Managing a nonprofit is a very noble move, but materializing it can be a daunting process even when you have billions of cash waiting to be used for a wonderful cause. In this episode, we learn from the knowledge bank of https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianlefer (Christian LeFer) who is the CEO and Founder of http://InstantNonprofit.com (InstantNonprofit.com) as he walks us through the steps of starting a nonprofit, including dealing with the IRS and lawyers. He also presents how he and his team can help anyone aiming to start a foundation or charity and presents them their 501(c)(3) package.

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The Basics Of Starting A Nonprofit with Christian LeFer

We have Christian Lefer. He’s the founder and CEO of https://www.instantnonprofit.com/ (InstantNonprofit.com). Christian, welcome.

Good to see you again, Bob.

Christian has been a previous guest and we’re going to talk about InstantNonprofit.com. Christian, tell us about your business and who you serve.

I had volunteered to start a nonprofit with some friends around 2008, 2009. I completed the application, which I figured how hard can this be. I sent it in. A few weeks already, I received a letter with an agent’s name on it and a phone number. I couldn’t seem to get ahold of that person. When I did get ahold of somebody in the front desk, they told me it was going to probably be about twelve months and I could sit back and cool my heels a little bit because that’s how long they take to approve on a 501(c)(3). I thought, “How ridiculous.” I grew up with my little sister being developmentally disabled. I had experience with her running in Special Olympics. People don’t even realize how much they count on nonprofits as part of our fabric of society, whether it’s PTA or local little league or whatever. I was pissed and morally outraged. I decided to call about twenty extensions north and south of that agent’s phone number and whoever I could get ahold of, I would beg, plead and cajole them to give me the information about why this was such a nightmare.

What separated a good file? What gave them a good day at their desk versus a bad day? The IRS has made this process very Byzantine and very confusing. There’s no real source of information that says, “This is exactly what you need to do.” They’ve only layered more and more anti-fraud Band-Aids on top of their process over the years, so it’s only become more complex. I put together what I called a love letter to a bureaucrat based on grilling all of those agents. I edit the application and I got an approval in about 45 days. I tried this again with my little formula. A couple of other people in town heard that I can do this. I had a school with a billionaire donor. The school needed to get their approval in time to admit kids into the school and the billionaire donor would match all of that donations. I said, “I think I can get this done.” I had no idea, but I got it done and I went from blogger to businessman at that point.

You hear many stories where people get motivated for one reason or another and typically, it’s a significant frustration. That’s your significant frustration. What does your ideal client look like?

There are probably three different types of ideal clients. One is this successful entrepreneur or successful person or even corporate. Something where there’s already success, there’s already somewhat of a framework in things like generating revenue and building teams and those kinds of things. They’ll come to us and say, “We’ve got this idea. We know we want to do this, but we don’t want to wait forever for this paperwork or slog through a bunch of delays and back and forth.

Too many people go to work every day because that’s what they think they’re supposed to do. Perhaps they have this dream that they’d love to pursue something else. Maybe they’d like to start their own firm or their own business, but they’re not sure how to do it. If you’re in that kind of dilemma, https://www.linkedin.com/in/crystal-mcdonough-6ab04a60 (Crystal McDonough) says the first thing you need to do is figure out your goals and what you want out of life, and then design your life around that. Crystal is the founder and owner of https://mcdonoughlawllc.com/ (McDonough Law) and she has designed a fairly unique lifestyle as an entrepreneur, a business owner, and a lawyer. Today, she shares what her normal day looks like and how she manages it.

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Designing Your Life Around What You Want with Crystal McDonough

We have Crystal McDonough. She is the Founder and Owner of https://mcdonoughlawllc.com/ (McDonough Law). They do business law, energy, natural resources and utilities. They serve Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, Idaho, California and Florida. Crystal, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Tell us a little bit about your business and who you serve.

We serve clients who are looking for attorneys who can help navigate them through some of their tough legal issues, whether it’s business, natural resources, energy or even trusts and estates. We help our clients navigate those issues. We come up with a plan to walk them through that and then we implement that plan to help them find as much success as they can with their situations.

You and I go back a little way. We’ve talked off and on for quite some time and this is not your straight-out of college first pursuit. You’ve been an entrepreneur and a business owner for many years before you pursued your law degree. Let’s dig in a little bit to the backstory.

I got my first taste in business when I was seven years old. I made inventions out of trash in our trash can, wrapped it in tin foil and went door to door selling my inventions to our neighbors for a quarter. I came home with a pocket full of change, I felt pretty good about myself. Later on in high school, I started a piano studio. I had been studying piano for a lot of years and my piano teachers said, “I think you’re ready to start teaching.” I opened up a studio, and I taught music for a lot of years.

What booming metropolis was it done?

This was in Grand Lake, Colorado, a little bitty mountain town if you’re familiar with it. I went from there. When I was in high school, I discovered that there was not a swim program for our community for all the kids. I coordinated with our local country club and the community center. I went and learned how to be a swim instructor. I took all the courses through the Red Cross. I developed and implemented a huge program that they ran for several years through the program. I taught all the lessons, I ran the program and I coordinated everything. I got my real first taste in how to run and manage things and take something from the ground up, solve the problem, put a plan together and find some success with that. There were a lot of kids that came through our program. It was fun, then I went to college.

What did you study in college?

I studied Piano Performance. That was my first love. Then, I met my husband and fell in love with him. We got married and went on to continue with other areas of business. We had a small construction business for a while. I maintained my piano studio because I loved teaching. We had a few other small businesses that we ran, but I always loved education. I always loved the learning. I was forever a student. I was always taking classes, and I ended up with a lot of degrees.

Even in the coaching world, there’s a lot of baloney that’s out there and all the fads and all the headline chasing. Bradford Cooper resists that with evidence-based work. Bradford is the CEO of https://www.uscorporatewellness.com/ (US Corporate Wellness) and the Cofounder of https://www.catalystcoachinginstitute.com/ (The Catalyst Coaching Institute). He teaches on how we can take meaningful steps that can surely change our lives for the better through wellness coaching which is focused on evidence-based practices in health and wellness. Stay clear of the shiny object that’s not going to help your life at all. Through this episode, learn to appreciate the benefits of coaching and what effective professional coaching does.

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Wellness Coaching with Bradford Cooper

We have Brad Cooper. Brad is the CEO of https://www.uscorporatewellness.com/ (US Corporate Wellness) and the Cofounder of https://www.catalystcoachinginstitute.com/ (The Catalyst Coaching Institute). We’ve been trying to get this done for some time, but you were presenting in Germany and working on your PhD. I appreciate you taking time.

It’s a joy to be here. Thank you very much.

Tell us about the business and who you serve?

There are two hats. At US Corporate Wellness, we serve employers. Employers that are looking to improve the lives of their employees in the health and wellness arena. A lot of people think of health and wellness as food and fitness, we go so far beyond that. We may be talking to them about stress or life balance or it could be food. It could be fitness. It could be sleep or any number of things. That hat worked in the trenches. We’re with the employer. We’re putting all those things together for them. The other hat we’ve been training wellness coaches. The wellness coaching industry has changed dramatically in the last few years.

There’s a National Board Certification for wellness coaches. You and I can’t be having a cup of coffee and say, “You want to be a wellness coach?” You say, “Yeah, Brad. That sounds pretty good,” and we walk out the door as wellness coaches. There’s now an extensive training process. You have to go through an accredited program. You have to have a number of practice sessions, etc. We’re one of the programs that if you decide you want to be a health and wellness coach, you can go through our program, become certified and pursue that National Board exam. On the one hand, we serve employers. On the other hand, we serve the people out there doing it. Sometimes there’s an overlap. We’re known in the industry as the coaching experts. The companies that want top level of coaching, they come to us and that’s because they heard of us through The Catalyst Coaching Institute and they didn’t even know about US Corporate Wellness.

For the business owner that maybe hasn’t gone down the road of approaching this as a strategy for the company, what’s the typical problem that business owner will recognize or into it in his company? Why do they typically reach out to you?

There are a lot of answers to that. First off, they tend to look at their medical claims and say, “Are you kidding me? We’re going up another 8% and another 12% or whatever this year. We have to do something about that.” That doesn’t happen like this. You’ve got to get a good plan in place. Oftentimes, that’s the first thing that makes them reach out or have one of their team members reach out and find us and talk to you the details. The reality is it’s so much deeper than that. You talked about culture.

It takes a great leader who understands his team and the company’s purpose to deliver great service. https://peakstructural.com/about-us/paul-sutton/ (Paul Sutton), the Founder and President of Paul Sutton’s https://peakstructural.com/ (Peak Structural, Inc.), shares what his business is all about, who their clientele is, and the services they specialize in. As the company grows, so does the pressure and the demand for more employees. With this, Paul talks about how they cope with their growth, confront their weaknesses, and unleash their people’s fullest potential to achieve their company’s mission and vision. Know more about Paul’s method in rearing his team and leading his company to greater heights in this episode.

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Growing Your Company By Unleashing Your Team’s Full Potential with Paul Sutton

We’re at the headquarters of Peak Structural with Paul Sutton. He’s the owner of https://peakstructural.com/ (Peak Structural). Paul, thank you for taking time out of your busy day.

I’m happy to be on the program.

Tell us about your business and who you serve.

We serve a primarily residential clientele. Literally, 90%-plus of our work is going to be on, around or underneath the home. We do some light commercial work as well, but most of our products and services are geared toward the residential market space. Geographically, our area covers upwards of Longmont on the north side of Denver and up there in Loveland, Boulder, Westminster, all the way through the Denver Metro and then all the way south down to the New Mexico border. It’s quite a footprint. It’s quite a large sandbox that we play in.

For the folks that aren’t in Colorado, that’s a stretch with traffic.

That’s several hundred miles north to south along the interstate corridor. You’ve got a major metropolitan area with Denver, Colorado Springs up and coming and then Pueblo to the south. The three different distinct metro areas amongst a lot of other suburbs and hamlets scattered in there as well.

What are the problems that you guys solve?

Sometimes we’re initially confused with some steel erection company. We put up skyscrapers or something like that, but that’s not the case. Our company specializes in foundation repairs, permanent solutions to foundation problems that homes here in Colorado can get into and elsewhere in the country as well. It’s certainly not unique to our climate here, but we do have some very active soils here in the front range. That can lead to instability with the home’s foundation itself; it can sometimes settle or crack or even heave upwards, and then an ancillary service that we work with is concrete leveling. Before a foundation is ever going to move, you’re going to see movement in a concrete slab typically. Driveways, porches, sidewalks, stoops, patios- those things readily move.

When they do, oftentimes they can create trip hazards and become more of a nuisance, even become a real hazard to health for folks coming and going. The concrete leveling is another aspect of ground movement that we provide services to mitigate against, correct those problems, put a long-term warranty on that as well. We’ve got two other services that also pertain to the underbelly of the home. That would be basement waterproofing, which goes hand-in-hand with structural problems. If you have too much water present around or underneath a foundation, it’s going to find a way in. In many homes and other structures, if you’ve got finished space below grade, you’ve got a problem.

You’ve got wet carpet or moldy sheetrock or damage to furnishings; things like that. From the health aspect, when you’ve got a very humid or dank environment in a basement,

Preserving capital and enhancing value for your company is paramount. That is why there are people like Dr. Stephen Long who exist. In this episode Dr. Long, the Founder and President of Motere Consulting, teaches us how he goes about with his Strategic Execution method for making teams and companies more successful. He introduces and breaks down the two elements that he uses – management assessment and management development components. With these methods, he promotes not only teamwork but also identifies risks. On the side, Dr. Long also talks about potential and shares some of his significant leadership-related experiences in the military.

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Management Assessment And Development: Behavioral Analysis Method For Growing Teams with Dr. Stephen Long

Our guest is Dr. Stephen Long. He’s the Founder and President of https://motereconsulting.com/ (Motere Consulting) here in Colorado Springs. Steve, thank you so much for taking the time to come by and be a guest on the show.

It’s my pleasure, Bob. Thanks for having me.

If you could, tell us a bit about your business and who you serve.

I’m the President and Founder of Motere Consulting, which is a performance enhancement firm that helps manage risk, preserve capital and enhance value through management development and management assessment services. I built a predictive model of human performance and leadership while I served as the Head of Performance Psychology in the Human Performance Lab at the Air Force Academy. The model has been successfully applied to business, athletic, academic, military and artistic performance. My business clients average 115% improvement in financial performance on average with a zero-failure rate. Basically, it’s a data company.

For the business owner that’s reading, I could do with the 115% improvement on pretty much anything at any time. If I’m that business customer and I go, “What is it that I should expect if I hire you to come in and evaluate my leadership team and my company?” What should they expect?

You’ve got to learn things about your people that you don’t know about them. Basically, what my behavioral analyses do is it’s a shortcut mechanism. Particularly with the clients I serve, what they find out in two to three weeks would normally take them two to three years to find out. And they usually find out under dire circumstances.

I’m your prospective new client and I’m getting ready to do whatever or I’m trying to hire and you come through the door, what time frame should I expect and what steps do you take to go through and arrive at a conclusion?

There are two elements. There is the management assessment component and the management development component. The management assessment component and what I’m doing there is I measure the behavioral factors of Strategic Execution. Strategic Execution is simply the ability to execute the strategy. There are some strategies that are better than others. There are some managers who execute strategy better than others. When you put a good strategy with a good manager, that’s when you blow the doors off.

You had the visionary versus the operational person?

You can combine the two. I don’t do anything with strategy. All my degrees are in education. That’s what the MBA is to determine as far as what to do. What the research has found is that strategies only deliver 63% of what they promise. Let’s say you got a proposal for $100 million. Lock that 30% or 40% off right from the start because at best they’re only going to get $60 million to $70 million. Then you combine the inability to execute strategy and it goes down significantly. This is where people don’t understand as far as what they...

Things are not always sunny when it comes to running a business. There will be days where it seems like one disaster is pouring after another. Sweeping in just like her company’s name, Raincatcher, to help businesses is Marla DiCarlo. With her experience, Marla can fully empathize with the owners, especially with exiting their business. She shares her story of transitioning from a CFO role to becoming the CEO of Raincatcher, and imparts valuable advice on selling your business or building one. She also gives valuable insights on attracting buyers through digital marketing and generating leads. Learn what makes a good leader and how to navigate the business world and more in this episode with host Bob Roark and Marla DiCarlo.

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Marla DiCarlo: How To Exit Your Business And Successfully Start Over

We’re in the world headquarters of Raincatcher with Marla DiCarlo. She is the CEO of https://raincatcher.com/ (Raincatcher). Marla, thanks so much for taking the time.

Thanks. I’m happy to be here.

Tell us a bit about your business and who you serve.

The name of our company is Raincatcher. We choose this name purposely because we always talk about that it’s hard to make it rain but easy to catch the rain. That’s what we’re doing. We’re trying to catch these business owners who are out there who need help. They want to make this once-in-a-lifetime event decision and they’re not prepared. We come alongside them and help them to not only market their business, find the right buyer and get the right price but also to spend time with them to help them prepare to sell. We do that by doing some tests, looking at the overall score of their business and figuring out how we can improve it. It’s like staging the house. I tell people often that you can have a nice house and a great area, but if you haven’t taken the time to clean it and remove the junk and some of the personal stuff, somebody is going to go in and go, “This place is a mess. I want to drop this down to $10,000, $20,000.” The same applies to business. There are certain things that they need to do to stage the business before they go and sell the business. That’s what we’re good at and what we’re all about at Raincatcher.

Before Raincatcher, you had quite a bit of experience going out and working with companies. You did a bunch of due diligence work. Let’s talk about the experience when you got to look inside companies and how you bring that forward to helping the companies now.

I love talking about this. This is where the passion for small business comes out. First off, I have to back up all the way. I originally went to school to become a social worker. I tell people that because it’s important. It talks about who I am as a person. What’s important to me is helping others. It’s something that’s in my core, something I care about. When I was in school, the problem was I thought differently. I realized among my peers I thought differently and my director of human services brought up that I didn’t quite think like everyone else. I have a very analytical side. I understood math. I’m very geeky that way, which served me well in my career. I became an accountant. The people component helped me in my career. I always cared about making a difference and wanting to change things and make them better. I became a corporate controller at a very young age. I was only 27 years old. I moved on with the founder of the company I was working with who created a fund. It was a $500 million fund that we could pull from. We worked with business owners to either help them exit their business, sell or maybe merge with another company.

We were doing this back at the beginning of the 2000s. My job was to fly out and perform due diligence on the small business owner, create the CIM (a Confidential Information Memorandum – It’s the mar...

Businesses will never thrive when there are no dynamic teams involved. The Founder and CEO of TalenTrust, Kathleen Quinn Votaw, shows us how they help improve the middle market, privately held companies that want to build a business through their People Puzzle Gap Analysis. She goes over how they train employees individually or in teams to be who they are and show what they stand for. Kathleen also talks about what her book, Solve the People Puzzle, adheres to with regards to hiring the right people, and reveals one of the things that can bring the kiss of death to any company.

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Building Mid-Market Private Companies Using People Puzzle Gap Analysis with Kathleen Quinn Votaw

We’re incredibly fortunate. We have Kathleen Quinn Votaw. She is the Founder and CEO of http://www.talentrust.com/ (TalenTrust). She is a leader in helping companies find, keep and grow great people. She’s also the author of https://talentrust.com/book/ (Solve the People Puzzle: How High-Growth Companies Attract and Retain Top Talent). She’s been recognized by the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce Top 25 Most Powerful Women in Business, back-to-back Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Private Companies honoree. She’s Cobiz Magazine’s Top 100 Women on Companies six years in a row. Kathleen, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day.

Thank you so much.

Tell us a little bit about your business and who you serve.

TalenTrust was established in 2003, and we serve the middle market. Business owners and business leaders in the middle market and Fortune 500 companies who want to find, keep and grow great people. It’s that simple. We work on culture and we work on recruitment to make sure that they can grow. That’s my mission in life. Making sure small businesses, middle-market businesses can grow.

As a business owner, I think about the statement. There’s a challenge with many of the business owners. They get to a certain point and then they go, “I have to add key talent. I don’t know if I need a chief of staff. I don’t know if a chief operating officer, I don’t know what I need.” They go, “I’m good at running my company,” and then they have to start hiring because they’re growing.

It happens all the time and we get to a point about where we need to bring in people who compliment who we are. In privately held businesses, we can’t do it all. You get to a certain point on your journey where you have to look at other people being successful on your behalf. Either you’re going to have a lifestyle company or you’re going to have a middle market company. We work with those middle market, privately held companies that want to build a business. The owner often finds themselves in a place where how can they replace themselves so they can go on and continue to grow the company. Whether it be sales, marketing operations, finance. We often run into people who don’t know how to or when to bring in the next best athlete, next best employee to get to the next level of growth.

I think about some of the companies, you’ll talk to them and they’re bursting at the seams. The business owner’s hair is on fire and they’re going next step. I’m that business owner, my hair’s on fire. We’re growing like mad. I go, “I’ve got to do something or I’m going to die in place.” What does that conversation look like when I as the business owner reach out to you for help and trying to determine the path forward?

It often starts with, “Kathleen, something’s wrong and I don’t know what it is.” It’s because something’s not working. You get to a juncture where you understand that your culture is suffering,

Any product that aims to help Mother Nature thrive and help the world function better is a great product. Kyle Ewing, the Founder and President of TerraSlate, talks about the genesis of the idea for TerraSlate paper to product development. The product is environmentally conscious as it minimizes the use of paper. With its efficiency, TerraSlate has become bigger, and the need for manpower also increased. With Kyle’s management efforts, he shares his key learnings from running the business as well as the challenges they had to go through as a team. He highlights his company’s overarching protocol which stands on three pillars of success – quality, speed, and customer service.

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The TerraSlate Advantage with Kyle Ewing

We’re with Kyle Ewing. He’s the Founder and President of https://terraslatepaper.com/ (TerraSlate). I had the pleasure of meeting him at a horse event. We’re in the signature flight terminal outside of DIA and Kyle’s about to fly to Houston.

We’re headed down to Houston on a jet to see some clients in the oil and gas industry. You will all have to cross your fingers for a good meeting!

Kyle, tell us about your business and who you serve.

My business is called TerraSlate. We make treeless paper that’s 100% waterproof and rip-proof. People often ask me, “Why do you need paper in a digital age?” What I tell them is there are millions and millions of things that not only get printed, but that get laminated and handled heavily on a daily basis. Something like a restaurant menu is always a good go-to example. Restaurant menus get handled by as many as 100 people a day and they get wiped down, spilled on, and people put hot coffee cups on them. They get wine or salsa spilled all over them and what’s cool is you can wipe them clean. For a restaurant, that’s very advantageous.

The other benefits are you can print it through any laser printer and you can write on it with a pen. Instead of printing out a sheet, then taking it over to the laminating machine and feeding the laminating machine one sheet at a time with traditional laminating pouches, you can put a ream of TerraSlate in your printer and click go. When it comes out, it’s done. You can do 500 in two minutes. We do everything from restaurant menus to work with biotech firms for materials in their labs. The paper is non-porous. If they’re working with hazardous chemicals or something like anthrax, the paper can go into the lab. It can get written on or used, usually, it’s a chart or some type that’s being filled out, and then it can go into the chemical bath and go out of the lab. You don’t have to type your notes before leaving the lab anymore.

With grocery stores, we do a lot of price tags, as well as behind the scenes manuals and foodservice guides. The next time you go to Whole Foods, touch the price tags, those are all done on TerraSlate. There are a couple of other cool things as well. We do maps and nautical charts for the military. We work with all four branches of the military as well as the Coast Guard. We’ve been having a good time with it. A customer called me and asked how does TerraSlate react to Plutonium 236 or whatever the isotope was. I said, “I have no idea. I don’t have any way to test that, but I’d be happy to put some samples in the mail. That way you can test it and let me know how it works.” I’m very excited to hear how that works if that works at all.

People hearing about TerraSlate paper, that you developed, and they’re asking, “How in the world did you think of this?” What drove you down this path? You’re a bit of a serial entrepreneur.

This is my third company. The first one I made a successful exit from. I bought myself a sports car and I bought my wife a house.

Every business is unique, and Hallenbeck Coin Gallery is nothing short of that. Taking us into the world of coin dealership, Tom Hallenbeck talks about the processes within their business and how they are coping with the changes. Marrying the past and the present, Tom takes us back to the time he was growing up as a coin collector to managing a full-service coin dealership in this changing time where everything is online. He identifies the three types of collectors out there and gets into the management side of the business – from fostering innovation to taking a creative approach to driving motivation. Finally, Tom reflects on his role as an entrepreneur, breaking down the misconceptions about the coin dealing.

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Managing A Coin Dealership Business In A Changing World with Tom Hallenbeck

I’m Tom Hallenbeck with https://www.hallenbeckcoingallery.com/ (Hallenbeck Coin Gallery). I serve the Colorado Springs Community as a coin dealer, but also we do estate appraisals. We deal with elder law attorneys. We buy and sell scrap gold and silver. We’re much more than a coin dealer.

Tom, I appreciate you taking time. We have Tom Hallenbeck. He’s the President of Hallenbeck Coin Gallery. Tell us about your business and who you serve?

We’ve been in business for many years. We serve the Colorado Springs Community and throughout the region of the Rocky Mountains. We buy and sell coins and precious metals. We also do estates. The average person we buy from, normally the majority of our advertising is geared toward purchasing. We buy mainly from men and women who have estates or collections they’ve either accumulated or inherited that they want to fairly liquidate.

I’ve driven past this place. I’ve lived in Colorado Springs forever. You think about, “It’s a coin shop.” That’s what’s in my mind. When you talk about serving the community and the estate planning side, what does that look like?

With a lot of estates, somebody inherits a collection whether it’s through a father or grandfather. Usually, it’s the male side of the family. They are collectors more so than women typically. When they get it, they’re like, “What do we do with this thing?” We will go through from pennies, nickels, dimes, all the way through silver dollars, gold coins, value each item and then give it to the estate. We do two types of appraisals. One is the retail or replacement cost. That’s for insurance purposes. Sometimes insurance companies need an appraisal or the person in charge of the estate or the collection needs an appraisal in case a Waldo Canyon fire came through and burned their house down. If there was a robbery, more likely a theft so they need a value for replacement cost. Probably the vast majority of our appraisals are what we call “Fair wholesale appraisers.” What would you get if you were selling that $20 gold piece, your Krugerrand, your set of Lincoln cents? We’d go through that appraisal also.

For a lot of the folks, I don’t think as they look at the front of your building they have an idea of the number of people here. For leadership, the marketing and how you get everybody motivated in a sales process, let’s talk a little bit about it. When you first started, how many people were here?

It started with just my father. We moved to Colorado. He was a curator at the https://www.money.org/ (American Numismatic Association), which is the world’s largest coin club and they have a fantastic museum over there. If you’re a coin collector, that’s a thrill of a lifetime. You get to play like a kid in the candy store. That’s why he moved to Colorado. He got laid off in a mass layoff with the Numismatic Association in 1983.

BEI or Business Enterprise Institute helps many entrepreneurs exit their businesses, choose their successor, and carry on with their dreams by supporting advisors. Jared Johnson and Elizabeth Mower, CEO and President of BEI respectively, share how they focus on working with advisors who help business owners in exit planning. They discuss how vital it is to create tools and online resources that can help advisory firms, CPAs, attorneys, business consultants, and coaches accomplish, deliver, and implement action plans for their clients. Moreover, they share why much emphasis is given to systematized education and training in helping advisors and their clients.

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How BEI Exit Planning Solutions Works with Jared Johnson and Elizabeth Mower

At BEI, we believe that these small and medium-sized business owners and the companies they run are the lifeblood of our economy. Our mission is to help as many of those business owners as possible exit their business when they want, with the money they need, choosing the successor that they’d like to see carry on their dream. We do that by supporting advisors to the business owner community: financial planners, attorneys, CPAs, wealth advisors, insurance advisors, and any advisor who works with the closely held business owner is somebody that we support. We want to provide the tools and resources to allow them to be the quarterback of an exit planning team.

We have https://www.exitplanning.com/user/482 (Jared Johnson), the CEO of BEI. We have https://www.exitplanning.com/user/211 (Elizabeth Mower), the President of BEI. We’re at the world headquarters of BEI in Denver, Colorado. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Bob, thanks for having us. We’re excited to share what BEI does and how we support the business owner community through their advisors and support and help other entrepreneurs understand how we operate. Maybe they can learn a little bit from our successes and certainly some of our failures in running up small and medium-sized businesses.

Tell me about your business and who you serve.

Our business is generally focused on helping business owners benefit from their lives’ work. We had to try and figure out a way to do that. In the distant past, we were helping one business owner at a time to figure out what they wanted to do with the future of their business. We quickly figured out that it was going to take a long time and we wouldn’t be able to get to everybody. We thought it was important work to do. We ended up realizing that we could have a much greater impact on the business community across North America if we work with advisors who help those business owners in each community. We’re on the ground every day meeting with business-owning clients and helping them figure out solutions to their problems and paths to their futures. What we decided to do is create tools and online resources that help advisory firms, CPAs, attorneys, business consultants, coaches, and people like that accomplish, deliver and implement action plans for their business-owning clients. We’re a behind-the-scenes tools provider.

It starts with education and making sure advisors truly understand what we believe is exit planning. A lot of business owners sometimes think, “When I’m ready to sell, I’ll call somebody,” or “I’m never going to transfer this business. I’m going to die at my desk. This is who I am.” That’s fantastic, but we need a plan for that as well. Even more, we see business owners out there who want to transfer to key employees, management staff, and kids, but the challenge with that is none of those people have any money. How do we help them accomplish their financial goals and objectives? Working with folks who don’t have any money to buy...