What Comes After Selling Your Business?

Most entrepreneurs spend years building toward success—but very few think about what comes after it.

In this episode of The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast, Brad breaks down what happens after the exit—and why so many entrepreneurs feel lost once the business no longer needs them. Whether you’re planning a passive exit, financial exit, or simply building a company that can run without you, success without a plan for what’s next can leave you stuck.

Brad shares how to define your “next mountain” before you sell by focusing on purpose, passion, and people. He also unpacks the shift from success to significance—and why clarity around what comes next is what makes real freedom possible.

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About Brad Sugars
Internationally known as one of the most influential entrepreneurs, Brad Sugars is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and the #1 business coach in the world. Over the course of his 30-year career as an entrepreneur, Brad has become the CEO of 9+ companies and is the owner of the multimillion-dollar franchise ActionCOACH®. As a husband and father of five, Brad is equally as passionate about his family as he is about business. That’s why, Brad is a strong advocate for building a business that works without you – so you can spend more time doing what really matters to you. Over the years of starting, scaling and selling many businesses, Brad has earned his fair share of scars. Being an entrepreneur is not an easy road. But if you can learn from those who have gone before you, it becomes a lot easier than going at it alone.

Please click here to learn more about Brad Sugars: https://bradsugars.com/

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Transcript

The Empty Summit After Success

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This is an interesting challenge and I'd like to address it up front because if you're planning to sell your business, you need to start thinking about this now. Many entrepreneurs hit that summit and then feel empty. Because I believe a business should be a vehicle to help you have a great life rather than business being your life. Will you really push through and get to the success that you want? Now what do I mean by your next mount? Think of it in one of three ways purpose, passion, or people. So what happens after you've made it? What happens after you've built a business that can run without you, or you've even gone to a financial exit and you've got the business and it's sold? Well, this is an interesting challenge, and I like to address it up front because if you're planning to sell your business, you need to start thinking about this now. So many entrepreneurs hit that summit and then feel empty. They hit the point of, well, now the company's running without me, or they've even exited the company totally. And they're like, well, what's next? What do I do? And this, my friends, is what I want you to start thinking about now. If you're planning to sell in the next three years, I want it in your head that you've got to start thinking about what's the distinction about, okay, why am I selling? What am I aiming to do? Or even if you're going to just a passive exit, the difference between success and significance. You know, you probably heard me discuss the three phases of money: learn, earn, return. So the first phase of money is learning. Now, you might still be in that phase where you're watching this podcast to learn because you're on your way to making a bunch of money. You might be right in the middle of earn where you're doing phenomenal. You're making the money, you're doing the good things, you're doing all of that stuff, and you're building and you could build to a passive exit or a financial exit. Or you might be contemplating that final phase of return, meaning, how do I move from success to significance? How do I move from running a great company to contributing to a great community? How do I move from one to the next? Now, there's no reason to say that when you finish building one company, you're done with success. Running one company could lead to a second and a third and a fourth. It could lead to buying many other companies. And that's where you got to go back in the pod and look at the acquisition-focused uh podcasts that we've done here. If you think about what happens for a lot of people once they've done that big exit, and for many times, that exit is literally a financial exit that means you never ever have to work again for the rest of time. And that's phenomenal. Okay. But as a good buddy of mine put it recently, he says, you know, when I get that capital money, I like putting that straight into other investments. And then I go on and keep making more money, type thing. So it's really up to you. But that's what we're discussing here today. So you can think about this and get a feeling for what is next after you finish this business. Now, a lot of people think, oh, you know what, I'm going to do next, I'm going to do nothing. Nope. If you're an entrepreneur and you've been building great companies, pretty good chance doing nothing will not enter your sphere. Okay. It might for a month, three months, maybe, and then you're going to get to a point called being bored. Now, maybe you go off and, you know, do grandparent thing or parent thing or go off and do other stuff. Fantastic. I know for me, the first time I retired, I got heavily involved with uh the kids because my kids were just born. And I got heavily involved in a charity, helping out, running a charity, being on the board, doing those sorts of things to keep me enthused. But I also moved heavily into investing the money that I was making and all of those sorts of things because I had to. So thinking about your next mountain. Now, what do I mean by your next mountain? Think of it in one of three ways: purpose, passion, or people. So when you think about purpose, okay, and I do a full two-day workshop on the subject of purpose because I believe a business should be a vehicle to help you have a great life rather than business being your life. Okay. So developing your purpose, finding, creating, deciding what do I want my life to be about? What do I want this? Why do I have a business? What is the goal of the business? How is it to provide for me, my family, my future? That's a big question for a lot of people. Usually your next mountain will come in one of three areas, as I mentioned, purpose, passion, or people. So the second mountain, second way to look for your mountain might be a passion that you've had. Like you may have always been good at sailing, and you might say, you know what? Once I retire, I'm actually going to go and do it and try and compete in tournaments. Once I do this, I'm going to go and do that. I found another friend of mine who, as he sold his company, he got into the passion of bodybuilding. Because he was like, you know, I've always wanted to, I've never really done it. So he's like, fantastic. Now I've got into that. Interestingly, it led him to another business in longevity and health and all of those sorts of things because he started to see opportunities. And I guess that's the thing for us serial entrepreneurs is that generally when we get invested or interested in something, we find a way to turn it into a profitable enterprise in some way, shape, or form. Or the third area is people. It might be that you decide, you know what, I want to go and coach little league because your kids are playing baseball and you think that's what I'm going to do and have a passion. I know another one of my friends, he literally got into softball with his daughters and he's stayed in, and it's become a massive passion. And uh it'll probably lead to a third career for him if he really wanted it to, because he's become very, very good at. But those three areas are where you're gonna find your next mountain. And whether you're ready to sell today or not, it's something you better start thinking about because you're going to have an exit. You know that. The question is, what are you gonna do next? So I want to touch on the negative side of this, the identity crisis that happens post-success for entrepreneurs. If you're an entrepreneur and you've your identity has been wrapped up in your business, in building your company, in doing the things you do, in becoming that. And I watched it with a friend of mine recently, and now he's just come out of the slump because he's found a new idea, found a new business, he's out building, he's back again, if that makes sense. It's like, you know, he should be wearing a t-shirt that says, guess who's back? Because the slump that he hit, because when the company sold and when things disappeared and he was no longer the CEO, and it was like, where do I go from here? Who am I at this point? Because his identity was CEO of the company. His identity was, and that's a lot of the reason why I say to people, you want to step back and have a semi-passive exit before you get to the financial exit. See, if you can get the company to run without you or be very close to running without you, and you step back and step back and step back, if you're only working one or two days a week and the company is essentially working without you, that post-financial exit is much easier for you. But when I see people going through the identity crisis uh post-exit or post-success, really, because it should be seen as a success. It should be seen as a graduation, you know. But we see it with even young people. They graduate college and now they're into, well, what's next? And they're creating a new identity for themselves, they're having to learn to build who they want to be. And that freedom of having the choice to decide who you want to be, but you've got to decide who you need to be. It's not just the freedom, it's like I get to choose who I want to be. I find often, though, that what gets people out of that slump is teaching or mentoring or philanthropy. It reignites the drive in a lot of people. So if you haven't got something of that now, start thinking about where you can start teaching. Start looking at where you can become a mentor, joining some groups where mentoring becomes a part of it. So you can start all of that knowledge that's in your head, all of those years of building companies and building teams and leadership and management, all of that, if you can give that back to people, it starts to move you in a direction. Joining the board of a charity where you can use your acumen, use your connections to add to that philanthropic nature of yourself and start building it. You know, if I looked at my second mountain, I literally failed at it the first time. There is no two ways about it. Where it was about four weeks into my retirement, I was in my mid-20s. The only other retired person I knew was my dad. You know, so I got into this thing and I just like, I can't do this. I need to get back to work. I need to get back to doing something because I hadn't planned what I was going to do next. So I went back to work the second time around when my daughter was firstborn. I had a charity that I was working with. I actually had something to move into type thing. I almost, I won't say I planned it, but it was dang closer to a plan of exiting than it was to not planning it, if that makes sense. So um it it took me that, but it also took me to recognizing that after business ownership comes investor and comes entrepreneur. So if you haven't read my book, Billionaire and Training, dive into that one because that'll help you understand that those levels are further along the path. I I think that when a lot of people, when they finish up or sell their business, turn their financial success into that second mountain. What do I mean? You can create a home office where you start investing in startups. I know one of the greatest pieces of advice I got when I was younger was keep investing in young people, Brad. As you get older, like I think about it now in my 50s. If I'm investing in people in their 20s and 30s, when I'm in my 70s, they're in their 40s and 50s. They're in power mode when I'm in relax mode type thing. So I keep investing in younger people, but it could be that you turn your legacy work into a structured mission in some way, whether it's a foundation or education, or it could be into a structured uh business model where you start building your wealth assets by investing in other companies, in real estate, in stocks, in whatever area that is. See, the freedom paradox, and it's really interesting that we we think about it. When you can do anything, clarity really matters. When you can choose whatever you want, having clarity matters. Now, I see a lot of the time that the first thing that happens when someone retires from running their own business is that they get stuck right into the whole idea of health and fitness and doing a lot of that. And that's a fantastic thing to get into, obviously, because longevity is a big part of life today. Well, when you have the ability to choose to do anything, it's like going back to when you're a kid and you had to make those big choices of what am I gonna do with my life? Now, I always say to my kids, you don't have to choose what you're gonna do with your life. You have to choose what you're gonna try. You know, try this career, try a bit of that career, try a few different things, and if you like it, stick with it. And if you don't, try something different. I think too many people get stuck in one thing and stay there. The old Jim Rohn saying, if you're not a tree, you don't have roots, you can move. Just get up, move, do something different. Well, when you financially retire, I guess, when you have a passive exit or a full financial exit, you get to choose what you want to do. Now, many of us just go on doing what we know, and that is get back into business, go and do something else in the business realm, but others choose to move to somewhere different. And it's fantastic that you get to have that choice. Here's the thing: you don't have to choose just one thing. You can become good at X and good at Y and do this and a part-time of that. You've got five days a week that you want to keep yourself busy. I guess you might have five things you can do. You know, one day might be dedicated to playing golf each week, and one day might be dedicated to charity work, and one day might be dedicated to your investing, and one day might be dedicated to mentoring young people. You know, you get to choose that. And I think you've got to have clarity, though. You've got to decide what it is you want next. So I think the other thing that I've noticed a lot more is that when someone's had their first round of success, the second mountain, they start to integrate more purpose into their business moves. I think Elon Musk is a perfect example of this, where yes, financial exit from the first business, hundreds of millions. And then he started things that were more on his passion, more on his purpose-driven things, you know, that tunneling companies and rocket ships, getting to Mars, building robots and self-driving cars. Like it's more, he got into things that were more his purpose rather than just business. And I think that if if we try and redefine it in a relatively simple way, a lot of the times with the learn, earn return, we move from that. In fact, we don't make a massive change. If we can just say we redefine the way we look at it, we move from accumulation to more contribution. Now, your first exit might not be enough for you to move from accumulation to contribution. Your first exit might just be the first of many, and you want to get back into the game and start again and go again and buy another company and build that up and do all those different things. Fantastic. But you've got to make a plan now. If you're planning on passive exit or financial exit, I want to see you thinking about what is next? What is the second mountain to climb once I hit that level of success? And only, in my opinion, once you've defined what that second level is, will you really push through and get to the success that you want? I find people that keep stalling the exit or stalling the passive exit because they haven't decided what they want to do next. They stay in the business because they want to feel needed, they want to feel that. Plan what's next so you can experience the success of a passive or a financial exit. If you could define your next mountain in like one sentence or one paragraph, make that your homework for this week from the pod and say, you know what? I'm gonna think about what it is I want to do next. And it might be four or five things that you want to try so that you don't have to define one. You might say, you know what, I think what I'm gonna do is partially start investing in real estate. So I'm gonna have to start studying that. I think partially what I'm gonna do is mentor young people. So I've got to find some places to get into mentoring young people. If that's the way you look at it, then defining your next mountain will help you achieve success on your first mountain. Thanks for joining me on the$100 million podcast. If you've got value from today's episode, make sure you've subscribed and share this with all of your friends. Never miss a strategy that could change your business and your life. And remember, the fastest way to scale is to learn from those who've done it. That's what this show is all about. See you on the next episode.