273 Solo Episode Big Picture

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth. 

I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg. 

This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience. 

When it comes to your business deep wealth, your exit or liquidity event is the most important financial decision of your life. 

But unfortunately, up to 90% of liquidity events fail. Think about all that time and your hard earned money wasted. 

Of the quote unquote "successful" liquidity events, most business owners leave 50% to over 100% of the deal value in the buyer's pocket and don't even know it. 

I should know. I said "no" to a seven-figure offer. And "yes" to mastering the art and the science of a liquidity event. [00:01:00] Two years later, I said "yes" to a different buyer with a nine figure deal. 

Are you thinking about an exit or liquidity event? 

Don't become a statistic and make the fatal mistake of believing the skills that built your business are the same ones to sell it. 

After all, how can you master something you've never done before? 

Let the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and the 9-step roadmap of preparation help you capture the best deal instead of any deal. 

At the end of this episode, take a moment and hear from business owners like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience. 

Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. And this episode is a solo one on an incredibly important area that in fact, most business owners miss to their detriment. Let me start off and I'll give you a hint of what this is. I'm going to read you a quote from none other than Richard Branson. 

If you're too busy working on the small things, you'll never get around to the big things.

And let me ask you this, take a step back for just a moment. Be really honest with yourself. Are you so busy, do [00:02:00] you have those golden handcuffs from your business shackling you from looking at the big picture, what's going on, where you should be, where you shouldn't be, perhaps these small little changes that are taking place in the industry that if you left unchecked, they can become big changes that you've missed out on.

And that's exactly what we're focusing on when it comes to the Deep Wealth nine step roadmap. There's a reason that step number one, otherwise known as the big picture, is where we begin. So step one big picture is what some people call... Blind spots. We at Deep Wealth call them an inflection point. What's an inflection point?

An inflection point, this is where a change is starting to take place in your industry, in your business. Most people don't see it. But over time, day over day, it builds up momentum. And if you miss it, by the time you find out about it, oftentimes it's too late.

Either you're a competition, they took it, they leveraged it, now they're way ahead of you, they've leapfrogged past you, they may even put you out of business, you now become obsolete. Or if you're not going to go out of business, you have to spend an [00:03:00] enormous amount of time and effort. Playing catch up instead of leading the charge, not a great scenario.

You don't want to be there. And in the 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery program for every one of our nine steps, we look at it through three different lenses. Number one, today, how can you grow your profits? And then the second lens, how do you increase your enterprise value? So how do you prepare for a liquidity event while you're growing your business?

So when it's time for your liquidity event, you show up with a much bigger, a much more profitable business. And then third, often overlooked, but as important, how do you ensure that you optimize your post-exit life for joy and for happiness? I know some of these things are on the art side of a liquidity event, on the art side of business, but that's where the magic happens.

So when it comes to step one, big picture, let's put it through each of those different lenses and let's start with growing the business. So, an inflection point, what do we need to do? Well, in the 90 Day Deep Wealth Mastery program, the first thing that we walk you through, how do you understand what an inflection point [00:04:00] is?

And then once you understand it, how do you spot those inflection points? One of the things that we do is we do a deep dive, a case study on Netflix versus Blockbuster. Now, if I took you back to the mid to late 1990s, Blockbuster was it. They were the titan of business. They were the 800 pound gorilla. And you had this fledgling called Netflix.

Most people hadn't heard of it that was out there really wasn't doing too well. Almost went out of business a few different times, but Netflix picked up on an inflection point that Blockbuster either didn't see at all, or they chose to ignore altogether.

Blockbuster did a little bit of both. What was the inflection point that Netflix picked up on back in the mid to late 1990s? 

Well, the inflection point was faster bandwidth. To set the context, to set the stage, some of you may not even remember this. You may not have even been around when this happened.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, this is what it was called before the Internet. In the early days of the Internet, to get access to the Internet, you had to use a modem. It was a dial up modem. It was incredibly slow. Sometimes it would [00:05:00] take a minute, yes, a minute for a page to load. Today we take that for granted.

We go onto the Internet, there's no dial up, it's instantaneous. A page shows up in milliseconds, nevermind seconds, but back in the day, that wasn't the case. And so the startup, this fledgling company called Netflix, they said, you know what, this is going to change. There's an inflection point. And what's going to happen eventually, not today, but eventually.

The Internet, it's going to become much faster, much more affordable that people in their homes, the everyday consumer, will have incredibly fast bandwidth. Now you may be saying, well, big deal. So what, what does that mean? And this is the importance of looking at the big picture when we begin to ask the right kinds of questions.

So what does it mean when the average consumer has this incredibly fast internet? 

Well, when it comes to movies, you can now stream movies. So gone are the days, if you can remember this of driving to your favorite video store and going through the traffic and the weather. You get to the video store, there's lineups, it's busy, [00:06:00] and maybe the movie that you want, it's not there.

Someone else rented it. You're out of luck. Not a great experience. So Netflix saw this and they began in the early days to prepare for streaming movies. 

In the 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery program, we do a deep dive on the David versus Goliath modern day tale of Blockbuster, that 800 pound gorilla, the Titan of video rentals. It was huge, a multi billion dollar company, and this fledgling, otherwise known as Netflix, who's just getting going.

And what we do is we look at the same inflection point, and there's always two sides to a coin, both in business and in life. And it's no different with the step one big picture and the inflection points. So the two sides of the coin, the same inflection point left unchecked, it will put you out of business or certainly into a smaller business if you either miss it or you choose to ignore it, but the very same inflection point when you identify it, when you leverage it, when you do something with it.

It can have you put yourself out of business and put yourself [00:07:00] into a much bigger, more profitable business. Now, hindsight is always 20 20. We now look back and say, yeah, this was a no brainer. Netflix, it beat Blockbuster. Blockbuster eventually, and here's a spoiler alert, Blockbuster eventually went out of business.

Yes, today we know that, but back in the day, it wasn't that clear. In fact, if you follow the Blockbuster and the Netflix saga. Netflix went to Blockbuster and offered Blockbuster to buy the company for 50 million. Blockbuster said, no. And today we say, wow, what a stupid mistake. What a dumb decision to not buy Netflix.

Back in the day, though, let's put this into context. Netflix was losing money. In fact, they had close to 50 million, give or take either side of that in debt. So it wasn't such a clear decision. And at the same time, streaming video. The faster internet, the bandwidth, it wasn't quite there. So at the time with the resources that I had, the information that I had, Blockbuster perhaps didn't make such a crazy decision in saying no.

Time said otherwise, but here's the difference. Even if [00:08:00] Blockbuster said no, which they did, Blockbuster now knew about streaming movies and they chose to ignore it. Netflix was way ahead of its time because streaming movies would take much longer than they thought it would take, but eventually it did come on the scene.

So with that in mind, let's now walk through those three different lenses that you know the big picture. You've identified an inflection point. How can that grow your profits? Let's talk about practical things today. So when you go through the 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery Program, the first thing that you do is you understand, well, what exactly the inflection points are.

And as we shared, an inflection point, it's something that's changing in the industry. It may be very small right now. There's not a lot of momentum with it. But it is happening, and you learn how to spot those inflection points, often years in advance. So, when you understand what an inflection point is...

You now know how to spot an inflection point. The next logical thing to do, well, how can I leverage those inflection points for success in the business? How can I put myself out of business and go into a much bigger business? Because let's face it, [00:09:00] what's the point of a liquidity event? What's the point of a post-exit life if you're no longer in business?

There is no point. And that's the power of the Deep Wealth nine step roadmap. Each of the steps, it ensures that we're in business to remain in business. Bigger, more profitable, thriving, and that when we do show up for the liquidity event, we're showing up with a much more valuable and much more profitable business.

And so one of the things that you learn to do when you learn how to leverage these inflection points, you want to remove what we call those inflection point business killers. So, an inflection point business killer, what is that? Well, let's go back to my David versus Goliath modern day saga, otherwise known as Blockbuster versus Netflix.

In that modern day saga, the business killer, the inflection point that put Blockbuster out of business, there were a few of them, but one of the main ones was faster bandwidth, the ability to stream movies. That was huge. Blockbuster said, well, why should we worry about this? And this is where as business owners, I want you to pay attention because most of you, believe it or not, you are the next Blockbuster waiting to [00:10:00] happen.

I don't want that to happen for you. So listen to how we avoid that. And because let's face it, the seeds of our future failure that's what's found in today's success. Life and business is ironic. Isn't it crazy that our success today has the seeds of failure tomorrow? Well, that's exactly what happens unless you deploy the strategies for step one, big picture.

So when we know what those business killers are, what we can now do is we can ask the question, okay, how do I leverage that inflection point? How do I remove that from being something that can harm my business to something that can help my business. And while you're at it, you can now say, okay, I identify this inflection point.

I'm years ahead from where it's going to happen and when it's going to happen. Maybe it's two years, maybe it's 10 years. The general rule of thumb, it takes a lot longer than what you think is going to take. But when you can start to prepare for today, for that inflection point, what you're doing, you're now saying, okay, can I change my business model?

Can I create a blue ocean where I set the rules, I create the business model, and I set myself up for [00:11:00] a market disruption? 

Now, when it comes to a blue ocean, when it comes to creating a winning business model, we are now in step two X Factors and in the 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery program, it's no coincidence, it's no mistake that right after step one, big picture, it's step two X Factors because when we create that blue ocean, which is an X Factor in and of itself, we can also create a winning business model.

In fact, we call it the Holy Grail of business models. There's three components to it. Number one, we're doing recurring revenue. So we leave the model of a pay as you go. We never know when our customers are going to be showing up. In a recurring business model. We know the frequency, our clients, they can forecast, they can budget exactly what they're going to be spending with us month over month, quarter over quarter, year over year.

And we also have that visibility that we can say, okay, we know we're going to be getting this kind of cashflow coming in. Let's put that into R& D. We can put some of that into marketing. We could put some of that into new initiatives. The second pillar of the business model, this is where we have long term contracts, preferably exclusive [00:12:00] if possible, and then the third, and this is really where the Holy Grail comes in, this is where we have revenue sharing.

When you combine all three, you have the Holy Grail of a business model. In and of itself, that's your X Factor. And that also puts you into that blue ocean because you're solving such a painful problem that people are only too happy to pay you to take their pain away. And so when you're going through all those things, you're combining step one, big picture, step two, X Factors.

What you now have, you have the ability to create these different strategies that are going to grow your profits. So let's go back to that modern day David versus Goliath saga. Blockbuster versus Netflix. What was Netflix doing? Okay. Yes, they were losing money. Not so great, but they were preparing for the day that streaming videos would be possible through faster bandwidth.

They began to invest in the technology, in the infrastructure, and the early days were messy. It didn't work. It was glitchy. They had outages. They had problems, but they were learning all the way through. What did Blockbuster do during that same time period with that same inflection point? Well, Blockbuster was greedy.[00:13:00]

They buried their head in the sand and they said, no one's going to want to use this. Why would someone want to go through all the technology hassles and the pain and the inconvenience when they can just drive to one of our stores. We're on virtually every corner across the US.

Someone can just show up, get the Hollywood movie and off they go. They can take it back home. Why would anyone want to do anything but that? And they ignored reality. They created their own distortion of reality. They really drank their own Kool Aid. Which was slowly the beginning of the end. Netflix on the other hand, they didn't.

And yes, it wasn't exactly the cleanest. It was messy as they went along, but as they perfected things, as fast bandwidth began to become more pervasive, that more households began to have it. They. Slowly but surely, put that final nail in the coffin for Blockbuster. So if we take a step back, step one, big picture, when it comes to growing your profits, what are we doing?

Number one, we're understanding what those inflection points are. And there's very specific questions that you can ask for understanding inflection points. And we go through that in the 90 Day Deep Wealth Mastery Program. In [00:14:00] the workbook, it lists all those questions. You and your team, you ask that. You come up with some answers.

You are leveraging artificial intelligence, aren't you? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, and AI comes back, it further expands and gives you more insights into what you said you were going to do, you and the team, so we understand what the inflection points are.

We now know how to spot them. When we pick one inflection point, we now create a launch plan. This is where we're putting all these strategies into practice. We stay with that launch plan until it's done. We know that done is always better than perfect. And we slowly begin the process of removing what we call those inflection point business killers.

And they now become inflection point business makers. While we're at it, we're asking all the right questions that we put ourselves into a blue ocean, a category of our own, where we create a holy grail of business models. And there's five specific strategies that you learn when you're going through all of that.

That's what makes all the difference. So that's how we're growing profits. Let's go to the second lens now of how do we increase the enterprise value or the value of the business? 

So when it comes to [00:15:00] enterprise value, this is where as a business, how do you prepare for your liquidity event? Years in advance, you're not just showing up unprepared. This is where most business owners, they make the fatal mistake. You know these statistics. Up to 90 percent of liquidity events fail.

Why? 

Business owners show up. They're not prepared. They have their buyers or their investors. They find out all the skeletons in the closet that the business owner should have found out about, but they didn't. And it's game over before it's even begun. So as we're growing the business today, we're preparing for that liquidity event tomorrow.

And what we're doing, we're finding those inflection points today, those skeletons, and we're coming up with plans to remove those skeletons, very similar to what we're doing on the growth side. 

Yes, I've drunk the Kool Aid when it comes to the Deep Wealth Mastery Program. What I love about our nine step roadmap, the very same time and effort that you're investing in the business to grow your profits, it's those same actions, tactics, and strategies. That are helping you increase your enterprise value.

So you're removing those skeletons, otherwise known as inflection points, because you put plans in either how to eliminate them [00:16:00] or the other thing that you're doing, you're saying, how can I take those inflection points and make them X Factors? And so we focus on that. We eliminate those inflection point deal killers.

And now we have all those strategies in place. We're taking those X Factors and some of those X Factors, they are absolutely world class. We are the only ones in the world that are doing it. We are the best at what we do, that they go from being an X Factor to what we call a Rembrandt. 

And we display those Rembrandts for the entire world to see. Those Rembrandts, which come from inflection points. That's what helps us keep our customers that they renew. That's what helps us to get new business. And that's what takes us from zero to hero in terms of growing our profits, increasing our enterprise value, creating a market disruption.

Because the other thing that we're doing with those Rembrandts, with those inflection points, with those skeletons that we removed, we're creating an incredibly compelling narrative for our future clients, for our existing clients, for our future buyers, our future investors, we're creating a narrative that tells the world why we are the [00:17:00] place to be nowhere else and why as a potential customer, you should put your business with us and nobody else.

Or why as a future buyer, you should buy our company or as an investor, you should invest in our company because we'll give you the highest return on investment. Now, for those of you that are saying, Jeffrey, okay, listen, you had me at inflection points. I wasn't quite sure about that, but yeah, you convinced me, but you're telling me that a narrative can do that much.

Absolutely. You better start knowing that a narrative does do that much. You've heard on this podcast, I've had evaluators come on and they all say more or less the same thing, that a powerful narrative that creates that's 80 percent of the enterprise value for a business. Let me repeat that again, a powerful and compelling narrative that forms up to 80 percent of your value when you're getting in front of buyers and investors.

Let me give you a few examples, not just from the Blockbuster, Netflix, but let me go to my e learning company, Embanet. That's a company that I had a nine figure deal with.

So Embanet, the inflection point that was taking place in the marketplace, it was becoming more difficult for universities that we worked [00:18:00] with to enroll new students. And they didn't know how to market. The marketplace was changing. You had the internet, you had the competition coming in town physically and setting up locations.

You had the competition coming in through video conferencing at the time because internet wasn't quite as fast as it is today. And so all those things were going on. The universities were losing students. They started to lose money in some instances. And the inflection point was, well, how can we help a university market and enroll more students than ever before?

Embanet at that time was not a marketing company. We were an online company. We converted courses to online. We did the hosting. We did the technical support. That was it. And it's very similar when you go back to Netflix. Netflix did not start out as a company that streamed movies.

If you remember, Netflix started out with DVDs in the mail. You would get a DVD in the mail as a rental, you kept it as long as you wanted, when you're done, you send it back through the mail, and then the next one came. Netflix found that inflection point, otherwise known as... Fast bandwidth, and they began working on that.

Well, the same thing that we did at Embanet, we identified the [00:19:00] inflection point, the ability to help universities market their programs in ways they couldn't do on their own to get more students, and slowly but surely behind the scenes, we began to market that and get that out there. Now, here's the key. the problem was so painful for universities, they could not figure it out on their own. Or even if they did figure it out on their own, they did not have the budget to solve it. They were prepared to go into the holy grail of business models with Embanet to help them do that. How do we do that?

Well, universities, for starters, they already have a recurring business model. The recurring business model is most students, when they enroll in a degree program... Every course that comes up, they're paying for that. And oftentimes, they'll pay for a semester at a time or a year at a time. So that was already in place.

But what we did, we went back to the universities and said, listen, we can help you fill the seats in ways you've never done before, maintaining your quality, helping you keep your intellectual property. But in order to do that, we're going to spend a lot of money. And in order for us to do that, We need to have a long term, in most cases, a 10 year exclusive [00:20:00] contract.

So the universities asked themselves, okay, are we going to do an exclusive contract with Embanet after they ran through the numbers and said, you know what, yes, it's worth it for us because Embanet Twok all the risk off the table. We're not gonna charge you a dime. In fact, we're gonna pay you from the very first student onwards. You are getting a check from us. How we're doing that is we're gonna split the revenues. So we created a blue ocean with the holy grail of business models and everything was integrated into one.

You couldn't have one without the other. We would not help the university if we didn't have that long-term exclusive contract. We would not help the university. If we didn't have that profit sharing, that revenue sharing, so you see how everything was tied together. 

Embanet one was the original business model. This is where we're doing the hosting, the technical support and the course development. Embanet one could not have gone to the universities and asked them to do the Holy Grail of business models because the university would have said, we can do the courses on our own.

Thank you very much. It's not going to cost us that much. Maybe they won't be as good, but they'll be good enough. Embanet Two, however, they could not say no to because they couldn't do [00:21:00] it at all. And that's the power of an inflection point. When you identify that early enough, you become the victor, not the victim.

And this is where you call your own shots. As a quick epilogue, by the way. If we would have waited on that, if we would have missed that, if we would have had competition, get to that ahead of us, and we would have come at the same problem five years later, three years later, seven years later, the universities would have said no.

Same idea, but timeliness is next to godliness. And that's why it's so important when you identify an inflection point that you immediately ask yourself, can I do something about this? Here's the thing, out of 100 potential inflection points, only one of them may be relevant to you, but that's all that it takes.

And as soon as you find that you jump on that right away, you get ahead of everyone else. You become the world class leader in that. And that's where you create your own blue ocean, your own category. You call the shots. And so going back to growing the enterprise value, by the way, that narrative that you created for your prospects, for your buyers, for your future investors, the narratives were pretty [00:22:00] much one in the same.

80 to 90 percent of that narrative was identical. It was only the last 10 or 20 percent that you would change depending on the different stakeholders. So can you see once again, how we're growing our profits? We're also preparing for our liquidity event, increasing our enterprise value, but it's really from the same time, the same insights, the same activities.

And once again, this is where most business owners completely miss the boat. They make this fatal mistake. Not a day goes by when I don't speak to a business owner and they're saying, you know what, Jeffrey? I don't have the time right now. I'm busy. I'll get to it when I'm a little bit later down the road or when I'm not as busy.

And I don't know, I don't know about you, but the last time I checked my calendar, there is no tomorrow. It doesn't exist. We're telling ourself a lie. If we're not preparing for our liquidity event today, you are preparing to fail tomorrow. It's that simple. I'm not here to be your best friend. I'm here to be your Deep Wealth advocate, and as an advocate, I'm here to tell you as it is, so you can do what you need to do to get the results. The marketplace doesn't wait for you. The competition doesn't wait for you. Your [00:23:00] future buyer certainly is not going to wait for you. There's lots of other opportunities out there.

You need to start preparing for today what the marketplace is going to need tomorrow. So now that we've covered the two different lenses, we spoke about how an inflection point can help us grow our profits. We spoke about how an inflection point can help us grow our enterprise value. Let's now look at the third lens, optimizing the post-exit life.

And you may be saying, okay, Jeffrey, once again, Yes, I was with you through growing the business, growing the profits, enterprise value, but how in the world can an inflection point help me with the post-exit life? Well, hold on to your hats, you're in for a ride. And once again, I'm going to put myself under the microscope.

They don't teach you in the books or in business school or elsewhere that preparing for your post-exit life is as important, if not more important than growing the business or your liquidity event, because after all, you're not having a liquidity event for the sake of a liquidity event, you're having a liquidity event for your post-exit life.

And so I missed the boat on that one. I made the biggest mistakes post-exit compared to pre exit. [00:24:00] And as you've heard me say before, I will say it again. I am still cleaning up from those horrible, horrendous, costly mistakes that I made. I had a huge ego. I surrounded myself with the wrong people. I was doing the wrong activities because I was not prepared for the post-exit life.

And in the post-exit life, no different than in business, on the personal side, we also have blind spots or inflection points. And that's exactly what we do in the 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery Program. In fact, not even step number one, step number zero, the Welcome module, we start with your post-exit life.

I've worked with business owners who are intent on having a liquidity event soon, but as soon as they go through that Welcome module, they take a step back, Jeffrey, I'm not ready for that liquidity event. I'm going to put a pause on that. In fact, I'm going to leverage what you taught me on how to grow the business, but I see that my post-exit life is not quite there.

I don't want to be miserable. I don't want to chase that happily ever after. I want to arrive with that happily ever after waiting for me. So let me take the time, my liquidity event is not going to suffer, if anything, it's going to [00:25:00] be the benefactor of it because I'm preparing for that post-exit life, I'll take the time now to do it, I'll show up with a more valuable business.

And so what you'll learn are from my mistakes, the lessons from the trenches of how you prepare. And I want to give a shout out to my good friend and a friend of the Deep Wealth community, AJ Wasserstein. He wrote this incredible case note of how do you prepare for the post-exit life. In fact, I'll put a link in the show notes there and I can only hope that the younger Jeffrey before the liquidity event, that I would have read AJ's case note, that I would have been the better for it. And so we're learning these lessons from the trenches because like myself, AJ never found is happily ever after.

You know, we were these two successful guys sitting at home in our pajamas. Bored out of our minds, nothing else to do, no one feels sorry for you. Everyone's busy. They can't come out to play. They're living their lives. They're going to their jobs, their careers, their businesses, and so one of the things that you do with your post-exit life, you create a timeline of when you're ready for your liquidity event, not the other way around. And in fact, in the 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery Program, we have a formula. Yes, believe it or not, we created a [00:26:00] timeline formula. Of when you'll be ready for your liquidity event, and at the same time, what you're learning for your postex exit life.

You're learning. What strategies can you do today right now, because you are richer than you think. Believe it or not, most business owners think, well, you know what? I'm not ready to have a wealth advisor. I'm not ready to start creating my wealth because it's locked up in the business. This is not the case.

You learn strategies of how you can increase the value for your financial freedom today. And at the same time, what you're doing when you're planning for your post-exit life, you're ensuring that you're not going out of business. Because I said before, I will say it again, what's the point of a liquidity event?

What's the point of a post-exit life if you're not in business? It defeats the purpose. And that's why optimizing for your post-exit life, you're putting strategies in place to make sure that your time, your focus, and your energy is not only for your post-exit life, but it's for your business today. And one of the main things that you do, I'm going to jump forward to step two, X Factors, I ask this very simple questions.

It's one of my favorite questions. You know this if you've been listening to the podcast for a while. What's that question? Does your business [00:27:00] run without you? Most business owners, the answer is an absolute no. I hear all kinds of buts. Well, let me tell you about this. Or let me tell you about that.

They're all excuses. It's a very simple question. Does your business run without you? Yes or no. It's a one word answer. And even if you have a management team, does it really run without you? Or are they checking in every single time to get your blessing for that major decision? Your business must run without you.

And when you do that, two wonderful things happen. Number one. For your future investor or buyer, they love that. They don't want a second full time job, otherwise known as your business. They don't want the risk of buying your business knowing that it could blow up when you're no longer there. And then number two, what you've done, you've unshackled yourself from those golden handcuffs.

You free up your time. You can now ask those big picture questions for your business, for your personal life. When you sell your business or when you bring in an investor, you're freeing up your time. You are going to lose momentum. If you have an exit, you'll have a non compete.

Some of your friends who are in the business, they're some of your employees, some of the companies that you work with, you [00:28:00] will not be able to speak with them. What are you going to do with all that time? AJ, he calls that white space in his Case Note, and there's all kinds of strategies of what you can do today well, in advance of your liquidity event, how are you going to fill your white space? Not just with anything, but with activities that leave you energized, that have you feeling excited. 

Hey, I can't wait to pick up that activity tomorrow. It just feels so good to do. And you're broadening your vision because think back to when you started your business, you tried many things that didn't work over time, you built up a momentum, you built up rituals, and now, you know, with your eyes closed.

What's going to make it work, what's not going to make it work. It's the same thing with your post-exit life. You need the time. My fatal mistake with my liquidity event journey, I did not plan for my post-exit life. 

So on day one of my post-exit life, I had no idea what to do. I lost all my momentum. Some of my friends, as I mentioned earlier, who were in the business, they were team members or employees, or they were at some of the customers that we're working with. I couldn't associate with them because of the non compete and really on the fly, in real time I was fumbling my way through, but I had all [00:29:00] kinds of social pressures. My mindset was wrong. Even though I had an incredibly successful exit, in my mind, I had imposter syndrome. I felt I had to demonstrate my worth to the world by doing all these impossible and crazy things that I had no business doing, but I didn't understand that at the time.

When you take the time and well in advance, you prepare for your post-exit life. day one, you have a plan. It's really a lifestyle because you've begun to implement that well before your post-exit life, well before your liquidity event. And so you're going out there and you're finding and removing your personal inflection points.

You're finding strategies of what you want to do more of. Strategies of what you want to do less of. And at the end of the day, what you're doing when you optimize your post-exit life, success without fulfillment is a failure. And so you're ensuring that your narrative says, yes, I'm successful because I have both joy and fulfillment in all that I do.

Whatever that looks like for you. Maybe you become a philanthropist. Maybe you go out and you start your next company. Maybe you're managing your money. Maybe you're just [00:30:00] traveling the world. The only right answer is the one that works for you. And that's where you want to be. But. It takes time. Like anything else, you're not going to get it on day one.

Sometimes it takes years. In my case, it took me close to a decade in fumbling through in real time to finally get the momentum, get that joy, get that fulfillment. And that's why you want to start that today. So if we take a step back, step one, big picture, I often joke with business owners who begin the 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery program.

I tell them that if they only did the first two steps and nothing else, that's the return on investment. Everything else is a bonus. And they laugh at me and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, Jeffrey, you're just saying that. But when they go through all nine steps, they come back and say, you know, Jeffrey, I didn't believe you at the time, but you're absolutely right.

If I stopped at step one big picture, or I stopped at step two X Factors. That was the price of admission right there. I'm making fewer mistakes in my business, fewer mistakes in my liquidity event. The ROI is huge from fewer mistakes. My business, we're now doing more things to grow faster, creating market [00:31:00] disruptions.

I'm showing up with a higher enterprise value and you're right. I'm optimizing my post-exit life. So let's put a pause on things for just a moment. Let's take a quick step back. What have we spoken about? Well, number one, what we shared was step one, big picture.

It's all about inflection points that happen on both the business side and on the personal side. And that inflection point, if you ignore it. If you miss it, if you stick your head in the sand, like some of you are doing right now, nudge, nudge, wink, wink with artificial intelligence, well, I'll get to it when I get to it.

I'm too busy to get to it. I'll figure out where it goes, what it looks like. That's not the way to go because when you miss it, your competition and the marketplace is not missing it, they will pass you by. You'll either be put out of business or you'll have a much smaller business. 

So that's all about growing your profits today so that you're in business today and for tomorrow and beyond. You're creating a market disruption. You're really solving a new and painful problem to keep you relevant. The second thing that you're doing while you're preparing to grow your profits today at the same time with many of the same strategies.

You're preparing for your future liquidity event. You're [00:32:00] showing up with far fewer skeletons. And if you can't remove all those skeletons, you know about those skeletons and you have narratives built around those skeletons to share with your future investor or buyer. And at the same time, you're preparing well in advance for your post-exit life so that you cross the finish line, not just with a financial win, but with fulfillment, with joy, knowing that you can check the boxes in things that give you meaning and purpose, but you're doing that well in advance. And at the same time, what you're doing, you are creating narratives for every one of those areas, you've created a narrative from the big picture on why your customers must stay customers, why a potential prospect must become a client, why a future buyer investor must absolutely invest or buy your company.

Those narratives are everything and you're creating them today. You and your team, you're refining them over time. They get better over time. As you fumble your way through, and yes, you will fumble your way through the big picture. When you're working with inflection points, you're not going to get it right the first time, but that's why you want to be an early mover.

You want to give yourself the runway to [00:33:00] recover from those mistakes. When you're tackling the big picture, and here's a bonus strategy for you, this is not a bet the farm decision, you and your team, your mindset, let's try an experiment. If we fail in this experiment we're not going out of business.

We're not breaking the bank. We're getting some feedback. We're getting some results and then we'll recalibrate. We'll adjust and we'll try it again and again and again. Every day you're at it and you're working at it.

And that's how you leverage step one, big picture to your advantage, to grow your profits, to grow your enterprise value and create a post-exit life that has both joy and fulfillment. So let me circle back to where we started that Richard Branson quote. If you're too busy working on the small things, you'll never get around to the big things.

And let me ask you this. Are you drinking your own Kool Aid? Are you buying the lies? Yes, I'm going to call it for what it is. Are you buying the lies that you're telling yourself? I'm too busy to think about the big picture. I'm too busy to even think about a liquidity event, nevermind a post-exit life.

If you're telling yourself that, you're setting yourself up [00:34:00] today for failure tomorrow. Coming out of this episode, what can you do? 

Ask your leadership team, ask your frontline employees, ask your clients, ask your prospective clients.

And this is an X Factor of a question. I'll reveal that for you. Hey, what's keeping you up at night when it comes to your business? That's what you're asking your prospects or your frontline employees or your team, your leadership team. Hey, what's keeping us up at night when it comes to running our business?

Listen for those problems, those, my friends, those are the inflection points that are asking you to identify them, leverage them, and solve them. And if you're not going to do it, your competition will, and that's what we don't want. So ask that question, what keeps you up at night? Identify those inflection points, pick one of them, and begin the process of creating a launch plan, a very specific blueprint of how you'll answer that inflection point. And you know that done is better than perfect. As you're creating your plan, it's not gonna be perfect. You'll refine it over time. You're taking small steps which add up to big results day over day, month over month, quarter over quarter, year over year. And that's what you're gonna be doing.

So that's the action item that I'd like you to [00:35:00] take. Find one inflection point that's maybe small today in the industry, but is going to become big. That you and your team can start working on. So there you have it. It's an official wrap. And let me ask you this. Did you enjoy this podcast? Did you enjoy this episode of learning all about step one, the big picture?

Did it change your perspective of how you can run your business, how you can grow your profits, how you can show up to your liquidity event, if that's two years away or 20 years away with a more valuable, more profitable company, and even have joy and fulfillment in your post-exit life? Well, if you answered yes, and I hope you did, I want to ask you for a small favor. If you haven't subscribed to this podcast, please in your favorite app, click on subscribe. When you subscribe to this podcast, you're doing two things. Number one, you're ensuring that every one of these episodes automatically show up. It's saving you time on your favorite device.

It's just there. It's a point and click. You can begin to listen. And the second thing that it does, it lets the community know, it lets other business owners know what we're doing because our big picture here at Deep Wealth, what gets us out of bed every single day, we are changing the social fabric of society one business [00:36:00] owner at a time, one liquidity event at a time. 

What do I mean by that? 

When you have a bigger business, a more profitable business from the strategies that you learn through Deep Wealth Mastery, you're hiring more people, the community benefits, you're solving more problems.

When it comes to your liquidity event, you're retiring, if I can say it, wealthier. You can take an allocation of your wealth, put it towards a social cause, find a charity, create a foundation, but together... We're making a difference out there and that's really what it's all about. So something as simple as subscribing to this podcast, tell your friends, your colleagues to subscribe to this podcast. 

Together we'll make a difference. We're paying it forward. And if you can do that, you have my commitment to continue to bring you world class guests and strategies from the trenches and tactics that really work to help move the dial on your business.

So with that said, it's an official wrap as we love to say here, Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while remaining healthy and safe. Thank you so much and God bless. 

Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me. 

Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an [00:37:00] ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions. 

Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity 

Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix. 

Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately. 

Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I [00:38:00] invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended. 

Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even. 

Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years [00:39:00] that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table? 

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

 If you're not on my email list, you'll want to be. Sign up at www.deepwealth.com/podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode, if it added value, if you walked away with some new insights and strategies, please leave a review on your favorite podcast channel. Reviews help us reach new listeners, grow the show. And continue to create content that you'll enjoy and as we wrap up this episode as always [00:40:00] please stay healthy and safe.