In this episode I'm joined by Andrea Carpenter, a next-generation entrepreneur who is redefining leadership and succession in family businesses.

We engage in a profound exploration of her unconventional pathway, which includes acquiring and leading an established firm rather than adhering to the prevalent startup narrative.

Andrea expounds upon the intricacies of facilitating successful transitions while prioritizing interpersonal relationships and preserving the integrity of familial connections within business contexts. As we delve into pivotal moments that have shaped her vision, we uncover insights on the significance of intentional leadership and the need for strategic planning in ensuring the longevity and prosperity of women-led enterprises.

This episode serves not only as an inspiration but as a practical guide for aspiring leaders to navigate the complexities of business transitions with foresight and empathy.

Our Guest This Week:

Today we have a 🌟 Truth-Telling Transitionist🌟 in our midst!  

Andrea Carpenter is a next-gen entrepreneur, G2 successor, and the incoming President of The Transition Strategists—where she helps families and founders design people-first business transitions that protect both relationships and results. 

Her somewhat unconventional entrepreneurial journey—buying into and leading an established business instead of starting from scratch—challenges the dominant startup myth and offers a powerful alternative path. As the creator of Your Next Gen Friend, she’s built a soul-centered platform and podcast that gives rising leaders space to explore identity, wealth, and legacy with honesty, grace, and strength. A former UX designer turned transition strategist, Andrea understands both the technical mechanics and emotional layers of family business planning—because she’s lived it. With fierce clarity and generous wisdom, she’s helping the next generation step out from invisible pressure and into intentional leadership

Takeaways:

• Andrea emphasizes the importance of intentional business transitions that prioritize relationships and outcomes.
• The episodes discusses the significance of identifying pivotal moments in life that shape one's entrepreneurial journey and leadership style.
• Effective family business transitions require careful planning and consideration of the emotional and operational dynamics involved.
• The discussion highlights the necessity of establishing a clear vision for the future, particularly in navigating the complexities of business transitions.
• Listeners are encouraged to explore the Objectives Matrix, a tool designed to clarify personal and business priorities for effective decision-making.

Chapters:

03:19 Defining Moments in Life

10:20 Navigating Business Transitions

16:56 The Journey of Growth and Team Evolution

21:20 Transitioning Family Businesses

25:59 Transitioning Business Roles and Responsibilities

30:21 Transitioning Leadership and Business Values

Burning Questions Answered:

1.What does it really take to build a self-managing company that thrives beyond the founder?

2.How can second-generation leaders bring their own vision while honoring what came before?

3.Why do most business transitions fail—and how can women founders avoid the same traps?

4.How do you create space for new leadership without losing your company culture?

5.What are the emotional and strategic steps to design a successful handoff?

Favorite Quotes

“Sometimes what needs to die is just an old version of you.”

“It’s okay to build differently than the generation before you.”

“Legacy is powerful—but it’s also deeply personal.”

GUEST OFFERS & CONTACT INFORMATION:

LinkedIn (Andrea): https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreashaver

The Transition Strategists –

Free Resource: https://transitionstrategists.com/force

Website: https://transitionstrategists.com

LinkedIn (Company): https://www.linkedin.com/company/transitionstrategists/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@transitionstrategists

Your Next Gen Friend –

Website: https://yournextgenfriend.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yournextgenfriend

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@yournextgenfriend

Podcast: https://yournextgenfriend.captivate.fm/

Follow the #WisdomOfWomen show for more inspiring stories and insights from trailblazing women founders, investors, and experts in growth and prosperity.

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RSS Feed: https://feeds.captivate.fm/womengetfunded/ 

Coco Sellman, the host of #WisdomOfWomen, believes business is a force for good, especially with visionary women at the helm. With over 25 years of entrepreneurial experience, she has launched five companies and guided over 500 startups. As Founder & CEO of A Force for Good, Coco supports purpose-driven women founders in unlocking exponential growth and prosperity. Her recent venture, Allumé Home Care, reached eight-figure revenues and seven-figure profits in just four years before a successful exit in 2024. A venture investor and board director, Coco’s upcoming book, *A Force for Good*, reveals a roadmap for women to lead high-impact, high-growth companies.

Learn more about A Force for Good:

Website: https://aforceforgood.biz/ 

Are Your GROWING or PLATEAUING? https://aforceforgood.biz/quiz/

FFG Tool of the Week: https://aforceforgood.biz/weekly-tool/ 

The Book:  https://aforceforgood.biz/book/ 

Growth Accelerator: https://aforceforgood.biz/accelerator/ 

Welcome to the Wisdom of Women Show.

We are dedicated to amplifying the voice of women in business.

A new model of leadership is emerging and we are here to amplify the voices of women leading the way.

I am your host Coco Zelman, five time founder, impact investor and creator of the Force for Good system.

Thank you for joining us today as we illuminate the path to unlocking opportunities and prosperity for women led enterprises by amplifying the voice and wisdom of women.

Today we have a truth telling transitionist in our midst.

Andrea Carpenter is a next gen entrepreneur, G2 successor and the incoming president of the Transition Strategist where she helps families and founders design people first, business transitions that protect both relationships and results.

Her somewhat unconventional entrepreneurial journey, buying into and leading an established business instead of starting from scratch challenges the dominant startup myth and offers powerful alternative path.

As the creator of your next gen brand, she's built a soul centered platform and podcast host that gives rising leaders space to explore identity, wealth and legacy with honesty, grace and strength.

A former UX designer turned transition start strategist, Andrea understands both the technical mechanics and emotional layers of family business planning, helping the next generation step into intentional leadership.

It is my pleasure to welcome you Andrea.

Thanks Coco for having me.

Oh, it's a pleasure.

We would love to know what is a book written by a woman that has significantly influenced your life?

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker.

Why do we come together?

What's the purpose of a gathering?

How do we design a gathering to get the outcome we want?

The first time I read her book I could translate the way that I think about design and curating the experience that people have on a website or something.

I can turn that into a system or a gathering or the way that people interact in person.

Highly recommend Priya's book.

It's been foundational in thinking about how we bring people together.

From a birthday party to a family meeting.

It's really applicable in all types of gatherings.

Oh my goodness.

I feel like this is heaven sent because I do so many gatherings.

I have events in my home all the time.

I feel like this is something that would be really valuable for me.

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker.

Is that right?

That's right, yeah.

Thank you for this wonderful recommendation.

I would love to know about the big important moments of your life.

Moments that shape who you become.

I think we all have these moments, these pivotal moments that teach us something that help us carve our way through life.

Sometimes really hard moments and sometimes really glorious moments.

What are we Big moments that have shaped who you are.

Andrea.

Yeah, so the first one I thought of is being a second generation inheritor.

My dad built a software company that he did two rounds of private equity to exit.

That happened while I was in college.

So some wealth inheritors, the family has money or there's been some type of wealth event.

The first time that I realized that my family was quote, unquote, different was very defining for me.

It was actually in the context of applying for colleges.

And I was like, all my friends are doing the fafsa.

I should probably do the fafsa.

And I remember my dad saying he probably didn't think I would interpret it this way, but he kind of laughs at my face and goes, no, we don't need to do the fafsa.

That has been really defining for me because it's how your next generation perceives or starts to learn about what they have.

The first time that you realize your family has money was a very defining moment for me when I was getting ready to apply for college.

Everyone else is filling out the fafsa, so I'm like, I should definitely fill out the FAFSA too.

And I remember my dad kind of laughing in my face, not in a mean way, but he was like, no, no, we don't need you.

You don't need to do that.

And it was the first time I was like, oh, let me put some context and framework around, well, how much is there?

We talked about the exact numbers or how much there was.

It was the first time I had a nugget of wisdom around, oh, there's something more here.

It was a very defining moment for me.

How cool is it that you're father was grounded, that you didn't know right?

And the way he raised you, it wasn't the most important thing in your life that you had.

The value systems are very strong in my family.

And my experience of the oldest versus my youngest, who's seven years behind, they moved to the mountains, they built a house.

Like, the experience was just so different.

But I feel like all three of us sisters are very grounded.

Watching the way that my parents did that, I think is very cool.

And there's a lot to learn.

I've felt before like I don't belong in places or mastermind groups where people have this wealth because a lot of my wealth was generated by my family.

That's been a story I've had to rewrite quite a bit in conversations with my dad.

This idea around, why do I have to do the same thing that my dad did.

I watched my dad be a founder grind from the beginning, and it was hard work.

I always thought that being a successful entrepreneur was me doing the exact same thing that my dad did.

And the reason my dad built all of this is because he wanted us, his daughters, his family, to feel fulfilled, to be able to do what we wanted to do.

The first time, I was like, I could still be really successful and work on a cool project and do all these things, but I don't actually have to be the one.

That was the moment.

I was like, oh, I could do things a little bit differently.

That was a very defining moment for me.

What point did you uncover for yourself that like, you could go and there was different options?

It's probably in the last four to five years has been the biggest chunk of my growth.

When I was 25, I joined GoBundance Women, which is a mastermind group.

My dad is always like, surround yourself with other people.

Even better if it's other women who are doing cool, amazing things.

So I joined this group.

They're all doing different types of businesses and real estate investing.

I'm like, what am I supposed to be doing?

I'm still working a full time job.

That ties into the third defining moment, which was I'm sitting in a conference and they asked the question, what in your life needs to die for something new to be born.

And I was like, oh my gosh, I have to quit my job.

The immense privilege that I have in my life is I need the paycheck and I have living expenses.

But I had a little bit of padding I could put in that notice on Monday.

And I started designing what I thought the future looked like for me.

At first I was gonna build a consulting business, and then I was like, no, I should look at buying businesses.

I explored these iterations, which ultimately led me to meet my now business partner, Elizabeth.

That was super defining.

I keep saying I'm gonna do this thing.

Why am I putting it off?

The trust.

That gut feeling set me off on a really cool path.

That is such a cool question.

What in your life needs to die for?

The next thing to emerge.

Wow.

To make room for something else to be born.

Great question.

I actually had a moment.

You would have found that with or without your padding, you're an entrepreneur.

That's what we do.

Sometimes we have to see something that needs to die.

And sometimes we can do it on Monday and sometimes in six months.

But the moment of clarity.

We need to see whatever our excuses or hang ups are around, why we can't do the thing that needs to go.

We have to get past that.

Right.

Otherwise you still rent this other job and not living your purpose.

Yep.

So that put me on the path.

I was like, I don't know what I want to do, but I want to do something.

With next gens.

I left a lot of space and I did a lot of random things to figure out where I wanted to land.

I landed in a spot that was really exciting by meeting my business partner, Elizabeth, who had done this work with family businesses and transition work for a long time.

She made the invitation to me to consider joining her business.

And you're like, oh, yeah, I want to go into family business transitions.

Cause I never considered my dad's business a family business.

But as I get into this work now a family business in the context of our work is a founder, in my dad's case, who cares more about the people he works with and the employees and his family as he navigates the transition and making sure that we're taking care of the people who matter most to us.

I love being a part of helping founders.

If I can help anyone navigate that period of transition, whether it's selling or passing to their kids.

And that's a win in my book if it helps the family stay together.

So that's ultimately how I do a lot of work with the next gens and the successors when there is an internal transition about to happen.

That's a lot of change.

Potentially even more change for the person stepping into the leadership of the company as the owner steps out.

Lots of leadership growth and change.

Sometimes they're purchasing equity, sometimes they're getting gifted equity.

How do you navigate all those discussions?

It's very hard.

I'm living that in our own transition.

I didn't flat out buy the business completely from her.

She wanted to work another five to seven years.

And I thought that was going to be really good.

Well, it is really good padding in this season of my life.

My daughter just turned one last weekend.

That is all about making sure that I have time and space to be with my family.

I wanted to be in a position where I had an established team and a little bit more space to do life things as well, which was a really good decision for me when I decided to ultimately buy the business versus build.

Tell me about your journey to choose to buy the transition strategist, the business you are purchasing.

Did you look at other opportunities?

Did you just come across this one?

What led you to this business?

Yeah, good question.

So I had this whole Idea.

It was called creating constellations.

The analogy was you look up in the night sky and you see all the stars, but nothing really stands out.

When you're at this crossroads of too many options, you can do a little introspection.

You can ask yourself good questions.

I've had some defining experiences around questions in my life.

Do you learn something about yourself?

You get that moment of clarity, and suddenly there's some brighter stars that start to shine and form a constellation or a north star type of direction for you to go.

So that was essentially the idea.

I was like, oh, I can build some coaching programs or we can do some group things.

I was thinking, particularly next gens, to navigate what they want to do in their life and what they're excited about and what feels good to them.

I shared this idea with Elizabeth the first time I met her.

She's the tiger 21 chair, and he's a member of Tiger.

I drive up to her farm area and we're sitting out on the porch.

I tell her about this idea, and she goes, I have a program similar to this idea that we're not even using.

She goes, it's just IP that's been sitting on the shelf.

She goes, how would you like to come into my business and work on designing a successor program?

You can use that IP if you want, or you can build something new.

And in the end, if we decide we don't like working together, I'll keep it and you keep it.

Like, we'll both just take what we worked on together and you could go build something else.

But I could use it in the business if I want.

I was 27 at the time, and to get experience in a field that I don't really have experience with, mentored by a woman that I thought was pretty cool.

My dad is always coaching, like, what's the real downside here?

If you learned something new that you can apply, is there a downside for you?

So we started working together.

We have an assessment called the IMAP assessment, which is a validated assessment similar to DISC and Myers Briggs.

It came out of the same kind of university as those in the 70s.

The difference is this one stayed private.

What I love about the IMAP assessment is it has a motivated role.

The natural wiring that starts to emerge at age 5.

Are you more of an ideas person or are you more of a systems person?

Is essentially the spectrum of things on the imap.

Elizabeth had me take this, and she stacked our data up on top of each other.

She's super creative and visionary.

Somewhere in the end of the spectrum.

But I have a big category of what is labeled the refiner, which means I love taking someone else's ideas.

And the second I saw that and the second she explained.

Explained why that could mean we might work really well together long term, I.

It was like this, like, light bulb went off in my head because I was like, oh, every time I think about starting my own business, I get it x far.

And then I get tired or burnt out.

And that's because I got pulled out of my motivated role.

Anytime I had to do something I'm not naturally wired to do, it felt heavy.

Now that I've seen tons of these IMAP assessments, most of the visionaries and founders have this certain type of natural wiring.

I need to honor who I am as a person and that refiner piece of that IMAP and how I've processed.

And I'm like, yeah, that is true.

I do get a lot of energy out of that.

So the assessment's just a tool to help us evaluate if that feels in our gut like a true statement or not.

To me, it does feel like a true statement.

That idea of actually buying and coming into someone else's ecosystem so that I can refine it gives me a lot of energy and excitement.

Honestly, by then I was so in the weeds and I had learned so much.

I really liked Elizabeth, and I love our team.

We have a team of 12 women right now.

Not on purpose.

That's just kind of who we've attracted and who's been the right fits for our role so far.

We're a very powerful team.

I love the energy.

Eventually, Elizabeth made the invitation again to see if I wanted to participate in it.

It felt right.

Not without its challenges.

I wouldn't say that buying a business or going into a partnership is the easy route by any means.

For many people, it's actually harder because it's no longer just holding what's important to you.

It's also holding what's important to another person.

We're at very different stages in life.

She's thinking about retirement, and I'm thinking about I might have five to 10 to 15 years of energy to put into this.

And so how fast we want to scale or how we want the system to run, types of things we're going to put in place, or how we structure the product offerings.

Our approaches on these things are different.

And so we have to come together to figure out what the best path forward is for both of us, which is a very hard thing to do.

I would say buying A business outright could be an easier path if someone was considering that.

I can understand that there's some benefits to what you have, right?

You've got two minds working on it.

But it's hard.

I had business partners too when my company merged.

They are great people.

Sometimes you have different ideas and then you have to negotiate that.

So tell me, it was originally the IP and now you're 12 women on the team to help us understand the journey from there was just an IP to now you have 12 women.

What happened?

Elizabeth has been through a few iterations.

She's tried different things over the years.

The other day we finished our EOS quarterly meeting and she goes, I want you to celebrate how far you've been able to take us.

Only one year since I've been in an active, committed role to the company.

She goes, that was something I wasn't able to do for 20 years.

There's been iterations of the company over the years, different models that she's tried, different structures.

When I joined, there were seven or eight on the team.

I would have been number nine.

It was Elizabeth and a couple back office staff.

We also have guides who are our transition guides, essentially consultants who help us deliver the work for clients.

We've brought in more back office support and a couple new guides since I joined the team.

It's been a nice evolution, a natural growth.

Most of the IP is stuff that Elizabeth has collected over the years.

Elizabeth was a solo practitioner, a very good lifestyle business where Elizabeth was the transition guide and she was supported by one project coordinator.

It's been this scale up to now, with me as the successor.

The only way that the business survives is to get Elizabeth out of most of the day to day.

She can't be the face of the company anymore.

She can't be the main person delivering work or building a services business that's more built to scale and potentially more built to sell.

Whether she sells it to me or we decide we're gonna sell it, I also wanna get out around the same time she wants to get out.

So you have a partnership at this point, you both own the company.

Is that how it's structured?

Correct.

We negotiated the first 40%, so I'm buying up to 40% locked in at two years ago valuation.

I have the options to buy up to 40% in the next few years.

That made the business affordable for me.

Right.

She wanted the amount of carry she felt comfortable doing at the end of the day, what's important to Elizabeth and what was important to me.

Do those two things match up?

And then as we start to talk about the structure, one of the things I said, it would be really great if I was at least a 50, 50 partner.

If not, see sooner a majority, because she's on her way out and I'm going to be the one coming in.

She wrote one down that was, I'm going to remain majority owner until the day I decide to leave.

And that was a deal breaker.

So we come to the table and have the list, and I'm like, that would be nice, but it's not a deal breaker.

Is there still something for us here?

We wanted to lay everything out on the table early.

The reason transitions fail is people don't talk or they have expectations on what another person is thinking or feeling or how another person wants a certain outcome to be, and they just don't talk about it.

So a lot of our work, there's a lot of cool IP and a lot of cool stuff that we do.

But at the end of the day, let's talk about some hard and potentially uncomfortable stuff, because if there's not a deal to move forward, then we don't need to move forward.

Let's just do what's best for everyone.

I think that's an example of what really happens when you're buying or merging with a company.

You cannot get everything you want.

Usually doesn't happen that way because oftentimes there are things you both want and there's not a way to share it.

Right?

So, like when.

And I experienced that when I.

When I did my merger, it was like, till I got to the table, I didn't know what was really important to me because I thought brand was important to me.

If at the end of the day, it didn't matter to me.

I wanted 50% ownership and I wasn't going to give on that.

For people thinking about selling their company, these will be moments of truth in your journey.

Now you're in a business where you've been buying her out to a certain percentage and building together.

You have individual roles.

Tell us more about about the company and what it does.

The transition strategist.

A lot of who we help is family businesses.

How do we transition the family business while we keep the family together?

If the family breaks apart, then that wasn't a successful transition.

A lot of times people have this idea that if I'm in a transition, all of my kids are going to get it equally or I'm going to sell it to X type of person or all the employees I'm going to offer it to are going to want to do the buyout.

The definition of family is you want to care for people in your business.

It's really any privately held business that this process works well for.

Where are you at today?

Where do you want to go?

That's the compass, the transition compass.

Setting the direction and then once we know what direction we're going, what's an initial draft of a roadmap to get there?

We do roadmaps, we don't do plans.

Because a transition plan indicates that there's only one way it can happen.

Ideally, we're doing this five to 10 years before you're actually ready to leave because it increases your options so much.

Even if in the end the best thing to do is sell five years beforehand, we might be able to say, oh well, if we restructured this or changed the company to do X number of things that could actually save you $3 million in taxes.

There's tax implications, state implications, all of these things.

Right.

Ultimately tie.

In addition to let's take care of the people you want to take care of.

If you want the business to continue, it's probably doing a lot of good things.

It's super ingrained in the community, employees, a certain number of people helping.

It really started as helping owners navigate all the complexities and things that come up with with a transition.

When I shared this with my dad, he was like, oh, this would have been really nice before I started considering what private equity would look like.

We're talking to some people, they're like, I don't even know if my kids are going to want it someday I might just decide to sell it because my time freedom is more important to that.

I say that's probably true, but why don't we just go through all the steps to make sure that there's nothing else that's important to you or lifestyle.

The compass is why do I want to transition?

What assets are there?

Who do I want to take care of if it's an internal transition?

There's more than just one.

Someday there's a transaction that's usually not true.

Sometimes like even my dad's couple rounds of private equity.

Right.

There were many when.

So there's your role now.

I'm the CEO.

Maybe I'm going to go to just board chair, strategic decision making.

I'm involved in finance day to day decisions like Elizabeth still approves cash flow and accounts receivable.

And accounts payable.

She's still looking at all that stuff in two to three years.

It's on the roadmap.

She's going to get out of making those decisions.

I'm going to be the person ready to make those decisions by that time.

And then there's also the equity transfers.

We want to separate your role from from the transfer of equity.

Whether you're selling it or transitioning it to another person, we can look at those things distinctly and that starts to make it a little bit easier.

And then we want to look on a high level.

Is your business even worth enough for the type of lifestyle that you want?

Based on what you shared, here's five options that might be good.

What's status quo?

Let's look at selling to a third party.

Let's look at transitioning to management.

Let's look at this and let's look at this.

We're going to look at every single one of those things that you said was important to you on your objectives matrix.

And if there's someone else involved, like a partner, we'll stack theirs in it too.

If we do that, it's a more objective way to look at all the options and an initial gut check of what might be good.

You can narrow that down to a couple things that feel really good.

And then talk to your CPAs and your estate attorneys.

You have a very good list of the outcomes that I'm actually looking and optimizing for as part of this transition or sale or whatever ends up happening.

What are my options versus starting directly with your attorney?

They're going to design a very pretty thing on paper, but not always on the stuff that's most important to you.

So that's really what our process is around, is that human and people side of transition, which at the end of the day boils down to what's important to everyone.

And is there a way that we could achieve the majority of them?

One of the lessons I learned going through a merger and a sale is that I would never start a company again without thinking about all these things all the time.

Before my other companies, I was so excited about the business that I was thinking about the business as the way I felt about it in the moment.

Not thinking about how I might feel in a future time with a different change of circumstances.

My health, my family, my desires to do other things.

Sometimes we create our companies blindly with our passion, but we don't create optionality for ourselves.

I experienced that and I would always remember that going forward.

The other thing is that There are things, this is all leading to a question that create a self managing, secure, high value business.

And there are things that don't.

Nobody necessarily tells you when you're building your company and making those decisions day to day, that some of the things you might be doing in the service of trying to do the right thing for your company might actually be taking you away from ever having that outcome.

We were talking to another advisor and we were sharing this story.

I was like, that's a great illustration of what you're saying.

They were talking to a client like, okay, I got six more years left.

Like, what's the number one thing that I could do to grow the value of this the most?

I'm willing to work really hard.

I'll do whatever it takes.

And the answer was, get out.

If you can stop doing things and the business does the same or better without you, it's gonna be worth way more when you sell it.

And it's hard when you're in it and you're like the person, right?

Because you're like, I gotta work hard.

I'm gonna do what's best for everyone.

But if the objective is I want this to live on, or I want someone else to be able to purchase this really good thing, or I want to empower my management to build their own value and create value, and maybe we're gonna do some type of management buyout.

At the end of the day, 95% of the time, the owners, the founders, the current leading generation is out of the business before they pass.

There are rare exceptions where the right thing is for them to just work until they die because they're happy and that's the best thing.

And the estate plan calls for it to pass after death anyways to help with taxes.

There are rare instances, but the majority of the time it's not you in an operating role until the day you die.

Yeah, well, and that's exactly right.

Look, it's very tempting as a founder.

I think about this when I was building Lumen and I knew in advance that if I was synonymous with the brand and if I solved all the problems and if I rescued every client situation, the company would always revolve around me.

I made some hard decisions that didn't make me look good sometimes where I would intentionally not always be in the office, right?

Even at the beginning.

Like, it is not my job to do your job right.

You are the medical director, you are the coo, you're the finance person.

You and I are not the same.

I am not an employee of the company.

I own the company.

And that can be weird and hard for a founder because you feel like you want to prove to your team that you are working as hard as they are.

I did all those things in other ways.

But you also need to make it very clear.

It's really hard to disentangle yourself.

And that's what we do.

If you're a founder and you feel so tangled up, we can help take a step back, look at everything.

What is it worth?

What do you want?

Who do you want to take care of?

And we can start to map out, okay, if in five, 10 years, you do still feel this way, and at that point you're ready to make the exit, sell, get acquired, or merge with someone else, then at least you know that you're flying towards, like, you take off from St. Louis and you're flying towards New York.

Exactly.

We're moving towards the east coast, and we're able to make decisions that are mostly moving us in that way.

It's okay.

If we want to take a detour to the world's largest ball of yarn or whatever the random thing is off the side of the interstate.

We can make detours and stops, but at least we're going in the right direction.

What would be a few pieces of advice to all founders who might be saying, I'll never be able to sell my company.

Everything in my company is tied up in me.

Or those founders who say, I love my company.

I'm going to keep it forever.

What would be advice?

And then the others, too.

I would like to sell my company in the next eight to 10 years.

What would be some advice for all of us to help us keep our value and also maintain options for moments when we need to or want to stay step aside.

Yeah, I think grounding yourself in those things that are most important to you is certainly one, because then you can start to make decisions that are in alignment with that.

Elizabeth knew that someday, in like, seven to 10 years, she did her transition roadmap about three to four years ago.

The team was like, what are you gonna do?

What happens if you get sick?

Her situation's a little bit later in life.

People are asking her, and she's like, I don't know.

So she makes her plan.

She's like, I think what I want to do is find a successor.

That would be the ideal thing.

And then if I don't find someone, it is what it is.

The only way she was able to make me an invitation, literally within 15 minutes of me meeting her, she goes I can't promise you anything, but I think you could be someone that I could see coming into my business.

I don't think she ever would have known or seen that in me if she hadn't already done the work to know that she might be looking for someone.

So I think there's a little bit of like, you put things out and then there's that magnetic attractiveness.

So yeah, I think there's a lot of power in knowing the direction.

And Elizabeth, obviously it worked out well for her that she met me and had those options.

But at the end of the day, it's what are those things that are most important to you?

And spending some time thinking about that.

All right, let's go to our Fast Fire round where I'm going to ask you five quick questions and invite you to answer in five words or less.

So what's one word that describes how you feel about legacy?

Powerful Most surprising lesson you've learned about money.

Your self worth is not the money.

Your self worth is not the money.

More than fine.

Hardest part of becoming a successor.

Bringing your own vision while honoring what was there before.

What do you do when doubt creeps in?

What does success mean to you right now?

Time with family, feeling fulfilled?

How can listeners connect with you?

Yeah, my favorite exercise to pull together what's most important to me is called the Objectives Matrix.

Coco and I put that up on a little landing page so you can download that transitionstrategist.com forward/forceforgood.

You can find me on LinkedIn at.

Andrea Carpenter I also have a podcast for successors and rising gens navigating succession and wealth called your next gen friend.

If you decide to go down the path of inviting someone else in or your kids in, I encourage them to listen to that.

I encourage everybody, whether you're thinking about selling, transitioning or merging to download this amazing tool because it is revealing.

It helps you think about the things you don't always think about and it will help you reposition your relationship with your company.

Thank you for joining us today on the Wisdom of Women Show.

Thank you for illuminating new ways of structuring your business and transitioning it to higher places, creating your own prosperity along the way.

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