evaluate. And so you want to take evaluation of all of those great characteristics that you have. You want to think about the problems that you want to eradicate from the face of the planet and try to find a match between the two. Because if you can, you can do some really meaningful work for a very meaningful population, whoever you connect with. And so that evaluation process is something that is, can be overwhelming for somebody who's not been through it before. But our process is pretty tight and we can help people kind of narrow that down from there. We use the X. And so we got cutesy here. Right. The X is for explore. We drop the E. Start with the X. But when you're exploring, you're actually seeing if like you can prove the concept.

Sure.

Do you, are you actually uniquely positioned to serve that group of people who are trying to overcome whatever that problem is.

Sure.

And that in and of itself can be encouraging on certain days. And it can also be a miserable experience on others because anybody who's built something knows that it's a roller coaster.

Right? Sure.

You know, everything you're on Top of the world, and then you can be at the bottom, or you can numb everything and just try to be even kill. But you don't ever actually enjoy that because it's just a numb experience.

Sure.

And then once you prove the concept and start building it, we want to transcend, so we want to fully manifest whatever this evolution is for us. Right. And deliver on the promise of helping those people solve that problem through whatever mechanism we dreamed of.

Sure.

This is. Some people call it a third mountain. Right. So the first mountain is when you solve it for yourself. The second one is when you build a company, you solve it for a smaller group of people. But our goal is to help people try to solve that problem for the world. We want big impact, and we want to help the people who are going to have big impact find the thing that they're going to have the big impact on.

I love it. That's. I love the process there. And it reminds me of when you fly, they always say, put your own oxygen mask on first. And it's exactly that in these steps. So thanks for going through that with us. So that was your book. Finding your next. Awesome, awesome. Perfect. We'll get some details for that here in a little bit. And, gosh, we're running out of time here. I feel like this could go on for days at this point. But one other thing that I'd love for you to cover is we talked a little bit earlier about multiple exits. And the reason I want you to cover this with the most of the people that listen to this podcast. There's a lot of just, you know, salesperson, technicians and salespeople, and there's a huge amount of owners, owner operators at multiple magnitudes of different sizes of companies. Most of the listeners are actively still in their businesses right now. So if you would, if you wouldn't mind, take a minute, and I'd love to walk everybody through the different exits like we were talking about, because everybody that's active, so many people right now don't realize they've had an exit or two. They just didn't realize it was internally. And so if we can help them with those steps. One thing that I say all the time is if you don't understand the rules of a game, it's confusing. You feel like you're stabbing in the dark. But as soon as you understand the rules of the game, it becomes fun and easy, or at least you know how to play the game. So this is part of that, is unpacking that and understanding those steps. So I love for you to take a minute and go through that portion of it with us.

Yeah. So we created the eight X's of a founder. We noticed that there was no roadmap for entrepreneurs. And the road to get from.

Chief.

Everything Officer, which is what it is whenever you leave being an employee to get in your 7, 8, 8 or 9 figure exit was murky and most people had no idea what steps that they were going to go through in order to get there. They were just going to try to sell their way there or hope that somebody knocked on their door and came to buy their business. But that isn't actually a good way to do it. And so we, we, we came up with the eight X's of a founder and it's our road map to find your, your different exits on your entrepreneurial journey. And so it starts with leaving, being an employee. So that's exit one. Exit two is when you leave Chief Everything Officer. Chief everything officer is CEO 1.0. But it's nothing that you see on social media. You're going to get the paper, you're emptying the trash, you're cleaning the bathroom, you're doing all of this stuff, you're filling up the gas in a truck, you're doing all this stuff for everything. You're answering the phone, you're billing, you're doing none of that is exciting, it's not glamorous. And you're probably working harder than you were when you were an employee. And so very quickly people usually try to get employees. And so the goal with the employees is for them to do the work that you were doing or at least fire yourself from specific roles so that you can focus on the things that a CEO should be doing. But it takes a little bit of time to become a true CEO. So exit three is when you become a product manager or a thought leader. And so I know you got some folks that do H vac stuff. And so as a product manager, maybe they're just putting Freon in or maybe there's new installs or you know, they're managing that group and then they actually have people going out and doing that in this exit. From there you're going to put an operator in place, right? The chief operating officer, some people may call them director of operations. But this person is going to be responsible for handling the day to day in your company when you go to that next exit, which then frees you up to actually be the CEO who's building brand and thinking strategically for the company. From there, most people try to start Skipping steps, right? I've got a functioning business. It works without me having to do things. Who knew that somebody else could do the schedule? Who knew somebody else could do the accounting? Who knew that somebody else could do my marketing? Who knew somebody else could sell for me? We got all that stuff figured out and I can go on a vacation and the thing doesn't fall apart. Sure starts to feel really good. But most people don't ever actually take a step back from the business. They stay in it. They believe that they have to be there. The thing that popped my bubble was having a conversation with a mentor and he said, the more important you are to your business, the less valuable your business is.

Ooh, that's good.

I said what? He said, the more important you are to your business, the less valuable your business is. Your goal is to make yourself obsolete, unnecessary in the business, so you can truly be an owner. Most people skip that step. They want to go from being the true CEO to selling their company and they think that they're going to be okay. But when you do that, if you're involved in the day to day operations and then you sell, it's like being in a car accident. Because you go from waking up in the morning if you decide to go work out, doing your morning routine, getting in the office, staying in the Office for your 8 to 12 or 15 hours, depending on how long you do that, then coming home, doing whatever you do with the family, only to get up and do it again to then getting up, doing your morning routine and having a completely empty calendar and no emails and no text messages related to the business that you just left for those 8 to 15 hours where you used to allocate that, that is violent.

Yeah. Oh gosh, absolutely.

Absolute sudden stop. And so winding down, working less and less and getting to a space or a place where that business is functioning without you forces you to unravel your identity from what you do in the business and kind of justifying or making it appear that you're important. So what we love for people to do here is become chairman of the board. And so if the company runs by itself, then having a board in place and you're chairman of the board, so you're still owner, you're still the final decision maker on the big strategic initiatives, but you're out of the day to day and this gives you some flexibility to look around and see what are the other things that I would like to do, what are the other problems I want to solve. And then you can start exploring those while you still have the company, so you don't go into a pure void when it's time for you to exit. So you know, that was exit 5. Exit 6 is what most people think about. That's the liquidity event. That's when they get their payday, that's when they hit the lottery and they think it's going to change stuff. But money's like air. You only care about money when you don't have enough.

Right, right.

But how much you have in your bank account doesn't matter. It might give you a sense of security temporarily, but it goes away pretty quickly. Because I can remember when I had a hundred dollars in a bank and I thought it was a lot. And then I can remember when I had a thousand dollars in a bank when I thought it was a lot. I was actually interviewing a guy a couple of days ago and he was like, Jerome, I remember when I thought $10 million in the bank was a lot. Like he's. So he sold a portion of his company and he had a billion dollar valuation and he sold like 25 or 30% of the company.

Sure.

So you're, I'm watching and it doesn't matter how big the number gets, you always get okay with it. It's not as impressive as it used to be. And so you know, exit 6 is a liquidity event that most people experience. So now you've gone from having a cash flow to having a nest egg.

Sure. Right.

And there's an interesting statistic. They say 80% of a entrepreneur's net worth is wrapped up in the business. So if 80% of your net worth is wrapped up in a business and now you have the liquidity of it and you get all of that in cash, I guess you can try to only spend a small percentage of it and hope that it doesn't run out before you pass away. But most people are going to try to figure out how to turn that in the cash into a cash flowing asset. And so when you're doing that, we call it a post exit portfolio. And the goal from my perspective with a post exit portfolio is to build it big. And then you treat the companies that are in your post exit portfolio like the products you used to sell. So if you're an H VAC business and you're selling new units, you want to be able to sell your companies. And so if you can buy the company, grow it and then sell it in concept, you're going to end up with a much bigger extra if done well.

Sure. So just what we're seeing all over the place in our industry right now, like left and right. Yeah.

So they're rolling them up and they're spinning them off and then they're doing it over and over again. And it's the fastest way to explode the well. But if you do it in something that you don't have any idea about or something you're not passionate about and you don't put out in the actual work, the money that you made on your exit vanishes pretty quickly. Because bad deal after, it only takes a couple of bad deals in order for everything to fall apart. So that's exit 7, the post exit portfolio. And then exit 8 is the thing that we're most excited about. And so you build a big post exit portfolio. You've got all these proceeds. And so we want to have our proceeds invested for lasting legacy. We call it pill. And so the goal here is to either have a fully endowed foundation that's working on the problem that you know, that you've been placed on this planet to solve, the one that you're supposed to eradicate from the planet, or you find a charitable organization that you can donate to in order to help them solve the problem that you know, that you are really excited about seeing nobody else experience.

Right.

This is where you truly get the impact. This is where you truly know that things are going to go for much longer than you'll ever live. And it's my hope that when people work with us, that they have more than six people who want to carry their casket.

Right.

You know, most people talk about the five people that have the impact on your life, but what about the six people who are going to carry you to your final resting place? What, what about those? And how can you live a life where people fight over the opportunity to do that service for you? Because if you make a huge impact, think about the folks who are going to do whatever they can in order to honor you for the impact that you've had on their life.

Right. And to carry it forward in your honor. Right. Yes. Oh, my gosh. When you. I'm getting, I'm getting emotional here. You hit on number eight. And it hits me so deeply because that, you know, I've been through not necessarily all of these stages, but, you know, when you start to identify a mission and a purpose and truly have a vision for not your, not necessarily just your own life, but exactly what you're saying, how to make that impact, something I've said a lot of times in the podcast, is the best way to Help the poor is to not be one, because we can make such a bigger impact that way. You know, we're not just trading an hour here for, you know, the one or two people we can help. And so, man, this makes me think of Steve Jobs, quote, about denting the universe, right? This is how we can dent the universe, right? My mission is to uplevel my. The home services because it's almost a joke at this point of any owners in, in our industry, of how many heart attacks have you had and how many wives are you on? And I hate that so deeply. And so that's part of my mission is to uplevel the industry as a whole to, to have healthier people that make bigger impact. So I love this message. So everybody listening, go back and listen to this again and sit with yourself and identify why you're really doing this. Because there's easier ways to make money, but there's not a lot of ways where we can so deeply impact so many people across time. And so really sit with yourself and identify those. The second you identify an actual vision and mission statement and look across our industry, the companies that are growing really quickly and growing well and very healthy, they have a very clear mission and vision statement. So you need that on a personal level as well as a mission and vision statement for your organization. And they don't have to be the same thing, which is a big part of what we're talking about here as well. So, man, thank you for going through that because the. I feel like you took us to church today.

I think it's mission work and I think there comes a point where everybody should have their mission and they should do that work. I think founders, entrepreneurs are some of the most amazing people in the world. You don't have to have a specific pedigree or anything to be successful. You got to find a problem for a specific group of people and solve it and solve it better than everybody else. And if you do that, you're going to be rewarded by the marketplace. And so if you can do that in pursuit of making money, imagine what would happen if you did it in pursuit of eradicating a problem from the face of the planet.

Right, right. Ah, such a bigger, bigger, like more important mission. I love this so much. Well, how do people get a hold of you? How do they. How do they get in touch with your organization? Where. So first of all, where can find the book to read that? And then also tell us about other. You know, you mentioned several books, so give us a quick run through where they can find your books and then how they get in touch with you when they're thinking about this. Because there are plenty of people that listen that are in that moment and they need some help to get there.

Well, and what's funny is Sam, what's funny is most people, they think, oh well, that's only five. That's five years away. I don't even think about that now. Man, you bat an eye and the year is gone like it was just January, right? And you know, we're halfway through the year. So what I would say is the thing I would love for all of your listeners to do and we'll see if they break it. But we've got an assessment. It's called your post exit identity assessment. And what we'll do there is give them Matrix the movie, the Matrix themed personality profile so that they know what they can lean into or lean on as strengths when they exit their business. Because most people have no idea they're just are and they don't even see those things as superpowers. And so if they go to the exit paradox.com forward/assessment, they can take that for free and they'll get a six page report back. It's not automatic and it's not automated. So literally we're going to analyze their answers and give them a customized report that's going to be different from everybody else that does it as our gift to them for taking the 10 minutes it takes to fill out the questionnaire. And that in and of itself we think is a tremendous value because it starts the process of nourishing which is, you know, what we think is the most powerful part of the process and starts, you know, the transition from being the business owner, being the founder to being a neo, a newly exited operator.

I love the, the references there too. That's awesome. So perfect. So the exit paradox.com forward slash assessment. Correct. Perfect. I'll make sure for everybody listen, I'll make sure that is that link is in the show notes as well and.

Take it too, Sam.

100%. I'm going to. So I also heard that you run a really incredible podcast as well. What is the name of your podcast?

The podcast is called Dream Catchers and we interview folks like Sam. Sam's going to be a guest on it who have exited. We want to tell the story, we want to talk about not how much money they made because we don't really care about that, but what was the process like and what was their journey through the founders exit paradox on the backside because we don't want anybody to be blindsided by the fact that you're not going to just be completely ecstatic on the backside of selling your business.

Right? Right. I love this. So, last question. So I'm guessing The, the Exit Paradox.com is the website where they can go to learn more about Exodus and the bigger bulk of the company.

So the bigger website is going to be exittoexcellence.com.

Okay.

But we do the exit paradox.com for folks who just want to get a quick hit on the assessment.

Okay. So the exit paradox.com assessment. For the assessment, everybody go subscribe, go like and subscribe to Dream Catchers, the, the podcast and then the bigger website, exittoexcellence.com I make sure all of these are in the show notes as well. So, man, it is time to land this plane. I'd love to take this on forever. You would definitely have to be a guest again. Love it. So before we go, any last words, anything you want to impart to everyone listening today?

I appreciate the opportunity to do that, Sam. What I would tell your listeners is if you've made it to this part of the interview, then you are part of the chosen few. And the chosen few should know that their dream should be real. And nobody's probably told you that in a long time. And you may have even stopped dreaming because you're so caught up in your day to day and you may have even forgotten that you used to pray your dream for what you have right now. There's still more dreams than you. And so I, I implore you to not stop dreaming. I implore for you not to stop trying. And I desire most deeply that you figure out what that dream is and then go pursue it. Because there's somebody who you haven't met who is counting on you to make your dream a reality because it is a stepping stone for them to do what they're supposed to do.

Love this so much. Thank you for that. The. And and for all of your listeners. If you're not the owner now, if you're in sales at all, you have an entrepreneurial bone in your body, that's for sure, or you wouldn't be so driven to succeed to be that apex performer. And there's a good chance at some point in time you're going to own a business if you don't already. And so this is also valuable for you as well. So if that's not currently, you take the meat out of this and come back to this episode and, and connect with Jerome because There will be a time in your life where these thoughts and this, this roadmap will be very effective for you. So man, thanks for being a guest on the show today. A couple quick announcements everybody. One is make sure to go check out closeitnow.net that's where you can learn more about the sales coaching and sales training and the programs that I have go. You can also just message me, Sam, close it now.net and we can have a conversation about what it looks like for the virtual coaching programs, for our on site visits to where we come to your location and breathe some fire into your organization to help your people up level specifically in this conversation and I don't talk about this often but in those on site trainings and even in the virtual trainings, it's not just learning sales skills. You know, we talked mentioned work to become someone worth buying from. We deep dive into your personal growth, into all of the components to be a healthy whole individual. So people want to do business with you. If you have the, you know, you know, the right words to say or not, it doesn't matter because authenticity and truly having a heart of service is what it's all about. And so there's so much more than just sales skills when we do sales training. So that's a big part of what sets us apart from the other trainers in the industry and the other organizations. So go check that out and otherwise thanks for being here, Jerome. It has been incredible. We'll get scheduled soon for Dream Catchers and until next time, everybody go save the world one heat stroke at a time.

You've been listening to the Close it now podcast. Our passion is to dive head to first into the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement and at the same time covering fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all. We hope you've enjoyed the show. If you did, make sure to like rate and review. We'll be back soon but in the meantime find the website and Close It Now. Find us on Instagram at thereal Close it now and on Facebook at Close It Now. See you next time.