Episode 31: Who Are You Without Your Business?

Michael Avery

Well, there are certain financial decisions that look perfectly rational on a piece of paper. You sell the business, you take some money off the table, you plan the succession and diversify your wealth, and then you move on to the next chapter. Simple, isn’t it? Except, of course, anyone who’s ever built and exited a business will tell you it isn’t simple at all. Because if you spend 20 or 30 years building a company, if your name and your friendships and your routines and your sense of purpose and perhaps even your status have all grown around that business, selling it isn’t merely a transaction. It can often feel like giving away a piece of your identity. And that raises a fascinating life chapters Money Choices question. How do you prepare financially for an exit without forgetting to prepare emotionally for the life that comes afterwards? I’m Michael Avery, and alongside me as always is financial planner Kim Potgieter. And our guest today has lived that transition herself. Judy Sunasky has spent 25 years building and running Blendwell Chemicals before selling the business and beginning a second career as a business and leadership coach. So Judy, it’s great to have you on the podcast with us. But you’re not a client of Kim. So how did the two of you come to meet?

Judy Sunasky

Well, Kim and I met through an organisation called Women Presidents Organization. So that was a community I was part of when I was building and working on my business. And Kim came in as a guest speaker to that particular event.

Michael Avery

And that means you can probably tell me a little a few things about Kim that she hasn’t revealed so far on the podcast. Did that grow into a real professional friendship? Tell me about that first meeting.

Judy Sunasky

Well, there were a couple of things that happened in that first meeting. One was it changed the way I looked at what my future would look like. So the impact of that talk from Kim was quite something. The other thing is Kim ended up becoming a member of WPO when I started leading it post-exit from my business. And so the friendship relationship has grown. And travelling companion. And travelling companions.

Michael Avery

I believe you went to the Amazon earlier this year, Kim.

Kim Potgieter

We did, and Rio and to Chicago. So we’ve done some fun things together. And it’s all around our WPO conferences. So where our W conferences take us, we’ve got a good friend Tara who always puts on a fun trip afterwards. So we learn, we laugh, and work together in this organisation. And I think the big thing for me, just while we’re talking about WPO, has really been the support other business owners offered me. Often this whole business owner world can be quite a lonely world because you can’t talk to your staff about a whole lot of things that you are thinking and planning and strategising about, but talking to other women in different industries but with similar kind of thinking and similar ideas, it supports you really nicely. So, yes, that’s why it’s grown into a lot more than just a friendship, it’s also been a support for each other.

Michael Avery

It’s so interesting. Often when I chat to female entrepreneurs, female executives, and there’s still something of a glass ceiling, sadly, in South Africa. Whenever you know Women’s Month comes around and you look at the surveys and we’ve made good progress, but there’s still so much more that we need to do. The same gripe tends to surface, and that is often women in very often in corporate don’t tend to support each other. And so it’s so interesting that the WPO was formed around really solving for this, Judy. But just tell me a little bit more about your involvement with the WPO and the work that still needs to be done to support, especially female founders and entrepreneurs, because as we know, entrepreneurship is a lonely journey at the best of times.

Judy Sunasky

It really is, and that’s the word that comes out most frequently is loneliness. If you look at it, there are two percent of women who actually reach the level where they can come into an organisation like WPO. So it’s a million dollars per annum in revenue that is the starting point. So very few people get there. It’s really a bit of a needle in a haystack. And then how do you find people who can support you at that level who understand that as women we’re not only leading in our businesses, we’re leading our families, we’re leading our children, and we have so much more and offer so much more support to our communities as well. So finding a space of like-minded people is a really powerful space to be in.

Michael Avery

Yeah, a very good point you raised there. The other thing about female founders and entrepreneurs, and all of the development and impact studies tend to point to the same thing, is that they’re much more likely to support the community and also to pay it forward as entrepreneurs to members of their community. There was a large cohort study done by the World Bank on Indian entrepreneurs, and the impact that female founders far outstripped the impact of male founders. So, as a country, there is a real need to support female entrepreneurs and founders. But I want to go back, Judy, when you first met Kim, how would you have described yourself then? Did you introduce yourself as hi, I own Blendwell Chemicals? Was that your identity at the time?

Judy Sunasky

Very much my identity. I refer to it now as Judy Blendwell. I was Judy Blendwell. I’m not that anymore, but I was.

Michael Avery

Before we go to how that changed in the succession planning, let’s go right back. Because what we’ve tended to do with guests is also just to just scratch the surface of that first money memory that you’ve ever had. And I’m not sure if Kim has ever taken you on that journey, but what are your earliest memories of money?

Judy Sunasky

Oh, and this is something that is still so ingrained in me today. I grew up in a home where money was not just available. It was a case of I remember my parents sitting around the dining room table month-end Sundays, trying to figure out which bills they were going to pay. So it was always scarce, and as a result of that, I was out and working from 16, trying to get to where I wanted to go and be, to show up in the way that I wanted to show up. So I was earning from a very young age.

Michael Avery

And would you say that followed you through into the habits you developed as an adult in the way you then approached building Blendwell Chemicals?

Judy Sunasky

A lot of it stayed with me. So I did a lot of waitressing work, and in that there are so many interactions with people, I think that stood me in really great stead. I did filing work, that wasn’t so much fun. I did promotional work, I sold hula hoops at the Rand Show and things like that.

Michael Avery

But they teach you such important, vital soft skills. I remember one of my first jobs was exactly that waiting tables in Melville on 7th Street while I was studying at RAU before it became the University of Johannesburg and paying my way through a journalism degree. Again, I also came from a family where money wasn’t abundant, but it then focuses the mind and gives you a bit of discipline, knowing that the safety net isn’t there and forces a or imposes a work ethic that sadly I think sometimes when there is a safety net, that work ethic is a little bit harder to acquire. I know I’m generalising here, but I think there are some very important lessons in all of this. Kim, what you’ve spoken on this podcast before about how our earliest money memories or experiences follow us into adulthood. When someone becomes an entrepreneur, do those money scripts sometimes get amplified?

Kim Potgieter

Of course they do. So I mean, just listening to Judy’s story, I think this is a great example of it. There she was as a young woman trying out all these different things to find a place. She then built a really good business. She was able to sell her business. And then when she started thinking about her next chapter, there was nothing in there that Judy was going to slow down. There was, like most people would be saying, Well, I have enough money now. I think I’ll just go off and, have a nice place at the coast and relax or and play golf. No, not Judy. We will we’ll get into it. But she’s doing a number of different things. So there she is now, not only working with the WPO, she’s got other organisations she’s working with, she’s got coaching she’s working with, she’s always coming up with a new idea of businesses to start. So intrinsically, that sits with her. Whether it’s pre-retirement, after retirement, that is who Judy is. And I see that a lot with entrepreneurs who come and talk about what they could possibly their next chapter look like. They cannot just go and sit at home, they cannot do nothing because it is so it’s in their DNA that they’re going to be doing different things. And then they get bored very quickly, and then that’s when the purpose goes, and that’s when this next chapter is absolutely a disappointment. So, I mean, Judy, I would say I’m looking up to her and I’m watching her. She’s just ahead of me in transitioning and watching all the different things she’s doing, I’m incredibly impressed. If I’ve had any impact in it, I’m thrilled. Okay, you’ve obviously been But I think it’s natural. I think it just comes to it.

Michael Avery

I was going to say, you’ve obviously been listening to the podcast, but it does come natural clearly to you, Judy. Maybe let’s go back to Blendwell because it’s a it was a family business, right? So what did you inherit at the time? How much of that early challenge was proving that you could lead this entity in your own right?

Judy Sunasky

Okay, so nothing was inherited. My parents, my dad started the business, him and my mum started the business. At the age of 50, he was fired, and they had no option but to go out there and do something, which he did. At the time it came for him to let go, or he had decided he’d had enough. I was working with them in a very constrained environment because I’m of a generation that’s that was not ready to live in a business that was this constrained, because that’s what happens as people get older, they really put the if they’re not being proactive about it, they really put the shackles on the business and it starts becoming smaller and smaller. And they came to me and they said that they’d been away on a holiday, they came back and said, We want now to sell the business to you. So the business was sold to me. They had allowed me, we did a deal where I was able to pay out of the profits to the business. We had a five-year plan, two and a half years, I was done.

Michael Avery

Ahead of time, and then you are now taking the business into the future with your own vision. How long ago was that? Tell me a little bit more about the products, the market, and what you saw in the business that was constraining it that you wanted to unshackle.

Judy Sunasky

So, in terms of how the business was run, in that you have to be there, you have to be doing the work inside the business all the time. There was no form of strategy in the business. I saw the opportunity to bring green cleaning products to market because it was a cleaning chemical manufacturing business. So we had the vision for that, we set it up, we got the first compliance in South Africa around green cleaning. We expanded the food market, and really what we did was we left behind the regular Handy Andy dishwashing liquid market that everybody’s in. Because when you’re in a market where everybody is competing and there’s no real differentiator, your differentiator becomes price, which then becomes a race to the bottom.

Michael Avery

Yeah, yeah.

Judy Sunasky

So we segmented it off and we specialised in food and green cleaning, which were high compliance and regular regulatory requirements, which then set us apart.

Michael Avery

And what year was this?

Judy Sunasky

Oh gosh. I can’t remember, but it was somewhere in the 2010s, I would imagine.

Michael Avery

Okay, so 2010s, the South African economy is still doing quite well. We haven’t quite yet had that hard knock from the state capture years, and I’d imagine the business grew quite nicely.

Judy Sunasky

The business grew nicely, and what grew quite nicely was our margins because we were working in a higher margin space.

Michael Avery

Yeah, and you didn’t have to sacrifice margin to compete on volume and that kind of thing. Where were you based?

Judy Sunasky

In Midrand. So we had our factory in Midrand.

Michael Avery

And in terms of volumes, what were your sales? How big was the business at the time?

Judy Sunasky

At the time we were turning in the region of 40 million. I had 40 staff, and yeah, we were supplying product across the country and cross-border as well.

Michael Avery

And so you were growing into a serious business here, but you took over a business that didn’t really have, by the sounds of things, systems and processes, proper governance, strategy, the ability for you for the founders to leave the business to someone else and trust that it would run without them. So was that your big mission that you said about professionalising the company so it could run without Judy at the helm?

Judy Sunasky

Absolutely. So I was looking to, I wasn’t sure if I wanted if I wanted to sell or if I just wanted to step outside of it. But with whichever choice it was, the process is the same. So about four years out from when I sold, I went on a mission to find out, okay, how do I do this?

Michael Avery

Yeah, yeah. Exits, I mean, we spend so much of our careers building a business, focusing on acquiring the next customer, improving the next process and system. And if you look at people who buy and sell businesses professionally and private equity, there’s the old joke, how do you spot someone who works in private equity? Well, when they walk in the room, they’re the first one looking for the exit because they understand the importance of exit planning. So when you embarked on that process to say, right, I may exit. Were you firm that you were going to sell equity or maybe stay involved in a more strategic position in the business? Were you exploratory to say, right, all options on the table? How did you approach that exit planning?

Judy Sunasky

I wasn’t sure at that stage exactly what it was that I wanted, but I knew in order to free myself from the business, that’s what I’d had to do. And I want to go back to the conversation I had with Kim because around that stage I was approaching 50, near 50, and I was looking at she spoke about her book Retirement. And in retirement, she spoke of like how do you plan this life together with your partner, where you’re going, how many people have a different viewpoint of like the husband might be retiring to an island in Greece, meanwhile, the wife is raising grandchildren and planting vegetables. If they’re not having the conversation, they have no idea of what that life story looks like. So I went back to my life story and I was all I was certain of at that moment in time was I knew that I didn’t want to be doing what I was doing for the rest of my life. I wanted to free myself up for whatever would come next. What it was, I didn’t know.

Michael Avery

Yeah.

Judy Sunasky

I just knew that I felt like my time was done.

Michael Avery

And you were fortunate enough to be able to plan a life where you were more time-rich than you were in running the business. Your partner, a husband, was he professional working in adjacent industries? Tell me about that conversation when you then decide to get together and say, what does this look like?

Judy Sunasky

So my husband came from a background of commercial property, so he came from banking. He came into the business for a while. That was not great. So we agreed to part ways on that one, and that I think is the whole story on its own in family businesses, but, we chose us, not the business in that case.

Michael Avery

Yeah, important distinction there to be my choice.

Judy Sunasky

Very important distinction. Yeah, so we started having the conversations around what does the next phase of our life look like and what is it that we want to do. And part of that was travel. There’s a lot of travel left in us at this stage, so yeah, we want to make the most of that. We do still have a son in high school, so he has one more year left. So that is our only shackle right now. But post that we’re free to do our thing.

Michael Avery

Many more Amazon trips in your future. What’s the important lesson here, Kim, for someone who has been an entrepreneur their entire life? They’ve used to they’re used to building, they’re used to being able to drive strategy execution and very high-level things. I would imagine a lot of status is tied up in that. And now you’ve got to start planning for an entirely different life where you’re pursuing another goal.

Kim Potgieter

So, Michael, what I see happening most to entrepreneurs is that they leave it too late. So, most of the entrepreneurs that I speak to put their head in the sand and they believe that they’re just going to carry on doing this forever. So, when you speak to them and you tell them to maybe think if there’s something else they’d like to be doing, or maybe to ask their partner if there’s something else their partner would like to be doing with them. Because as we know, entrepreneurs are so absorbed in their businesses that there’s often not a lot of time left for anybody else. But so when you first ask this question to them, you can actually see in them that they don’t want to go there, their heads in the sand and they don’t want to go there. So for me, it’s always making sure that your business is ready to sell. And I think that’s something great that both Judy and I both learned at WPO is having your business ready at any stage that has a system so that you can, because then you’ve got the choice. The number of clients that I’m sitting with in their 70s that haven’t done this. So when we talk about where does the what is the asset that they’ve got their business, and then we start talking to them and we go, okay, do you have a succession plan in place? Do you know somebody you can sell it to? It kind of what Judy was saying, it started now becoming too late because they’re thinking a lot smaller, they maybe don’t have the confidence they used to have. Now all of a sudden, to take that business to market to get its real value is really difficult.

Michael Avery

And if you want to get the multiple that you believe is fair for your business, very often in that exit planning process, you might identify buyers that ordinarily wouldn’t have been the intuitive buyer, and they may be looking for a particular revenue line or something you might have to build into the business to you know to get that multiple. I mean, there’s so many strategic questions that I think start with that exit in mind that if you start early enough, Judy, then you can you can build into the business and ensure that you are ready and saleable at the multiple that you believe the business is worth at the end of the day.

Judy Sunasky

Yeah, and I think you bring up a really important point. I was given a great piece of advice also from somebody from WPO, and when I started having the conversation around looking to potentially exit, she said to me, You need to start putting yourself in front of the people who could potentially be your buyer. So that became part of the strategy.

Michael Avery

Being seen in the right places, meeting in the right rooms with people who could be so they know you before you go to market, and it doesn’t look like an afterthought, and you can build those relationships which are often so key in this process, Kim.

Kim Potgieter

Yeah, one thing I wanted to add. So when I have taken these conversations, and let me just think about my own business Chartered Wealth, similar age to Judy, it’s more been around getting the people ready in my organisation. We’ve made a decision not to sell, our decision is we want that younger group of people to carry on running our business.

Michael Avery

So that’s your succession.

Kim Potgieter

That’s the succession. But if we didn’t have the conversation early enough with the right people, we would have lost those good people. And I’ve seen with clients what happens to them is they hold on so long, so long. So the young people that they would have had as their succession plan leave them. And then they’re really disappointed because these young people have left them and you see it couldn’t work. But you need to start having these conversations early with people so that they know what your intentions are. So it’s just the same as sitting across the buyer, it’s the same as sitting across with your staff if you’re potentially seeing them as your succession plan.

Michael Avery

Yeah, I think that’s a great point. And talk to me about the psychology that you went through as well, Judy, when you had made up that, internally you’d made up your mind to say, right, now’s the time. I’ve had enough. I need to start planning the exit process, and it could well be four, five, six years down the line, but I’m starting now. Do you mentally start saying goodbye before you’ve actually left? Did it did it mentally change your approach to the business? And there’s no right or wrong answer here, but d what did you feel when you started embarking on the exit process?

Judy Sunasky

No, I don’t I don’t think I had mentally said goodbye at all. I think I felt the pain of goodbye. After I’d sold it, I hadn’t mentally prepared myself, and that’s a really interesting point because I prepared the business and the numbers, but I never prepared myself.

Michael Avery

What was the biggest surprise that you felt y you maybe were underprepared for? Was it your identity being attached to the business or a sense of why do I get up every morning? What was the big surprise?

Judy Sunasky

All of that. So my identity being attached to the businesses, the relationships I had because of the business, they’re not necessarily there afterwards. It’s kind of like going through a divorce, where everything shifts and changes. I would be waking up in the morning, and when I had my business, I had a very clear view of what my year was going to look like, what I would be achieving, the whole picture. And then suddenly I had nothing. And that was a very difficult phase.

Michael Avery

The post it just reinforces something that we so often talk about, Kim, is the lack of preparation we often do internally on ourselves. And as professionals, there’s so much work done on the business or the big corporate that you’re leaving, and not nearly enough done on the individual. It just shows you how much we ascribe our sense of worth and identity and value to our work. And I’m not saying that’s wrong necessarily, but I there’s a big lesson in that. I think the scales are imbalanced.

Kim Potgieter

I’m always encouraging people just to start the parallel life before they do it.

Michael Avery

Yeah.

Kim Potgieter

So if they know some of the things that they want to do, so there’s a push, like really, in a way, or pull of what they’re retiring to or what the next chapter looks like, I’ve definitely seen it help a lot more. Because what happens is it’s our personalities. We put absolutely everything into the sale or everything into it, and then we forget that there’s us in it, and we forget that we’re going to come out of this all, and you know what’s left of us often there can be quite a lot of burnout because you’ve just given so much to making sure that this happens properly. And as most people, we like these perfectionists that want to get it exactly right, get the sale right, and all of that. A-type personalities generally we’re dealing with it is I think A-type’s a better word than perfectionists, but again, then you’re left in it. So when I say to people, whether they’re a corporate, whether they’ve got their own business and been an entrepreneur when they’re doing this transition, I say it takes a couple of years in preparation for yourself. I mean, when we’ve had other conversations like with Andrew Mackey, he was at a corporate, he spent five plus years preparing himself emotionally for it. And I think that would be my message is have some things that you’re going to so that it’s not a hole. Because I’ve had Judy’s such a beautiful success story, and that’s why I wanted her on the show. But I have had other clients that have lost their complete sense of purpose and actually gone into depression. And that depression for an entrepreneur or that depression for somebody who’s an A-type is huge.

Judy Sunasky

May I add to that? You might not have seen the depression, Kim. It was definitely there. It was definitely there. There was a deep dark hole that came afterwards until I was able to, push through that and get into a space and just started discovering. But somebody shared with me some white papers on post-exit and funny enough, a WPO lady again, and it’s quite normal. It’s really normal.

Michael Avery

Yeah, it is. It’s mourning.

Judy Sunasky

Yeah. And the piece after that really inspired me once I’d read the papers she shared with me was that you do your best work. Most people do their best work post-that.

Michael Avery

That’s remarkable. I mean, the wisdom that you acquired through that process as well, I think, is no small part of that. Is that when you then decided to do the business coaching and mentoring, or was that always part of the transition plan?

Judy Sunasky

It was never part of the plan. To be quite honest, I didn’t have a plan. You see why she’s not my client, Michael. I was like, if I close this door, other doors will open. So I just had faith, really.

Michael Avery

Yeah, hope. What did they say about hope not being a strategy?

Judy Sunasky

That’s one of my favourite lines to my clients. But the opportunity came up for me to then chair the WPO chapter. As the person who led us was then leaving. So I stepped into that role, and then that’s really how things unfolded from there.

Michael Avery

And then it was kind of a step change for you into this next level as a as a business coach and mentor. How have you found that?

Judy Sunasky

I love it. I absolutely love it. I really feel like it’s a happy space for me. It’s not always happy things you’re dealing with, but I have impact on other people’s lives, and that really feeds my soul.

Michael Avery

Yeah, that is powerful. The fact that you’re being able to give back decades of experience building and scaling and exiting your own business and to have that impact, especially in the South African context where let’s face it, entrepreneurship, we should be hero-worshipping our entrepreneurs, much like Jack Ma said when he came to visit back in 2018 at the president’s first investment conference. It’s how the Chinese got to this amazing growth model that they’ve got. They really do. If you’re an entrepreneur over there, you’ve got very high status and all the accoutrements that come with that. In South African society, though, I don’t think we celebrate our entrepreneurs nearly enough. So I’m glad that you are giving back. And I think that there’s a lot of space here, Kim, for executives, and often you’re dealing with professionals to give back any in a very similar way, be it mentorship, business coaching, but that there really is a need to take that the bit of grey hair and the wisdom and pass it on to the next generation.

Kim Potgieter

Often they just don’t know where to do it, Michael. And that’s why I always encourage also to start having conversations with the right people when you still feel your confidence. Because once that confidence is gone, it’s really hard to make those calls to mix with the right people who can get you in rooms with people who you can help.

Judy Sunasky

Yeah.

Kim Potgieter

So my always I always just say to people, let’s rather, and again I’m back to the parallel, look what wisdom you’ve brought, all the years that you’ve been working, whatever you’ve been doing, building a business. Let’s look at the wisdom. Let’s work up the times where you actually got your most joy from it, where you felt you were adding your most value. And take some of that skill and wisdom and go and see the right people before you make these decisions so that you have those seeds that you’ve planted that you can go and find it. I mean, Judy has an incredibly, and I’m sorry to hear that she went through such a hard period, but I think it’s normal. And if she hadn’t gone through it, I would be a little bit worried about her too. I think even however prepared you are, you’re going to grieve. But what we don’t want to do is be grieving and depressed to such an extent that we can’t pick ourselves back up. So make sure that you keep your contacts. People say to me, the one thing is, oh, I’m going to take a sabbatical for a year afterwards. I’m going to go and I’m not going to contact anybody, I’m not going to do anything. Those are the people that I don’t normally see coming back into the work and what they were doing because they lose their confidence. I think even when you’re taking your year sabbatical or giving yourself a break because you deserve it, keep your contacts, have those coffees, have those chats, let people see you and know you because they forget you quite quickly.

Michael Avery

And it’s so important in today’s world where we’re on a hamster wheel, and I just think of my own diary and half, and you maybe turn down that coffee or don’t keep up that regular brunch or lunch meeting. If you don’t keep those up, it’s very difficult to pick them up when you’ve called time on a career, and I see your point, almost impossible. Hopefully, people listening to this, if they haven’t started and they’re in this kind of phase of their life, will start planning that, and you know that’s the kind of message we want to get across. Coming back to the work that you’re doing now, Judy, and working with founders and entrepreneurs, what do you think of the and very high level the South African entrepreneurial ecosystem? And where are you seeing founders getting stuck at the moment? And where do you see the most impact that you have in trying to get them unstuck?

Judy Sunasky

Well, being a founder, entrepreneur, business person in South Africa is tough. There’s no question about it. It’s a it’s a difficult market, it’s fraught with constant challenges and resilient wins. Luckily, South Africans are really resilient. The sticking points come in at the different step changes in the business. So usually what starts you off, the talent, the craft, the skill, then gets to a phase where you’ve now moved into management that you’re not really skilled at, and at that stage you’re not really enjoying what you’re doing anymore. And there’s the step change required for you to find your next role in the business.

Michael Avery

It’s such a different role that from being the founder, creator, someone who’s building something versus someone who’s managing something with processes and systems often takes two different people entirely. And those businesses that have founders who understand where that moment is. I was chatting to Kathleen Quillinen, the founder of Pesto Princess, the other day. She’s been she’d grown a very successful pesto business. It’s now available in most retail markets. She said the biggest challenge for her was stepping away and saying, right, I’m not the person who’s going to scale this. We’re now in Pick n Pay and checkers and all of this. I don’t want to manage systems and processes. So she stepped back and she does marketing, she’s still involved in the business, but she understood when. And I think that is always very difficult. I just want to bring this firmly back to the kind of money side of the conversation because, selling a business obviously changes the shape of wealth. Yesterday you owned an operating company, tomorrow you may suddenly own cash and investments. And I think psychologically that can be quite different. Did selling Blendwell change how you thought about financial security? And, did you feel secure? Because I know often when you’re an entrepreneur, you feel you’re in charge of everything.

Judy Sunasky

Where’s my salary? I was paying myself. Suddenly that was gone. And again, you might have money that you have invested. It’s not the same as getting when you’ve had a salary in your account for years and years and years and years, It’s quite a It’s a real mind shift. It’s a real mind shift. It’s a mind shift. Yeah, I’m like clutching my chest, yeah, because it can feel how difficult that is.

Kim Potgieter

And so many times what we haven’t done is got our mind around the fact that investment we’re going to draw down on. So I what I see quite a mistake people make is first of all, they don’t work out what the number is they should get for the business. So that’s where financial planning comes into this. Just like Judy had the conversation with her husband. At that point would be to have a get a financial plan done and see what money you need to live on for the rest of your life. It helps you also come up with the value for your business.

Michael Avery

Yeah.

Kim Potgieter

Because if you know what it is you’re going to need for the rest of your life, then you go into negotiations, all of a sudden you know the number that you will not go below. You won’t go below. And then the conversation goes, well, depending on what you can get, is it something that you can just leave to grow and you live off the interest? Or is it something that’s going to be going down through the years? And it’s a hard thing to come around when you’re a builder and when you’re into growth and your investments start coming down. But you’ve got to keep asking yourself, if my money’s going to last until I’m over a hundred and there’s some money to leave to my children, is there a bigger number that I need? Do I still need to be pushing myself so hard? And it’s hard for an entrepreneur because an entrepreneur deep down knows about growing, knows about creating, and now it’s a very unshaky ground.

Michael Avery

I mean, it there’s something ironic about an entrepreneur is perfectly comfortable having 90% of their wealth concentrated in one private company who now all of a sudden becomes scared of a 5% movement in an investment portfolio that’s better diversified.

Judy Sunasky

But then It’s a bit less control.

Michael Avery

Absolutely. So just as we end off, Judy, it’s been great chatting to you, but what would your advice be to someone who finds themselves in a similar situation? They’ve spent the better part of their working lives building this asset of value that they’re now going to exit and they need to start thinking about what happens next. I’ve got a few friends in mind who I’m going to be sending this to.

Judy Sunasky

Well, you have to consider what your next phase of life looks like from a financial perspective. You need to understand what you need to be able to live that. If you’re going to be exiting your business, you need to prepare your business, but most importantly, you need to prepare yourself.

Michael Avery

Fantastic. We’ll leave it there then. And I think that’s the hardest lesson of all separating what you do from who you are. And that requires a whole lot more work than I think many entrepreneurs are aware of. I think they may be on some level aware of it, but I think the words courage maybe.

Kim Potgieter

The next word’s courage that you need to have to do all of that.

Michael Avery

To do all of that. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Judy Sunasky, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. And Kim Potgieter, always a pleasure having you in studio. I’m Michael Avery. This has been Life Chapters, Money Choices. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share amongst your network, especially those entrepreneurs out there who might need to be thinking about this as they’re looking to exit their own businesses. Take care.