Denise Logan - Work, Money & Meaning: How to Let Go When the Time Comes

An award-winning professional speaker and author of The Seller’s Journey: A Business Fable about Navigating the Emotional Obstacles to Selling Your Business, Denise Logan has addressed audiences on three continents about the psychology of business owners and how to make it easier when the time comes to let go. Known as The Seller Whisperer, she draws upon a twenty year body of work focused on the intersection of work, money, and meaning and how it is reflected in the legacies of today’s business leaders.

She has rightly observed that while work is where we spend the majority of our time, much of it is spent wishing we were somewhere else, doing something else. Divorcing meaning from our work too often leaves us blindly trudging through a mediocre life using money as the miserly arbiter of success in matters of soul and meaning. It leads to an endless chase for more, hoping to outsmart death and desperately prove that our life somehow mattered. Even worse, when work is how we define ourselves and we are faced with job loss or impending retirement, it can seem terrifying.

What happens when your old answer to the question “What Do You Do?” no longer fits? If you thought you are what you do, and suddenly you don’t do it anymore, do you not exist?

Standout Quotes:

"Every family's dynamic is slightly different and always the same" - [Denise]

"So as fear starts to escalate, our thinking is disrupted" - [Denise]

"The best transitions happen 5 years before someone is ready" - [Denise]

"The reality is that every owner will exit their business, voluntarily or involuntarily... so you will either transition to someone or you will leave your business with it being unprepared" - [Denise]

"if we look at mortality issues, often the more mortality resistance that someone has , the higher the likelihood is that they will also be avoiding succession planning"

One of the questions I start early on with an owner is ''what does work provide for you, beyond the money?... where will you get those needs met outside the business?" - [Denise]

"Succession happens at all different ages" - [Denise]

"Are we simply creating roles in the business so family members have work to do, as opposed to are they the right people in the business?" - [Denise]

"Change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end" - [Mike]

"Transparency always works, it is always better" - [Denise]

"The arc of the journey for an owner is the same, whether we're talking about a $50000 hair salon or 500 million-dollar company, the arc of transition that's happening for someone is the same"

"Transition will happen no matter what, so the question is 'what kind of transition do you want to have as a business owner?'"

"Success is often determined by how prepared you are rather than just letting it be" - [Mike]

"Our legacy comes from our daily actions, it is not just the amount of money that we leave behind or the money that we have accumulated" - [Denise]

"We can often get completely spun up on what our number is, the number is not the number in the bank account, the number is the number of memories that we have left behind because that is truly how we will be remembered" - [Denise]

Key Takeaways:

Denise started as a mental health professional and then moved into practicing Law where she started her firm but sold because she lost interest in the business. This prompted her to start a road trip till she was invited to help build a friend's business before the sale, an experience that kick-started her work of helping owners transition during the sale of their businesses. It also inspired her book, "The Seller's Journey".

Using the analogy of a fist, Denise likens the fear center in the brain, 'the Amygdala' to the thumb of the hand, pointing out that while the other fingers could restrict the thumb's movements the same way the frontal cortex can restrict the Amygdala, excessive pressure from the thumb or the Amygdala, in this case, can break free of the rest