“A bit of a puzzle around finding the right piece to fit and being willing to say no to the pieces that don’t—that was what got me excited about the M&A process,” says Brenda Jacobsen, the managing director of STS Capital Partners. “The last piece is just creating a win for all because there’s nothing worse than making someone who’s given up or agreed to sell you their life’s work and feeling like they were cheated out of what they feel it was worth,” she adds, emphasizing that transparency and realistic valuations are crucial to prevent either party from feeling shortchanged, thus fostering trust and successful outcomes in M&A deals.

In this episode, Brenda joins Alex Raymond to explore the intricacies of mergers and acquisitions. Brenda shares her extensive experience in M&A, stressing the importance of transparency, realistic valuations, and building strategic partnerships. She attributes much of her professional success to mindfulness and conscious leadership principles, which she learned from the Conscious Leadership Group. These principles have helped her navigate her career with resilience and responsibility.

The episode touches on Brenda’s experiences in the healthcare sector, where she led acquisitions of physician-owned practices, highlighting the importance of trust and transparency in these deals. She advises entrepreneurs to prepare for exits by focusing on profitability, growth, and reducing dependency on the founder. She also shares insights on raising capital and the significance of a supportive community, such as the Young Presidents’ Organization.

Join Alex and Brenda for practical advice and insights on navigating the complexities of M&A, grounded in mindful and conscious leadership principles.

Quotes

• “I have a very high threshold for staying uncomfortable for as long as I need to in order to make decisions. As an entrepreneur and a leader in any company, but especially in earlier stage companies, that is incredibly valuable.” (06:10 | Brenda Jacobsen)
• “One of the things that makes M&A scary, both for companies being acquired and for companies acquiring, is that no matter what you’re buying, you are also buying this talented group of people that make that company work. You may not have plans for all of them to continue on in the new entity, but you need them for a certain amount of time, even if it’s just for the transition. By really thinking people first through that process, it doesn’t have to be hard. It just has to be intentional.” (23:02 | Brenda Jacobsen)
• “I think bringing in outside capital can feel like market validation, but I see it as giving away what you’ve invested blood, sweat, tears, and sleepless nights into, often at a valuation that’s not favorable to you in the future. I try to encourage people to think about using the proceeds from the business to reinvest and grow, even if that means the pace is slower, because then the upside is yours instead of someone else’s.” (42:57 | Brenda Jacobsen)

Links

Connect with Brenda Jacobsen:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendajacobsen/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“Should I stay or should I go? Every founder asks themselves this question at one point or another,” says Alex Raymond, as he tackles the often taboo topic of CEO succession and transition with Evgeny Shadchnev, author of “Startup CEO Succession: A Founder’s Guide to Leadership Transition.” Evgeny shares his experience of stepping down as CEO of Makers, a software developing bootcamp he led for seven years, and discusses a nine-step roadmap for succession planning.

In this episode, Alex and Evgeny emphasize the importance of early and open conversations about succession, addressing fears, and the need for careful planning. Evgeny highlights the emotional challenges founders face, like burnout and loss of identity, and underscores the necessity of recognizing and managing these issues. He also explores post-transition pathways for founders and stresses the importance of supporting the new CEO without undermining them.

Join Alex and Evgeny in this episode to gain valuable insights for strategic and thoughtful planning to support a smooth succession and successful transition.

Quotes

• “What I find really, really meaningful on a personal level is making a difference in someone’s life on a personal level.” (12:20 | Evgeny Shadchnev)
• “One thing I learned since stepping down is that nearly every founder CEO considers it at some point. I was absolutely not an exception. Not everyone chooses to. But everyone asks themselves the question: ‘Am I the right person for the next stage of the journey as the job inevitably changes?’” (21:50 | Evgeny Shadchnev)
• “The job of a founder or CEO really changes over time. And the more the founder reflects on what’s going to come next year or in two years’ time, and the more alignment there is with the board, the higher the chances that a win-win, successful, smooth transition is going to be found.” (24:34 | Evgeny Shadchnev)
• “No one leaves their startup they’ve been running for 10 years full of energy. Nearly everyone needs time to rest and recover, slow down, and just get in touch with what it is that they need deep inside. It’s also important to reflect because founders often quite literally don’t see opportunities ahead of them… So taking time to slow down and rest and reflect on your career options can be invaluable because this moment is truly precious.” (32:02 | Evgeny Shadchnev)
• “CEO succession takes time. The more time you have, the higher the chances that you will have a good succession.” (37:48 | Evgeny Shadchnev)

Links

Connect with Evgeny Shadchnev:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shadchnev/

Website: https://www.evgeny.coach/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“A pivot really is a second chance,” says Jason Shen, author of “Path to Pivot.” In this episode, Alex Raymond talks with Jason about the critical decision-making process of whether to continue, pivot, or close a business. Shen emphasizes leveraging assets and insights to create a market advantage, highlighting the rarity and value of a well-executed pivot.

Jason recounts his shift from writing about resilience to focusing on pivots, inspired by his experiences with his Y Combinator-backed companies, Ridejoy and Headlight. While Ridejoy’s pivot failed, Headlight’s pivot led to a successful exit to Facebook, forming the foundation of his book.

The episode delves into the mental and emotional facets of pivoting, introducing Jason’s “Align, Explore, Commit” framework for systematic pivoting. Jason and Alex also discuss “shooting the zombie,” the tough call to pivot or close a business that can’t meet venture capital expectations.

Insightful anecdotes and practical advice make this episode a valuable guide for entrepreneurs facing pivotal decisions with resilience and strategic thinking.

Jason is offering listeners of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast a discount code for 50% off any version of The Path to Pivot ebook. Just head over to https://jasonshen.gumroad.com/l/path-to-pivot and use code CONSCIOUS to get 50% off.

Quotes

• “If you’re at your wit’s end, if you really have no idea where to go, if the walls start to close in, then maybe a dramatic shift may be more important. And that’s where a pivot comes into play. A pivot is to say ‘What if we change the fundamentals of this business?’ Keeping some parts the same, maybe the team is the same, maybe the product is the same, maybe the market is the same, but you make some other dramatic shift. You go from selling it one time to a lower monthly fee. A business model change is still a pretty meaningful change.” (14:43 | Jason Shen)
• “A good pivot is always based on some kind of new insight. It involves learning something from the world that you’ve already been operating in that certainly gives you a leg up, an advantage, and that’s what you have. You’re able to shift your product, but position it for a new problem, position it for a new market, but sort of retain a lot of the experiences that you’d built, which is super important.” (22:12 | Jason Shen)
• “You have to have insights based on what you’ve developed as a business and assets that you’ve developed that can create some kind of advantage for you so that you can actually win in this market and sort of earn the right to keep playing this game. And the reality is, it takes time to build anything. It takes time to even make an attempt at anything. And so, a pivot really is a second chance.” (32:55 | Jason Shen)

Links

Connect with Jason Shen:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonshen/

Website: https://www.jasonshen.com/

The Path to Pivot: https://jasonshen.gumroad.com/l/path-to-pivot

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“I like to think of life as a trilogy,” says keynote speaker and entrepreneur Keith Roberts. Along with mentor Ryan Avery, Keith set a Guinness World Record for the longest public speaking marathon by a team of two, promoting their co-authored historical novel, “The Eternal Flame: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s Modern Leader.”

Keith joins The Conscious Entrepreneur podcast to share insights from his 30-year practice in Buddhism, founding and selling his company Zenman, and participating in the global nonprofit Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) and MIT’s Entrepreneur Masters Program. He discusses the power of gratitude in creating your ideal life, building effective habits, and the importance of writing down your goals to achieve them faster.

Keith co-created the OAK journal, a 90-day journaling framework with prompts, visualization techniques, and mantras to help keep you on track. He shares his experience of letting go of his first company and the dangers of linking your identity to your business. Learn about the “sunk equity fallacy” and why practicing gratitude is more than just compiling a checklist.

Join Keith and host Alex Raymond as they discuss thought leaders like Joe Dispenza and Ryan Holiday, and explore what’s next in Keith’s journey.

Quotes

• “I had this epiphany that I was trading my time for money and it was a really bad deal.” (11:55 | Keith Roberts)
• “Writing things down, doubles the probability of accomplishing them.” (12:29 | Keith Roberts)
• “Aligning the frequency in what you’re putting out in the world—what vibrations, what you’re attracting, what you’re manifesting, that abundance vs scarcity mindset—you’re doing that every single day by your gratitude and then journaling positive thoughts. Like you mentioned, every day has a prompt, and it’s not ‘What’s frustrating you today?’ Every single one of them is intentionally positive to help you have that right mindset and vibrating at the frequency that’s going to attract your best life.” (15:41 | Keith Roberts)
• “If you repeat something you’re grateful for, you’re getting diminishing returns. The more specific you can be with your gratitude, the better the ROI is going to get as far as the neurotransmitters.” (17:39 | Keith Roberts)
• “I’d built it to the point where it became my identity, and when I was trying to come up with my personal ‘why?’ I kept framing it through the lens of this agency that had become my identity. And my ‘why’ is not selling more Frontier Airlines tickets or houses for RE/MAX or Bijou—which is this Chinese moonshine, the biggest-selling liquor in the world, we did a site for them so—it didn’t have anything to with what I had built and I had to get over this concept of ‘sunk equity.’”(35:10 | Keith Roberts)

Links

Connect with Keith Roberts:

Website: https://keithrobertsiii.com/

OAK Journal: https://oakjournal.com/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“Ultimately, I decided I actually owe it to myself to not be in the kind of leadership situation where I’m unable to follow my intuition,” says Cristina Poindexter about the valuable realizations she gained from co-founding Parable, a CPG start-up dedicated to brain health nutrition. She ultimately stepped away from her role as co-CEO just before the company’s dissolution.

At the time of founding, the market was eager for supplements focused on brain health and cognition. Cristina, open about her own mental health journey, was enthusiastic about moving from the tech space to offering more tangible products. However, challenges with fundraising as a female, toxic power dynamics, and her own intuition made her realize it wasn’t the right fit.

In today’s episode, Cristina talks to host Alex Raymond about what she would do differently, how the experience has helped her prioritize, and why she continues to support the next person in the brain health space. She shares the physical and psychological toll of fundraising meetings, a common issue she discovered when she shared her experience on LinkedIn that remains relatively unaddressed. Cristina explains why new entrepreneurs should adopt a community-based approach to their businesses, the pressure on females in the startup space to “boss up,” and the importance of following your intuition.

Quotes

• “The advice I give entrepreneurs now that are entering this space is really start with a community-based approach that decreases your reliance on ads and more the direct response and logical way to go to market. Do illogical things that don’t scale at the beginning.” (15:00 | Cristina Poindexter)
• “There are many people out there who will resonate with your mission, brands and colleagues in the business space. That is actually something that is really powerful in the beginning for startups—to talk to the folks that have a similar mission, that aren’t competing with you and work together to help each other get your products out.” (16:31 | Cristina Poindexter)
• “That was this huge learning for me that ultimately, I decided I actually owe it to myself to not be in the kind of leadership situation where I’m unable to follow my intuition that way because I could tell that that’s actually what the company needed from me to actually close the race. It needed me to go off script, it needed me to be intuitive, and go about it in a way that I could sense my way into the field. And no one around me was really telling me that’s OK, that’s right.” (25:46 | Cristina Poindexter)
• “What I couldn’t help but notice was my life felt much more exciting and alive and healthy and exciting for me if I was not in the CEO position. And I will say, as a woman, we are taught, in the startup world, to boss up, don’t bend to the guys, stand our own, defend ourselves, lean in. To actually come to the decision that I actually didn’t want it was so hard because I knew what it would look like from the outside.” (43:00 | Cristina Poindexter)

Links

Connect with Cristina Poindexter:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristinapoindexter/

Website: https://www.cristina-poindexter.com/

The Power of Parable: https://cristinapoindexter.substack.com/p/the-power-of-parable

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“There’s a sense that our value as men is tied to what we produce in the world, and that’s a dangerous mentality,” explains Jordan Holmes, founder of How Men Cry. Through gatherings, retreats, and speaking engagements, Jordan creates spaces for men to open up about their mental health struggles and the pressures of traditional masculinity—pressures that often prevent them from opening up elsewhere. Under the performance name “Dxtr Spits,” he uses music, poetry, spoken word, and storytelling to challenge his own narratives about manhood.

Jordan explains that our narratives are shaped by social conditioning and childhood experiences, often becoming so ingrained that we mistake them for our true personalities. By embracing self-curiosity, vulnerability, and neuroplasticity, we can discover who we are beneath our trauma. He shares the three questions that spark the most passionate discussions and how he models the vulnerability he aims to inspire.

“How Men Cry” goes beyond just shedding tears. In today’s episode of The Conscious Entrepreneur, Jordan shares the story behind his organization’s name and the subtle yet significant difference between “how” and “why.”

Quotes

• “There’s a lot of social programming and other things that have been delivered to men where we have—the sense I said before that our value is tied to what we produce within the world. And it’s such a dangerous mentality to be caught up in because then in the moments where you aren’t producing, or something that you produce fails, or the business doesn’t grow as much as you need it to within a certain amount of time, then that becomes something that’s taken on personally.” (5:25 | Jordan Holmes)
• “So many of the traumas and narratives that we deal with in general—how we learn to be in a relationship, how we learn to be in friendship, how we learn to communicate, our self-talk—so many things are rooted in our childhood experiences.” (7:03 | Jordan Holmes)
• “I’m not really talking about physical tears, quite often, I’m talking about all the different ways that men—or people, for that matter—can cry out from unprocessed pains and traumas. And from a lot of the material, like my writing and performance material, I was finding through-lines in narratives of my own pain and the ways that I was crying out without necessarily dropping physical tears.” (14:21 | Jordan Holmes)
• “Individuals don’t really learn their best when you try to force answers on them, anyway. Part of why I think so many of the male narratives in the world are not landing well is because we’re doing a lot of prescription of “This is how someone needs to be” or criticizing this part of somebody or all these other things that don’t really allow for the space for people to learn and grow safely.” (19:21 | Jordan Holmes)

Links

Connect with Jordan Holmes:

LinkedIn: https://howmencry.com/

Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-dxtr-holmes/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“Be cautious about taking the leap (into entrepreneurship) because it’s very difficult to undo,” says Guy Rubin, founder & CEO of Ebsta, a pioneering company in the CRM and sales tech space. In this episode of The Conscious Entrepreneur podcast, Guy shares refreshing advice for aspiring entrepreneurs: take your time. He emphasizes that many young founders are drawn to overnight success stories or feel the need to build rapidly. Instead, Guy advises finding your steepest learning curve, acting as an apprentice, and staying the least knowledgeable person in the room for as long as possible. Even when you think you’re ready to start a business, he suggests waiting a bit longer. The learning and planning phase is crucial because once you start, especially with external investments, it’s much harder to reverse course.

For those who have already founded their businesses, Guy talks about the importance of seeking mentors and building a strong network. He believes that your team should see you as a confident leader while also feeling they can teach you something. Guy shares his experience guiding Ebsta through multiple pivots and transformations since 2012.

Despite the challenges of entrepreneurship, Guy asserts that it’s still better than being someone’s employee or, worse, a wage slave. Tune in to today’s discussion to learn how to set yourself up for success.

Quotes

• “Doing your apprenticeship years and keeping that learning curve as steep as you can, especially in your 20s, I think it sets you up really well to then go into be an entrepreneur and setting up your own business, perhaps in your 30s.” (4:33 | Guy Rubin)
• “I don’t think you are running your own business if you’re on your own. I think you need at least a business partner, or a group of individuals who can really help you. Because suddenly you become a lot more than the sum of the parts.” (9:32 | Guy Rubin)
• “I would encourage people to think about trying to be single purpose vehicles. Focus achieves greatness, and as soon as that focus is gone, it’s very, very easy to be distracted, and it’s very easy to not achieve. So, having that discipline to back a horse and then get 110% behind it is so important.” (34:15 | Guy Rubin)
• “It doesn’t matter how unsure you are, you need to show yourself as a strong, focused, driven leader. And leaders give definitive answers.” (35:43 | Guy Rubin)

Links

Connect with Guy Rubin:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubinguy/

Website: https://www.ebsta.com/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“If you can create a ‘win-a-thon,’ where everyone wins, then ultimately it’s good for business,” says James Colquhoun, the filmmaker behind such films as “Food Matters” and “Hungry for Change” which were groundbreaking explorations of the Big Food industry and its exploitation of our habits. “Food Matters” was born out of a mission to heal his ailing father through the power of nutrition, and resulted in his connecting with the needs and interests of a larger audience. On today’s episode of The Conscious Entrepreneur, James talks about the importance of finding your personal mission and how to align with it in your business, and how entrepreneurs can serve the dual gods of service and profit.

He discusses merging his successful streaming service with media company Gaia Inc., where he now acts as CEO, a transition that was made harmonious because both parties had a shared vision. He offers the five points of a successful workplace culture, the importance of emotional intelligence and resilience, especially in our modern world, and why companies are less like a family and more like a sports team.

And what is the one thing all the most successful sports teams have in common? The answer might surprise you, but it demonstrates the importance of alignment, serving others and working from love.

Quotes

• “I feel like a huge wave of consciousness around eating clean, looking after your body, this ‘wellness revolution,’ That was a huge trend and we just happened to be at the very beginning of it because we listened to an issue that was pertinent in our personal lives which became a macro issue that people connected with.” (8:14 | James Colquhoun)
• “I like to categorize life in three ways: you sleep—and let’s all hope you do that well—you have waking hours with yourself, family, loved ones, play, outdoors, whatever, and then you have mission. I don’t really call it work, I only ever call it mission. You want to align those as much as you can to your core purpose.” (24:09 | James Colquhoun)
• “In business, I have this philosophy that if you can create what I call a ‘win-a-thon,’ where everyone wins, then ultimately it’s good for business. So, if I think about the consumer, if I think about the filmmaker, if I think about the shareholders, the environment, if you can create a win at every level, they’re the unique areas of focus that I love to invest more in or focus more of my time on.” (28:49 | James Colquhoun)
• “We’ve become less emotionally resilient and less emotionally intelligent and I think when you’re working with teams you want people to be emotionally intelligent. People that can handle feedback, that can have an ego hit, that can take something and say, ‘OK. Wash it off. Next. Go.’” (35:49 | James Colquhun)

Links

Connect with James Colquhoun:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-colquhoun-/

Website: https://www.gaia.com/

Website: https://www.foodmatters.com/

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm