This week on The Exit: Suleman “Suli” Ali was introduced to the world of business M&A when he was just eight years old helping his father find and buy their family’s first business. However, it wasn’t until years later into his early 20s and his first job at Microsoft that he determined that corporate life was not for him and he answered his calling to a life of entrepreneurship. During this time, the Facebook app marketplace was in its early stages and he went all in on becoming a...

This week on The Exit: After a short stint in politics, Charlie Silver, founder and CEO of Permission.io, shares his 35-year entrepreneurial journey, which started by opening Michigan’s first Jiffy Lube store. 10 years and 17 franchises later, he sold all of his stores back to Jiffy Lube, and founded his next venture, RealAge, a health risk assessment company. After launching and scaling the business to $30M in revenue, he decided it was the right time to sell, and exited the business to...

This week on The Exit: John Shufeldt was an ER doctor before embarking on a decades-long career as a serial healthcare entrepreneur with three companies and a health-tech VC firm under his belt. He details the sale of his virtual medicine business, MeMD to Walmart in 2021. He recognizes that, while he happened to sell at a peak valuation, it wasn’t due to timing the market, but rather his success came in selling the company while there was still a “blue ocean” of growth opportunity ahead,...

This week on The Exit: Before the days of YouTube and TikTok, James Creech was creating videos, little did he know this interest would lead him to one day launch a company focused on content creation. In 2016 when influencer marketing and the creator economy was still finding its feet, James and his partners saw a need for tracking and reporting on the impact of influencer marketing, and the opportunity to turn this into a business. Together with his two partners, James launched Paladin, an...

This week on The Exit: Among everything Sara Hirsh Bordo has done in her career, from being a marketing executive at Paramount Pictures and MGM Studios, the owner of several acquired businesses, and a 15x award-winning filmmaker, she might now mostly describe herself as an impact-focused creator. Through her production company, Women Rising®, which was named as one of the most “Innovative, Interesting, and Purpose-Driven Women-Led Startups to Watch” by Inc Magazine, Sara has used her...

This week on The Exit: Matt Frary got his start in online business during the dot com era. After graduating from business school and being unable to find a job, he went on an entrepreneurial journey that would have him building and selling five different online businesses. One thing he learned about himself was how he knew when it was time to sell. In his case, he loved the building and scaling phase but knew he was no longer the best person for his business once he grew it to the...

This week on The Exit: Srishti Kawatra describes her journey from founding her food distribution nonprofit while working at her corporate job in India, to being acquired by one of India’s largest food-tech companies, Zomato. She discusses how what started as a partnership inquiry turned into the offer, and what specifically made Zomato so interested in acquiring her business. She wasn’t planning to exit, but she shares how she ultimately concluded that moving forward with the sale was the...

This week on The Exit: John Rood, author of "Beyond the Exit", shares his journey of exiting his test prep business, Next Step Test Preparation, and the challenges he faced post-exit, including uncertainty, depression, and illness. He discusses the importance of planning for your future beyond the exit, highlighting the need for entrepreneurs to envision their post-exit lives and embrace the transition. He also provides insights from his upcoming book, which includes interviews with 71...

This week on The Exit: Pallavi Golla, serial entrepreneur and mother of two young boys, walks us through her journey of building and selling her bamboo fabric baby activewear business, Lark. She details the challenges faced during the sale process, including the sudden withdrawal of a key investor in 2022, as well as how she leveraged her social media following to find three serious buyers. She emphasizes the importance of community building, strong relationships with suppliers, and...

This week on The Exit: Ben Faw has gone through two exits, one of which closed for a $100M valuation. In this conversation, Ben discusses how he selected the business to build, his criteria for finding an M&A advisor at the beginning of the exit process, and some metrics the buyer was looking at that ultimately led to closing the deal. In regards to the timing of the sale, interestingly, Ben starts thinking about selling a business when everything is going well, as this is when you can...

This week on The Exit: “If you can’t make a sale, you have no business…but with sales comes rejection.” David Perez is a seasoned entrepreneur who has sold two companies, generated millions from Fortune100 customers, and has served as an advisor for founders and businesses. Through the rollercoaster ride of his business journey, one constant that he believes led to his success is in becoming comfortable with and energized by rejection. From his first venture in 1999 building corporate...

This week on The Exit: Jon Caldwell, an entrepreneur who transitioned from the army to business, shares his journey from starting a pet supplements brand on Amazon to its successful exit. He highlights the importance of pricing strategies, noting how testing different price points was crucial for his product's success. Despite facing challenges like inventory management and waiting for a TV show appearance, Jon's persistence paid off when his business took off in sales and eventually...

This week on The Exit: Collin Mitchell, Managing Partner at Leadium, shares insights from his entrepreneurial journey with three successful exits, one business which he and his wife grew from zero to $5M in only 26 months. Collin discusses the importance of sales, scaling teams, and the preparedness needed for exits. From starting in sales to founding businesses like Monster VoIP and Salescast, he emphasizes the significance of understanding deal points, having a clear exit plan, and...

This week on The Exit: Jill Faherty Lloyd is a financial advisor who is truly influential when it comes to financial advisory for women. Jill shares her experience with liquidity events, the importance of being prepared for them, and what you need to know. Having always worked in predominantly male financial services firms, Jill realized that the industry was not adequately addressing the needs of women investors. She pitched most of the major wealth management firms in New York, but they...

This week on The Exit: Raja Skogland is the perfect example of why timing can be so important. Raja has had multiple exits but her most successful exit all came down to timing. Starting an online accelerator program for early stage companies was always a good concept, but Raja never would have expected the huge growth that came during COVID when everyone had to interact online. In what may be one of the fastest high-value acquisitions, the deal was done in just 10 days. Raja has an incredible...

This week on The Exit: From selling her own company to mentoring other women entrepreneurs. This episode of the exit is a full circle entrepreneurial story from starting a business, building it into a successful company, to exiting and becoming an investor helping other women grow their businesses. Robbie tells how timing is everything, she was in the right place at the right time and a connection saw the potential of the company. Robbie continued to build the company and negotiate an exit...

This week on The Exit: From developing the world's first voice analytics-driven sales enablement application to working at the UN in championing women’s empowerment and entrepreneurship, Alysia Silberg has had a remarkable career and she’s not slowing down. When Alysia built Acceleforce, an AI voice analytics company and the first of its kind in the world, she never expected to exit to one of their first customers. Since that exit, Alysia has worked in VC funding and most recently started...

This week on The Exit: Founder and Managing Partner of the Celestial Group, Jennifer Pereira, shares her goals for achieving financial freedom and why you need to change your mindset about investing in and acquiring cash flowing businesses to be successful. Early on in her career, Jennifer knew she wanted to reach financial freedom and not be tied to a 9-to-5 day job. When she moved into the world of private equity she began to learn about alternate asset classes including revenue generating...

This week on The Exit, host Steve McGarry sits down with marketplace expert Elias Chavando. The two discuss the intricacies that come with scaling a marketplace and how the strategies used by Elias can be applied to any type of business. Elias is more than qualified to provide wisdom on marketplace businesses, having founded both Progresando.com and Yoover.com. He’s also consulted some of the biggest digital marketplaces in the world as one of the few experts in what is an emerging business...

This week on The Exit: Mark Samuel shares his extensive background in consumer product-related industries, spanning over two decades. His first successful exit involved a meal management venture for sports’ enthusiasts. Mark meticulosly scaled the business over a six-year period, cultivating a small yet reliable team of four. Faced with the pivotal decision of either adding more capital to scale the brand or pursuing an exit, Mark chose the latter, successfully selling the business to an...

This week on The Exit: Seth’s entrepreneurial career started very early. By the age of 20 he had already founded and sold his first digital company, a marketplace for plugins and templates for blogs. After leaving law school, Seth started and exited numerous other companies in content and marketing niches, exiting successfully a number of times, after growing his companies to stellar revenues. Tune in to learn about his impressive feat of achieving a 95% year-over-year growth for six...

This week on The Exit: This is an incredible story of Dr Steve Fox bringing together some of the best minds in the country to change the world of teeth hygiene forever. Raising $70 Million, Dr Fox created a patent to remineralise, restructure, harden and strengthen teeth, improving oral care all over the world. He released 68 patents, took the company public and had the best performing stock in the United States in the first quarter of 1997 across all 3 exchanges. After such astronomical...

This week on The Exit: Steffi Baker has pushed herself not only in her career as a co-founder and investor, but also as a competitive figure skater, skating in the opening ceremony of the olympics. After the olympics, Steffi moved to London to complete her MBA where she found herself meeting women who were looking to grow their wealth but were constrained by societal stereotypes. That was when Steffi co-founded the High Net Worth Women Institute. Designed to help people leverage personal...

This week on The Exit: Diego Sampaio’s career started at an early age. At 12 he was building websites and coding for friends and family. At 16 he initiated a web hosting service for Brazil. By 18 he founded his first company, marking the beginning of a remarkable ascent. Diego has been part of numerous exits in his entrepreneurial journey, including for companies that weren’t profitable at the time of exit. This has provided him with deep insights into effectively communicating core values to...