The Exit Mindset

Most founders say they want an exit. Far fewer talk honestly about the moment you realize your partners are no longer aligned, your lead pipeline is changing, and the business you built is quietly becoming harder to carry.

We’re joined by Angela Poynton, a Philadelphia marketing leader who launched her agency in 2017, navigated a partner buyout, and later sold the firm after taking it to market and sorting through multiple offers. We unpack what happens when a partnership that once solved business development starts to shift, and how learning sales, networking, and visibility becomes essential for agency growth. Angela also shares how she built the support system she needed: mentors, EO and EO Accelerator peers, and the professionals who helped her stay steady through an emotional, high-stakes decision.

From valuation disagreements to bank financing and personal guarantees, we get specific about the mechanics of a partner buyout and the reality of running a services business where “sweat equity” eventually turns into real dollars. Then we walk through the M&A process for a marketing agency: deciding to sell while performance is strong, choosing between private equity and strategic buyers, living through months of due diligence, and designing a transition that protects clients, team members, and your own next chapter.

If you’re thinking about a business exit strategy, selling a services business, or preparing your company for acquisition, you’ll leave with clearer trade-offs and a more realistic path forward. Subscribe, share this with a founder who’s building for an exit, and leave a review with the biggest question you have about selling your business.

Transcript

Welcome And Why Exits Matter

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello and welcome to How is I supposed to know that? This is a podcast designed for entrepreneurs. Uh we entrepreneurs, we small business owners all know what it's like to grow and scale a company, and we want things uh to go really well all the time. Uh and unfortunately that's not always the case. So this is a safe space where we get to talk about uh the uh the both the joys and the pains of that entrepreneurial experience uh and uh all those things that are associated with it, and the lessons learned along the way. For a lot of small business owners, the the holy grail is the exit. And the reason that we get up and we grind and we work and we scale is so that we can eventually leave the business on our own terms. Uh that's the goal for Median entrepreneurs. Uh and uh today uh we are privileged uh here on the podcast uh to be joined by somebody who's gone through that journey uh and uh is willing to uh to share her experiences and talk about some lessons learned. Uh please welcome uh my my friend Angela Poynter. Welcome, Angela.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Thank you so much, Bernard. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

I'm really happy to have you here. You are someone in the Philadelphia entrepreneurial community who's um ubiquitous. I mean, you've uh you've accomplished so much, four-time uh winner of the Philadelphia 100 award, um uh an um enterprising woman of the year award, uh and a client author, a speaker, someone who's you know volunteers everywhere that I have, but I see volunteering everywhere. It's amazing. Uh not quite sure where to begin in terms of an introduction. So maybe I should leave it to you uh to introduce yourself and just uh tell the audience a little bit about who you are.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Sure. My name is Angela Poynton, and I've been working in the field of marketing really since I got out of school. I um have always resided, at least post-secondary education, resided in the Philadelphia area and really started. I didn't start my entrepreneurial journey until about 2017, but started

Angela’s Path Into Entrepreneurship

SPEAKER_01 2:05

working in different marketing departments internally at companies and also at advertising agencies. And then eventually my career took me to starting my own agency again in 2017, and as you stated, exited that agency in 2024. And then now I'm I'm still in the marketing world. I'm doing marketing consulting for a few select companies. Um, but yeah, that's my journey up until this point at a high level.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

That's great. Thanks so much for that. Uh so uh I'd love to go a little bit deeper and and um just learn more about your experiences at each of those points. Uh so um, so you said that you started your company at in 2017. Was that your first entrepreneurial experience?

SPEAKER_01 2:56

That was. Well, I dabbled in starting little tiny micro businesses before then. So I guess I had an entrepreneurial spirit. I just didn't know, I was so naive as to what it took to start a company, how to grow it, how to scale it. Um, for instance, I started a products company that was an e-commerce company. Uh maybe sold 20 products total, and then decided I'm gonna shut this down, but I built the whole website. And so I learned a lot through that experience. I did some freelancing up until then on the side. So I was helping other entrepreneurs with their marketing here or there, getting paid for it. But it wasn't until 2017 that I started a company that really had the foundation to be able to grow in scale. And what happened was I was working for a marketing agency. I had started at the ground floor and had climbed the ranks. Ironically, I was there for about seven years, which is about exactly how how long I owned my own, but I climbed the ranks up until the point of potentially becoming partner. So we were starting those discussions. I was about to have my second son. I was at a crossroads, and the crossroads was either go all in and become partner or leave. And it was pretty drastic difference between those. I didn't really feel like there was a middle road anymore. I had done everything that I wanted to there. And after having my son and being home for a while, I decided I really wanted to leave. So I did go back, but I went back part-time. And while I was part-time, I was, you know, doing some of that freelancing more starting to think about my own gig and uh hired my replacement, exited, still friends with my replacement to this day, but exited that company by you know politely declining being a partner of that marketing agency. I then again did some freelance here and there until the partners of that agency, there were two of them, came knocking on my door and said, Hey, would you like to start an agency together? A whole new LLC, different brand. They still own that agency that I used to work for. And the reason why they approached me was because they were starting to swim upstream, doing bigger client engagements with larger enterprise level clients, and they were still well known in the entrepreneurial community and were attracting leads um for clients they, you know, frankly, didn't want to serve anymore. But it was a shame to throw them away. So they had a brilliant idea. Why don't we see if Angela's up for running the operations of an agency? We'll funnel the leads that we're getting from this one to that agency, and it was great. We set up our operating agreement, we formed a partnership, and I instantly solved the business development challenge that most small businesses have when they're first starting out. So I didn't have to worry about lead generation, I really had to worry about financial

A Partnership That Solved Sales

SPEAKER_01 6:40

management, operational management, building a team and serving the clients, which was all the things that I was really good at and had done for somebody else until then I could just do it for myself now.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

So before you this is this is great, but before you continue, I want to know how you solve the the revenue problem because that's relevant to almost anybody that's just listening to this, including myself. So to the extent that you're willing to share, what what what how'd you do it?

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Well, I had a I was able to cheat, and my cheat was that they were funneling all the leads to me. I just had to field the discovery calls. I could still bounce, you know, they were my business partners, so I could ask them about makeup of proposal, scope of work, those sorts of things, which I largely didn't lean on them for. And then I just was responsible for delivering the work. But literally multiple times a week, I would get an email from my partners that would say, We just talked to this prospect, they are not a fit for our agency, meaning the one they owned. Right, they're a fit for this one. Here you go. Here's a warm introduction. And we had a great, great system of doing that and funneling leads to this new LLC for I would say the first three years, it was fabulous.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

That's great. Uh so what happened after Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

So then, like many things, it wasn't great. And what started happening, um, you know, whether it was because of the economy or different things that they changed in their own agency, I don't know. But the leads were not coming in. So that business development um secret that I had going for me started to dissipate and disappear. And more and more uh it was on me to generate leads, right, for the organization. And so it wasn't that was not in our contract together. It was clearly stated that that was their responsibility. But of course, I was addicted to growth at that point. I wasn't gonna let things decay or decline. I wanted to keep growing. Um, and one of the things that I, in a naive way, thought, Bernard, when I started this agency with them is I'm gonna sell this someday. Like I just knew from day one, which was a ridiculous thought to have when the agency's worth zero dollars or fifty dollars or whatever. But I was hell bent on getting to that point somehow, somehow. So after about three years, the the leads were not funneling in. I was looking at month over the month performance, and I was scratching my head and saying, okay, I'll go out and start speaking, I'll write a book, I'll, you know, do the things that are gonna help shake the trees and generate leads, even though contractually it wasn't, you know, stated as my responsibility, right? And so I naturally went into that. I had no experience with sales other than fielding calls and like presenting proposals. I didn't have lead generation experience. So I started tapping my network. My network was getting better and better at that point, and I was then actively contributing to growth of the organization over, I would say, year four into year five of the um business. It was growing well. I believed it had a lot of potential, but I was tired. I was tired of like wearing all the hats and um having business partners where I felt

When Lead Flow Stopped

SPEAKER_01 10:50

like there was it was beginning beginning to become the equal balance was off, right? And so I really would that was became the number one thing on my mind, you know, as you're washing dishes or you're folding laundry or you're driving in the car, you're thinking about the challenges that your business face. That's what I was thinking about all the time in that era of my life. This feels unfair. I'm doing all the things. What do I do?

unknown 11:22

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

And the what do I do was the hardest part of that for me because these two people who I still love and care about deeply were very important in my life. I had worked for them for a long time at the agency that they still owned. One of them I worked at a job even before that. He was my um VP of marketing when I was very young in my career. So it was a lifelong professional friendship.

unknown 11:55

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Um, that was going deeper and deeper as far as the strength of the relationship. And I knew the moment that I said the words, I need to buy you out, or I want to buy you out, it jeopardized that. And so I don't know about you or your listeners, but for me, I need to be a thousand percent certain before I do anything. I am a high fact finder, I like to get all my ducks in a row. And so you too, yeah. So I hired a mentor to help me through this, somebody who had seen partnerships form and dissolve. I hired a therapist because I really was struggling with the friendship piece of it.

unknown 12:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

And I leveraged EO, the organization that we met through. Um, there my EOA mentor at the time was somebody who had bought and sold businesses who I could really tap into.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

So uh Angela, I know EO, I know EOA. Yeah, that's that's where we met, uh, but not everybody in the audience necessarily does. Would you mind just giving a brief description of what those terms mean?

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Yeah. So entrepreneurs organization is what EO stands for. That's a global organization. There's chapters all over the world. We are in the Philadelphia chapter, which is local to us. But for anyone listening, you know, you can look up their website and find a chapter near you. But in essence, it's a it's a wonderful program for entrepreneurs that um, you know, helps with these challenging things in in a confidential space where you can lean on peers um and get experiences from others and really learn and grow. Um EOA stands for EO Accelerator, which a lot of people start in before graduating to EO. And it's a program designed specifically to help smaller organizations get above the million-dollar mark by working on three, three to four important pillars. And you work with a coach and a mentor, plus three or four other peer um entrepreneurs. That was the program that I was in at the time. And the facilitator of the group that I was in is the person who had bought and sold multiple businesses. And he's definitely still a mentor toward to this day for me. And um, I really leaned on him and his expertise heavily because I was a big basket of emotional nerves, and he brought the outside world perspective and kind of, you know, in my experience, this is how it's been done. Um, that I desperately, desperately needed.

unknown 14:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

So so it sounds like you assembled a pretty big team before you even broached the subject of a buyout from your partners.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

The team was a combination of full-time and part-time people, but yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

And I'm sorry, let me clarify. I didn't mean the the employees in your company. What I mean more is your almost assembled, it sounds like you assembled almost an advisory board of consultants and people that could provide you the support that you needed to get through this process strategically, emotionally. Um all those things.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

All those things. I needed scaffolding, I knew I couldn't do it on my own. And I, you know, that's

Building Support For A Buyout

SPEAKER_01 15:40

very much me. Like check all the boxes and make sure I hear all the opinions and then can distill it down into what feels right. And so I did that for probably about I was seriously thinking about this for about four months, where I was leaning heavily on others, presenting to my group, you know, issues around this, and really was a sponge for any experience shares that people had around this topic.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

So in that four-month period, what was giving you the most anxiety?

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Um, I think two things. I think having the actual conversation and how to remain cool, calm, and collected in a very emotional conversation that I don't know, but I don't think they were expecting. That was one. And two, really understanding what this meant for me from a financial perspective. When you start a services-based business, oftentimes people put set sweat equity into it rather than money. And that was true here. But when you buy out business partners, now you're talking about making a financial investment on yourself that you have to pay. I mean, it was serious, like it was a big chunk of money, and there's personal guarantees. You know, I did a loan through a bank that I had to talk about with my husband. And I hadn't had to have those kinds of conversations in my entrepreneurial life up until then. Everything else was bootstrapped and just sweat.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Right. So you knew that. Uh so there's a very real relational part of this that you mentioned. I think that's important to talk about. Uh, but then there's also a financial component of it uh that uh sounds like it was the first time you're going through something like this. And uh and uh that must have been uh quite a learning curve as well.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

It was, yeah. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it was I did not take out an SVA loan. It was a regular bank loan. I can't quite remember to this day why uh been too long, but um, you know, it was I looked at what the monthly payment on the loan would be. I looked at what the net profit was on a historical monthly basis. I looked at, you know, we did like um dividend sharing, profit sharing amongst the three of us. So I looked at what that was again. Like I gotta find all the facts before making a decision. So it became a math. Like, am I willing to bet on this? And I knew that what helped that situation was the growth, despite the challenges with lead generation that were happening. The growth was great. So it didn't give me pause. Of course, you know, the world could fall out from under anybody.

unknown 18:58

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Entrepreneurship is a roller coaster, but if it had been Rocky, I would have been even more challenged to make that decision. Luckily, it wasn't.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

So um so you so you so you're you do your patch binding and you're working with your advisors over this four-month period, uh, and eventually you're you're ready to have that conversation. Um, what was that like? Did you um did you schedule a meeting? Did you, you know, did you do it at a restaurant or did it be public?

SPEAKER_01 19:29

It was over Zoom.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

It was over Zoom. I was sweating profusely, but trying to smile and be calm and professional, it didn't go great. Um, so we had in our agreement, in our operating agreement, that if anybody ever wanted to buy one another out, you know, we'd come up with a valuation and kind of both

Valuation Conflict And Third Party Help

SPEAKER_01 19:55

sides would do a valuation and then we'd meet in the middle. Well, I presented what I thought the valuation was, and it wasn't received well. So we were stuck. And what we decided is that we needed a third-party validate valuation of the company. And that's ultimately how I met the MA agency that I would sell the agency through. There was an agency in New York called Barney at the time. Now they're called Merge, and they specialize in MA deals for marketing agencies. And so uh my two partners had known of them. I had heard of them, but never really like connected with them. But I did. And at the time, I'm sure they don't do this now. At the time, they were willing to perform a free valuation, and so it was really easy to obtain. It allowed us to agree on this um valuation for the organization, and then part ways for me at that point. I was not willing to continue the partnership anymore. So the only two options that we had on the table is me buying them out or us all three selling it together, which would have been very challenging because there's different flavors of how you exit an organization who you sell to. And I'm sure we all would have had different opinions of what that looked like. So luckily it worked out that I bought them out in 24 and off we went. I'm sorry, 22.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

22.

unknown 21:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Um, so what was it a relief that to have them removed from from from the company or you you're nodding yes?

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yes, because um, I think the buyout process, like Getting an agreement together and you know, agreeing on the valuation, and all of that work from the moment I said I want to buy you out was a handful of months. So I had been thinking about it for four months and preparing, and then the whole process took for argument's sake another four months before we settled. It probably was a little faster than that. It was all I thought about. Uh, you know, every moment between running the business and just personal life, that is what I was thinking about, and it was upsetting. And so it was a massive relief when it was over. I didn't realize how draining something like that is on a business's ability to perform, especially when the leader is the one being drained.

unknown 22:56

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

As soon as that deal went through, that was uh we closed on that late spring, early summer of 2022. The last half of the year was bananas. And the first half of 2023 was even better. So it was all this any energy that was putting into like negative things or things that were distracting me, all of a sudden could be put into complete re-energy energy of sales and networking and speaking and all the activities that ultimately end up helping a business.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Right. That's amazing. It's amazing how it changes energy and

Relief After Buying Partners Out

SPEAKER_00 23:40

it can can make such a dramatic impact like that. Yeah. So um, so your so your business is a banana is everything is going really well. Uh you're you're you're in a groove, and at a certain point, uh you you decide to to to exit.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

Can you talk me through that?

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Mm-hmm. So that experience did burn me out a little bit from an energy perspective. We had great growth, and we the problems that we were starting to have were we've got clients to handle, bigger clients, and we don't have the team yet. So everything is stressful in the business, like it's never perfect. You never have like one deal close exactly when you hire someone, and you know, it never works out exactly like that. And so there's always a balance of too many clients, not enough people, too many people, not enough clients. And so I was starting to get um a little burnt on the growth uh volume, right? And how fast that was. And I at that time, remember when I started it, I knew I wanted to sell it. I was starting to become, I think, through the buyout of the partners, become more of a student of exiting a business. So I started listening to podcasts on that. I became more curious and read books about it. I started talking to people who had sold businesses more and more. So that was my little like tiptoe into that space. And I just started sponging, sponging, sponging. And what I learned, and everybody knows this, but it became so real to me through the different stories I was listening to on podcasts and such that you really need to sell when you're doing well. That you don't want to wait until you're not doing well to decide, right? And so we were doing so well, and on paper, it was a beautiful story. And I started getting curious, you know, is now the time. They never tell you that you don't know when you're up. It's very easy to know when you're down because you've been up and you've gone down, but how do you know you're not gonna be up more in another quarter or another six months or a year? And so I was like, well, I'm never gonna know what the future has in store. I think I should reconnect with that evaluation firm and just see what they have to say. So in October of 2023, which was only a year and a half after I bought the two partners out, I decided to take a train ride to New York City and meet with them, had an hour meeting, went I had sent them some stuff in you know earlier. So we went through everything, talked through how it would work, and they didn't say anything to make me feel like I shouldn't sell right then, which was kind of the approach that I is, you know, as I'm taking the train up there. I'm like, I I don't take a

Learning To Sell While Ahead

SPEAKER_01 26:55

meeting like that or do a meeting like that just because you know, you kind of have intent with it. So on the elevator ride down, I'm like, this is it, we're doing it. So worked out the details of the contract with them, probably took a week, and it was on the market and listed by early November.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Wow, that's a quick turnaround, sounds like yes. Uh so uh so once it's on the market, what what happened after that?

SPEAKER_01 27:25

It was a good uh it was a good story, so it attracted a lot of interest. I ultimately put it on the market in early November, had five offers before the holidays, so like mid-December. Started looking through those offers. They were different mixes and flavors, different types of buyers, some PE buyers, some buyers who wanted an agency or already owned an agency. Um, so I looked through all five of those with them and then ultimately signed off on the LOI that was the most appealing to me, which was another marketing agency that was growing through acquisition. Um I liked that.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

I'm sorry, some definitions in place here. Uh PE uh stands for private equity, uh, and LOI stands for letter of intent. That's a document that that attorneys use to signify a buyer's interest in selling a property or orgasm. Um sorry, sorry to drop you, Angela, but please.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

No, that's not good. Good. I'm glad. The the buyer that I ended up selecting was an agency who was growing through acquisition. I liked that. That felt good to me. The PE model did not feel good to me personally. Um, one, I felt like I was too small for it. So I would be like the small person in their whole portfolio mix, and I I don't love that. Two, all well, I think there were two PE buyers. They wanted me to hang on and to work in the company for another three years. I was ready to be out. So I selected that buyer because I liked the structure of it, but also he only asked for a 90-day transition once it closed. So we started due diligence, which is where they look at all your reporting, accounting, finances, team, all the things. That whole process took seven months. And at the end of May 2024, it was closed. We were done.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

So um where did you do it? Well, so you you closed, you uh was it a physical was the closing physical? Was everybody actually there in the same room, or was it all done electronically?

SPEAKER_01 29:58

We we were a remote company. This person was in Denver. He did fly out the day after we closed, flew out

Offers, LOI, And Picking A Buyer

SPEAKER_01 30:10

that night, and we had talked about doing this ahead of time. We just didn't know what the date was going to be. So he bought a ticket and flew out to Philadelphia, and we did meet in person for two or three days and really worked through the details of the client, introduced him to the team, all again, all via Zoom. But he and I and the head of you know the agency, the the operations, my second in command, met in a conference room doing that time period.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

So once the the deal was was completely done, um and uh what was the first thing you did? Did you did you celebrate? Did you go on a vacation? Uh what happened?

SPEAKER_01 30:57

Yeah, it was a crazy time of year or time in my life. My son, my oldest son, was graduating high school. I think graduation was eight days after the day of closing. But on the day of closing was the day that they bus all the seniors to their elementary schools that they went to, and they do the clap out with the kindergartners and the teachers that you know some of them had. And I went to that, it was extremely emotional for a lot of reasons. There was a lot of change, a lot of celebration. It was all good emotions. Um, so I did that literally that afternoon. Um, and then we had planned a trip to Portugal as a family, and I didn't know how that was gonna happen with the close date, but it worked out nicely. It was about a month after we closed. So I had some time to just work on transitioning to him. But that vacation was phenomenal. It was the first vacation I had ever taken in, I think, since at some point in our careers, we started using laptops before then. Like you'd go on a vacation, your desktop would be back at your office, you wouldn't slap it with you. So it had been years since I had not taken a laptop on vacation, and that was phenomenal. So good. It's not supposed to be yes.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

Uh so how long was it months? Was it days? How long after your business sold? Did you did you wait before rejoining the the workforce in some capacity?

SPEAKER_01 32:38

I had had a separate LLC for what I'm doing now, which is fractional marketing officer consulting. The whole time I owned 11 out of 11, which was the name of my marketing agency. And I only let myself handle like one client at a time while I owned the agency. It was my way of still staying connected with client work, which as you run a business and you grow in scale, you get further and further from the clients, the marketing problems, solving those problems, those sorts of things. And I really, I mean, that was my degree, my career. I didn't want to totally remove myself. What that meant, however, is I had a client that I was working with, and I needed to continue to serve that client. And so I really was working from day one. Now, I think that was a good thing for me. The more and more I talk to other people who have exited their business, they

Due Diligence And The Final Close

SPEAKER_01 33:40

take a big long vacation, they go to the woods or the lake or the beach or whatever's spiritual to them, and then they start getting antsy. And so even though I worked consistently, I have not gotten that antsy feeling. I think that it has brought me instant balance and boundaries where I'm not ever interested. Maybe I'll eat my words and listen to this podcast in five years. Be like, hmm, I was wrong. But at this moment and then I have not been interested in starting another company that's gonna grow in scale again.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

Yeah. Uh so uh it's actually a great transition uh for you to tell us a little bit more about what you are doing.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

Yeah, so my company is just pointing companies. That's the name of the LLC, but in essence, it's just me. People hire me as a coaching and a consultant where they don't have a full marketing department with leadership yet. They don't have somebody in the seat where it's driving marketing strategy and planning and what should our metrics be, those sorts of things. They bring me in fractionally on a part-time basis to be in that leader seat. And the work that makes me very happy is when I can eventually help them hire my replacement. That's my favorite part of it. It's kind of the capstone for me for a client relationship is to work on that recruitment as well, that hiring, making sure the person's a culture fit, and then training them and offboarding myself after that. It's usually about a two to three year engagement. I work with companies who do B2B sales and marketing. I don't know anything about B2C, always wanted to, never did in my career work for a B2C company. So companies like professional services companies, manufacturing, those sorts of things.

unknown 35:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

And still to this day, I'm only working with a tiny, tiny handful of clients at a time.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

Uh that's that's great. Uh are there any upcoming projects or initiatives you want to tell people about?

SPEAKER_01 36:04

One thing that I'm

Celebration, Family Milestones, Portugal

SPEAKER_01 36:05

also doing that I think is a bit of a niche within this space, is I'm helping other companies with their own MA transactions. So either advising them through my own experiences and all the things that I've learned about this world, andor helping them through it from a communications perspective. Because whenever you do a strategic change like that, if you're making an acquisition or you're, you know, merging or selling off a division of the company, communication is key. How you position that to team members is what keeps a lot of entrepreneurs up at night around that topic. But then your partners, your vendors, your clients, most importantly, if you're big enough, you know, the outside world and media. So I've taken on a few of those projects that's selling my business, and I absolutely love them.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

That's great. And you're the perfect person to talk about that. Thank you. So um, so before we close here, do you uh have any parting words of wisdom from your experiences that to share with the audience? Maybe thinking about an exit.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

Yes, I think a couple of things. One, know that it is possible, believe that it is possible. We work so hard to build these businesses and they are assets. They there's a fact and figure. Um, I saw a certified exit planner speak. A huge percentage of entrepreneurial businesses, I can't remember the exact percentage, don't get sold. They just dissolve and end, which is a shame and a huge vacuum of value in our overall economy.

Fractional Marketing Leadership After Exit

SPEAKER_01 37:55

But most of all, for the entrepreneur and their family themselves, building an asset that you can sell creates generational wealth. It makes huge ripple effects in people's lives from the buyers' lives, the employees' lives, the clients' lives. And it is worth educating yourself about and learning more about. I encourage anybody to become a student of that. And there's not a lot of material out there, so that's a good news and a bad news. Good news is you don't have to read a whole lot because not a lot exists. The bad news is it seems to be a little bit of a secret that only a few people know about, but there are podcasts and other things that people can, you know, tap into and learn more about. That would be number one is to really like learn about that. Get yourself educated. Number two is, you know, I just like the name of your podcast, like it is a rocky road. It's an emotional road. Selling a business is very, very emotional, but there's people out there that can help you through that. You know, there are advisors, coaches, people who've done it before are extremely generous with their time.

Exit Lessons And How To Connect

SPEAKER_01 39:10

Even if you're, you know, like I was very young in my career, but still hungry for knowledge. I wanted to talk to anybody who is willing to share their story and experience with me. And that was extremely helpful.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

That's great. And you know, and I want to thank you for sharing your your experiences with with me and the listening audience here. Uh, you've you've added to the to the curriculum, uh, to the resources that are out there for people who are considering this. So what are what are uh say thank you again for that? Uh if anybody would like to follow up with you, uh to maybe to pick your brain or to or even to hire you, uh, what's the the best way to get in touch?

SPEAKER_01 39:48

The best way is probably either LinkedIn or my website. So I'm on LinkedIn, it's just Angela Poynton. Pointon is P-O-I-N-T-O-N. Or you can go to my website, which is angela-pointon.com.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Great. Thank you so much, Angela. Angela, this has been a pleasure. I really enjoyed this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

Mine too. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 40:11

Thank you. And this has been another episode of How was I posting it? Bye, everyone.