Ep. 87 — Erin Weed: Selling the Business When the Business Is You

5 min read

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Episode Summary

You built it from a place that mattered. You poured a decade in. Now the business runs, you have a team, and you can feel something inside you that says it’s time to leave — and you don’t know who you are without it. Erin Weed founded Girls Fight Back after her best friend Shannon was murdered in 2001, ran it for twelve years, taught over a million women, and then sold it in the same year she gave birth to a daughter who, you can’t make this up, was born on Shannon’s birthday. We got into the part most owners don’t talk about: the year of prep between deciding to leave and actually leaving. How she stopped running it like an activist and started running it like a business that had to survive without her. Why she chose her speakers bureau agent as the buyer over a media brand with more money. Why finance and legal almost killed the deal and how she and the buyer had to look at each other and recommit. And the work she does now called The Dig, finding the one word that tells you whether any decision in your life is moving you toward your truth or away from it. If your identity is fused to your company, this one is for you.

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## Top 10 Takeaways
  1. If your identity is interwoven with the business, you’ve built a cage you can’t sell out of without grieving.
  2. You don’t have to sell the whole entity. Sometimes the intellectual property is the business.
  3. Run the company like an activist for as long as you can. Then run it like an operator before you sell.
  4. Spend a year systemizing what only lives in your head, or the buyer is buying a binder full of nothing.
  5. Ask who will take care of this, not who will pay the most. They are different questions with different answers.
  6. The buyer who believes in the business beats the buyer with deeper pockets when the model depends on belief.
  7. Finance and legal are historians. You and the buyer are the only ones who can see forward.
  8. When the deal starts blowing up, the only question that matters is: Are we still in? Everything else is logistics.
  9. Half the battle is knowing you’re out of alignment. The other half is giving yourself permission to course correct.
  10. Give yourself permission to evolve, whether that means selling, holding, growing, or shutting it down.

Sound Bites

“I don’t know that I ever made a decision to be an entrepreneur. I was on a mission.” (@00:00:42) — Erin Weed

“My identity was completely interwoven, which I will also say is not the healthiest thing to do for any kind of entrepreneur.” (@00:16:59) — Erin Weed

“I feel a lot of entrepreneurs go at it from like who would want to buy it, but I looked at it as who will take care of this baby that I’ve made.” (@00:24:30) — Erin Weed

“I’ve had a lot of clients who have sold companies and they didn’t feel good about it later. I just decided I just want to feel good about it.” (@00:28:38) — Erin Weed

“She and I knew the business better than any of them. It almost reminds me of when you’re in a relationship and things are blowing up around you. Sometimes you just got to look at the person and be like, okay, are we doing this?” (@00:29:53) — Erin Weed

“Permission to evolve. Can we give ourselves that?” (@00:45:19) — Erin Weed

About This Episode

Erin Weed is the founder of Girls Fight Back, a women’s safety and self-defense seminar program she built after her best friend Shannon McNamara was murdered in 2001. Over twelve years she taught more than a million women across the U.S., India, and Pakistan before selling the company in 2013 to her own speakers bureau. She’s now the founder of Evoso, a leadership communication academy, a TEDx speaking coach, and the creator of The Dig, a process that helps people identify the one word that captures their authentic operating system. This episode is a candid look at what it actually takes, emotionally and operationally, to separate yourself from a business that started as your identity.

Resources Mentioned

  • Girls Fight Back — The women’s safety and self-defense seminar company Erin founded and sold.
  • Evoso — Erin’s current company, an academy for leaders who want to speak their truth. — evo.so
  • Erin Weed’s site — Information on The Dig and her current work. — erinweed.com
  • The Hoffman Process — Week-long intensive personal development program Erin did right after closing the sale.
  • TEDx Boulder — Where Erin volunteered as a speaking coach and started seeing patterns in how leaders distill their message.
  • YEC (Young Entrepreneurs Council) — How Erin and Ryan connected.

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