Being Ready To Sell Your Business with Dave Sinclair | E033
The need to develop an identity beyond your business.
In this episode of Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, and writer, interviews Dave Sinclair, a transition coach that helps individuals and business owners overcome the stress and anxiety that come with a major life shift.
Episode Highlights:
● 1:40 – Dave shares his backstory and why he does what he does.
● 9:31 – What happens in the lives of business owners when they know it’s time to get help?
● 11:55 – Dave discusses the two questions that business owners need to ask themselves.
● 12:52 – Are people in crisis or heading to a crisis when they reach out to Dave?
● 15:38 – How does Dave work with people who are currently going through a crisis?
● 20:15 – How does the PERMA Model of Happiness play into Dave’s coaching?
● 27:20 – Are there commonalities amongst the people that are successful/unsuccessful in Dave’s program?
● 31:26 – Dave discusses how mindset affects someone’s transition preparedness.
● 35:00 – What is the strength that individuals have that allows them to let go?
● 36:20 – Dave discusses his upcoming book, Numb?, and what he is trying to accomplish.
3 Key Points
1. Dave decided to rebuild his life when he was 40-years-old and found that he was completely lost. In his search for meaning, he found that many business owners experience the same struggle.
2. Those that are moving onto the next stage of their lives outside of the business must decide what is important to them and then break that ideal life into a day-to-day journey.
3. People who embrace a growth mindset, as opposed to a fixed mindset, possess the open-minded characteristics that it takes to achieve their ideal lives outside of their businesses.
Tweetable Quotes:
● “If you’re running a business, when’s the best time to plant a tree? 10 years ago. When’s the second-best time? Now.” - Dave Sinclair
● ”It’s the best-kept secret there is, especially for business owners. You don’t know what you don’t know.” - Dave Sinclair
● “What legacy do you want to leave? Do you want to leave a legacy of chaos for your family or do you want to leave a legacy where the business can continue?” - Dave Sinclair
● “It’s like so many things in life. We will ignore it until absolutely the last moment when we absolutely have to pay attention to it and now it’s too late.” - Jason Pereira
● “To answer the question, which clients do I find have a better chance of creating this life outside the business? It’s the ones that are willing to really open it up, open up to the question, do the deep inner work that’s going to be required to build that identity.” - Dave Sinclair
Resources Mentioned:
● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
● Woodgate.com – Sponsor
● FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact
● jasonpereira.ca – Jason Pereira’s Website
● Man’s Search for Meaning – Book
● Davesinclair.ca – Dave Sinclair’s Website
Full Transcript:
Producer: Welcome to the Financial Planning For Canadian Business Owners podcast. You will hear about industry insights with award winning financial planner and entrepreneur Jason Pereira. Through the interviews with different experts with their stories and advice, you will learn how you can navigate the challenges of being an entrepreneur, plan for success and make the most of your business and life. Now, your host, Jason Pereira.
Jason Pereira: Hello, welcome to Financial Planning For Canadian Business Owners. I'm your host Jason Pereira. In this show I have Dave Sinclair of Business Transitions Plus. Dave is an author and advisor, or I should've said, consultant that helps people cope with the mental aspects and challenges of transitioning from business owner to retiree. He's going to share with us his personal journey as well as what it is he does for people. I will share my stories too about seeing just how frequent this problem happens. With that, here's my interview with Dave. Dave, thanks for taking the time today.
Dave Sinclair: Thanks for having me here today, Jason. I'm excited to speak with you.
Jason Pereira: I'm excited to have you on for various reasons. Because, the message that you have is one that I share with every business owner who is running so hard and so fast they see a finish line, but they don't realize that line is more of a wall than it is a ribbon. You've lived that firsthand, and you saw the downside of it. That's the teaser, let you tell your story. First of all, tell me about you and your backstory, and then, what it is you do? It's a long question, but spill your guts.
Dave Sinclair: Exactly. It's always interesting people say, what brought you here Dave? Why do you do what you do? What do you do? I can't explain it without the backstory. I'm going to try to keep it as brief as possible. In short, [inaudible 00:01:53] running, running, running towards that ribbon and that's really what it was all about. Let's jump to 10 years ago, I was a part owner of a small multinational and I was that guy from the outside. I was that guy, Jason, that looked like I had it all. I was moving, I was hustling, I was doing all that, all the buzz words, making tons of money, had all the trappings, had the nice house, the beautiful car. I had the lavish vacations running, running, running, running. What do you think I didn't have Jason?
Jason Pereira: Purpose? Meaning beyond the job?
Dave Sinclair: Yeah, that's it. Purpose, meaning to be on the job. I was hiding in this job and rather, what I didn't have is, I didn't have any sense of balance of who I was outside this work. Okay, so here I am, I'm running, running, running 10 years ago, and life is like ... I was 70 pounds overweight, I was stressed out, my marriage was in shambles. My family life was holding on by an edge. I really didn't have an idea of where this was going, what was going on. Being this small multinational, this small company, I ended up just blaming all my problems on just working too hard in the business. My problems are I can't find the right people to support me, I can't find this stuff and all that stuff, I can't find anything, and owe was me in all these problems.
Dave Sinclair: After some soul searching, and maybe too many drinks one day, I finally decided, "I'm going to pull the pin. If this is all my problems, I'm going to leave the business." I did that. I left the business. Fortunately, I knew what the valuation of my shares were. We had it's mother transactions with some other partners. I rather abruptly said, "Yeah, I got to leave this behind." I left that behind. Here's the problem, when I left behind [crosstalk 00:03:38] yeah, it was like, you talk about this, I running, running, running. I was going a million miles an hour, all of a sudden, boom, bam, freight train into the existential brick wall. "Who the hell am I?" Okay, so that hit me all of a sudden. I woke up one morning, Jason, I was no longer getting all these pings in my inbox. I was irrelevant.
Dave Sinclair: I was no longer needed. Okay. At that point, you're thinking, "You've got all this time and energy you can do all this stuff." What did I fill my time with? I started drinking.
Jason Pereira: [crosstalk 00:04:11]
Dave Sinclair: Yeah, no, that's good. I found myself getting busy, the first thing I did to get rid of the pigs in my inbox, and this will sound funny and almost sad this time, is I got a Gmail email address, and I started signing up for things online so I would get pings in my inbox. Okay? You know all those spam emails you get, all of a sudden, I was getting some purpose from that because my inbox was going off. Spending more time just figuring out ruminating, wondering, "What the hell am I going to do? Who am I?" Led me further down this past the point where I ended up checking into an addictions treatment center, about three months into this so called goal major my life moving forward, this rebuild of my ... I was 40 when this happened, when I sold out and did all this stuff. I had no idea who I was.
Dave Sinclair: I checked into this center. It was a [inaudible 00:04:57] purpose facility. It's actually somewhere I think people addictions or not, "Just go away for a little bit and figure out who the hell you are outside the business." First book I read on all this stuff, most relevant book I read was Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Okay. Quickly I started to put the pieces together, and story short, I was taking that step back trying to figure out who I am outside the business, that's really what started turning things around for me. Realizing I'm not that unique. The amount of business owners that were in there, career professionals that were struggling with the same identity question, right? I'll circle this back. This circles back to what I do now.
Dave Sinclair: At the beginning, remember, I was talking about this business, there was this monkey on my back, and I couldn't get people to help me out. It just felt like I was burdened all alone, so I was just going to get rid of the business. Here's my theory on that. Even if the people were there, which they were there to help me out, I was so insecure in my identity outside the business that I wouldn't allow them to help me, because I needed the business to need me. I needed the pings, I needed the stuff. It wasn't until later until I checked in and figured out, "Hey, you know what? I can have a life outside the business. I can do all these things." Now that's what I do is I help business owners, if they're basically getting ready to leave their business, what is it you're going to do outside the business, so you don't hit your existential brick wall?
Dave Sinclair: If you're still running a business, when's the best time to plant a tree? Now. When's the second-best time? Or when's time, 10 years ago. When's the second-best time? Now. Even if you're a younger business owner, and this is resonating with you, what can you do to start making yourself redundant of business? I would go a step back further. How do you start understanding what you really want outside the business? What your identity is outside the business? Who you are outside the business? Use that as that tool to help you start doing the stuff to make yourself redundant. I don't think you're going to do it if you really are relying and your identity is so tied into the business. It's really hard to extricate yourself from the business when you are the business, and that is your identity. That is your sense of purpose.
Dave Sinclair: I talk about this, I joke about it, but at the same time, this is serious stuff. I've seen this time and time again. When we talk about surrounding ourselves with people smarter than us, Jason, we're terrified to do it. Step back. That's what I help people with, to step back and really figure out who you are outside the business.
Jason Pereira: With that, a couple big things. I always tell people that there's two retirement plans, the one that I worked on, which is the math one, and then there's the one for, "What are you going to do with all that time?" What I'm really trying to say there is, there needs to be something about you beyond the business otherwise going to go crazy. One of my clients was retired for almost six months before he was going so stir crazy that he bought another business, put his son in charge, just to give him some place to go, because otherwise he was losing it. I get it, the ping thing you mentioned, this is how we've been engineered now, right? If you don't get the vibration in your pocket, you feel you're not busy and stuff like that.
Jason Pereira: I totally get that. I share that. So much of this goes back to ego, right? You are the business. The business success is you. When the business success is you and you are the core driver of that, how do you start sharing that if it is you, right? How do you start sharing those duties for responsibility and recognition if it is all you, right? That's why so many people have such a difficulty in delegating. I always say like, "Don't be so arrogant as to think that you are the best at every function of your business." That's sheer hubris, right? You cannot be the best salesperson/bookkeeper/the operating part. When you sit back and think about it, you're like there's no way. Not only that, maybe things get done differently, but do you ever stop to think maybe they get done better, right? If they're not, what's the cost on your life, as you discovered. Yeah, it's, really hard, especially when you start off early on and it's a fight for survival, right?
Jason Pereira:You're wrapped up in this fight for survival and getting off that treadmill is just so difficult. I thank you for sharing that deeply intimate story, because you share the dark side of what happens if you don't deal with these issues before we do it. You mentioned Frankl. How timeless is that work in that man always needs to search for meaning, right, and purpose. If we get it from one place, and that purpose is gone suddenly, how do you replace that if you didn't work on the you? Yeah, so thank you for sharing that. Let's talk about, first off, you help people with this. I have to think that the people you help are first of all, recognizing there's a problem. What happens in their life to help them recognize that there is a problem and that they know that they need help?
Dave Sinclair: Yeah, that's a good question. It can come in various ways. Sometimes it's a health scare. Sometimes it's just overwhelming. There's two types of health scares. There's the physical health scare where something happens and it's all of a sudden, "Oh crap, I'm not here anymore. Maybe I need to sell the business. Maybe I need to get the resources out of the business," or there's multiple scares. The other type of healthcare, of course, is a health scare, right? Just feeling overwhelmed and thinking, "What am I going to do?" Starting to just have all this burden on top you, all this anxiety. There's those two types of things. Just want you to take a look at what's going on in the world right now. How many business owners are wondering, "Oh, boy, I wish I would have transitioned out of my company three, four years ago."
Dave Sinclair: That is true. Timing is everything, but there's all kinds of things that bring these thoughts to light. The thing is, if the thoughts come to light is how do you take advantage of them? What do you start doing to actually progress things forward? Because it takes a long time to get a decent plan in place, especially if your business is solely reliant on you, when these things happen. It's funny you asked that question, because I wish... They call it the $10 trillion opportunity in the US, this this thing about people exiting their business and the [inaudible 00:10:42] and it's the best kept secret there is specially for business owners. You don't know what you don't know. Okay? If you're the business owner who's just trucking along there, and you're making a decent living.
Dave Sinclair: Let's paint a picture, maybe you got 20 employees, and you're able to golf every Friday and do all these things, and it's providing you a decent income and all that stuff. But there's still a lot of things in your head, and you hold all the keys, what's it going to take at that point ... you're living a pretty decent life, what's it going to take for you to realize that you're sitting on a house of cards? I guess one question you can put out there it's a Tom Dean's question. I think it's a Tom Dean's question.
Jason Pereira: Tom's been on before.
Dave Sinclair: Nice. What legacy? I think he talks about this as well. What legacy do you want to leave? Do you want to leave a legacy of chaos for your family? Or do you want to leave a legacy where the business can continue? What is it that you really want? Unfortunately, you ask the question, quite often it's a scare. I'd have to ask the question, "What the heck do we have to do so it's not a scare?" For me, it was a scare too. I had to turn things around. I was just overwhelmed and stuff like that. I guess what I'm saying, be a different way. What if we started looking at it this way? Two questions. What if we started asking this? Number one, how is the business holding me back from living my ideal life, if it is?
Dave Sinclair: I think more importantly is, how are you holding the business back from allowing it to support you to live your ideal life? That to me is the key question, what do you need to do? I think it comes back to that sense of identity. It could be the person who's struggling with their family, what's going on? But what's it going to take? It's unfortunate, Jason, usually it ends up being, "Oh yeah, now my better half is saying that they're going to leave if I don't change things, and now it's time to do stuff." Right. Quite often it's an event, unfortunately. They call them the three Ds, was it death, disability and
Jason Pereira: Disagreement.
Dave Sinclair: Yeah.
Jason Pereira: Yeah, that's how we deal with it. That's how they trigger it. Someone comes to you, they realize they're in crisis or near crisis. But actually, it's a better question. Are these people in crisis already usually as they come and speak to you? Or are they people who basically are recognizing that they could be heading towards a crisis?
Dave Sinclair: I'd say, typically, it's a little bit of both, but more the people that are in crisis already. That's where I've been finding the people, is more there, are. At that point, it's almost like, no matter how bad it is, when you're in crisis, that's catalyst to then make things move forward.
Jason Pereira: Yeah. It's unfortunate, right? It's like so many things in life, right? We'll ignore it until absolutely the last moment when we absolutely have to pay attention to it because now it's not too late. It's the old, no one wants to buy insurance until the house is on fire, and then it's too late. Anyway, hopefully, I'd like to hope that the advisors out there such as myself are out there, basically, coaching people on this. I have done it. I don't find them in crisis, but I will often say, "What's the retirement plan beyond the retirement plan? What are you going to do with that time? What are your hobbies? What are the things you do to find purpose?"
Jason Pereira: If you think that you're going to never have travel and then you retire day one, and suddenly, you're going to take two trips a year and that's going to be fulfilling enough, first off ... or, let's say you could do five, six trips because that's what you really want to do. Have you spent that much time in airports? Do you really want to go through that, right, then that often? How long is that going to last? Because after a certain while this could get old, right? You get to the places you wanted to see, probably, and maybe you're done with it, right?
Jason Pereira: If you're not someone who's lived that lifestyle before, then you're probably not going to want to live that afterwards. Then, beyond that, it's like how much golf can you legitimately play, right? What happens in the offseason? Here's the other one, the same client who basically bought that other business, he said, "You know what, I found myself waking up, reading newspaper, having breakfast, sit back with my wife and discuss where we're going to eat lunch.
Jason Pereira: That was my day." It was before he had his grandkids were at a certain age, whatever it was. The reality is that, where do you find that? I had another interview with Peter Merrick specifically talking about mechanisms for finding that beyond charitable legacy, he talked about mentorship, right? Your knowledge is valuable. There's organizations out there that you could be members of this club, whether it be YPO or what's the other one? EO. There's a bunch of them that, not only that they value the people who are currently there and doing this, but they form mentorship groups to basically keep you engaged, right, and to make you feel like you're valuable. Board work, I've seen clients take on board work. At least they have a place to go every quarter to, basically, do that.
Jason Pereira: Or I even tell clients like, "Retirement isn't you stop working. Retirement means you have the option to not work things you don't want to do." Maybe it's not fUll retirement, maybe it's you're going in one, two days a week. Maybe it's going to do volunteer work. The beauty of it is you have the luxury of doing whatever it is you want. I, typically, find them before the crisis and hopefully I help them avert the crisis. They come to you hat in hand saying, "I'm in trouble." How do you work through this? How do you get through this?
Dave Sinclair: Sure. It comes back to what you're talking about there. Ideally, again, best time to plant a tree 10, 15 years ago before the crisis, and that point you would have taken the time to practice retirement, okay, while you're building your business, which in turn will create more value. I guess when you talk about when they come to me when they're in that crisis, and let's use the common age person, someone comes to me they're, say, 45 years old, okay, and they want to sell their business because they've had enough. They're in crisis, they're staring down the road of whatever, maybe addiction, maybe a poor family life, whatever it is. What would I do with that person? It's really them take a step back to figure out, "Okay, well number one, where am I right now?" Okay? "What are the facts? What's going on? Where am I right now?
Dave Sinclair: What is this transition that I'd like to put in place moving forward?" Really taking a look at the situation of where they are right now, objectively, just the same way a reporter would do it. Then actually we take a step back further and say, "Well, what am I telling myself about this?" Getting into the plot, and really helping them objectively see what the mental chatter is around it, and what they're telling themselves? Where are they right now? Once they know where they are, then we can start setting our vision to where they want to go. By that, we start creating a well-rounded vision of all the different aspects of life that are important to them. That's a key statement there. What's important to you. I played off, and we think, "This has to be this way, this has to be this way. I have to completely get out of the business or be in the business." No, it's not black or white. It's not whatever. It's very gray.
Dave Sinclair: What's important to you from a work aspect, from a family aspect, recreation aspect, heck, even imagine where you're going to live? What do you really want, okay? Create that well-rounded vision. It's interesting, once you start creating that well-rounded vision, Jason, then you start seeing that you've got purpose in all kinds of aspects of your life. You start creating these new purpose statements for each one of the aspects of your life. Now, you know where you are, you know where you want to get to. The next thing we need to work on, well how do you get there? From that point of view, we start taking a look at, "Okay, I've got this vision, I know where I am. I've started to get this feeling that this could be a really purposeful ... there's a lot of purpose here what I'm looking at. I'm starting to get a bit more passionate about where I'm going."
Dave Sinclair: Now, the rubber needs to meet the road. We need to start putting an action plan in place. What are you going to do? Start thinking strategically about how you're going to knock these things off? I follow the Jay Papasan and Gary Keller, the book, The One Thing. I love their One Thing question. What's the one thing that, if I were to do it right now, would have the biggest impact on my life overall? Break things down into easy actionable steps, start building these healthy habits moving forward, one thing at a time. What's your morning routine? Okay, you're trying golf? What else can you try? "I will reach out to my family." Okay. Have you tried calling them? Have you set up a family ... what can you do? These all sound very simple, but really what we're doing is coaching people through different actions and building habits so they can create this ideal life outside the business.
Dave Sinclair: Once they have that, they know where they are, they know where they're going, they know how to get there. How do you stay on track? That's where as a transition transformation coach, that's where someone like me really comes in. Is every couple of weeks we talk that. How are things going? How is this progress going towards your ideal life, this ideal transition? What are you noticing? If I'm working with someone creating a business so they can transition to a new owner, how's your strategic planning going with this? It's just ongoing. What are you doing? Checking back in and re-going through those four questions? Where am I right now? Where do I want to go? How do I get there? How do I stay on track?
Dave Sinclair: That's the core of my processes. Those four are questions that I really bring up in the book that I have coming out here right away. Really, for a transition for your business that's operating even for your ideal life, the process is much the same. Is taking that step back, taking a look at those four key questions, working through them on a continual basis to strategic planning or planning, not plan, planning. It's a verb. It's not a noun. It's not [crosstalk 00:19:43].
Jason Pereira: I say this [inaudible 00:19:44] financial planning, it's a process, it's not a product, right? If you treat it like a product, you stop the benefits the second it gets to you, right? If you treat like a process, it is a constantly iterative process. It's funny talking about morning routines, yeah, what's the saying, if you want to change the world, start by making your bed every morning. You have
Dave Sinclair:[inaudible 00:20:01].
Jason Pereira: Yeah, great quote. A lot of what you're talking about resonates with me and reminds me of something that I've recently discovered, which is the PERMA model of happiness. Does that play into what it is you do? If so, can you walk us through what PERMA is and how it applies?
Dave Sinclair: Yeah, sure. I've never been asked that question before, but PERMA, for sure, that's by Martin Seligman, one of the, I guess, founders, I guess you could say, of positive psychology movement. Just fantastic guy who does fantastic work. The PERMA model really has five different parts to it. The first one is positive emotion. What is it that we can feel good about, and what is there that kind of floats our boats? The PERMA model kind of builds upon that positive emotion. We hear a lot today about... not as much as we used to, no just be positive.
Dave Sinclair: Okay, well, positive emotion isn't just that, but really tapping into that positive emotion, really feeling that positive emotion when it's there, and even using things like gratitude to tap into that even more is a powerful way to do that. Getting further into this, P is for positive emotion, E is for engagement. Engagement is kind of that being lost in the flow, really doing things that make you feel like you're in the moment. These are these mini moments where time kind of stands still for you.
Dave Sinclair: Even for business owners, when you start asking them, it's kind of funny. Working with business owners, it's like, yeah, what do you do that really kind of floats your boat? You've been so busy building the business and so much has been wrapped up around that... It's, have these hobbies. They don't have these things that they can kind of get lost in time, so this engagement portion is... now, for the business owners, it's helping them find things, maybe even from when they were young, that really kind of floated their boat, that they can start revisiting again.
Dave Sinclair: It's really interesting, when you start tapping into some things, it can be as simple as, for a business owner, well, maybe I'll just spend some time walking out in nature. They haven't had time to do that. Things that they really liked to do when they were kids, things that really engaged them, and also gave them those positive emotions, start feeding upon each other. The next letter is R for relationships. Now, how important is it to have those positive, supportive relationships in your life? And for the business owner? Again, this is where they could hit that brick wall. A lot of the relationships come from where? Employees.
Jason Pereira: Business. Yeah, employees, yeah, vendors.
Dave Sinclair: Yeah, absolutely. Yep. So, all of a sudden, you don't have those relationships. When you do so again, for that business owner, it's practicing, where do I find those relationships? What do I need to do? That was a big one for me. I'd cut myself off from a lot of my most important [inaudible 00:22:26] and I've spent a lot of time over the last 10 years putting those in place. I'm happy to say right now that that's a key cornerstone to who I am now, is my relationships. Relationships with my wife, my sons, my family, my friends, all these things, right?
Dave Sinclair: Meaning, that's the M in PERMA. Meaning, that's a huge one and that comes back to people stuff, Man's Search for Meaning. How you find meaning? Frankel would say there was three ways to find meaning in this world. The first way is in the works that we do, the things that we accomplish, the things we get done. For business owners, we all know that. So much meaning in our business. Okay? How else can we find meaning? Well, there's other ways to find meaning, and Frankel said there's two other ways, right?
Dave Sinclair: Another way is, well, by finding meaning in beauty, in nature, in art, in sport, in whatever it might be, just in that more recreational side of things. The last way that he said to define meaning was, well, when you can't remove the conditions that cause your suffering, to actually find meaning in the suffering. For a lot of the people that come to me, okay, in that point of crisis, what that means is, well, let's take a look. What has this situation taught you about what's important to you right no?
Dave Sinclair: Then, like if I start finding meaning, and well I was kind of estranged from my family, but it taught you what? I guess I really want to be closer to my family in the future. What's the meaning in that? And now that we removed the cause of the suffering, you overwork, or whatever it might be, you've got this opportunity to move forward. The last one is accomplishments, and this is an important one. Don't get me wrong with what I'm saying. I love being a business owner, I love being able to help people out and I even love to make money.
Dave Sinclair: I love all these, okay? It's okay to be fueled by accomplishments. That's perfectly fine, right? Again, for a business owner, when the accomplishments are all they are, and all these other things aren't in... I don't want to use the word balance, because balance has this connotation that, why, everything's perfectly balanced. No. Just touching on the fact that these things are important, and understanding them and being aware of them is huge.
Dave Sinclair: Accomplishments are fine. No meaning, relationships, engagement, positive emotion. I love sleeping Seligman's stuff. I can talk about... I always have to kind of remember the different stuff. I can't... and don't take me verbatim as to what he was talking about with them, but that's just my take on them, and how I apply them to the work I do with my clients. Does that answer the question, Jason?
Jason Pereira: It does. I mean, I think most advisors who've seen people transition, business owner's transition to retirement, can totally relate to this. I often say that the... my business partner is very good at this, in terms of being a hand to guide them through it, but the most stressful time, when it comes to their investments for a client, tends to be the couple years leading up retirement and the first couple years in retirement, because a lot of times they think it's its monetary based. They're worried that they have enough.
Jason Pereira: That's what they say, but even after you disprove... after you prove there's enough, they still have that anxiety. When you start digging deep, you start finding it's the loss of identity, really, that's what's actually causing the issue, right? I mean, don't get me wrong. It's the nerve racking belief that, "Okay, I've always had a paycheck coming in and now that's going to stop." That is nerve racking. I totally understand that, but when you start to dig deep beyond that, and you say, look...
Jason Pereira: Now, we deal with an affluent client base, and a lot of them, we tell them this, "You can buy the world's biggest mattress, stuff it under the mattress, and you would never run out of money, so get that mindset out of your head," right? Even after that, we tell them, "Okay, you can retire tomorrow, if you want." Suddenly, when they hear that, they go from, that's been the goal all these years to, "Oh my god, I can retire tomorrow. I don't know if I want to. I don't know if I'm ready to." Then what happens when they're retired, is they finally pull that trigger.
Jason Pereira: They are so much more concerned about every day to day movement in their portfolio than they've ever been. They start saying things like, "Well, I'm going to pay close attention to it now." I mean, take a deep breath. Okay, I can understand your anxiety, but what do you think your attention to this fact, to this portfolio, what do you think is going to change because of that? We're not going to change the strategy, because we've been using it. It works. It makes sense. It's all backed by empirical evidence. What is it that you're stressing about this is going to change about the outcome?
Jason Pereira: More often than not, it's because they have nothing to do, right? It is one of the most common... I'm sure everybody is listening to this, relate that. The reason for this, really, is because they're just not busy enough, and one of the ways they manifest that is that suddenly, now they got to take control. They control the income in their lives. Now, they're going to take control of the investments in their lives. It's a couple years before they finally learn that it's an unproductive, unfruitful exercise for them. It's an interesting experience that I think we, as advisors on this side of the table, we see it.
Jason Pereira: We don't necessarily equate it to the manifestation of the loss of identity, but that's at the core of it all. Anyway, that's my rant on that. Once you've gone through these exercises to help them identify the importance aspects of their lives and improve upon their lives, tell me about... I want to be frank about the success stories and the failure stories. What are the type of people... like, the commonalities amongst the type of people who come to you and just, it fails? It just doesn't work. And other commonalities amongst the people that come to you, and yeah, you just know from the day you meet them, "I'm going to be able to help this person."
Dave Sinclair: Yeah, I think that's a good question. Everyone's different. It's all kind of unique, but I think the commonalities, the people that adopt the growth mindset, Carol Dweck's work on a growth mindset, people that adopt a growth mindset that they can learn, grow, move, forward, adjust, deal with the change and all that stuff, they're going to have a better opportunity to move forward than people that are maybe a little bit more... I don't want to use the word ‘fixed in your ways', because that's not necessarily true, but more of a fixed mindset.
Dave Sinclair: That this is the way it is, more cynical, more playing that victim card, that this has happened to me, not for me. The people that think that this has happened to me, and there's really... I can't see a path, and I feel stuck, there's no one that can help, and they're super cynical, and just believe that they just can't grow beyond this, they may have a tough time, but the people that take that creator's mindset, that more open mindset, growth mindset, they're going to be able to move forward.
Dave Sinclair: The people that are more open, the people that are reaching out, and do you know what? The people that start working on this stuff sooner than later. I'll bring up a little story here. A client, we'll call him... let's call him Paul, okay? Not his name, but working with Paul, and he's got a decent sized company, somewhere around 100 employees, I think. I don't know what the revenue is right now. I'm not going to guess at that. There's a few companies balls. Anyways, talking to him, and he's kind of at that midpoint.
Dave Sinclair: Paul's around 40-ish, somewhere around that age, and he had a crisis, okay, and started wondering, "Well, do I need to get rid of the business? Is this what's creating all the stress?" Well, we started working with him, and we started taking a look at it, and one of the things he looked at is I had him do an exercise to take a look at, sell, how much time do you spend in the business? What are the [inaudible 00:28:56]? What are you basically doing a week, inside and outside the business? Okay?
Dave Sinclair: So, he started realizing... he started coming up with this list of all the things that he does in the business. This is a great exercise for people to do, by the way. He started coming up with a list of things that he did within the business. Okay? We met again the following weekend and he said, "Dave, I..." I said, "Well, what do you notice?" He said, "I've got things that other people can be doing." I said, "Cool." He was looking for more time to live a life outside of his business. That was the premise, because he was kind of stressed out, so he was looking for more time.
Dave Sinclair: He starts doing all this... he recognizes all these tasks other people can do, Jason, and I said, "Well, what are you going to do?" He says, "Well, I mean, I start seeing if they can start doing it." We meet again, he goes out there, he comes up with a plan, he comes back the next week, and I said, "What do you notice?" He said, "Well, I went and started talking to these people." Said, "Not only can they do it, but they're excited to do these tasks that I absolutely dread." He starts putting that in place and that moves forward.
Dave Sinclair:About a month goes by. He comes back and I say, "How are things going?" He says, "Well, I've kind of slowed things down. I had people doing this." He says, "I don't know what's going on. I just feel stuck. I can't get people to do it. I'm uneasy," and we coached around this for a little while, and he came up with a realization. He says, "Well, these things were filling my time, Dave." Well, he's looking for time. "These things were filling my time." We went a little deeper and he realized, "I'm scared to have the time because I don't know what to do outside of this."
Dave Sinclair: This was a guy that came to me. It's sometimes a bait and switch how I have to do things, Jason, okay? I have to let the client just be the client and just move through things, because no, he didn't have a problem. He had everything figured out in his personal life and all this stuff, right? He was good. At least he figured he was. Going through this task to create more time, so he could have even more time to live his life, then he realized, I don't have enough things in my life that I could enjoy.
Jason Pereira: [crosstalk 00:30:35].
Dave Sinclair: Anyways, so we started doing that. He starts figuring out all these other things that he can do to start moving forward, and we're still kind of working together, but things now are moving much better for him. He's got more things to do. Small things, not huge steps, but small things, and reconnecting with things that are really important to him. Now, what's happening within his business? Again, this guy's 45 years old. What do you think is happening inside his business with these people that are...
Jason Pereira: It's doing better than it was before.
Dave Sinclair: Doing better than... in these times right now. People are more engaged. Everything's going forward. He's starting to live the life that he wants. He's feeling more comfortable. He's building an identity outside the business, and the result of him building that identity outside the business, and having the people inside the business that can do it, can even take more time off, what do you think the result is in terms of transition preparedness? I'll use that word. Transition preparedness.
Jason Pereira: Well, now he's super prepared for transition, because he's worked on his life outside of it. He's also... I like to call succession planning the art of making oneself irrelevant. A truly valuable succession plan is one where, by the time you're ready to leave, you're no longer needed, and that's fine, right? You should be happy about that because the end goal is freeing yourself, and that should be it, I find that succession plans that fail, are those people who cannot... who's egos cannot let them go, let themselves, basically, do something else, right?
Jason Pereira: Or they find someone who's actually better than what they were at doing that, especially in my business as an advisor. Imagine you find an advisor, and, oh, this person I thought I was going to train is actually better at this than I ever was. Then suddenly, they feel like, but if I do that, I'm going to look... if I transition to this person, I'm actually going to look bad, right? That happens all the time, right? Getting your ego out of the way is the most important thing. I think I said before, that thinking that there isn't someone... that you're the best at everything, and there isn't somebody, so let's call it...
Jason Pereira: Let's look at the Olympics, right? The men and women who win the gold medal in the decathlon, they are the best all round athletes in the world. Could they win a single gold medal in that individual different categories of the 10 things that they do? Heck, no. In fact, they typically wouldn't make the finals. So, the generalist versus the specialist, those are two very different things. If you're scaling a business, you start building a team of specialists as opposed to generalist. Yeah, exactly. If you do that over a line, a period of time, by the time you're ready to exit, it's like, it's done. It's not even a question.
Dave Sinclair: Way better. So, coming back to the question you asked, which kind of people have been assessed this? It's like this client here. The people that are open to explore these questions, to explore the deeper questions, the why behind it. For this one client, why is it that he started feeling uncomfortable? He was willing to explore that and get a little vulnerable. I create that safe space for people where they can explore and go a little deeper. So, to answer the question, which clients do I find have a better chance of creating this life outside the business? I think it's the ones that really are willing to open it up, open up to the question and do the deep inner work that's going to be required to build that identity. It's funny, once you find the identity...
Jason Pereira: Right. It's funny... Yeah, what's with the identity? It's easy, right? It's funny. I've done Strategic Coach training with Dan Sullivan, and one of the things they have there is a basic construct of free days, focus days and flex days. One of the first things they make you do is that you have to take free day. You have to take at least one free day per week. End of story. That free day involves you not looking at anything to do with work, thinking about work. Get away with it. Like, get away from it. It was funny because I'm like, okay, no problem.
Jason Pereira: I'm good to go, but the number of people in that room who struggled with that, and the... I was like, why are we dwelling on this for two hours, right? Just stop working for a day. They'd be like, "But, so I can't look at my email? I shouldn't look at... but how do I stop thinking about my..." It's just, they could not get outside of it. You could see visual... you could see distress at just the concept of it. That's how attached these people work.
Jason Pereira: For some of us, it was like, yeah, no problem. Whatever, right? It's funny, just to share another personal example of my story. I'm involved in a ton of things, right? I've got my core business, which was working very well. I've got into the podcasting, blogging, volunteer association short ministry, FinTech stuff, and every just... I've got a wife and two kids who still choose to love me and stay with me, despite all this stuff I do. Everybody's just like
Dave Sinclair: Wow.
Jason Pereira: ... "How, in God's name, do you do all that?" I'm like, "Why is it you seem to think that I actually do all the work? I don't think you understand this. I work on making my business, my core business super efficient. It gets down to the point where I can take something else on that I'm passionate about, and then I make it that highly streamlined and efficient, and just, the family time is always there, right? Every now and then, it gets poked upon, but my wife makes sure that there's enough of it there. Otherwise, she tells me there's not enough. Yeah, so it's a matter of... there's always a better, faster, stronger way to do things, and frankly, if you can't automate it, give it to someone else. There's probably someone else who could be better at it.
Dave Sinclair: Well, and then have the security. I mean, if you think about it, what allows you? When you talk about that, the people that were having the challenge taking that day off, the people that have the challenge letting go, or letting someone else do it. I don't know. What is the strength that you have, or what's the value that you rely on, or whatever it might be, Jason, that allows you to do that?
Jason Pereira: Yeah. I mean, that's the finding that. One of the other things he focuses on is the idea that we have it backwards, and what he means by we have it backwards is, we work ourselves to the point of exhaustion, then go on vacation. We come back, we're super highly productive, and then we work ourselves until exhaustion and we need another vacation. He's like, think of it differently. If you focus on, I'm going to take the vacation first to be productive, and then before I go over that cliff, I'm going to take another vacation, because I can come back and be more productive.
Jason Pereira: Because it's the old saying, if you're surrounded by... if you think everybody around you is an idiot, odds are they're not. You're just basically overstressed. You've gotten to the point where you find yourself saying, no one can do anything right, except me. Check your ego. It's actually you that basically needs to start looking at things differently. Before we go, I want you to talk about your book. Tell me about your book.
Dave Sinclair: Sure.
Jason Pereira: What it is you're trying to accomplish with it, and when it comes out?
Dave Sinclair: Yeah, the book, hopefully, it's coming out here in the next, I'd say month or so, or just in the final stages of typeset. What I'm trying to accomplish with it, the book is called Numb?, Numb with a question mark. It's really speaking to those... with business owners out there that... business owners, career professionals, or just anyone out there that's just stuck on that hedonic treadmill, just going around in circles and circles and just chasing happiness for the sake of chasing happiness, happiness around that corner. The book is really there, and it talks about my journey. It talks of what's kind of worked for me, some of the stuff that I've read.
Dave Sinclair: My on take on it. It talks about those four stages. Where are you now, where do you get to, how do you get there, how do you keep on track? Then for business owners, it breaks it down into what I think is the most valuable... not the biggest value ever, at least within an organization, is a business owner who understands who they are both inside the business and outside the business. The book is a practical method for you to create a little bit of a strategic plan for your ideal life, your ideal business and your ideal transition.
Dave Sinclair: The first part of the book is kind of talking about what led up to it, and the second part of the book is a workbook that can help you go through creating a little bit of a plan for your ideal life, your ideal business and your ideal transition. Which really, for a business owner, those are three legs on a stool. You have to have a good plan of your life. You have to have a good plan for your business so it creates the value to support that life, and allows you to live that life and practice it like we talked about.
Dave Sinclair: You still have to have a good transition plan in place, so that when the time comes, you can extract that capital out of the business, so that you can move on to the next stage of your ideal life. That's kind of what the books about, and yeah, hopefully within the next month, I can be there. Yeah, I'm excited about it. Excited, nervous. It's a big job to create a book. It's been a little bit of a process. It's a bit of a process just to put yourself out there and talk about your own journey. Right?
Jason Pereira: Yeah, I mean, you expose yourself quite well, but I mean, I think nothing resonates with people more than hearing someone who's actually been through it, compared to anything else. I will say this much, and I think I've said it before here, or I said it elsewhere. Someone who does a lot of writing, every time I think of writing a book, I understand more and more why Hemingway became an alcoholic. It is a painful, painful ordeal. So, with that, Dave, I want to thank you for the sincere conversation, for a very important one. I'm sure, for anyone who feels like this is sounding familiar to them, in terms of the negative aspects of this, I highly suggest you pick up Dave's book. Where can people find you?
Dave Sinclair: Sure, they find me... Probably the best website to find me at right now is just davesinclair.ca. I'm slowly transitioning everything over to that website right now. I still have the website, Business Transition btplus.ca, too, as well, but davesinclair.ca, you can find the book on there. You can reach out. You can book a discovery session with me, a complimentary discovery session, if this sounds like it's relevant, so yeah. By all means, reach out. I love [crosstalk 00:39:09] topics. I love having them. It's kind of my journey to help people see that the destination can be fulfilling, a little bit more fulfilling, but more importantly, that the journey and the destination can be both fulfilling along the way.
Jason Pereira: Excellent. Well, thank you very much, Dave, and I'd like to thank everybody for coming out and for listening to this podcast, and thanks for Dave coming out and sharing such an intimate story. For those of you who enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you [inaudible 00:39:36] your podcast. Until next time, take care.
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