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Today’s guest on the Mitlin Money Mindset™ podcast is Denise Logan, known as the Seller Whisper. She’s a professional speaker and author of The Seller’s Journey, which is a fable about navigating the emotional obstacles of selling your business. She has spent more than 20 years developing a body of work focused on the intersection of work, money, and meaning, and how it is reflected in the legacies of today’s leaders. For most business owners their business is their baby and just like children leaving the nest, letting a business go presents challenges for many owners. Denise helps people through this process. As you will see, having the proper mindset is a major component to a business owner’s successful exit.

You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in…

  • What is a “Seller Whisperer”? [2:28]
  • How Denise ended up in this line of work [4:52]
  • The identity wrapped up in the “What do you do” question [7:26]
  • How Denise integrates with other professionals that are part of the sale? [11:54]
  • Example of an emotional playdown [14:59]
  • Making sure owners have profitability and success at the same time? [21:11]
  • How mindset plays a large part in the success or failure of the transaction. [26:27]
  • What Denise did today that put her in the right mindset for success? [30:13]

What is a Seller Whisperer and how is she advantageous to a seller’s team?

Selling can be a difficult time in the owner’s life. They are accustomed to running this business every day and knowing everything that’s going on. There is this emotional process of how do they let go and how do they turn clients and staff over to someone else. There is also the issue of our identity being so wrapped up in what we do that outside of work we don’t know who we are. Thoughts of who am I after I sell make letting go even harder.

The lawyer, CPA, investment banker, business broker, or their wealth advisor are supporting the transactional part of letting go of the business, this is something they do again and again. But, for the owner, this is one of the biggest transitions in their life. They will likely only do this one time, and it’s not just business. As a Seller Whisperer, Denise Logan steps into the process of a business sale with an owner to help them navigate the emotional obstacles that could otherwise keep them from being able to harvest the wealth from their life’s work. Her involvement can be the difference between a deal going through and dying at the table.

Planning the end from the beginning

From the very beginning when someone starts a business, Denise believes they should concentrate on what their business is for? Sometimes it’s just a wealth-generating engine, however, it often provides a lot of other pieces for us that we don’t realize or think of. It becomes baggage like our sense of power and who we identify as, it also becomes our place of community.

From the very beginning owners should always be looking at what their exit will be, not just when will they make the money from it, but how to let go? The reality is, not all owners make it to the end of their business, and having an idea along the way of how they will exit helps the process if and when it arises. We often think succession planning or exit planning comes at the end of the business. Denise says that it should actually begin earlier, at the start of the business and that owners should consider how they will plan to exit and what will happen if they can’t work. Thinking about who will take over because businesses if they unexpectedly die or are incapacitated. Very few of the businesses that suffer an unprepared loss are successful even at the fortune 500 level.

What Denise did today that brought her joy and the right mindset?

I always end every show with the same question, because this is the Mitlin Money Mindset™ so that question is “what did you do today that brought you joy and put you in the right mindset for success?” Denise’s answer was pretty awesome.

She said, “Every day I connect with something bigger than me. So, I live in Scottsdale, Arizona. Although, I work with clients all over the US and Canada. I get up every morning and see the sunrise. It helps me to connect with the bigness of things. And before I go to bed every night, I trot myself out into the front yard and I look up at the moon. And I have a little ritual that I do on the full moon, I think about what I want to empty from my life over the next month. What are the things I want to let go of? And on the new moon, I think about what are the things I’m going to add-in. So every night when I go out and look at the moon, I’m coming back to that basic question that I ask myself. What am I letting go of? And what am I inviting in? And that helps me to stay connected to things that are bigger than the small things that can derail our lives.”

What a great mindset indeed. Be sure to check out the show to get all the little nuggets Denise has to offer!

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Denise

Guests on the Mitlin Money Mindset Show are not affiliated with CWM, LLC, and opinions expressed herein may not be representative CWM, LLC. CWM, LLC is not responsible for the guest’s content linked on this site.

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