Navix Consultants Has Guided Over 600 Business Owners Through Exits Worth Billions

Meeting Patrick and What Inspired Him to Focus on Exit Planning

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)

Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories Podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome adversity. As you listen today, let one idea shape what you do next. My name is Anthony Codispoti, and today's guest spent years studying the D-Day invasion and turned it into a leadership book for CEOs. That book, his third, won a gold medal.

His other two are about business owners walking away from the companies they spent their lives building. He started his career as a junior investment banking associate in New York, watching business owners sell their companies from across the table. In 2009, he left that world to build a firm devoted entirely to prepping business owners for that pinnacle moment of exiting. His firm has since guided more than 500 owners through transitions worth billions of dollars in combined value.

Patrick Ungashick is a co-founder and CEO of Navix Consultants, an Atlanta firm focused exclusively on exit planning for privately held businesses. He also chairs Perseum Group and is a partner of Palmera's Capital Partners. And he has delivered more than 500 keynotes and workshops for groups including Vistage and the Entrepreneurs Organization. But before we get into all that good stuff,

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Patrick Ungashick (02:40)

Anthony, very much my pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity.

Anthony Codispoti (02:43)

Patrick, how did I do the on the pronunciation of your last name?

Patrick Ungashick (02:46)

You actually nailed it. And I'll let you know that that's uh a a credit to you because a lot of people ask, it trips people up. So I'm just gonna lean into it really quickly. Um not only do people ask me how to pronounce it, but like half the time, Anthony, there's a follow-up question which always like, gee, where's that come from? When I was younger, I would change the subject, I would ignore the person. But you know, I think as we all mature, we get more comfortable in our own skin. So super quickly, Ungashick is Americanized German.

And when you reverse engineer it back into the original German, Ungashick becomes un geschickt. And I don't speak any German, but I've had many people explain this to me. Geschickt means skillful or competent, and un means not. So my my last name in German means basically something around Dufus.

Anthony Codispoti (03:35)

That story. Um,

Patrick Ungashick (03:36)

Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (03:37)

so my background is Italian. My father was born in Italy, and um, sort of tracing the roots of our name back to the original Greek ancestry, it translates loosely into something like keeper of the house, king of the house, master of the house.

Patrick Ungashick (03:52)

That's great.

Anthony Codispoti (03:53)

So slightly more um complimentary than doofus.

Patrick Ungashick (03:56)

Yeah. Y your family was in the nice part of the village, my family

was outside the walls, on the on the outskirts, wearing the dunce cap, that's right.

Anthony Codispoti (04:04)

You guys were wearing the Dunce cap, huh?

So you spent your early career as a junior investment banking associate in New York. And you were on, you know, the one side of the table watching owner after owner go through

Patrick Ungashick (04:16)

Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (04:17)

the sale of their company. What were you seeing through those experiences that made you want to build something different?

Patrick Ungashick (04:23)

I was seeing a lot of stress. I mean, when I say a lot, I mean practically universal stress, anxiety, uncertainty, fear. And these were not, these were not, you know, underperforming or struggling businesses. I would just see owner after owner who built great companies and had these amazing stories, phenomenal products and services, great brands, created a lot of jobs. And when it was time to go to exit.

And exit means different things. It can mean sale. It can mean family succession. We can talk about any of that. But ultimately, when it comes when I go to exit, the nearly universal experience, Anthony, was business owners who really, you know, struggled emotionally, sometimes financially, uh, with the process and then where it left them. And that just made a huge impact on me from the very beginning of my career. And and because it was so pervasive, I just, you know, I didn't know what I didn't know back then, but

I just made mental note after mental note saying there's got to be a better way to help business owners so that they go into this process, most most of whom have never been through a process before. They'll exit only once. So that unfamiliarity is fueling a lot of this. But there's got to be a better way to help people so that the journey has better outcomes and and and less pain along the way.

Anthony Codispoti (05:41)

And so what was your vision for the better way, Patrick?

Patrick Ungashick (05:44)

Great. Well, I mean, I can't tell you there was no light bulb moment. It was very much an evolution. but we started doing, gosh, 30 years ago, 25 years ago, we started doing financial planning for business owners. That's weird. What does that mean? And then eventually we um we did not invent the phrase, but we started to talk with people about exit planning and and being prepared for exit. And for a long time, the most common response from a business owner who's a potential client was, Well, what's exit strategy? What's exit planning?

Um, and we evolved. Our business model evolved learning how to uh deliver a quality outcome to a client, learning how when there were no deliverables, this is this is pre in the beginning, almost pre-internet, but definitely pre-AI, pre-software. Around this, we had to learn how to train people. We had to learn how to market it. We had to learn how to get clients to engage and follow through on working on something that is an outcome that might be several years in their future. That's hard to do because business owners are perpetually busy.

we had to learn how to make money at it. So we had there was a lot of on the job learning, a lot of evolution to our business.

Anthony Codispoti (06:49)

Were you actually calling it exit planning back then? Was that a term that people were using?

Patrick Ungashick (06:53)

it was not a widespread term. It's it's far more understood and acknowledged and embraced in today's marketplace. But yes, twenty five, certainly thirty years ago, nobody talked about or almost nobody talked about exit planning as an offering, as an exercise. No.

Founding Navix and Formalizing Its Methodology

Anthony Codispoti (07:10)

What was the year you decided to go out on your own?

Patrick Ungashick (07:13)

Well, we had a uh a wealth management firm that did a lot of traditional I mentioned financial planning for business owners. So we we were doing a lot of that work, but our clients were not entirely, but predominantly business owners. And it was in the later 2000s that we said, you know, we need to create a scalable, systemic deliverable for clients. It's hard to build any business that if you can't scale it. And we need to put a wrapper around this and a defined brand and a f defined set of steps.

and deliverables for the clients. And that was the birth of Navix, NAVIX, Navix as in Navigate Towards Your Exit. And we officially launched Navix as a proprietary methodology and as a standalone company officially in 2009.

Anthony Codispoti (07:58)

Okay, so take me back to the start of the first company, the wealth management firm. You go out on your own, probably have some relationships at this point, but how are you getting those first few clients?

Patrick Ungashick (08:09)

Sure, great question. So in the beginning, uh my business, the wealth management business first started up with me and I had three other partners, one of whom was my father and two other gentlemen not related, but there were four of us who founded it. And um, how we acquired clients, some of it the traditional way, networking, referrals, of course, that's always an important methodology. But the primary method that we used to use was networking and gaining the trust and referrals from other professionals.

Predominantly accountants and lawyers, because predominantly accountants and lawyers work closely with business owners. They often are that trusted advisor. They they have those relationships. And so we spent a lot of time working with accountants and attorneys, educating them on the issues that we knew they saw with their customers that we could help solve, building trust, building rapport so that they would make our phone ring by saying, Hey, I've got a client that's you know has a successful business.

needs to exit, doesn't know step one, can you get involved? And we did that work for a long time. And but what changed is, as you know today, Anthony, in today's marketplace, a lot of professional services firms do everything under the same roof. So some of those accounting firms and law firms that we used to collaborate with on a mute based on mutual trust and and um respecting what each other did for their for their customers, they eventually became our competitors. So we had to evolve.

Building Trusted Referral Relationships

Anthony Codispoti (09:35)

Okay, so take me back to those earlier days before there was this competition and you're getting the referrals from these folks because a lot of businesses can benefit from this type of a referral arrangement, right? You get an introduction from a trusted partner who's already vetted you that knows what you do. It makes that first client conversation so much easier.

What does it actually look like to establish that relationship? I hear you say we were doing a lot of presentations to these CPAs and other folks, attorneys, et cetera, and we're building up trust. But at the end of the day, like that CPA is busy doing what their bus what their business is built around. They don't have the time to be pitching your services. And, you know, as much as they may like you and what it is they think you can do, what's ultimately in it for them? Why do they make that handoff when they did?

Patrick Ungashick (10:30)

Great question. What's ultimately in it for them? Because you're exactly correct in your assessment of the dynamics. Ultimately, what's in it for them is to solve a problem for their client. So if for example, their client owns a successful successful business, doesn't have an exit strategy, that's a problem. So can I bring other professionals in who do this for a living who are going to not only help my client solve the problem, but do it in a way that at a minimum does no harm to my relationship with my client.

And in many cases, elevates that relationship with the client. For example, if you're doing exit strategy work, pretty hard to do comprehensive, sound exit planning without uncovering some tax and accounting issues. So very often the very nature of the process can generate more follow-on work. It's it happens, it's not a guarantee, of s of course it happens. But the most important thing is that solving a problem for that client. That's when you are that's when that trust deepens.

And that's when no, they're never going to go out and just be actively promoting what we do. But when they see problems, when they see needs that we can solve, they're not going to hesitate to involve us. what's it take to get there? It takes a lot of conversations. I mean, myself and others on our team, Anthony, it was not unusual. You have, you know, two or three coffee meetings a day, three and four times a week, as you're going out and and approaching other professionals and saying, here's what we do. I'd like to understand what you do.

Is there an opportunity for us to collaborate? Nine out of ten of those initial cups of coffee or in today's world it'd be a Zoom meeting, nine out of ten of them don't go anywhere. but it only takes one out of ten for there to be the foundation of a relationship where you can end up referring a lot of business back and forth over years.

Using Books and Speaking to Grow the Business

Anthony Codispoti (12:12)

And so as those referral partnerships sort of faded away because a lot of these partners then become competitors, how did you guys evolve? How did you continue growing your business and finding new clients?

Patrick Ungashick (12:26)

great question. and there was a lot of pain in there. So again, it was no there was no single light bulb moment. The thing that really catapulted us going forward is I wrote my first book. my first book is called Dance in the End Zone. I wrote it because I worked closely with a business coach. I'll I'll never forget the lunch. We were having sushi one day, and I was telling him that look, there's not a lot of this is goes back twenty years now, Anthony, but

I was telling him, look, I only think there's three or four books out there about four business owners written for business owners about how to think about and get ready for exit. And I said, I bought all four of them. I think they're not very good. And um, I thought, Anthony, I thought I was working with my coach and sort of processing an issue. He later told me all I was doing was whining, was at that point in time. And that was the kind of coach, that was the kind of relationship we had.

But he looked at me in the middle of sushi lunch after listening to me for a while and he said, Well, then go write your own darn book. And um, I walked away from that meeting feeling appropriately challenged. And I said, You know, that's a really good point. And I started working on my first book. And it took me a while. It was a slug fest, like writing a book is, especially first. there is something special about writing a book. It's um, it's an incredibly

it's a two-way process. It it not only are you creating something that you hope informs an audience, but the process of writing a book is it informs you. It requires you to sharpen your message. It requires you to do research. It requires you to think and and and formulate coherent thoughts. And when my first book came out, it did what uh a lot of people write books, hope a book will do, is it started to generate interest and started to generate speaking activities.

I did not go into this saying we need to do speaking because uh some of our our our referral relationships are are not proving as as long term as we want them to be. Uh but that's eventually what did happen. The speaking sort of elevated while some of these other traditional networking opportunities started to um to come down in terms of activity.

Anthony Codispoti (14:23)

Were you already doing speaking engagements prior to the book coming out?

Patrick Ungashick (14:26)

A few here and there, but really random, for free, unpaid. Um, and I'm I'm sure I wasn't very good at it.

Anthony Codispoti (14:34)

Okay, so you write the book, but it's not a field of dreams, kind of build it and they will come. Like what did you do afterwards to market and promote it?

Patrick Ungashick (14:42)

Sure. Um, I've for many times in my career, I've been involved in different CEO peer-to-peer groups. I can't advocate that resource enough to other business owners and leaders. There's a bunch of them out there. you mentioned in your introduction to me, one is Vistage, there's EO, there's YPO, there's another half a dozen national here in the US organizations, even beyond that. Um

From the learning opportunity that comes from being in the room with peer leaders and sharing ideas and and tackling issues. As a member of that group, when my first book came out, I was afforded the opportunity to go talk to some other groups about my brand new book. purely in the beginning, Anthony, purely on an informal basis. But it was kind of cool. I I did my first workshop around that book called Dance in the End Zone. And a business owner came up to me at a break and handed me a business card and said, I think we need to talk.

And we got a client out of it. I remember going back to my office at the time it was in Atlanta and I, wow, that was kind of fun. And um one became two and two became four. we should probably think about how to get good at this. And um, and it it snowballed from there. It took a while, it took several years for it to really become something of a consistent opportunity and activity. But but speaking for what we do, because it is a complex topic, it's a it's a

layered topic. It involves business and legal and finance and personal issues and emotional issues. speaking lines up very well because the more that you can educate your audience and if your audience is full of potential clients, you typically get good potential clients out of that because they are more educated. They are more, they are thinking and and acting at a higher level.

Anthony Codispoti (16:23)

So dance in the end zone. If I can sort of infer what the title means, you want to take folks through the different steps of preparing for and exiting your business so that you get to the end zone, you get to that goal

Patrick Ungashick (16:33)

Yes. Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (16:35)

line, and you can do that victory dance.

Patrick Ungashick (16:36)

That's exactly correct. That's what it's all about.

Anthony Codispoti (16:39)

And so when you're getting these business opportunities from it in the early days, do you think folks have read the book prior? Or have they seen that, oh, Patrick is the guy that wrote a book, then he just must be an expert. And so that just gives him some credibility. Even without reading the book, I'm gonna go talk to him.

Patrick Ungashick (16:57)

Yeah, it's like 95% the second scenario. Uh it's been nice. I've had a few times where I've been on a plane and I've looked over and I've seen someone reading that book. That's kind of cool. Uh, but you know, and if people buy it, wonderful, that's great. Um, I'm not gonna put any kids through college off book royalties. A lot of authors would probably say the same thing. Uh it is predominantly about a credibility statement. Um, and it is a reference. We we have many clients.

Who um that when we start working with them, they'll say, Hey, Patrick, I picked up your book three years ago and I sat on my shelf for two years and 10 months. But a couple months ago, I I finally pulled it down and I read a little or thumbed through it and I said, Okay, it's time. So that's the other, I mean, shelf life, I don't mean that as a pun. The shelf life of a book of a book is is practically indefinite. That's the other advantage of having a uh a book that resonates with your audience around your message.

Anthony Codispoti (17:51)

So early on, you get a handful of new clients from it, very exciting, right? Worth

Patrick Ungashick (17:55)

Yeah, sure.

Anthony Codispoti (17:56)

the effort. but you said it took a few years before it really became a consistent source of lead generation for you. What was it that caused it to pick up additional momentum in those later years?

Patrick Ungashick (18:08)

I I worked with a speaker coach. Um, I saw that there was something there. I'm smart enough to know that we all do in our professional lives. Are are you brilliant at it in the beginning? So I realized that there was a need for professionalization of my speaking and both skills, but also as a business activity. I I absolutely enjoy speaking, but it is a business activity. And so there needs to be some replicatable systems and patterns and approaches around it.

And so I worked with a business coach for quite some time and that really catapulted both my activity but also my success. Success in terms of making the phone ring for additional speaking opportunities. And then also success in terms of seeing a measurable uh attractive from a business standpoint, attractive level of people in the audience who later become a client for our firm.

Anthony Codispoti (19:00)

Okay, so folks invite you to come give a speech for like who invites you in? Who would be

Patrick Ungashick (19:06)

Most of

my because of what we do, our our desired audience is business owners. Smaller to lower mid-market size companies, a couple million in revenue, up to a couple hundred million in revenue. So that's our audience. And so the t the standard audiences we speak to are go back to some of those peer organizations like an EO or like a vistage. that's a significant portion of my speaking. And then keynotes to trade associations, groups where they're having their annual leadership conference.

Um sometimes it's in Chicago in January, sometimes it's in Maui in J June, right? So it could be some nice destinations. but keynotes to trade and and professional groups and then workshops to business owner audiences.

Anthony Codispoti (19:49)

And are they at least paying for your travel expenses for you to come make that trip?

Patrick Ungashick (19:53)

travel and speaking fees. Um that's a common question. If anyone in your audience is listening to this and and has some experience with speaking or wants to, you know, from take go in that direction, there comes a point and i every speaker reaches it. There comes a point where you say, you know, I've been doing some of these for free because in the beginning from a credibility and stamp from a credibility standpoint and from a developmental standpoint, that's an an inevitable stage that most people have to go through. But there comes a point where you just have to say, you know what?

I'm I'm not doing them free anymore. And I'm gonna start to charge. And this is what we're gonna charge. And um, and it's for me, it was a it was a gut check moment. I think it probably is for a lot of speakers. But once you, once you cross that Rubicon, once you burn the bridge behind you, uh, it's pretty liberating. And from a business standpoint, it's paid marketing. And that's that's a pretty nice side of the equation to be on for with regards to a marketing strategy.

Anthony Codispoti (20:48)

you're getting paid for the marketing that you're producing. So so you're getting paid that they cover your travel expenses, they pay a speaker fee, and you

Patrick Ungashick (20:57)

Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (20:57)

go there and oftentimes you're picking up new clients because you've just positioned yourself as the expert and you've gotten to form some relationships there. It's brilliant.

Patrick Ungashick (21:05)

Yeah,

sure. There I mean there are there are professional speakers who have no business need or their business model does not include any of that follow on, you know, opportunities, either selling books or training programs or leadership coaching services, or in our case, helping business owners prepare and achieve successful exits. There are speakers who have nothing else they want to do from a business model standpoint, but the majority of speakers that are out there on the circuit, like I am.

the speaking is an entry point into a a follow on business relationship and that's that's the way it works.

Anthony Codispoti (21:38)

And

and do you have to be careful about how you're presenting so that it doesn't come across as a sales pitch?

Patrick Ungashick (21:44)

Yes.

Yeah. I mean, put yourself in the audience, Anthony. You'd you'd never want to, whether it's twenty minutes or two hours, nobody wants to sit through an infomercial. And so, no matter how how it might be packaged and delivered. So yes, um I told you I worked with a speaker coach and some of the advice I got when I started to actually apply myself and realize I wanted to get good at this or at least better at it, was one of the um a bit of advice that I got was during my workshops was to give away all the answers. Just give it all away.

And you know, of course, your initial answer is thought reaction. My initial reaction was skepticism. You mean give away everything, tell the audience, especially in a in an in-depth workshop setting where you have a few hours, maybe even a half a day. Tell the audience of business owners everything they need to do step by step. Yes, give it all away. And the reasoning behind that, and the gentleman who gave me this advice was so correct, is when you

Give all the answers away to the audience, especially on a topic like ours, which is complex. What happens is the really smart, really um the the people you want to work with, the good clients, they will see, wait a minute, this issue has more layers to it than I thought. There's a lot more involved than I initially appreciated. There are experts out there who can help me with this as a means as opposed to me to try to do it myself. I want to talk to them. The the

The individual who is more inclined to do it yourself or is just not yet ready to receive that message, it's okay. So by giving it all away, your credibility goes through the roof. You never stray into that I'm I'm selling uh a place that you never want to go, because then the ice gets really thin under your feet and you lose all credibility. And the really good potential clients, it resonates with them and it acts as a filter and you end up you end up doing business with more people that you want to do business with. It's it's a pretty amazing dynamic.

Anthony Codispoti (23:37)

I love this.

Yeah, I love this approach. ah I didn't this was kind of a fun sidebar. I didn't realize we were gonna s end up spending so much time on it, but

Patrick Ungashick (23:45)

That was great.

Building Navix’s Exit-Planning Tools and Process

Anthony Codispoti (23:46)

it was a it was a lot of fun. So I want to go back. So you had this wealth management company, and then at some point in late 2000s, I think 2009, you're like, we need to package up what it is that we've been talking about from an exit planning perspective. you know, this set of processes, and we need to formalize it. And that was the birth of Navix.

Patrick Ungashick (24:06)

That's correct.

Anthony Codispoti (24:07)

Talk to me a little bit more about that birthing process back in two thousand.

Patrick Ungashick (24:12)

Well, there wasn't at the time there wasn't a whole lot of software out there. There wasn't I mean, today if you're a business owner and you're curious about what is my company worth, you can go online and and even before AI, there were lots of online calculators that would give you maybe a sense of what your business might be worth from a value standpoint and a sales situation. None of that existed, Anthony. So we had to start to create tools that we could use so that when I hired somebody and said, You're gonna join our exit pointing team,

to this day, there's still no exit planning degrees that people can get in, you know, from their undergraduate program. So we were training, we were taking people who had skills and discipline and knowledge in other areas like investment banking or maybe on the tax side. And then we were teaching them the additional information they needed to know in order to be a competent exit planner. Um, and eventually turned into a massive library.

Of deliverables to clients, uh, analytical models, reports that would assess their situation and give them advice on what to do, and then also training materials so that we can grow and expand our own business. Um, if someone asked me uh early early into that effort, if I would have known in the beginning the kind of effort it took to create all that material, would I have done it? My answer was heck no. Hard

Anthony Codispoti (25:25)

Sure.

Patrick Ungashick (25:27)

no. Now, between software and AI, nobody has to create that from scratch, but that was our world.

fifteen, seventeen years ago.

Anthony Codispoti (25:35)

Sometimes ignorance really can be bliss when it comes to starting a new business. I I've been in

Patrick Ungashick (25:39)

Yes. Yeah, I

I that's a good point. I think I don't think our experience is unique. I think a lot of business owners would say, if anyone would have told me what it would take to launch this, I never would have done it. You're right. Ignorance is absolutely bliss. Now that I'm here. Yeah, and

Anthony Codispoti (25:51)

But now that I'm here and I'm part way up the mountain, I'm gonna keep going. Yeah.

Patrick Ungashick (25:56)

and we look back at it and our team collectively, our team collectively, we're over six hundred business owners we've worked with since that start.

There's lots of people out there doing a great job for business owners. I would put our team up there second to none.

Anthony Codispoti (26:08)

So tell me a little bit more about the process. Somebody hires Navix. What does it look like?

Patrick Ungashick (26:13)

Great question. And it it really depends on where the business owner is and what their objectives are. Time is a very relevant factor. our is a business owner thinking about GI1 exit sometime in the next three to five years? If so, we've got 36 to 60 months to work with. Is a business owner saying, you know, I got a buyer standing in my doorway. Somebody sent me an email and I thought it was legit, turned out it was legit. I replied and we're now talking. I have a buyer standing in my doorway.

They don't have 36 to 60 months. they may there they want to evaluate whether that opportunity is real now and how do I handle it? What do I what do do with it? So it really depends on where the business owner is and what their situation is and what their timeline is. The bottom line, people engage us because, and I know your work, Anthony, you know, helps business owners with many of these same issues, but business owners engage us because most of them have limited to no experience with.

Taking a company through an exit, which for most is a sale process. They um don't know what they don't know and they don't want to practice or learn on the job. It's a very that's a very risk-filled approach. So by engaging with people like us, and there's others, of course, but by people like us or us, they get objective advice and guidance and that proactive

Anthony Codispoti (27:30)

So if somebody comes to you, they've got a buyer at the door, the process looks a little bit different. You guys are kind of moving right into that negotiating and sort of the MA phase of the process. If somebody comes to you and you've got a little bit more time, that three to five year window that you really like, what kind of levers are you pulling during that time? What are you doing to help them get ready for that sale and maximize their exit value?

Patrick Ungashick (27:56)

Great question. you've got to divide it into two halves. We can talk about both if want, because getting a business ready for an exit event is a very different set of issues and questions and challenges than getting the business owner, who's a human being, ready for this event. there is it there is some overlap, but if it was a Venn diagram, that middle that middle overlap piece is pretty thin. So as far as getting the business ready for an exit event.

There are some universal or practically universal characteristics that make a company more exitable or more ready for exit. I'll give you one. It's one that comes up all the time in the vast majority of engagements, which is how owner-independent does that company operate? A lot of business owners will say, my business is pretty independent. I could go away for a week, I could take a two-week vacation, and everything would be fine.

In reality, what typically happens, even within pretty good-sized companies, companies are doing tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of revenue. In reality, what happens is the business owner never truly unplugs, never truly disengages from the company. And the business owner is involved in all the major decisions and is very often the most effective problem solver in the organization. Sometimes they're the number one salesperson in the organization. And when you really take a step back and look, any buyer or successor is going to have serious questions about.

That company's ability to grow once the business owner exits, as long as if any of those um realities are true. So we're helping usually business owners expand and um amplify the strengths of the team other than them, get them out of the day-to-day operations, get them out of the day-to-day decisions, help them make the company more scalable, more sustainable, because that drives value, especially in the sale, and then help them get ready for this incredible.

incredibly invasive, incredibly painful process called due diligence.

The Emotional Impact of Leaving a Business

Anthony Codispoti (29:50)

Talk to me more about the process of prepping the business owner for the sale. I think this

Patrick Ungashick (29:56)

Great question.

Anthony Codispoti (29:57)

is the part that doesn't get talked about as much.

Patrick Ungashick (29:59)

It doesn't. And one of my business partners a long time ago said, you know, if you if you looked at our typical engagement, each client engagement is somewhere between twenty and eighty percent uh coaching and psychology. Uh because so much of it look, we're a society and and there's other wonderful societies in the world, but I think this is it's not uniquely American, but the Americans do this more than any other uh any other uh culture I've had a chance to get to know, which is

Business owners, we define ourselves by the companies that we own and lead. And for many of us have found it. It's more than my third child, is the you know that a common uh metaphor that comes up. It's it's our identity, it's who we are. You know, you you go to a social setting, first question, what's your name? Second question, what do you do? And so we define ourselves that way. And so for a business owner who has almost everything at stake at exit, they have their financial.

win and independence is usually at stake at exit. They have their sense of identity. Who am I going to be late, uh especially post exit? What does that look like? what's my identity going to be? I'll tell a quick story about this. Years ago, we had a client, two business partners, they owned a really successful multi-location restaurant business, uh, forty-fifty million dollars of revenue, which is really a good size for a rep uh restaurant company. And because they were in the restaurant business, when we met with them, it was not unusual. We had to meet with them.

During non-business hours because they would be so tied up running this this their um signature oper operation. So I remember one meeting on a Saturday afternoon. Very unusual we would meet on a Saturday afternoon, but that was what was involved. And the two partners, 50-50 partners, show up, and the one gentleman is dressed casually because we're meeting in a business on a Saturday afternoon. And the other gentleman is wearing a golf shirt with the company name embroidered on, you know, with this so common, embroidered on the chest. And the thought just occurred to me that he, if you probably went and opened up his closet doors.

He doesn't have clo any other clothes except for those that have the company name on. And it turned out to be true. He didn't. and so figuratively and literally, the company was him. It was, it was right there stamped on his chest. And so getting the business owner ready individually, it's about going through that financial win and doing the detailed pre preparing from a financial standpoint. It's about assessing their sense of identity and what are their plans for life after exit.

What are they going to do that's going to create meaningful, personal, engaging, rewarding, stimulating activities after exit? Very few people want to retire and just sit on the beach and and and sip their favorite cocktail. Uh and then also it brings family relationships in because exit changes dynamics at home in ways that a lot of business owners aren't prepared because they've never been through it before.

Anthony Codispoti (32:38)

Uh what is this is it like a single conversation where you sit down and kind of lay out, hey, I want you to get prepared for this, some things to think about, maybe here's a flyer or pamphlet, or yeah, okay. So it's much more involved than that.

Patrick Ungashick (32:49)

Wouldn't that nice?

Much more involved than that. for uh if we're still talking about getting the business owner as a person ready for exit, our typical engagements will last a couple years. So it's usually a series of conversations, parsing this out. Let's let's get the financial plan ready, let's make sure we're good about the financial outcomes that we want. We've done that homework.

That's that's in many ways the easier piece because it's more cut and dry, it's more analytical, it's more quantitative. let's talk about you and let's talk about your plans for life after exit. Let's talk about the changes this is going to drive at home. I mean, exit changes uh routines and relationships. Here's a here's a quick exercise any business owners in your audience can do, Anthony. I think you'll get appreciate this. We had we suggest to clients: get out an old-fashioned piece of paper, a legal pad, draw a line down the middle, create two columns.

And label the two columns, label the first column pure social event, and then label the second column disguised work event. And then go back and look at your calendar for the previous year. For most of us, that means pulling this thing out, right? Look at all the things that you did in a social setting or at a social time, evenings, weekends, and take each event that was in your calendar that you know participated in that you went to and put it in one of those two columns.

Pure social event versus disguised work event. And what happens, you're smiling, because I know you can anticipate what's coming, is for a lot of business owners, the things that they're doing that seem to be social, well, there's undoubtedly a social element to them, they're actually disguised work events. They are relationships where the catalyst for coming together, the timing, the currency, the tradition for that meeting, that event is rooted in their business status as an owner, CEO, et cetera. And

When we exit, when a business owner exits, the business reason, the catalyst for participating in that event, going to that party, going to that trip, whatever it might be, goes away. And for a lot of business owners, it feels like that their friendships have ended. Now, I'm not suggesting that those relationships were not genuine, they are, but the business need, the business reason for coming together ends. And it's incredibly disorienting if you don't know that this might happen and you're not prepared for it.

Anthony Codispoti (35:07)

Disorienting is a great word for it, Patrick. And this is something because I've been through a few exits myself. And this is something that I've experienced each time to varying degrees. And something I had no preparation for. No idea, no idea what was going on inside of me as this mourning process is unfolding. And and and I think mourning, people may listen to that and he's being dramatic. No, like it

Patrick Ungashick (35:32)

No.

Anthony Codispoti (35:33)

It it was like this this part of my soul had been ripped out. I didn't know what to do with myself. I didn't know where I fit into the world. So

A Client’s Post-Sale Connection to His Company

Patrick Ungashick (35:39)

We

we had a client years ago, he sold his three hundred employee construction firm, sold it for a wonderful price. He cared so deeply about his people, so cared so deeply about his firm. He had this amazing tradition, Anthony. Every Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, they bought six hundred turkeys. Six hundred turkeys, and they closed their offices for the day and they cooked. They had these huge giant they made them out of these boilers.

These large commercial smokers, and they had this huge party for their 300 employees, and they smoked 600 turkeys. And every every one of the 300 employees took one smoked turkey home for their turkey dinner the next day on Thanksgiving. And the other 300 turkeys they donated to um to charities who needed food for homeless people and and mothers who were in bad situations. What an amazing story, right? He sells the business.

A few months before Thanksgiving, closes on the trend action, wonderful outcome. He gets an invite to go to this party. He's no longer part of this company. And he's going to the party and he's walking out to the they've closed down the business. They did all this in their company parking lot. And somebody says to him how wonderful it was to see him there and for him to join as a guest. He called me a couple days later, all upset, because he was so pleased with the outcome. He was so thankful to have had this experience.

But he was called a guest. And that was and that was gut wrenching for him because he was like, I am. I'm it's not me anymore. So yeah, it you're not being in any way overly dramatic.

Anthony Codispoti (37:15)

Can you think of an example of a time where you took a a client through this process and it really helped them land on their feet better after the sale?

Patrick Ungashick (37:25)

Yeah, uh quite a few. Um it it's really important for business owners how much time do you have to prepare, but to to don't wing it. Don't say I'll figure out what I want to do life after exit after the fact. Uh a former client who's now become a a good friend, um, stepped away from his business, actually didn't sell it, turned it over to one of his adult children. Um and

Got I I was able to work with him and we helped him get actively involved in a charitable group that really had a big leadership void. He was a born leader, very successful business leader in his own right, in a in his companies. Um and within a six months or a year, he was uh chair of the board of the directors of this very prominent charity that did uh youth development, youth education. And he did that for five, seven years, and he really elevated that organization.

He found a passion and a calling for him that that uh utilized all of his leadership skills and kept him really busy in a in a way that was just as engaging, just as stimulating, all the problem solving that gets us excited in the morning. He got all that from this charitable organization. So yeah, don't don't wing it. Find something. It doesn't have to be charitable, it doesn't have to be another company that you start. It doesn't even have to be business related, but find something that challenges you and gives you a reason to be excited, you know, at least, at least a couple of times a week, if not every day.

Anthony Codispoti (38:46)

What would be another example of that if it's not another business, it's not a charity?

Patrick Ungashick (38:52)

Mentoring. the some of the big ones that come up are are civic or religious organizations, people mentoring. Uh a lot of clients that we work with really enjoy helping others, especially others in their industry. So if they can get involved in a board level, sure. I mean, it could be a paid board seat, but doesn't have to be really mentoring and coaching other indust other groups in their industry, business owners maybe who are 15, 20 years younger than them. That's another activity that really resonates with a lot of business owners who have exited.

Creating Leverage With Buyers to Improve Valuation

Anthony Codispoti (39:23)

Petra, can you take us through an example of a time you took a client through the exit planning process? Maybe some particularly creative things that you advised them or steered them to do that helped to drive a better valuation for them.

Patrick Ungashick (39:39)

Better valuation. Wow, okay, that's very specific. So sure, I can give you one. The um I mentioned, you asked me before what does engagement look like. We talked about time. And I mentioned the scenario of a business owner, a potential buyer standing in my doorway, so to speak. Anthony, we see that a lot these days because the market, the MA market, mergers and acquisitions market has been it's been hot for a long time. There, the there's been some noise out there, whether it's interest rates or tariffs or whatever. But in general, if you have a high performing business,

There and especially if your business is of a minimum size or larger, you know, you're gonna have buyers who are interested in talking to you on a pretty steady basis. So a lot of our work these days is is more that scenario where, gee, somebody contacted me. I might want to talk to them. They this might be too good to let it slip by. Well, there are significant disadvantages for the seller for talking to just one potential buyer because the buyer has all the leverage, the buyer has the money, right?

the buyer can really use their uh their one-on-one opportunity to potentially acquire this business to gain a lot of leverage, including potentially hold the valuation down. So you asked me about something particularly creative. Um, one thing that we'll do in those types of client engagements is when it is eventually time to talk to that potential buyer, is drop some not so subtle hints that our client, who's the potential seller, uh, is happy to be talking to you. But gee, Anthony, we've got some other

potential buyers we're going to be reaching out to. You made us think we're now going to maybe broaden the conversation. And we've even gone so far as to create, as Anthony, as you I know you're aware, when a company sells, very often there's marketing materials that are prepared to show to multiple buyers. We've even gone so far as to create marketing materials that we share to that one potential buyer that's standing in the doorway that we actually never even share to any other potential buyers, but we let them know that we created them with the intention to share them.

With other buyers in order to create that perception that they have competition and they better sharpen their pencil and come up with a particularly compelling valuation offer to acquire the business. Otherwise, we're going to go talk to some other people. So we want to um, in that situation, we want to get creative. We don't want to derail the conversation or scare away that potential buyer who's standing there, but we also don't want to let that potential buyer reach the wrong conclusion that they've got an inside track with no competition.

Anthony Codispoti (42:02)

They keep their pencils sharpened throughout that negotiation process. Yeah.

Patrick Ungashick (42:05)

Keep your pencil sharpened, that's right.

Anthony Codispoti (42:07)

How about some operational levers that you've helped clients pull to drive that valuation?

Patrick Ungashick (42:12)

Great question. One of our favorites to talk about because it is different. It is, it causes business owners and leaders to think very differently and challenge some of their often lifelong assumptions, is getting business owners to unplug from their company. And unplug means no phone, no email, no peeking at the email for a minimum of two weeks, multiple times per year.

And I share this concept routinely with business audiences. I literally have had people stand in the room and point a finger at me and going, that's crazy. You're that's nuts. That's impossible. It's that's malpractice. You should never do that. I've had other people go, Are you really? I'm allowed to take a vacation. And we could talk about this topic for a while. We call it unplugging, but here's what we're driving at. I talked before about owner independence. And if you think about it, the

Greater the portion, the higher the percentage of decisions that run through the business owner in order to get made, then the lower their ceiling for growth, the lower their ceiling for valuation. Because if anything of significance has to flow through the business owner, that is a bottleneck right there. So by unplugging several times per year, why several times per year? Make it normal.

By unplugging for a minimum of two weeks. Why a minimum of two weeks? Because if you're going just one week, people are just gonna wait for you to come back. But if you're going for two weeks, then people have to step up and they have to start to make decisions, they have to make calls, they have to handle problems, they have to solve problems, they have to interact with customers and vendors and suppliers and each other without the business owner in the room, physically or digitally in the room. What happens is companies start to learn how to execute at an even higher level. And then

That business owner, if that business owner wants to take that time that we've just freed up, four to six weeks per year. If they want to go recreate and go sit on the beach, wonderful, go sit on the beach. Or if you want to work just as hard as you were working before, how about use that time to be strategic? How about use that time to figure out how do I make my $10 million business $100 million business? How do I use that time to figure out how do I launch our third location or our second major product?

All those, what's the what oldest sayings out there is work on the business rather than in the business. and so that operational issue, that leadership and management discipline that we talk about that really causes business owners to rethink how they interact with their businesses and their teams is unplug regularly. And then when you come back, you're gonna get surprises. You're gonna get the negative surprises, but you're gonna fix it. Whatever happened that was under, you know, the subpar where you're gone, you're gonna fix it and you just made your company better and more valuable.

And when you come back, you're also going to get those positive surprises. Matter fact, we've conducted a lot of research on this and the positive surprises outnumber the negative surprises. Why? Because you've got really good people. But so when you come back and you realize your people performed even better than you thought they would, your company just got better and just got more valuable.

Anthony Codispoti (45:09)

It's a strong recurring theme here of removing the owner dependency that I keep hearing from you, Patrick. That's that's big news for everybody who's listening that wants to eventually exit. That that's a big part of the process.

Patrick Ungashick (45:22)

It well it is, because you know, I became a business owner by accident. I didn't graduate from college on holding a diploma in hands my hand saying I want to be a business owner. Some people do, but I think a lot of people that's not how it usually works. I think we're unknowingly misinformed, Anthony. I think a lot of business owners believe, again, I know I did, that your mandate, which your most important thing you're supposed to do every day is build a great company. I could not disagree with that anymore.

Than I do. I don't think my responsibility as a business owner is to build a great company. I think my responsibility as a business owner is to build a great team. And then the great team builds that great company. And that's not just wordplay. If you and I are both business owners, Anthony, and every morning you wake up and you say to yourself, What can I do today to build a great team? And I wake up every day and say, What can I do today to build a great company?

Over the course of the next eight, 10, 12 hours, we're gonna do very different things during our day. And you're gonna end up building a great team and you're gonna end up with a business that's larger, more valuable, more probably more exciting, a lot more fun, less risky, better led than my organization is. It's just it's only a matter of time. So don't

Anthony Codispoti (46:30)

That is

a subtle, but at the same time a giant mind shift. I'm I was challenging myself on that as you were talking. And I'm like, no, I right now, in this moment, anyways, I am focused on building a great company. In the past, and in previous ventures, I have been focused on building a great team. And I can feel the difference, just sort of like pulling from my memory threads. I can feel the difference in what it was I was.

my to do list look like every day.

Patrick Ungashick (47:02)

Sure, absolutely. I mean, customer has a problem. If I'm building a great company and I'm probably really good at what we what we do, I'm gonna solve that customer problem. Customer has a problem. You are gonna say, who in my organization can maybe solve this customer problem as well as I can? And if the answer is nobody, okay, we still got to solve the customer problem, but who can I teach in this moment on how to solve that problem so that the next time it happens or something like it happens again, they can handle that, not me. It's a completely different approach. In both scenarios,

The customer problem gets solved by your approach in that example is gonna far eclipse money.

Anthony Codispoti (47:37)

Hmm. I want to talk about one of your other books, Patrick, A Tale of Two Owners. This is a book you wrote about co owners exiting together. What was the impetus behind writing this book?

Patrick Ungashick (47:49)

if you're gonna get good at speaking, you should practice and work on it and probably also do some research, have some original content. And we did some research, we've done it several times. We've done some major research studies. Our very first research study on the topic of exit and getting ready for exit revealed something to us, Anthony, that weren't we weren't even thinking about. I don't think anybody was back then, and so a lot of people are not. And that is most privately held companies have more than one owner. It's our number, 70%.

Our clientele has has upheld that number for almost 20 years now. I've seen other studies back it up as well. Seven out of 10 businesses have more than one owner. And by the way, the average number of owners is right around three. So, right away, if you share ownership in a company with somebody else, creating a path and a plan for a successful exit doesn't happen in a silo. It doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Anthony, if you and I are 50-50 business partners, everything that I might want to achieve, I've got to make sure it aligns with what you want to achieve. At a minimum, we have to make sure we're not derailing one another. What do I what do I mean by that? Well, maybe we're different ages. Maybe I want to exit 10 years from now and you want to exit tomorrow. How are we going to deal with that? Or maybe I want to sell this business to an outside buyer, but you have a son or daughter in the company and you want the business to stay in the family. How are we going to figure that out? So as soon as you get multiple owners involved.

Then you have the real, not potential, but probability for incompatible exit objectives. And that's when the that's when the fun really starts. So a tale of two owners, as far as I know, is was and still is the only book written for business co owners, business partners. And here's how you explore and approach, and here's how you have the conversations as business partners to figure out and eventually gain alignment around how are we going to make sure that.

When there is an exit event, everybody's objectives are achieved.

Anthony Codispoti (49:47)

What did you learn from writing and promoting the first book that you did better the second time around?

Patrick Ungashick (49:55)

Uh the second book is very different from the burst, from the first. The second book is a fable format. the first book taught tells Dance in the End Zone, tells a lot of real-world client stories. Names changed, of course. And whenever I have a chance for anyone who has read Dance in the End Zone or at least part of it, they give me feedback. Everybody remembers the stories. And so I I learned that.

That the stories resonate with people. So the second book is one big long story. And I really wanted to lean into that because I love the all the data that's now out there, the science that's out there about how different areas of our brain and our memory light up when we're hearing a story, as opposed to just dry facts or other types of content. And so I wanted to tell a long story, and that's how a tale of two owner works: is a it's a business, it's a case study told in one big long story.

Anthony Codispoti (50:45)

How in terms of promoting it or leveraging it for your own marketing advantages?

Patrick Ungashick (50:51)

I didn't know anything about book promotion, Anthony, when my first books came out. If you want me to be honest about it. So we we um we do a I think a really good job uh with regards to building up our database and and keeping in touch with people that have attended a workshop, not just last week, but a year ago, five years ago. So a lot of our marketing of my books prior to the most recent one, the third one, which we did a lot more public marketing on. My first two books, we were marketing.

pr pretty much to our own internal audiences of people that we met, people who have attended a workshop, and then and then putting it out there and you know on the Amazons and the Barnes Noble. So it was it was uh it was amateur hour if you want me to be candid and and honest about it with the first couple. Don't get me wrong, the the first two books they they sell well, but that's not the point. It goes back to that credibility. Uh I gotta tell you, I've had more people, more people have read Dance in the end zone because it's a broader content, broader message.

Than a tale of two owners, which is that very specific, how do my business partner and I figure this out? But I've had a lot more people come up to me about a tale of two owners and look me in the eye and say, that one changed everything for me. That one, my business partner and I, we were stuck. And it was a breakthrough moment for us. And that's that's really rewarding when I have had the chance to hear feedback like that.

Anthony Codispoti (52:08)

What percentage of the books are you writing yourself versus getting some professional help with?

Patrick Ungashick (52:13)

hundred percent myself. I l I like to write and um if my name's on it then it's my book.

Anthony Codispoti (52:18)

Okay. All right, so tell us about the third book, this one that won a gold medal.

Patrick Ungashick (52:22)

So the stories. So the third book is called Uh Day for Leadership. I'm a history nerd. I've always been a history nerd. And I think to use a quick metaphor, I think when someone is a really good chef and they go out to eat, they must, you know, even though hopefully they're going to enjoy the meal, but they see things that I'm not going to see. I don't know about you, Anthony, but maybe you might not see because I'm not a chef. they're their radar is up. They're going to have higher level of perception. They're going to be aware of things because of their skills and their and their

Their talent in that. Um, I've always been a big history nerd ever since I was a little kid. what I read was always history. when I read a history book, um, yeah, I I enjoy the history for itself, but I see leadership moments. I see people making sometimes incredibly courageous, brave, wise leadership decisions. I see people making horrific leadership mistakes. because that's what history is. History is just stories of people. And

I mentioned earlier about telling stories. I love telling stories. I tell stories in my workshops. I tell stories in my books. So I wanted to find a way to tell, I think, some fascinating stories. And I picked a moment of time, a special day in a lot of our collective awareness around D-Day, which of course was a pivotal battle in World War II. I mined from D-Day leadership stories.

They're not the stories that are that's not saving Private Ryan. They're not the stories of the incredible stories, tragic stories of the soldiers rushing across the beach. Those stories have been told. And I don't know how relevant and applicable those stories are for business leaders. These are the stories of the senior leaders figuring out strategy. These are the stories of people wrestling with culture and silos and lack of a strategic plan.

And uh lack of um lack of solutions and how do we adapt in the moment. All all things that are absolutely true to today's organizations. So it uh a day for leadership is eight different case studies, eight different leadership challenges. With the actual D-Day story told, most of it is behind the scenes. people have read the book tell me without with almost no exceptions. I never knew any of this stuff. And I maybe I'm a history nerd too.

Um and and then making those stories relevant for today's business leaders and and challenges they face.

Anthony Codispoti (54:41)

And so has this one also been helpful for you from a marketing perspective and getting clients?

Patrick Ungashick (54:46)

Yes. So this one we we we did it the right way. We've learned a lot. Uh so this one uh I've been very pleased it's won multiple awards, it's won bestseller status with Amazon. Um the uh it's positioned to like any, I think hopefully any good book should, it's positioned to give it all away. Somebody could read the book from start to finish and never need us for anything. but the book is also very clear about hey, if you want help elevating your company's leadership.

If you want to help maximizing your company's value, here's how you can work with us in some follow on ways for them to contact us. Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (55:21)

Talk to me a little bit more about how you're using each of the books today in your marketing. Is it when they introduce you to come up on stage that they talk about each of the three books? Maybe all of them are there, available for folks to either buy or you're giving away and signing. Are you and your team members giving them out to everybody who gets on a sales call with you? Like mailing it as a follow-up? I'm just curious how you're leveraging

Patrick Ungashick (55:47)

I should be taking some notes. These are some great ideas here. it's it's a little bit of all the above, but maybe just a little bit. there are types of events, like if I'm a keynote speaker, where yes, you can have a tate literally the table in the back of the room where all the books are available for sale. So much today is digital, so much today is people just pulling out their phone and pulling up their Amazon app or whatever, you know, whatever method they use to quickly order the the hard copy or the or the audible or the ebook version.

So so much of it today is digital. Having said that, we don't do anything without thinking about how do we position you know, resources like the books. Is it a QR code embedded in the materials? Is it that follow up communication? So we're very thoughtful and in very intentional around it. you know, I've got the three books are out. I've actually got a fourth coming. So at some point it hard it's hard to show them all, showcase them all side by side. It gets just gets kind of noisy in the messaging.

Where we we do give the l a lot of thought and we do try and position the right book for the right audience.

Why Patrick Wrote Prepped

Anthony Codispoti (56:49)

Why write a fourth book? Is there a gap that you haven't covered yet?

Patrick Ungashick (56:53)

Yes. So the fourth book, it's not it's uh depending upon when this podcast release it, your this episode release of maybe out because it's coming out soon. It's called Prepped, the business owner's blueprint for selling their business. Most business owners have never been through a sale process. So Dance in the End Zone, my first book is very broad about how to get ready for exit, including some pieces about how to get ready for sale, but it it's applicable to any and all business owners. Prepped the the

Intended reader, the intended audience is that very specific situation of the business owner. There's a lot of them though, millions. business owner who says, I think I want to sell my company one day, and that day might be sooner rather than later. I've never done this before. What do I need to need to do to prepare? So there was very much a gap in terms of our content around that topic. So that's why we wrote prepped. There may be a fifth one out there. I don't know if whatever it is, but sooner or later, I'm still young.

Anthony Codispoti (57:48)

Where did the inspiration for the fourth one come from? Were you listening to clients? Were you listening to folks that you were doing speaking engagements for? Or is it just something that bubbled up inside of you?

Patrick Ungashick (57:59)

It's very much listening to people. In addition to the 40 or 50 paid speaking events I do per year. And those are great because you do have, depending upon the audience size, you do have a chance to get audience feedback and QA. And the questions tell you what's on people's minds. In addition to doing that, the other thing that is consumes most of my time is I and other partners from our team as well, but I will do 100 to 150.

calls, video calls with business owners a year, usually coming out of a workshop or they were on our website and they, you know, fill out the a digital form. I would like to talk to somebody. Those are, of course, Anthony, as you might expect, some of those turn into client engagements. But those are fascinating because you can tell a lot what's going on by the questions people ask. What do they want to talk about? And if you do enough of those, you realize, you know what, we're constantly answering most of the same questions.

Uh, what does due diligence mean? How do I find a buyer? What how yeah, what kind of financial information is a buyer going to be looking for? How far in advance do I need to be thinking about some of this? Should I get audited financials? Should I not get audited financials? I mean, there's a there's a list of dozens and dozens of topics, questions that come up almost every single time, especially if you have a bunch of business owners who believe they're gonna they're gonna sell their company to an outside buyer.

So it was very much listening to the most frequently asked questions, listening to the issues, most commonly encountered challenges, and going, you know what, we need to write a book about that. the book gives it all away. Here's what you need to do. And um, I'm very confident, even though that one's not even out, not out yet, but I'm very confident when it does, there's gonna be some business owners who read it and go, wow, this is a lot more involved.

There's a lot more at risk than I was maybe thinking I probably need some help.

Anthony Codispoti (59:50)

It's like you've taken your most frequently asked questions and bundled up the answers into a single book. Yeah.

Patrick Ungashick (59:56)

Yes. Yeah.

How Patrick’s Firm Is Using AI

Anthony Codispoti (59:59)

How are you using AI in your work, Patrick?

Patrick Ungashick (1:00:01)

what an amazing uh topic it is, right? I mean, there's obviously people with PhDs after the last name who know more about AI than maybe I'll ever understand. Uh we're using it in all kinds of ways. We're using it like a lot of organizations are. I think maybe we're we're not bleeding edge, but I I'd like to think we're maybe a little bit ahead of what I hear, because I hear a lot of questions about AI now, including in a lot of my workshops. How is AI gonna affect my business? How is AI gonna affect the value of my of my company?

Um, internally, we're using AI to really improve what we do for clients and how we do it. Not just save time and gain efficiencies, but improve accuracy, improve the quality of our analysis and our deliverable. Um, everybody, I think, right now is on the learning curve of that. And and we're talking about it as a team internally almost every single day. Uh, we're also using um AI in terms of watching what's happening to markets.

As we as you know, Anthony, as well as I do, AI is radically changing some industries more than others. For example, SaaS businesses, software as a service, that entire industry. SaaS is really having to figure out how what does that look like in the form of AI, uh, with in the face of AI going forward. We've had many SaaS businesses, but there are lots of industries that are you would think are not really

um going to be impacted by by AI, but AI is impacting them directly or indirectly. So it's changing the landscape on a almost daily basis. And on a net balance, I I for our business, I think it's a win. I think it dramatically improves what we can do for people and how efficiently we can do it.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:35)

Do you think there's a potential at some point in the future that AI could threaten the work that you're doing with Navig's consultants?

Patrick Ungashick (1:01:43)

Yes, I think AI will um the work, the way we're doing the work now, AI will make obsolete very quickly. So I don't think AI makes exit planning go away, just like I don't think it makes a lot of other professional services, advisory functions go away. The way we're doing it today can't continue for for very long in the face of AI. We need to learn how to take AI tools and resources.

and allow us to elevate what we do for clients that won't replace us unless we don't adapt. but it will make us that much more um applicable and allow us to be that much more effective from one client to the next.

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:24)

So you just see it as being something that you guys need to adapt quickly so that you're at the cutting edge of what it allows you to do. You don't see it replacing you being part of the equation.

Patrick Ungashick (1:02:37)

No, I don't. Um, let's reconvene in a couple of years and see if maybe see if I'm wrong. I think given what we do, business owners are still gonna want some human beings to be there and advise them and guide them through the process. Now, having said that, we already know clients are taking things, reports we prepare, analysis we provide, models we create, and they're taking their putting in their favorite AI platform. I I I I put your report in Claude. Here's what it told me.

So that's what I mean. Er everybody's gotta up their game if you're in the advisory business, if you are in the business of of giving people, you know, assistance and direction and recommendations on l issues as important as important and complex as these are, we can't afford to be doing it the way we have been doing it, because it's too easy to be commoditized. but what we can do is take those same tools and be delivering something that is of a higher value, more customized, more insightful to the client.

as opposed to the old, more templated way.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:35)

Hm. As you think about the work that you're doing now, Patrick, what is it that you most want to be remembered for?

Patrick Ungashick (1:03:43)

Uh I've been very honored to be a business owner myself. I I love what business owners get to do. They get to create jobs, they get to solve problems in the marketplace, they get to innovate, uh, they generate a lot they generate stuff that pays a lot of taxes. And nobody likes to pay taxes, but we need taxes to run our societies.

Um, business owners are uh at some point every business owner has made one and typically a lot more than one courageous decisions that they usually get no credit for because there's typically nobody in the room. When they said, hey, you know what, COVID, we've got this worldwide you know pandemic going on. I'm gonna not take a paycheck for a year. Otherwise, my company won't survive. No one's in the room for moments like that. So I've been very honored to be a business owner myself, but even a greater honor for me is when I have the opportunity.

you know, in the back of the room after a workshop or when someone maybe, you know, emails in because they read one of the books, when another business owner says, Hey, you know what, what the advice that you've given either as a client or because I read the book, whatever the whatever the environment was, the advice that you um gave us uh changed my life as a business owner. That's by far the greatest honor I've ever had. And I've been blessed to have had that happen a few times. And so if I'm if I'm ever remembered in any way, I hope it's more people thinking about those moments.

Anthony Codispoti (1:05:07)

Patrick, before I ask my last question, I want to do three quick things for the audience. First of all, anybody who wants to get in touch with Patrick, go to his website, navixconsultants.com. And Navix is spelled with an X. N-A-V-I-X, Navixconsultants.com. It'll be in the show notes, but you can remember it, Navixconsultants.com. Also, if you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to subscribe wherever you're listening. It also sends a signal that helps others discover our podcasts.

So thanks for taking a moment to help spread the word. And if you advise business owners on their wealth, retirement, or legacy, here's a lever most of your clients don't know they have: a program that counterintuitively turns their healthcare plan into higher net profits, freeing up capital they can redirect into your planning and raising the value of the business itself. Backed by Bain Capital Insurance, so you know it's solid, bring your clients that kind of win and they'll pass your name along. Addbackbenefits.com.

Okay, Patrick, so last question for you. A year from now, what is one very specific thing that you hope to be celebrating?

Patrick Ungashick (1:06:13)

I hope to be celebrating that we've helped our one thousandth w one, three zeros after it, one thousandth business owner. Uh I think that'd be pretty cool. Uh, you know, there's millions of business owners out there. So it's a tiny from a market share standpoint, it's tiny, it's infinitesimal. but that's a thousand people who are business owners that we've had a chance to do something positive for.

on uh, you know, uh for the reasons we've talked about today on a topic, on a a a part of them that is so important to them. I think that'd be a pretty awesome milestone. And and even more, I'd love it if most of those next three or four hundred clients are ones that didn't do any work with me. Uh not because I'm lazy, uh, but because I hope that there's others on our team uh that are carrying this legacy forward of the work that we do with other business owners.

Anthony Codispoti (1:07:03)

Love it. Patrick Ungashick from Navix Consultants. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate you being here.

Patrick Ungashick (1:07:12)

Thank you, Anthony. Entirely my pleasure.

Anthony Codispoti (1:07:14)

Hey folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us. And if one thing stood out, put that into action today.

Connect with Patrick Ungashick:

Website: navixconsultants.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickungashick