Why Most Founders Delay a Private Equity Exit by 5 Years

There’s a moment every scaled founder hits where effort stops producing leverage. Revenue is real. The team is capable. But progress feels heavier than it should, and decisions take longer, cost more, and drain energy faster than before.

In this episode, I sit down with Alexis Sikorsky, a strategic advisor to founders who are serious about scaling fast and exiting strong. Alexis isn’t sharing theory. He built, scaled, and sold a Switzerland-based software company in a nine-figure private equity exit, then stayed in the game long enough to see exactly what founders misunderstand about timing, systems, and value creation.

We talk candidly about why founders delay a Private Equity Exit by years: not because they lack ambition, but because exhaustion, missing numbers, and underpowered leadership structures quietly cap momentum. Alexis breaks down the mistakes that cost him five years and $50 million, what private equity actually looks for, and how founders can shift from running hard to engineering optionality.

If you’re scaling a digital agency past 7 figures and thinking about sustainability, leverage, automation in leadership, or what an exit really requires, this conversation will sharpen how you see your business and your next move.

Books Mentioned

• The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu
  
  

If you want to stay connected with Alexis, find him on LinkedIn or check out his book Cashing Out, where he lays out the APEX framework for founders preparing for private equity. He’s also inviting founders doing $5–15M in revenue to participate in interviews for his upcoming book; details shared directly in this episode.

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Alexis’s Journey And Early Ventures
• 3:20 Building Internet Businesses In Senegal
• 8:20 From Trainer To Founder Of New Access
• 12:30 2008 Crash And The Grinding Years
• 17:20 The Private Equity Offer And Earnout
• 22:30 Integration, Chairmanship, And Full Exit
• 26:30 Mistakes, Luck, And Learning Forward
• 31:30 Advisory Over Consulting And Oxford MBA
• 36:00 Leading A-Players Vs Managing

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

I'm so excited today to have Alexis Sikorsky on the podcast. Alexis is a strategic advisor to founders who are serious about scaling fast and exiting strong. With a nine-figure private equity exit under his belt, Alexis isn't speaking from theory. He's lived the entrepreneurial highs and lows across decades of company building, boardroom negotiation, and international leadership. His flagship book, Cashing Out, lays out the Apex methodology, a four-part framework to assess, plan, execute, and exit that demystifies the journey to private equity for founders feeling stuck or overwhelmed by growth and decision fatigue. Lexus founded, scaled, and sold New Access, a Switzerland-based software company, ultimately closing a $100 million plus exit and transitioning into a new chapter as a special advisor to ambitious CEOs. Today, through Sikorsky Consulting and Night Scale Partners, he works with growth-scale businesses, typically doing $5 million plus in annual revenue, who want to engineer their next chapter or PE exit. Alexis, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for having me, William.

Intro: 1:22

I appreciate it. Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host, author, and leadership and executive coach, Dr. William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:44

I would love to start with you sharing a bit of your story with our listeners, Alexis, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. I hit some of the high points there. But how did you get started?

Alexis Sikorsky: 1:58

Um depends how far we want to go back. Long story short, I've always been an entrepreneur. Very rarely a successful one. But I I've been an entrepreneur. I started my first company when I was 15. It was an export-import company. My parents still not totally forgiven me about that. And then like did some work in the movie industry, did a movie school, movie industry, did a bit of advertising. Fair to say it took a minute to find exactly what my calling was. I had a movie production company, I had an ad agency. And then in 1994, I think, around that, I went on a trip to Senegal where one of my teachers and partner in my movie company has had established and married a beautiful Senegalese woman. So I came to visit him for a week's holiday, and literally when we landed, uh a week later they opened the internet node in Senegal. And somehow I decided that like, I don't know, a sign of the gods or something that I should do, I should start an internet cafe, internet service provider in Senegal. So I went there for a week. I stayed almost five years. And that's the beginning of my legendary business decisions that people think I'm so smart and when I usually tend to get extremely lucky. So I had like, you know, I I was like, I was 24, so I knew everything about life. That's right. As we do at that age, right? And we think older people are so stupid and know nothing. So I had this vision that said, okay, this internet thing is new. It's gonna take a minute to take on, but I won't be able to like lose money for three years because I didn't have money at the time. Um I said, so I'm gonna open my internet service provider, I'm gonna open the internet cafe, but next to it, I'm gonna open a big restaurant, and with the profit of the restaurant will subsidize the internet part, right? That was the my thesis and worked super well from day one. The internet cafe was full, the internet service provider became immediately the most successful private one, and the first one in Western Africa could never manage to sit one guest in my restaurant. So, like, say, oh Metisakena, you've been so successful. Yeah, but just like it's exactly the reverse of my business plan. So after after five years there, um for let's say interesting, funny political reason, I had to leave Senegal a little bit in a hurry, like literally with a suitcase. Went back to Switzerland. No job, no money, basically no skill, so scratch my head. And during my time in Senegal, actually, what happened is I knew nothing about tech at the time. I knew nothing about nothing at the time, to be honest. Uh my training was movie production and advertising, so I literally knew nothing about nothing. Um, and in the middle of running the internet service provider, I was starting to get pissed to be messed around by IT people. So I decided I'm gonna go back home for six weeks. And I called a small engineering, computer engineering school and say, hey, can you do a bespoke program that teach me everything there is to know about networking, internet uh in six weeks? They say, Good, I did that. So when I get back to Geneva, I went to knock at this school door and say, uh, okay, so I'm back. I have no money, no job. Um, can you hire me as a teacher? And they say, good. Then for 14 months, actually, it's the only 14 months I've been employed in my whole life. But for these 14 months, I was um network trainer, computer trainer for adults. And then I bought the company back from the founders, then I created the in 2000 created the uh New Access. We started as an um bespoke internet development company. Like you're old enough uh to remember 2000, right? Like it's when the um internet went from like being a purely presentation tool to an actually application tool. So we're starting to build like the first e-commerce. Uh and we we worked like with British and American tobacco, we did a lot of data mining for them. We we worked for America's Cup, we did uh press accreditation, stuff like that. So from 2000 to 2003, um training company went bankrupt, but this company um went actually starting well, small, you know what I mean? Like small uh they they they call it now, I think I call it grinding, I think now they call it bootstrapped, funder led, funder financed uh company. 2003, almost by accident, I heard by people working for me of um document management software company that was going bankrupt. So it was a document management software company that was selling to private banks. So bought this company for a very small amount of money, realized that I made absolutely by accident the deal of the century because I still don't understand why this company went bankrupt. It was doing a, I don't know, it was small, but it was like 3 million revenue and like super profitable. So did that, shut down the Bespoke development company when I understood the difference in margin between software and bespoke. Grow the company pretty well to from 2000 to 2007. And now like we go back mentally to 2007, I'm the king of the world. I'm so smart. The company is doing like, I don't know, 10, 11 million revenue, very profitable. I don't have a penny in the bank, I spend like crazy because what could go wrong? Like I'm so smart, and in 2007, and I have a software company that deals only with private banks. What can go wrong in 2008, right? Then 2008 uh hit and lost 75% of my revenue in one day, pretty much. Like all my clients called and said, by the way, we love you, but we're not buying anything from you this year. Uh so I had to live with basically the maintenance contract because our product was pretty sticky and hard to replace. So we we kept like 25-30% of the revenue. And that's the start of the grinding years, the tough years. Like 2008 to 2014, six years of firing 70% of the staff. And I'm talking like you you you know entrepreneurs, right? It's these people that are not lining an Excel spreadsheet. They're my friends, they're my family, like firing them every month, like asking, like, do I continue? Do I do I stop? Or am I in like good money chasing bad money? Mortgaging my house, like really, really tough years. And then come 2014, we could say with some creative accounting that the company was back to breakeven. So, roughly again, 10, 11 million revenue, breakish even, like on the way to breakeven, and that's when I got a phone call from the private equity. So again, you know company, you know you get that phone call once a week. We are private equity, want to buy your company. And for some reason, I was working with my brother and I give him credit. He said, you know what, you should talk to these people. And they are they created their PE by selling their software company. They're French, they speak your language, they know your culture, they know software. Then okay, was that okay? So I actually replied to the call and they say we're coming next week. I said, okay. So they come, they spend half a day here, explain the business, and they say want to buy the company. And I made a decision at that time that I never ever regretted. It'd be completely honest and transparent with them. I told them, listen, I'm exhausted. I'm tired, I'm super ready to sell, but not now. Now the company is just break-even, the valuation is gonna be super low, but I'll make you a deal. You let me work an extra two years, you come back in two years because you made the effort to come today. In two years, I promise you I'm not gonna auction the thing. As long as you make me a decent and honest offer, I'm gonna sign with you. They said, thank you, that's very generous, but that's not what we're gonna do. And they said, we're gonna do something a little bit different. You're gonna go home, you're gonna work on a business plan to tell me exactly where you're gonna be in two years, and we come back next week to discuss this document. I said, Okay, grab my brother, we made a business plan that was somewhere between Uber Optimistic to pure Lala Land, somewhere in between. As to be honest, where our business plan should be. You, you, you, you're not Nostradamus, you're not predicting the future, you're shaping the future. So you're supposed to be optimistic. I think I was like in in our business plan, we had like two and a half million Ebid Dah in two years for companies that have been losing money for five years. Like very optimistic. They came, uh they look at the business plan, they said, okay, so we're gonna buy your company now, we're gonna pay it 11 times your Ebid Da in two years, and we're gonna give you 85% cash and 15% earnout. And I was like, yeah, exactly my reaction. To a point that I started to calling a for a few friends to see if there's not one of them making a practical joke on me or something like that. So basically they made me an offer I couldn't refuse, signed it, sold 77% of the company, and start working for them for the two years with the like kind of half-target of making my 15% of earnout, but it was not that important because I already made 85% cash, right? And I end up making more with my 15% earnout than with my 85% cash, because they didn't cap the earnout. And uh two and a half million we anticipated uh turn out to be four, I think, or something like that. Because like, and that's super interesting, and that's a use case I discuss with my clients all the time. PE is all about discrepancy of information. They buy you on the cheap because they know more than you know, and that's one of the big lessons I learned. One thing they knew and I didn't is the value they bring to the table. So I calculated like, okay, I could get to two and a half million a bit that are very optimistic, but not totally impossible on my own. So they did okay in their mind, and I know that because I talked to them, I became friend friend with these people. They say, okay, he said two and a half, that means one and a half, but can we double that? And then they say, okay, we have the network, we have the CFOs, we have the knowledge, we have the cost-cutting. Yeah, we can double that. And that's exactly what happened. Wow. So that brings us to uh 2016, 17. My earnout, stayed uh on board as CEO for another year. Company was doing absolutely great. By the time we acquired a company that was double our size, so we went from 10-ish million revenue to 50 million revenue. So at that point, you had 50 million revenue. And the company we we acquired, the CEO of this company that I put head of sales. So the P structured the deal, but I actually ran the integration, which was super interesting. And the CEO, like I was talking to him and I was like, it's ridiculous. This guy is 10 years older than me. He's way more qualified, he speaks all the languages, he has experience in an international group. So I went to see the P and say, listen, that's ridiculous. This guy should be CEO, not me. And so we put him as CEO, and I get myself the best and most fantastic job in the entire universe, which is chairman of the board. I would really, really recommend that job to anyone. Same salary, but instead of working 14 hours a day, you you work half a day per month during the board. Fantastic job, and you can still go play a couple of rounds of golf with your clients, so the pee still think you're indispensable. In 2019, 2020, I had my midlife crisis, new new wife, new country. I went to see the P and say, okay, buy my buy back my share if you give me a decent valuation. They gave me a fantastic valuation, sold the remaining of my share, and they sold um three years later for an undisclosed uh six-digit, no, nine-digit valuation. So, like very, very, very good deal for me, for all my co-founders, minority shareholders, all the staff, and for the private equity. The only one who didn't do a good deal, but that's not our fault, is the company who bought the who bought New Access because they fit up. Um, but that's not our fault. It's really their fault. And now it's actually back on the market and might be some fun stuff to do with that company again someday. Wow. What a story, man. I'm sorry I told you I tend to talk too much. I'm done.

Dr. William Attaway: 16:18

No, that was brilliant. I think that's so valuable because I don't believe there's any such thing as a wasted experience. And listening to your story and your journey, it's so fascinating that at so many points, I think a lot of people would have given up. They would have said, Oh, I need to cut my losses, oh, I need to I need to stop this. You didn't. You kept believing in yourself and betting on yourself as you continued to go forward. Came into a point where you said it was it was luck or something like that. But I wonder if it wasn't the cumulative power of all of the experiences you had had up to this point that led you into a season of reward for the hard work that you had poured into this.

Alexis Sikorsky: 17:01

Can I just change one word of what you said? And I'll agree with it. It's not the accumulation of hard work of experience, it's the accumulation of mistakes and my ability to always make new mistakes and not make the same mistake over and over again. That's one skill I have. I make so and I made I can identify like five, six clear mistakes I made, and they are very clearly in order. And uh the one I made at the beginning, I didn't do at the I made at the end. So I made so many mistakes, but never the same one. And I keep doing that. I'm keep like, that's a new mistake. Interesting. I didn't see this one coming. Except a couple that I keep making, but that's a conversation for my string. Like, for example, I overtrust, I don't know how to say no, and I think everybody that has an idea is the best idea in the world. I'm I know that about myself, and that's why it was really good to have my brother because he's the opposite. So it was so, but apart from that, I made new mistakes, and yes, I've been incredibly lucky. That's like you you cannot, and you cannot, and you should not discount luck in the journey of an entrepreneur. Like timing, like outside, like I literally sold my share to the private equity three months before COVID. That was not like huge foreseen, and I know, like, but like yeah, it's it's I I persevered. I don't think because I was truly believing in myself or none of this like new age stuff. I'm old generation. I persevered because I really had no other choice. I literally have no skill. There's nothing less else I can do. Like I was thinking after I sold the company, had money in my bank account, say, what could I do? Could I find a job? No, no way. Like I'm totally unemployable. There's nothing, I'm not, I'm not a good enough developer to become a developer. I'm not a good CEO, I'm not a good CFO. Like, literally, like, even I could not flip burgers at McDonald's because I end up burning myself. Like, there's literally nothing I could do, so I had no choice.

Dr. William Attaway: 19:07

Wow. You know, I love I love that change that you make there because I think that's so valuable. You know, we're gonna make mistakes. We're gonna be driving and we're gonna drive into a ditch. The question is, are we gonna drive into the same ditch over and over again? Are we gonna continue to circle the same drain? Or are we gonna learn from that, understanding that there are so many new mistakes we can make and be okay with that, understanding that failure, as long as you fail forward, as long as you learn from the mistakes, can lead to success because failure is part of the journey. I love that mindset.

Alexis Sikorsky: 19:39

Also, on that topic, and that's the reason I started my teeny tiny consulting. Well, no, sorry, I'm not, I I hate this term, and nobody in my company is allowed to use consulting. Advisory business. Because consulting immediately summoned like very fancy PowerPoint and half a million dollar invoice for no value, but very nice grammar. That's not what we do. I don't produce a PowerPoint. That's one of the things I say to my client: do not expect a PowerPoint from me. What you'll get is that is one-to-one dialogue. That's all you'll get. It's like if you make a book of the 10 more common mistakes you can make starting a company, I think I made them all. I don't think I missed one. I actually, so after I sold the company, I decided to retire. I always wanted to retire at 50. I retired at 50 and two months, which clearly was a failure, but um but a minor failure, and that's because of this lawyer in in Zurich that slowed the process for two months. I could have retired before 50 if the guy was a little faster. Anyway. So I retired and then I started to get a little bit bored. You know, I live in England. I just moved there. I moved there during COVID. I didn't know anybody. I was starting to get a bit bored. So I started an executive MBA at Oxford. So I did, yeah, it was like almost like mental gymnastic, you know what I mean? Like instead of saying, I'm gonna go to the gym because I didn't do that, I went to mental gym. That's how I approached it. And doing that, I was meeting lots, lots of young entrepreneurs because a good like third of the cohort is young entrepreneurs trying to learn the business and talking to them. I was like, shaking the same mistake I made. Like, how can I help them make new mistakes and not the one that cost you? So I made a little mental exercise. I say, okay, let's put together the total cost of my mistakes. Let's say I'm gonna start over now, the exact same business in the market condition of 20 years ago, um, but not just not making the mistakes. Just not like letting one one customer uh be 80% of the revenue, not uh going through the the global financial crisis with no watchest, like all the mistakes I made. So let's not make this mistake, mental exercise, what the total cost, and my calculation that's all these mistakes put together cost me 50 million and five years. I would have told five years earlier and 50 million more, which by the way, it's not the end of the world. It's not the end of the world where the total of your mistakes cost you five years and a third of what you get from the company. It's not the end of the world, but still that would be nice. And I say, okay, so how can I save the next me 50 million and five years? So that's the whole idea behind the thing.

Dr. William Attaway: 22:33

Well, I love that. And I love the mindset again of this advisory of saying, how can I take my experiences and instead of trying to hold them up and say I'm just gonna be a reservoir of all of that learning, instead, how can I be a conduit of that and help the next you? I I think that mindset of generosity, I think is incredibly powerful. And I'm so encouraged to hear you talk about that. You know, the easiest thing in the world with an exit like you had is to say, hey, where's a beach that I can sit on for the next 30 years?

unknown: 23:05

You know?

Alexis Sikorsky: 23:06

Have you ever tried sitting on a beach more than a week? I've killed myself.

Dr. William Attaway: 23:11

I would go bored out of my mind.

Alexis Sikorsky: 23:13

Yeah, you'd end up killing yourself. No, I could have like played all the beautiful golf courses in the world in my private jet, and I did a bit of that, to be honest. And then I got a new wife, and we traveled the world, and for three years we didn't spend more than 10 days at the same place. It was fantastic, but that also has to stop at some point. It's not generosity, it's like there is nothing. I'm sorry, I'm gonna I'm gonna sound like a bit new age, uh, but I don't know how to put it otherwise. It's so rewarding to help somebody grow. It's even like I think my mindset is I would be more coached than a player. Although in business I cannot call myself a coach, and I know that because when we did the executive MBA, we had uh a few coaching sessions included, and I learned that a coach is not allowed to give his opinion. So that's VD VD was not gonna work for me. So yeah, helping people is the most rewarding thing you can do. Like I I like that. I like doing that.

Dr. William Attaway: 24:16

I think that generous I think that is generosity. I really do. I think that is part of how you're wired. And to allow that to flow not just to you, these lessons, these these learnings, not just to flow to you, but to flow through you to benefit those around you, I think is a life well lived. And I'm I'm just so encouraged to hear you talk about that. So that's really your focus now is helping entrepreneurs.

Alexis Sikorsky: 24:39

It's super like it's so exciting. Next week I'm flying to Lockerby in Scotland to talk with a company that do a new revolutionary polymer for asphalt. Like when I talked to these guys the first time, honestly, I didn't know what asphalt was. I know it was something you put on the street. I had no idea how it gets done or anything. So, like, it's so exciting to learn new stuff. And when when in my life, like playing golf, will I meet somebody who does polymer for asphalt using recycled plastic? It's like it's true. It's fantastic. It's it's like I'm working with people who are like um social media stars and that stuff that for me, it's like it's even more fine for me than asphalt, to be honest. But I'm learning all that stuff. It's super interesting.

Dr. William Attaway: 25:31

So, in that vein, let me ask you this. You know, you have to lead your team and the clients that you work with, you have to lead them in a higher at a higher level than you did even just a few years ago. And that same thing is gonna be true three, four, five years from now. How do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up with the new leadership skills that your company, your team, your clients are gonna need you to have in the years to come?

Alexis Sikorsky: 25:57

Right now, my company is very small, and the people who work with me are all my friends or people I've been working with with 30 years. For 30 years, sorry. They're either ex-employees or ex-clients, or the newer one are Oxford, people I met in Oxford. So leading smart people is a different job than leading less smart people. Leading A-players is a different skill set, and that's something I believe I'm relatively good at. You know, one thing I learned in in Oxford, which was very interesting, is I actually learned I I I knew it like instinctively, but I learned it properly, the difference between leadership and management. And one of the things I learned about myself during these years, and I wish I knew earlier, that I think I'm a good leader. I'm a terrible, terrible manager. I'm like the worst manager in the world. And I I wasted so much time trying to manage. And now with my company, I don't manage a thing. I have people, I lead them in the sense like not in the sense that they need my leadership, but I'm my job is the vision. My job is the guy who says we're going that way. Yeah. I don't need to tell you how to run your boat, you know how to run a boat. My job is we're going that way, and all the boats are going in that same direction. That's leadership. And that's the skill that's required. And then, like, yeah, people have to trust that you can lead them, and it's pretty easy with these people because most of them know me. And also, um, I'm gonna sound a bit pretentious, but there's so many coaches and gross experts out there. I think I have a track record, and I think that's value. I actually built a company for scratch and sold it for nine figures. So there's a little bit of binder down that, even if it was like a chaotic journey with lots of mistakes. Like I speak private equity. I know how to sell to private equity, I know what they like, I know what they dislike, know where they how they try to I'm trying not to swear too much, but how they try to mess up with you, how they try to lower your valuation, I know their tricks. So this is knowledge that helps with leadership. When I when I'm sitting in front of a client and say, okay, these are the nine elements you will need before you're ready to talk to private equity. This is where you are, this is where you need to be, and this is how we're gonna get you there. I can talk about that because I've done it. And that's yeah, that's that's I'm a decent leader, I'm not a fantastic leader. It's it's hard in this universe to be a fantastic leader because the great leaders are really, really great. Like the the I got to 200 million valuation, these people get to 200 billion valuation. So like I'm nowhere near that level. And that's something I'm honest with with your client. That'd say, I'm gonna bring your company to 100 million. If you want to bring it from 100 million to a billion, then it's probably gonna be somebody else. That's probably gonna be a little too big for me. We'll see if it happens. Maybe I would have learned enough by then to be able to help them. But I don't like telling I'm an expert of something I never done. And I think that should be good business practices.

Dr. William Attaway: 29:23

I agree completely. I think that's integrity. And I think that's wisdom.

Alexis Sikorsky: 29:28

And it's also like just good business practices because if you if you look stupid trying to do something like if I was trying to be a football coach, I think they would notice pretty soon that I have no skin.

Dr. William Attaway: 29:41

Well said. That's great. I imagine that like most of us, you're a continual learner and you're always, and we've talked about that a number of times through this through this conversation. Is there a book that made a big difference in your journey that you would recommend to the leaders who are listening?

Alexis Sikorsky: 29:55

Uh uh to be honest, uh, I'm not a huge reader of business books. I do read a few. I'd say there are two books uh that really helped me with leadership. One is The Prince by Machiavel, which is not really a business book, but it's actually not far from being a business book. That's right. Exactly. And the other one that's clearly a business book is the The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Yes. These are actually business books. They're old business books. Um, they won't tell me much about AI, but a lot of the concepts that are in there are still valuable to AI. And I think like when I see some of the paths the big AI company are taking, I want to scream to them, read Sun Tzu, read Machiavel. Like you're missing some of the big, big, big fundamentals in there. So I'm I'm reading the books of my friends because like I wrote a book, so I have lots of new friends. After you wrote a book you write a book, you have new friends. So every time somebody sends me read my book, I buy the book and I read the book because I think it's the polite thing to do. I do find some wisdom in there. It's lots of, again, very theoretical knowledge of people who like talk about stuff they they never did. I I read all the book of Dan Priestley, who's a friend and a client, because when this guy talks about something, like he tells you how to get successful in the personal branding. The guy went to Diary of a CEO five times in a row. He's the most host in diary of a CEO. So when Dan talks about something, okay, like he knows what he's talking about. Yeah, most of my knowledge doesn't come from books, it comes from talking to people. And I read when I read, it's more like Chinese science fiction than business books. I'm not that smart. I'm not that educated. I'm gonna disagree, man. I gotta say, after this conversation, I'm street smart, but I don't have a like a high education, except now I have an MBA in Oxford that's like that counts on uh on That that's not nothing.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:10

Alexis, I could have talked to you for another hour. This has been so fascinating and I believe so insightful. I I know our listeners are gonna want to stay connected to you, continue to learn more from you and about what you're doing. What is the best way for them to do that?

Alexis Sikorsky: 32:26

Well, as long as it's asked politely, I never say no when somebody asks for help. Doesn't mean I'm gonna spend 50 hours on your problem if you're a startup. And most of the time when people ask for my help, I say there is literally nothing I can do for you because most of the people who ask for help are startup people, and I know nothing about startups. It's not my universe. So don't call me if you have the new AI startup and no money, no revenue. I I would take the call, I would be very polite, but there's literally nothing I can do for you. I I know nothing about this universe. But when it's somebody I can help, I help because that's who I am. That's gonna sound a little bit self-promoting, but the reason I wrote a book, it's because I thought there is value in there and advice that can be helpful for an entrepreneur. So if you have five dollars to spend, you can buy the book and read the book. And if you buy enough of it, I might become rich of that. If if I I think if I drive my book sales like a million times, I can stop working just on the sale of the book. So um find me on LinkedIn. I have one good advantage is I'm not named Paul Paul Smith, so I'm pretty easy to find on LinkedIn. Um right now, actually, to your listeners, there is something they can do to help me. Um if they have an hour to spare. I'm preparing my second book. There's a big difference between a book and a chat, actually. I realize that. In a chat, I'm gonna come with my preconceived idea. I'm gonna listen to you, and I'm gonna adapt my idea, say, okay, that doesn't really apply to you. I was wrong on that thing, let's modify my perception. And you can do that in a book because the reader doesn't talk back to you. So you have to be pretty solid. And I think my first book is pretty solid because it's really focused on something I know very, very well. The second book I want to write, I'm writing a book about a particular step in the companies. And my hypothesis is that lots of companies, um, especially bootstrap, founder-led lifestyle companies or even gross companies, but I'm not talking, again, about the Series F-founded uh startup. I'm talking about the guy who starts small and growing and with sweat and tears. And there's lots of companies like that out there. There are literally tens of thousands of them. And my hypothesis is a lot of them get stuck between five and fifteen million revenue. And I think they get stuck for three main reasons. One is exhaustion. That's not talking and I don't mean exhaustion in the sense like, oh, work lifestyle balance and all the new age. I'm talking about getting to a point where you're so much in the company that you have no more time and energy to be on the company. Where you spend all your day confusing what's urgent with what's important. And that's one of my favorite concepts. That's one reason. Second reason you don't have the proper tools to pilot your company, and especially you don't have the right numbers. You don't have the numbers you need at the frequency you need. The first two are very easy fixes. And the third one, and that's why I started Night Scale, is you get to a point when you need to hire C-level people, proper C-level people, not your cousin who does your accounting, who's probably absolutely fantastic, but he doesn't have the experience of being a CFO. And I'm not minimizing it. It's important. These guys were with you from the beginning, they're important. I'm not telling you should replace them, but at some point you need CFO, is a good example. Some point you need somebody to say, okay, what's my debt ratio should be? How do I grow from there? Is my product mix the right mind? Is my pricing the right one, etc.? So proper CFO job. Duplicate that with operation IT, HR, like HR, the 10 million company, they suck at HR. They know nothing. I know because I sucked at HR my whole life. Sales, marketing, etc. But you cannot hire these people because these people are too expensive. Like you, you, you are 5 million revenue, 1 million a bit daggone company, you hire a CFO, and that's half your a bit daggone. So you you you so that's the the reason get get stuck, and I want to write a book specifically about that. But I need to test my hypothesis because I don't want to release a book and people say, oh, that's that's not at all why I'm stuck, or I'm not stuck at all. Um so I would like the people who listen to that, who are in that bracket, five to fifteen million revenue, founder-led. Um if they can give me an hour for a book interview, I promise there will be no sales pitch. And I am very generous in in exchange for an hour of your time. You get a free book that's five dollars value, and sided by signed by me, which is probably still five dollars value. But that's what I offer in exchange. If you have an hour to spare to help me test my hypothesis, that would be generous and be very helpful for me.

Dr. William Attaway: 37:49

Love that. Well, I'm sure there are listeners who are listening to the show who would love to be a part of what you're doing there, man. We'll have a link to your book, Cashing Out, and I can't wait to read the new one when it reaches. It'll be a minute. It'll be worth it. Alexis, thank you so much for your time and your generosity today in sharing so much of your story and what you've learned along the way. Thanks, William. It was a pleasure.