Mike Malatesta Guest Episode on Ready Yet?! w/ Host Erin Marcus – The Secret to Building and Selling Successful Businesses (454)

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Episode transcript below:

00:00 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Hi everyone. Mike Malatesta here and welcome back to the how it Happened podcast. On this podcast, I dig in deep with every guest to explore the roots of their success, to discover not just how it happened but why it matters. My mission is to find and share stories that inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you.

00:19 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
I want to live a life, to the extent that it’s possible, of options rather than obligations. It’s never like 100%, it’s never totally black and white, and all these people you might see saying that it is, it’s not. If you looked at their life, it doesn’t run anything like that, not at all. If you’re in a situation where you can get selfish about your future and most I mean certainly if you’re an entrepreneur you should be working towards that then this notion about being able to live your life better and better and better over time, guided by options rather than obligations, I think it’s very, very powerful. This episode is sponsored by the Dream Exit.

00:56
The Dream Exit is a private bespoke program for successful entrepreneurs with annual revenue between $5 million and $100 million who realize that they have one chance to get their Dream Exit right and that the odds of realizing that dream by themselves, all alone or at the last minute are stacked against them. In less than 90 days, we teach you how to design, build and execute a customized Dream Exit playbook that gets your business ready for sale at its maximum value and gets you ready to maximize your meaning and purpose in your post-exit life. Even if today you are not ready to sell. You see, dream Exits just don’t happen. They are the result of early, professional and proven planning. So if you’re an entrepreneur with annual sales between $5 million and $100 million and you want to learn how to 10X to 100X your chances of achieving the Dream Exit you deserve, go to dreamexitplaybookcom today.

02:01 – Erin Marcus (Host)
All right, hello, hello and welcome to the Ready Yet podcast, where I’m excited about today’s guest, because, if you look at the tagline of this podcast, you’ll never do what it takes until you become the person it takes to do it. And you were looking for a spokesmodel for that topic, right? If you’re looking for an example of embodying both tactical right, tactical achievement and just an amazing story and shift in who you are being to take all your achievements and blow it up from there. My guest today, mike Melitesta, is, I mean, you can’t really ask for a better example. So I can’t wait for this conversation before we get in all of it. Why don’t you give everyone a little more formal introduction into who you are and what you do?

02:49 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Sure Well, thanks for the compliment.

02:52 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
I guess to getting started.

02:55 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yeah, it reminds me of that tagline you have there. It reminds me of this thing I believe in that commitment comes before confidence, right? So until you can totally commit to something, you have no chance of becoming good at it or confident at it or even having the ability to achieve it. So I like your tag. It’s not exactly the same, but it reminds me of it’s very similar. Well, anyway, thanks so much for having me on, aaron.

03:20
I am an entrepreneur, I’m a teacher, I’m a podcaster and I’m an author, and I’d say I’m probably those things in that order. I started my first business when I was 26. So that was 30-ish years ago, and over those times I’ve had plenty of successes. I’ve had many, many failures, but what I’ve always had is a consistent curiosity to learn and to be as good as I can be and to help as many people as I can help. And so what’s interesting is the success and the failures are kind of less important to me now than my own progress and the progress that I can help other people make in their lives, careers or whatever ambitions. So that’s a short, very short version of who I am.

04:21 – Erin Marcus (Host)
It’s a very short version Awesome. Well, so just diving into everything that you share. So I was lucky enough to hear you speak at a Young Guns event a few months ago and meet you there and ownership love it. I love my autographed copy. I have questions as I went through it, and why don’t we just dive right in and see where this takes us?

04:44
In the beginning, one of the things you say in here, because this question has come up for me so many times. People have been asking me this lately and I know my example. My answer One of the things you’ve said in here more than once is saying yes to every opportunity. How do you determine what’s an opportunity and what’s a distraction?

05:08 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
So the origin of that in the book saying yes to everything was that’s how I approached life for the early to mid part of my career, and that worked really well because I could always. I always felt like I was making myself more valuable in the eyes of other people when I would say yes to something that other people might say no to, so I thought it was a tremendous advantage. However, there came a time and there probably comes a time in your life and there probably comes a time in everyone’s life where you feel like you’re saying yes to too many things and all of a sudden, you’re over committed, you’re maybe frustrated, you don’t want to do things that you signed up for, but you signed up for them and so you do them because it’s an obligation. Right? It’s really about things becoming obligations, and I found that for me and I go into more detail in this in the book. But you know, late part of 2003, I had something very significant happen in my life and my partnership at work, and it really brought to the forefront this whole life that I built around obligations that I created for myself that I was not excited about. That was actually that, rather than rather than them being accretive to my energy and to my effectiveness. They were detracting from it, and so, for me, it was about getting selfish with my and we can go into that later if you want but ultimately, to answer your question directly is how do I know what to say yes to and no to?

06:52
I don’t all the time know what to say yes, no to all the time, so I want to be very clear about that. Now. You hear a lot of people say if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no, and I say those people are full of crap, because you don’t ever know what is a hell yes for you, and you don’t ever know what is a hell no for you. However, for me, I’m about okay, I always try to live my life in the future. What am I? What do I want to make my property in the future? So those are the things that I’m most focused on Now.

07:28
That’s pretty broad meaning. I have this idea or ideal of what I want my future to be, and I can be pretty clear about that. I don’t know, though, what the path is and what the relationships are, and what the opportunities are there going to get me to that ideal or to that goal. So I kind of put just put things through a matrix is do these things have the chance to help me get there? Then I’m going to be probably a yes on that, and if I say to myself there’s just no way, then I would say a no to it, and so that’s how I’ve tried to. Just being clear about what I want has really helped me with my over committing to to yeses.

08:21 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Yeah, I think that some of the key things that you’re saying that I really want to hit home on is you know what you want.

08:31
Right right, and I think so many people don’t have the clarity. You know, one of the things I say a lot is, but you know, I always ask people when I work with them what are we building here, how we know what are we trying to create? And they’ll tell me a number. I want a five million dollar business, I want a one million dollar business on a ten million dollar business, whatever it is. But that’s such an irrelevant piece of information, right, because you can have a million different ways to have a million dollar business and they’re gonna be very different lives.

09:00
Yes and if you’re not clear on what you want, to your point, you can’t. You won’t know what’s a yes and what’s a no.

09:08 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yes, yeah, that example you you just gave reminds me of the you know that peeling the onion thing. Someone says they want something. You say, well, why do you want that? And they respond to that with whatever. And you go Well, why is that important to you? And you just kind of keep digging down because Most people and I think this is probably rings true with your experience they think they want something because they’ve equated that something to something else that they’ve observed in their life Maybe not their own experience, but someone else’s and they want to mirror that.

09:40
They think that, if they think that, they think that that’s what they want. But then, but you’re right, most when it comes right down to it, it’s sometimes very difficult for people to say this is exactly what I want and you help them get there. It sounds like so. Once you get there, you can start building a path. You can start, you know, really helping them. If it’s just this sort of like this is what I think I want, because this is what Aaron has and I would be happy if I was she yeah, then that’s gonna be tougher.

10:15 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Well, and I think you know, it’s a mixture of when you were raised, how you were raised, who you’re currently around like. There’s all these stories of what things are.

10:28 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yes, as.

10:30 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Opposed to what they would be for us or what they actually are. I was just talking to somebody oh, x secret service. I have a new friend in my life. He’s x secret service. He’s very cool and everything that you would apply to that. You’re a great guy and we’re talking about how that’s one of those jobs that you think is one thing and you just don’t know what it is until you get there.

10:50 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, just think of that. Yeah, I mean I don’t know this guy at all, or I don’t know that life that well either. But it just think to yourself. Well, it looks pretty cool, you wear the nice suit, you got the dark shades.

10:59 – Erin Marcus (Host)
You got the. Thing. You know, you got the Limits in the presidential.

11:05 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
You know, you’re always surrounded by, like, the most powerful people in the world, which seems really great. But then it’s like well, you’re on call all the time. You never know where you’re gonna be the next day you know, I’m just standing around doing, right yeah.

11:19
It’s very difficult to have a life Right. That has meaning when you have that kind of a job. I’m assuming now the meaning might come from the job and that must be, ought, might be awesome. But yeah, you’re right. You look at it and you go, oh, that would be cool cool, Awesome.

11:35 – Erin Marcus (Host)
So one of the things you you already said and I 100% agree with you you can’t have confidence until you have commitment.

11:43
Yeah and one of the things. I have this in my own life. I don’t I don’t know an entrepreneur that doesn’t go through this, and I want to preface this by saying we don’t have time even remotely, if we were to do seven episodes of the show, to go through the stories that you share, and so I just If you’re listening to this episode I highly highly recommend do yourself a favor, grab a copy of owner shift, read it it is. It’s an easy read its stories, but it’s very, very impactful. Go figure out the background of what we’re talking about here, because I don’t know any, any entrepreneur that doesn’t go through ups and downs. Yours are a little more up and down than average.

12:31 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Huge understatement.

12:33 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Huge understatement. Go get the book, dive into it. But even if you want to touch on any of that, I know you share it openly. So I’m not. I’m not hiding anything here. I just for time, the sake of time mm-hmm.

12:47
How do you, when you do talk about this a little bit in here, but I was just dying to know more. So I’m gonna ask how do you, how do you recommend, how can you even imagine creating exuding confidence and moving forward with, while trying to hold the ups and downs and the downs, and the downs and the downs and the challenges like right as an Entrepreneur and a business owner doesn’t do me. As a business consultant, it does me no good to show up and share the background shit show with the audience, like they don’t want to know this. This does not instill confidence in my clients right but it is my reality and it’s everybody’s reality.

13:27 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yeah.

13:29 – Erin Marcus (Host)
I Don’t like fake it till you make it it feels like a lie. There’s act as if you can talk about compartmentalizing, like seriously, how do you, freaking, keep going?

13:40 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yeah, well, there’s something you know everybody’s got some Something unique about them that that can keep them going in times where other people wouldn’t. And whether it’s my stories, whether it’s the entrepreneurial journey, whether it’s having some illness, whether it’s having someone in your family with an illness, whether it’s having had some Unbelievable tragedy in your, in your life, people find we’re most of us are programmed to just keep moving Forward. In my case, I would say there were two things. One I had a little bit of that and I don’t know where that comes from, aaron but to I had a responsibility to other people. It was not just you know me and I I that. That responsibility mattered to me, like showing up early to get ready for this podcast. It matters to me that I show up and Deliver on what I’m supposed to deliver to people, and it’s kind of like I Learned about this from a guy named Dan Sullivan, that strategic coach.

14:55 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Mm-hmm.

14:55 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
He’s. You know he talks about backstage and front stage. Front stage is, you know, in a theater environment. Right front stage is what the audience sees, that’s the production, that’s the performance and there’s not one person In that audience who gives a crap about all the stuff. That’s one going on backstage during the performance, or two had to go on to make the performance unless, unless it impacts their joy of the front stage performance and they don’t like it. They don’t like when that gets messed up.

15:31
So I try to keep. Even before I heard that Now it’s like a, it’s like something I remind myself of because I have this model, you know from his description. But even before that it was like bringing whatever’s going on with me to surface to everybody every day or every minute. How does that help them? It doesn’t help them at all, nor, and they don’t care and it’s not their problem. So I think the combination of those two things, I have something built in me that helps me to be able to keep moving forward. The second is that I feel like I have a responsibility, and that’s important to me to deliver on what I’ve promised people or what they expect from me.

16:21 – Erin Marcus (Host)
No, I love it. By the way, have you read this one yet, Dan Sullivan?

16:27 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yes. Literally right here I like all the marks you got in there too.

16:32 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Yeah, that was a good one, right, it’s a mixture of how much resilience? I think you’re right. I think humans are highly, highly resilient. I think social media would have us believing what was me is the case, right? I don’t think that that’s the case.

16:48 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yeah, you know it’s funny. You say that because even people who are like the immigrants that are coming here, we spend a lot of time talking about how overburdened we are as a result and how our policy needs to change and all of those things, but we rarely, rarely talk about. I rarely hear people talking about what the hell is going on in someone’s mind and life that would commit them to a 6,000, 5,000, 3,000 mile journey into the complete unknown. We’re talking about entrepreneurial, risking all of their stuff because someone has told them or they have seen pictures or they have someone. That’s yeah, that there’s something better for you over here and they actually make it. That’s, that’s that.

17:55
That regardless of how you feel about the right and regardless of how you feel about the politics is like that’s a person I might want to, like you know, have on my squad Right.

18:07 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Have a conversation with.

18:08 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yes, 100% yeah.

18:10 – Erin Marcus (Host)
I don’t One of the things I learned and I so. I grew up in Chicago in the 70s and 80s in public schools with and we counted once people from 22 different countries.

18:21 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
OK.

18:22 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Massive immigration waves, so nobody speaking English and nobody having any money. And you just learn that people are people and which has been helped me immensely in all of my different careers. But the other thing that happened when I was younger and you never know what somebody is going through and you never know how they’re needing to be resilient. And I had met I was working in apartment complexes because at the age of 26, somebody decided yeah, let’s give Aaron, you know full reign over our multimillion dollar asset here. Ok, it used to be a thing. Right Now, I look back and go. I was 26. What were you thinking? And we would have these people who are new to our country and didn’t speak English in charge of doing jobs. And you learn about them and you realize they’re chemistry professors back home, but there’s a language barrier. There are good facts back home, but there’s a language barrier. And to your point about humans being resilient, we just don’t know.

19:20 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yeah.

19:21 – Erin Marcus (Host)
And not everybody needs to know all of the details of all of our things in the moment. What are they? I think one of the things you do a fantastic job in your book and just in your conversations is you can learn from my scars. I don’t have to show you the wounds.

19:35 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Oh yeah, I like the way you say that, right, like nobody wants to see your wounds, but they to benefit them.

19:41 – Erin Marcus (Host)
To learn from your scars is again.

19:45 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Oh, thank you for that. Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that before. Yeah, I’m going to use that.

19:49 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Use that, yes. So one of the things I’m curious about is you know you get to this moment in your life where you really do have a big shift, right when you really and you are having successes. Like we’re not talking about failure, failure, failure. What do I do? There was some huge successes there, but with challenges, seriously, people get the book, read the stories, you’ll love it. One of the things that I know about me is I would love to tell you that I am inspired by puppies and rainbows and unicorns to do what I do, and that’s just not the case. I make change when I’m sick of my own crap, like when I can’t take me anymore. Now is when we make the big shifts and you talk about your four fallacies and being stuck in your valley, and I’d love to hear more about the catalyst right, the catalyst that made you decide I’ve got to change how I’m doing this.

20:46 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yeah, you. So that’s funny, you change when you can’t stand yourself. I? That’s something I hadn’t really thought about either, but it fits perfectly with the fallacies, right. So I had these fallacies about who I was and who I needed to be in order to be successful, and they were. They were things like you know I’m, I can outwork anybody else, so I don’t, I don’t need any help. That’s a big one. I don’t need any help. If you, I thought people who needed help were losers and I thought that for a long time like people who hired consultants or they got a coach or they, you know, even admitted that they had a problem, it’s like, oh, that’s we must have grown up in the same neighborhood.

21:35 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I get it.

21:37 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
But those, yeah, and those, those fallacies, really so. So it’s sort of like saying, yes, for a while I think they served me well, but then you have to realize that, either when you can’t stand yourself, or you realize that you know you keep hitting the gas and instead of the the tires grabbing and pulling you out of wherever you are, they just dig in and they just start slipping and you go nowhere and you put more on it, like this used to work every time. I did it and it doesn’t work anymore. You know, there’s some comes a point where you have to admit the truth, and for me, that they the fact that you know the fallacies that I was living under, which were mostly like, basically, you know I’m better than everybody else, kind of like fallacies that were running my life, were hurting me. They got me, you know. So they got a Pareto principle right. They got me to a point where, where past, where I thought most people could get and I’m, they failed, they started to fail me or I started to rely on them. That’s probably better. I probably started to rely on them after they you know, the expiration date had had passed.

22:46
So that’s, that’s a fallacy, that’s the fallacy, and in my, my, my realization about those fallacies happened when I was in this value of uncertainty uncertainty, as I call it, which is a set, you know, in strategic coach language, in the in, maybe in 10 times, is easier than two times. They talk about gap in the game. There’s a whole book about the gap. Well, we all get into this thing, that that you call it a gap, call it a funk, call it whatever it’s, where you’re basically Wishing your life was something else, but you’re ignoring all of the things that got you to where you are. And so, after my partner Putsch died in a tragic fire, I dropped into this thing I identified as the Valley of Uncertainty, which was really a place where I was still, you know, representing myself, I think appropriately to the people that I felt I had a responsibility to. But on the inside, I was really challenging. I was really challenged by the thought that I am not sure what to do.

24:10 – Erin Marcus (Host)
And I think not knowing what to do is one of the worst mindset places to be. Yeah, like, once you make the decision, even if you haven’t had the difficult conversation, you’re still better. You feel better than what you’re describing, that Valley of Uncertainty. To me, nothing is more horrific internally than when I can’t figure out or decide what to do.

24:44 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yes, yeah and that and so, yeah, that was going on, and then it was accompanied by this sort of wish, this hope that someone would come along and fix it. Yeah, and lift me up out of this Valley and dust me off and say you know here’s the road to the Promised Land. Just walk down there and that’s where it is.

25:10
But my time in there, but my time in there was painful, but it was ultimately proved to be very helpful to me because, one, it allowed me to finally recognize these fallacies that I was living under, and, two, it led to this whole path towards what I call getting selfish, which led to me actually exploring my future and understanding that I could make my future something that I own. And if, without a future that I own, it occurred to me, how could I possibly move toward it in a thoughtful, consistent way? And even more than that, how could I convey to my team and to the people who were working with me and helping me how they could best serve this mission to get to where this future that we want to make our property we want to own?

26:09 – Erin Marcus (Host)
And the way you describe it. It’s the way that I believe it. When I first learned about a concept you know, radical personal responsibility, I call it being charged. That’s where the tagline for my business came from. If I learned very early that if you don’t make decisions for you, people who are not vested in, you get to make those decisions Right. And when you first start thinking about personal responsibility, especially the stories that you share, it’s like it sucks, because then you can’t blame all other people.

26:45
Right Doesn’t start out as something that feels so good, but then you realize it’s the most powerful thing you can do for yourself.

26:55 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yeah. So here’s a litmus test that I found you come up against. You come up talking to or whatever interacting with, an entrepreneur or a business owner or a leader of any kind, and they begin to blame something that’s not going right in their life or their business on somebody else. You know you have a problem child there. You know you have someone who is living under fallacies, like I was living under, and who would very much like to honestly put their hand up and say I’m not equipped to take responsibility for this.

27:36
How can you help me get back on track? Because without that, you’re not going to make any progress. And then getting back to the, you know, if you don’t know where you’re going to go, people will try to take you where they want to go. That’s true, but there may be more to that and it may be like they, if they don’t know what you want, they observe your behavior and when they observe your behavior, they make assumptions about what it is you actually do want, which is what, which is in line with what you’re behaving, and they try to do that. They try to like give you what they are interpreting you you want, even though it’s not what you want.

28:19
In fact you’re so frustrated by it, but and they just layer it on more because they think that’s what you want, so it’s. It’s so, so important to when. You don’t have to call it getting selfish, you can call it focusing, you could call it whatever you want, but it’s so, so important, if you want to lead people and you want to accomplish big goals, to actually know what that looks like, so that you can share that, convey that with other people in a way that they understand, and then they can take autonomy. They can bring their their, their, their talent, autonomy, whatever to that mission, as opposed to just waiting there and saying, well, I know he or she’ll tell me what they want at some point, it’s, and I’ll just continue to do what I think they want until then.

29:12 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Well and it really does all come together right, because you need to make the commitment to build the confidence. You need to know where you’re going in order to make decisions. And going back to now that I listened to you, going back to the first question I asked you is how do you know what to say yes to and what’s a distraction If? If you don’t have all these things or you know, no one’s perfect, they’re going to be hits and misses, but if you haven’t worked on these things and figure them out, you become susceptible to more bad decisions.

29:48 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yes, yeah, and, and, and. So I have three words that I try to apply to that. So that leads to obligations instead of options, and I want to reverse that. I want to live a life, to the extent that it’s possible, of options rather than obligations. And so having that and you’re right, it’s never like 100% you can do, there’s never black and totally black and white. And all these people who say who you might see saying that it is, it’s not. If you looked at their life, it’s. That doesn’t run anything like that, not at all. But the closer you, if you’re in a situation where you can get selfish about your future and most I mean certainly if you’re an entrepreneur, you should be working towards that then this notion about being able to live your life better and better and better over time, guided by options rather than obligations, I think it’s very, very powerful.

30:48 – Erin Marcus (Host)
So how did you? I’m going to switch gears a little bit.

30:51 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yeah.

30:52 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Because I really want to talk about what you’re doing now. So I know that you went through what you went through and you ended up in a situation where you sold what? Two different businesses, I think for over a hundred million each that you had started.

31:06 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
That’s right, Not a hundred million each.

31:11 – Erin Marcus (Host)
but over a hundred million together. Okay, it’s still impressive. Thank you, right. All right, how did you go from job to entrepreneur, small business to business owner right To now? You’re really I’m going to assume it’s your third iteration. If you’re like me, it’s like your hundredth iteration, but we’re what you’re doing now with helping folks create their dream exit. One of the things that I talk a lot about just to give you some perspective here on why I’m so into this is, I think most people who start businesses get stuck at entrepreneur, solopreneur, because they’re not able to get over the bridge into business owner.

31:57 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yeah.

31:58 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Right, they’re the business. They’re under the fallacies, they’ve built the business around them. They are the business, they are the bottleneck, like hello hi, it’s me, I’m the problem, right. And then they don’t get over the bridge to business owner and because they can’t figure that out, they retreat. Right, they retreat and end up with the business they settle for instead of the one that they can have, and so this is why I’m excited about this from your perspective, those are the people that I’m working with, those are my audience. So now you have something that you call the dream exit, which I love, because if you don’t have an exit plan, you don’t have a business.

32:44
Like yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, it’s my corporate background, right, like bring business tactics and tools and approach to business, not solopreneurship which is great, by the way, if you’ve chosen to be a solopreneur as opposed to gotten stuck there. So how did you? You know your story and your journey to there. I’d love to hear about how you ended up deciding to do this and more about what it is.

33:11 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
The dream exit you’re talking about, or okay, yeah. So the notion for the dream exit came from me exploring my talent and experience and trying to think about how I could help entrepreneurs in a way that was different than what I was seeing other people help entrepreneurs with. So there’s a lot of people who help, teach and coach entrepreneurs how to improve the strategy in their business, the tactical execution in their business, the culture in their business. You know all of these different things, which are all very valuable and and and should be told. I could probably do that. But then I was thinking about all the people 24, 25 people plus their partners that I’ve been involved in the purchase of their business, and I started thinking about the two times that I’ve been involved in selling the business. And I started thinking about all the entrepreneurs that I know who have either tried to sell their business unsuccessfully or they’ve sold it and have some sort of regret about it, and I thought, okay, my here’s, here’s where, here’s where I’m going to be most valuable to people. One, I know what it’s like to do both sides of the transaction, so I bring that, and I don’t think there are many people who have that, who have also been the entrepreneur right. It’s like there’s a lot of corporate people who buy, sell companies, but it’s different. There’s a lot of private equity and other investors who bought and sold companies, but it’s different. And I it pains me to see entrepreneurs work so hard to establish a successful business and not realize what I call and define as the dream exit. It pains me.

35:21
So there are two things in a dream exit, aaron. One is you get maximum value for your business. Now, that doesn’t always mean you get the highest price, because you may not want the highest price, you may want to sell to a particular sort of you know competitor or partner or whatever. But regardless, you need to be set up to, to, to realize that maximum value. The number two and, more importantly, a lot of your value, you think, if you’re like most entrepreneurs, is tied up in you, you as your business. People ask what do you do? Well, I own so and so that’s who I am and to an extent that is, but without something else to to look forward to after you sell your business. That often becomes a really, really big problem, and I mean a big problem that can become a financial problem, that can become a dependency problem that can become a divorce problem, that can become all kinds of problems and people so so.

36:26
So I want people to understand that if you want to get maximum value and meaning from your business and for you personally, you need to start working on that. You need to understand what is involved in getting that and put a plan together. I call it a playbook, which is the first part of what I help people with to start exploring all the things you need to be exploring and getting some different definition. Ultimately, knowing what you want, right, know what you want. So that’s super important.

37:01
That whole process I call you know buyer’s lens. You know putting yourself in a buyer’s shoes. So many entrepreneurs don’t put themselves in a buyer’s shoes ever until they decide to accept an offer and then they’re going to try to figure out how to do that against someone who’s done this, you know many, many times, and the likelihood that you’re going to level that playing field by yourself all alone is it’s low, very low. And then I don’t want entrepreneurs to go through that whole process of building their business, sell it and for a moment have regret or want to do over or be pissed off or just no-transcript, essentially lose the value of everything that they’ve created, because, in their mind, they’ve messed this last part of it up, and four out of five business owners wish they could have spent more time working on these two things after they’ve sold their business. They don’t even have to admit that, right, they’ve sold the business. Why would you?

38:09
but, four out of five admit that that that’s the case, and I think that’s horrible. I think that’s terrible way to end what should be an amazing way to end, and so that’s what the dream exit is all about. I just I help people, I teach people how to put that playbook together, I teach them and guide them through the value creation process for themselves and for their business, and then, when they do want to sell and if they do want to sell I offer to help them, as they’re sort of the only late, the only person liaison in the process who’s 100% focused on them getting what they want, and I feel like there’s tremendous value in that for everybody.

38:53 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Awesome and, truthfully, what I also really like about it is the way to create an amazing business, and the way to create an amazing business that’s sellable is actually it’s not a dissimilar process. You’re still going to end up with something of much higher value than you had before.

39:12 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Correct.

39:14 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Usually just put it on your tax code a little different right. You can put the money on your taxes a little different depending on what you’re trying to do, but that’s really the only difference.

39:23 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yeah, and for all the people that you mentioned, you know that they start and then they get stuck for some reason. The reason that most people get stuck in my experience, and then stop trying is because they one, they don’t know what they want. Two, they aren’t able to convey what they want to the people around them.

39:43
Three, they end up getting their nose into, and I know from experience, so don’t they end up getting their nose into every single part of the business Not the reason, not the parts they liked that they actually started the business for, but all of them because they feel like that’s what I have to do. I have to manage everything. And once they get into that mindset and that habit, it’s very difficult for them to get out of it, because they think this is the only way. And all you have to do is look around at all the people who have been able to get past that and it’s impossible for you to say this is the only way. This is a choice. You have a. You choose to do that, and if that’s your choice, fine, but be happy with it, because if that’s your choice and you’re not happy with it, there’s only one person who need to talk?

40:33
Yeah, I mean, that’s that whole responsibility for it. Yeah.

40:39 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Awesome. Well, I know we’re coming up on time and I want to thank you so much for your stories, your time, your energy, your effort, all your insights. Seriously, grab a copy of Ownershift. Really love this. Check out the Dream Exit. I think we have it. Well, I know we’ll put the link in the show.

40:56 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yeah, it’s, super easy, dreamexitcom.

40:59 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Oh, so you look at you on Marketing 101. Dream Make Easy. Marketing 101,.

41:04 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Make it.

41:04 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Easy DreamExitcom. So thank you again for joining me. I love chatting with you and hearing more of your story. Thank you so much.

41:13 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Yeah, it’s been my pleasure. Thanks for buying the book, reading the book. Promoting the book and having me on your wonderful show. I’m very impressed by what you’re doing and it’s been an honor to be here. Thank you, Awesome.

41:23 – Erin Marcus (Host)
Thank you.

41:24 – Mike Malatesta (Guest)
Hey everybody, thanks for listening to this show and before you go, I just have three requests for you. One if you like what I’m doing, please consider subscribing or following the podcast on whatever podcast platform you prefer. If you’re really into it, leave me a review, write something nice about me, give me five stars or whatever you feel is most appropriate. Number two I’ve got a book. It’s called Ownershift how Getting Selfish Got Me Unstuck. It’s an Amazon bestseller and I’d love for you to read it or listen to it on Audible or wherever else Barnes, noble, amazon you can get it everywhere If you’re looking for inspiration that will help you unlock your greatness and potential. Order or download it today so that you can have your very own copy and if you get it, please let me know what you think.

42:09
Number three my newsletter. I do a newsletter every Thursday and I talk about things that are interesting to me and or I give more information about the podcast and the podcast guests that I’ve had and the experiences that I’ve had with them. You can sign up for the podcast today at my website, which is my name, mikemalatestacom. You do that right now. Put in your email address and you’ll get the very next issue. The newsletter is short, thoughtful and designed to inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you.