In this episode of Freedom to Exit, Lani Dickinson delivers a wake-up call for founders still stuck inside their business: buyers don’t want your hustle—they want your systems.

Lani breaks down how AI and automation directly impact your company’s value, employee retention, client satisfaction, and ultimate ability to scale—or sell. You’ll hear why burnout, dropped leads, and repetitive tasks are slowly eroding your valuation, and how small changes in automation can unlock the freedom (and exit multiple) you actually started your business for.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why most businesses that list never sell (and how to avoid being one of them)
• How automation impacts profitability, client experience, and valuation
• What buyers are really looking for—and why they don’t care how hard you work
• How to hit industry benchmarks that matter in due diligence
• Why AI improves employee retention and eliminates burnout
• The truth about client expectations, speed-to-lead, and how automation meets them
• Real stories of founders who stopped babysitting their business—and finally stepped away

Links Mentioned:

✅ 7 Ways AI Can Boost Your Sales and Save You Time – Free Guide

✅ The Changes Assessment – See What Buyers See in Your Business

Enjoyed this episode?

Subscribe to Freedom to Exit for more no-fluff insights on building a business that buyers chase.

Connect with Lani Dickinson:

📌 Instagram: @stealthfreedomtoexit

📌 Facebook: Lani Dickinson

📩 Email: info@stealthfreedomtoexit.com

🌐 Website: stealthfreedomtoexit.com

If this episode helped you, send it to a fellow founder—and don’t forget to leave a review. It helps more business owners find the show and take their next step toward freedom.

>> Lani Dickinson: Welcome back to Freedom to Exit. We're gonna talk about how

you can't exit, what you still have to babysit, and

how automation can increase the business value and free you

up. Cause here's the real truth. While

most owners of today were working really

hard with their head down building a business over

the last 20, 30 years, the rules of the

game changed. Buyers today do not

want to work in the business. They want the cash flow

that comes from the business. And maybe they want to be

connected to the outcome that the business provides for the

buyers. They don't want to buy a job

that they have to work in. That's the painful

truth of what's going on today. So this is also

why only one in five businesses sell and

the four out of five that don't. There's a whole army

of people being trained on how to take

advantage of the fact that the owner is

still working in the business. And

so these deals look like massive

owner financing. A, reduced payout in the

beginning, a future payout based on some

metrics that the owner no longer controls the

existing cash flow of the business, paying the

owner of salary while they train

new people how to basically disassemble

everything they built. This is the real reality of what's going

on in business buying today. If you

cannot walk away from your business without it crumbling,

you don't own a business, you own a job and a

stressful one with no health insurance. And

it's one that nobody wants to buy. Buyers today are looking

for something scalable, stable and

completely independent of them. When they buy the

business, they are not buying your hustle, they're

buying your systems. And today we're going to talk

about how automation, even if you just do a little bit,

especially AI powered automation, can help you

finally step out of the day to day, increase your

valuation and get you the freedom you started

the business for in the first, first place. Here I have

a tale of two agencies with the same revenue. Both of

them doing about 1.2 million a year.

The first ones still taking sales calls,

still handling client onboarding, writing

proposals, checking reports before they went out

and responding to Slack messages over the weekend. The

second had automated lead qualification in booking

a templated onboarding recorded video process

for onboarding of new clients. All the delivery systems

handled through SOPs and automation. AI handling

all of the frontline FAQs and follow ups so they could get to

the 12 follow ups needed to close the sale. Guess what happened?

Agency one can't sell. The buyer

said, well we'll buy it at a

discount. But you need to come with the business a minimum

of three years, ideally five. Can you imagine selling

your business and becoming an employee of it for five

more years doing it the way the new owner wants

to do it. And by the way, they're not on site in the business

because they're not working in the business and agency

too. Sold for 4 times EBITDA

clean quick premium offer,

no earn out, no need to stay on as an employee.

Why? Because it was a plug and play business

that had also been optimized, which I'm going to talk about in a

future episode optimization. So buyers

buy systems, not superheroes.

Your firefighting ability is not impressive

to a buyer and I know that hurts to hear that

they don't care that you know how to do all the

things and that you are that is not a badge of

honor if you're ever going to exit your business

either for time and location freedom. Now stop missing

dinners at home and stop missing the events and

activities or the ability to exit fully

in a sale later. Buyers don't really want

to buy your genius. They want to buy a

recipe, not the chef. You gotta think about that.

And if the recipe only works if you're in the

kitchen, it's not scalable and it's definitely

not sellable. Automation really helps you step out of that

role and let your business run like a machine, even

if you're on the beach or building your next thing. Here's one of my

favorite stories. It's frustrating, but it really

shows the difference between how humans approach it

and how an AI assist sales

process could work. I have a friend who was helping a tanning

salon and they were going crazy not

understanding why they were giving away a free session lead

magnet and it wasn't converting into higher ticket

sales for the other things that they were offering. And

they were just, you know, couldn't figure it out. So

they hired a marketer who did some secret shopping and found

out that the receptionist was answering the

phone to book the free appointments and saying when the

owner starts selling you all the upsell stuff, you

don't need any of that. So all the money that the owner was

putting out to generate leads, the

reception was turning away the

profit that that was meant to bring in.

Many of us are familiar with loss leaders. We lose money on the

sample a lot. We believe that a certain percentage of that is

going to turn into business on the but not if the receptionist

is saying you don't need any of that. Ouch. Painful

way to Learn a human behavior lesson. She was

uncomfortable with selling and didn't say that to the

owner of course, but just did her own thing in the background.

So all that money being spent was being killed by the front

desk. So we put in some AI and some automation. The AI

is s not afraid to do the upsells. It will follow up all

the number of times that are needed. Consistent

messaging, better conversion, a front desk that

could focus on higher value tasks or

something that they were already good at. Here's another part

that owners often don't think about when they're moving into a

sale. Automation helps you hit industry

benchmarks, which are often hard to hit

because benchmarks are saying this is how the

business that is profitable and successful. These are the numbers

that should be hitting. But a small business

with and this is like up to 20 million that doesn't

have some kind of AI and automation in

place is gonna have a hard time hitting

benchmarks. Buyers, consultants,

valuation experts, they are all going to

compare everything in your business to the

benchmarks about your industry type. Speed

delete. How fast are you responding? Client churn. Are

people sticking around or leaving because of dropped balls?

Review volume and quality things we've talked about on other

podcasts. Operational consistency,

cost of delivery. Are you overspending

on products and supplies or human

labor? When automation could streamline all of that

profit margin, Are you dropping enough profit to the bottom

line? You bit a whisperer T shirt on. Today it's

all about do you create profit? Is

there cash flow? And then things

like cost to acquire a lead? They drastically

drop when you add in AI and automation

for your follow up. So the cost to acquire

lead suddenly becomes way more affordable or

the lifetime value of a customer that increases

when you add in AI and automation.

When you know about the statistics about

people want what they want right now, the humans are

rarely available right now to do it. So

AI and automation can give them what they need

now, which increases lifetime value of the customer.

It doesn't just help with one of these

AI impacts, all of these and many, many more.

These were just the first few that came up when I was

outlining this. When you improve these numbers,

you're not just growing revenue today, you're

increasing valuation based on the

business being able to create ebitda which increases your

chances for a more successful sale more on your

terms. Speed to response in this process

is pretty much everything. So let's zoom

in on one benchmark. Speed delete. Because

that's where new people are looking for you and you're

going to make more revenue, which leads ideally to more

profit, which means more exit multiple

90% of customers want an

immediate response. Only 60% of

those people define that as under 10

minutes. Some people define that as less than

five minutes. So 90%

say immediate. That's somewhere between five and 10 minutes.

And most small businesses responding in hours

or days so they all get back to them after

lunch. Doesn't work. You simply

cannot meet this expectation on your

own. No human could. Neither could your staff.

What happens when you're slow? Even if you don't think you're

slow, 90% want a full

immediate response in between five and 10 minutes. So what

happens when you're slow by those terms? You lose the lead.

They're already googling your competitors, you're lowering your

conversion rates, you miss the booking, you get

worse reviews. And when you start asking for

referrals? Crickets. So this

is something to look at. If you aren't getting

natural word of mouth in natural

unsolicited referrals, it might be in

how quickly you're following up or not following up,

because that's a pretty tough definition to meet. It also means

that you're not delivering the experience that makes people

refer. So we go back to the review podcast that we

already talked about. So staff burnout. They're

part of this equation. The repetition

of answering FAQs over and over and

over, doing the same process over and over. The stuff

robots can do, doing it over and over and over again. That

leaves staff burnout. So let's talk about that in your

team, they are human, they aren't robots. And

humans get cranky when they're stuck doing the same thing over and over

and over again. 67% of

workers feel burnout from repetitive tasks. And burnout

shows up as process resistance,

poor tone with customers, a little ey rolly,

low morale, certainly turnover. But AI

never gets tired, never forgets, never

forgets to do. The upsell never rolls its eyes. It

just executes exactly as you tell it to,

as many times as it needs to to get to the yes.

And that's good for your customers and your team,

because meaningful work drives retention

and culture, which clients are then further

drawn to. So here's the flip side of the

repetition problem. Employees who say that their

work feels meaningful are are

69% less likely to leave within

six months, and they stay on average

7.4 months longer.

87% say recognition and

connection to purpose and something that matters and is

worthwhile is more important than

compensation. So when you have

Happy people who feel connected to the work and

they feel like they're making a difference in the world. Not just ask

answering FAQs and they stay longer.

Guess what? They know the process, they know the system, they're more

efficient, they know your regular customers, they can treat them

special. So when we add in AI and automation,

we can redirect the human capital to where it can

make a huge difference in relationships.

So when you automate low value repetitive

stuff, your team gets to do the work that actually

fulfills them, which creates more loyalty, more

engaged brand ambassadors, basically. The

other thing that this does is all these

repetitive tasks that don't get done. We should

do, we know we should. It would be important to do

them. Things like updating credit card

expiration dates, things like sending out

disengagement letters like an attorney, they don't send

those out and a new case comes in for the

person they haven't disengaged, they might be on the hook for

representing that person. So the letter's got toa go.

Well, if we don't use AI in automation to do that

and the employee says I'll do them tomorrow or I'll

do them Friday when I come back, there's some risk,

right? So what happens? The owner might

do it at night during dinner, or

miss the kids ball game or whatever because they don't want the risk

and the employee went home. So these

boring, repetitive things can all be

given to AI and happen right

now just the way they should. Decrease risk,

increase loyalty, increase engagement and have a better

client experience and employee experience. So

here's some objections I know you're going to have for me. And

here's some truth bombs to knock those objections right

down. My business is unique. I can't tell you how many times

I've heard that. Sure, but it doesn't mean that your

intake process, your FAQs and your follow

up are. There's something in your process that's

pretty much all the same. Automation handles

the repeatable part so you can focus on the special

sauce. Okay, here's a great one. Clients want me.

They won't buy anybody else. They won't work with anyone

else. Okay, maybe. But the research shows they

want a fast, responsive,

predictable experience. Even more. The

data supports that. Remember the 90% in under 10

minutes. You can't do everything in under 10

minutes. So maybe you keep the older

clients who are trained to be only with you and

you slowly start introducing team. But the new

clients need to not get you. And the data

shows that people Would rather get what they

need now even from AI, then

wait two days to hear back from anybody personally. Okay,

here's the next one. I've tried automation, I've tried the

systems, I've tried that. It was super clunky, was too hard to learn.

Every day this stuff gets better. Every few seconds this

stuff gets better. But what I would say is that was

then, this is now. Today's systems are

literally drag and drop easy. And in my

case, for my clients, we just do it for you.

And we back this with 24.

7 human support to help people implement

fast and keep going. So to get over the tech

fear of things and automation is impersonal.

Okay, I want you to go download by lead

magnet and listen to the voice demo in the lead

magnet because you will hear real calls

that sound exactly like well trained humans.

Most people are shocked that it's AI. The other day

I was writing some stuff and the AI said to

me, do you want to take a break so that I can get a Red

Bull? Just kidding. AI doesn't need

Red Bulls. So AI can

really personalize the experience for your incoming

clients and for you. Here's the big picture. Freedom,

growth or exit. Whether your goal is to work

fewer hours, travel more, make it home for

dinner, tell more bedtime stories, or sell your

business, or just stop being the one that holds it all together,

AI and automation is the

tool that can help get you there. It gives you

time, scalability, brand consistency,

consistent voice, better staff, happier

clients, higher profit, which all of that leads

to a more valuable business. You don't have to disappear and

stay gone overnight. You just have to start stepping

back. I remember when my client Rosie said to

me, we had just started working together and she

said, now when can we take a vacation? Is that in

about two years? And I said, no, I'm all about

happy, healthy, wealthy and whole

entrepreneurs. And no, now that you've said

that, you've got to go away, at least for the weekend, right

away. And so she was scared, so she took a short

road trip. She lives in Southern California, so she

went to Palm Springs for the weekend. She was definitely

scared to leave for a weekend, so she wanted to be

within driving distance. She texted me over the weekend and sent

me pictures and she said it's great to be making money from

the cabana. The team in the process has it handled.

So no, you should not wait two more years to take a

vacation. Yes, you should be coming to dinner, having it hot

with your family. Stop missing out on the things that matter. That's actually

the reason I do what I do is to help people stop

missing the moments that matter. So you don't have

to disappear overnight and stay gone forever. But you do

have to start stepping back. So here's what I want you to do.

Download the free guide the seven ways to incorporate AI

into your business. Today you'll get actionable

automation strategies plus access to my live demos

where you can hear how AI actually

sounds like a human and how efficient and effective it really

is. And you can also take the changes assessment where

you can see what a buyer would see if they were

to assess your business and pinpoint the

places where you can make the changes now to have

better outcomes now and later. Both links are in the

show notes. Here's the thing. You won't get

to exit either for time and location freedom now or

to sell the business later if you're still in the business. This

is literally why only one in five

businesses sell that get listed. The only way out

is to become replaceable, not

irrelevant replaceable. Because a business

that runs without you, that's the one buyers fight to

buy. That's the one that gives you the life you really

want now and in the future. So thank you for

joining today. I'd love for you to subscribe and share this

episode with somebody you know needs to hear it. Thanks so much.