100M+ Exit ft. Alexis Sikorsky | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby

Summary

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Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby

Episode: “100M+ Exit ft. Alexis Sikorsky” (August 22, 2025)

Host: Joseph Shalaby
Guest: Alexis Sikorsky (serial entrepreneur, exited for $100M+)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, host Joseph Shalaby welcomes Alexis Sikorsky, a seasoned entrepreneur who has built, scaled, and exited businesses, including a $100M+ exit. They dive deep into the emotional and practical realities of entrepreneurship: navigating high-stakes crises, managing people, learning from major business mistakes, demystifying private equity, and building frameworks to help founders achieve their own successful exits. Alexis is candid about his failures, personal struggles, and the realities (not the glamour) of entrepreneurial life, blending unfiltered wisdom with practical advice.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Embracing the Entrepreneurial Path Early

• Early Ventures: Alexis began entrepreneurial ventures at 15, starting with import/export. He jokes his motivation was adolescent overconfidence:
  • “I thought I was very, very smart. That’s something all 15 year olds have in common.” (01:17 – Alexis)
• Both host and guest shared stories of their failed teenage startups, emphasizing the importance – and inevitability – of early failure.

2. Running & Scaling Tech Companies Before and After Crisis

• Growth Pre-Crisis: Alexis built and grew a banking software company from the basement, reaching $12M revenue by 2008 (“I’m the king of the world. I’m so smart, I’m so bright.” 05:11 – Alexis).
• Impact of the 2008 Crash:
  • Lost 75% of revenue overnight, as banks froze all tech spend (05:42).
  • Emotional toll revealed: “I had to grind from 2008 to 2014; I mortgaged my house every month. You ask: are we throwing good money after bad?” (06:22 – Alexis).
  • Survival strategies: Firing 75% of staff, slashing expenses, pivoting to new, “countercyclical” products focused on compliance and risk (07:39).

3. Hardest Parts of Leadership – Letting People Go

• Pain of Layoffs: Alexis confesses that firing people made him “physically sick...literally” and that the effects on founders can be overwhelming (02:40).
• Approach: Deals with it “as humanly as possible” and distinguishes between firing for performance (“their fault”) and economic reasons (“your fault”) (03:06).

4. Hard Lessons in Business

• Says he “left $50 million on the table” due to not understanding private equity (PE) and various mistakes (09:01).
• Now, Alexis helps founders avoid these mistakes, especially by teaching them to “speak private equity.”
• On PE:

  “It’s a leverage business… exactly like buying a house, except your leverage is a little lower. You get like 70% leverage, not 90. And it’s a little higher risk, but it’s way, way better rewards.” (12:50 – Alexis)

5. The Apex Method for Cashing Out

• Genesis: After selling his business and three-year retirement, Alexis noticed founders making the same mistakes he had. He started helping, then wrote a book so more people could benefit (13:47 – 14:45).
• Core Steps:
  1. Analyze: Deep-dive into the company; most founders “don’t know what they have.” (15:15)
  2. Plan: Set precise strategic goals, e.g., valuing growth targets for a 4-year exit timeline.
  3. Execute: Founder executes; Alexis joins the board, tracks progress.
  4. Exit: Target is a transformative exit in under 4 years.
  • “Lots of them have massive engines and no steering wheel.” (15:51 – Alexis)

6. Emotional and Ethical Challenges

• Personal Impact of Hard Decisions: Recalls firing half the company (twice) due to Swiss regulations—“that’s hard” (19:29 – 20:24).
• Family & Grit: Admits he’s at a loss teaching resilience to kids raised in affluence ("I don’t know how to explain to a kid that’s been brought [to] school in a Bentley that you need to grind" 28:47).

7. Internal Hurdles for Founders

• No Strategic Plan: Most don’t know what they want personally (20:50).
• Confusing Urgency and Importance: “You spend your time extinguishing fires instead of doing strategy” (21:05).
• Undercapitalized: Alexis insists on “nine months of your monthly burn rate in your bank account,” as crisis is inevitable.
• People Constraints: Hard to attract talent needed to scale, especially for mid-size businesses. Solution: “Virtual C-suite” with fractional, often semi-retired, experienced execs (23:08).

8. Leadership vs. Management

• Alexis learned post-exit that he’s not a manager, but a leader: “People confuse manager and leader…they’re kind of opposite skills. Very rarely do you meet someone who’s both” (24:40).

9. The Meaning of Freedom and Life After Exit

• Freedom: “Freedom is a number… how much money do you need in your bank account to never have to work again?” (26:05).
• He always asks founders: “What’s your number?”—that’s the minimum target for the sale.
• On ‘Now What?’ Post-Exit: Wryly dismisses self-pity: “Boo hoo… now you have $40 million…get over it… Go see a shrink you can afford” (27:04).

10. What Alexis is Most Proud Of and Advice for Young Entrepreneurs

• Pride: More proud of helping others and his book than his own financial exit.
  • “Pride comes from helping others, not from your own success.” (27:38)
• Advice: “Know what you don’t know. Know what you’re good at, know what you’re bad at and have a plan.” (28:12)

11. Parenting and Values

• Teaching Children: Acknowledges struggle raising grit in affluent kids. Focuses on values of responsibility and charity rather than displays of wealth.
  • “You can be rich, you’re not allowed to be an asshole.” (30:24 – Alexis)
  • “With money comes responsibility.”

12. Personal, Family, and Professional Goals

• Personal: Addressing his ADHD, which strains family and friends (31:25).
• Family: Supporting his daughter with ASD, helping her flourish (32:06).
• Professional: Help founders to successful exits. “I don’t have a set number or money goal.” (32:27)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On firing people:
  “Makes me physically sick every time I have to do it.” (02:40 – Alexis Sikorsky)
• On what keeps founders in a rut:
  “Needing good people. Not being able to afford good people. That’s the one that… keeps most companies in the $10 million range.” (22:37 – Alexis)
• On leadership:
  “They confuse manager and leader…they’re not the same, but kind of opposite skills.” (24:40 – Alexis)
• On what he tells his kids:
  “You can be rich, you’re not allowed to be an asshole.” (30:24 – Alexis)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:29 – Alexis’s morning routine (or lack thereof with young kids)
• 01:04 – Alexis’s first venture at 15
• 02:11 – Most difficult early fears: firing people
• 05:03 – 06:53 – Growth, crash, and bounce-back of his tech company post-2008
• 09:01 – Realizing he lost $50M due to mistakes with PE
• 10:38 – 12:32 – Private Equity crash course
• 13:32 – 15:15 – The APEX method: birth and core concepts
• 19:29 – Firing half the staff due to Swiss law—emotional trauma
• 20:50 – 23:08 – Biggest founder hurdles: lack of plan, urgent vs. important, undercapitalization, talent
• 24:40 – Discovering the difference between leaders and managers
• 26:05 – “Freedom is a number”
• 27:38 – What Alexis is most proud of: his impact helping others
• 28:47 – 31:14 – Teaching children values; instilling grit and social responsibility

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Tone and Final Thoughts

The conversation balances humor, humility, and hard truths. Alexis is candid and dryly witty, unafraid to highlight his own missteps as much as his wins. Listeners come away with practical frameworks for scaling and exiting a business, wisdom on emotional resilience, and a reminder that success isn’t just about money—it’s about the legacy you build by helping others.

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Find Alexis Sikorsky: On LinkedIn (search his name)
His Book: “The APEX Method for Cashing Out” – Available on Amazon/Audible

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For any entrepreneur, founder, or leader, this episode is a powerhouse of truth, humility, and actionable advice from someone who’s truly “been there, done that.”

Transcript

[A]

I am sitting here with a legendary entrepreneur based out of the UK, currently residing in Spain. Mr. Alexis Sikorski has had multiple exits with his last exit north of a hundred million dollars. Please welcome Alexis Sikorsky. Alexis, thanks for being on the show today. Thanks for having me here, Alexis. I like to start the show off the same way I start with every entrepreneur. And what's your morning routine?

[B]

I don't have a morning routine anymore because I have two young kids, so my morning routine is changing diapers and bottles.

[A]

Yeah, I remember that. I have four young kids, so I totally get it. What was it before you had the two young ones?

[B]

I wasn't really a routine kind of guy. I had more an evening routine. So get to the office like relatively early, but not crazy early, like eight, nine, and then work the day, back at home at six, feed the kids, put them to bed and back in the office at 10. That was my daily routine.

[A]

Nice, nice. Well, hey, what. When you began your entrepreneurial path, you started at 15 years old. What really drove you at that early of an age to start your entrepreneurial journey?

[B]

I thought I was very, very smart. That's something all 15 years old have in common. Right. I thought I knew everything and I was very, very smart. So I say, why not like buy stuff cheap and sell them expensive? Let's do export import and become a billionaire.

[A]

So you started export import business at 15?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Wow. How'd that go?

[B]

Not good.

[A]

Was it failed venture?

[B]

I was 15, so yeah, it didn't go.

[A]

I started my first entrepreneurial venture, but met at 14 as well. And yeah, definitely a failed venture, but a lot of fun.

[B]

Yeah. And it's, remember, it's a time like before the dot coms, right? It's, it's the 70s, so like the 70s, early 80s, so 80s in that case. So it's before like the Internet. It's before, like, it's. It's another time.

[A]

Gotcha. Now growing a new access from your basement in Switzerland. What personal fears or doubts kept you, kept you, kept you up. That at night when you started that first company, New access, firing people, really?

[B]

That's the only. Honestly, I was more scared to have to fire people than to lose my money.

[A]

What, what is it about firing people that really scared you?

[B]

Makes me physically sick every time I have to do it. Like literally physically sick. I hate doing that. And like literally, my brother, I was working with my brother. At some point, he literally went to the hospital. We had. When you had to fire a lot of people makes us physically sick.

[A]

So how do you deal with it now?

[B]

Same way I dealt with it before, as humanly as possible. And when someone has to go, it has to go. And I managed to, at least on an intellectual point of view, justified by understanding that they were contract. It's a specific contract that actually define the way you can separate. So, like, you don't betray people. And also, I'm older, so I'm less of the. It's a family, we kumbaya, we all love each other. And it's more like. But still, I don't enjoy doing that. I probably will have to do it again soon. And it's also different when you have to fire people because of performance or to fire people for economical reason. Right. If it's for performance, it's their fault. If it's for economical reason, it's your fault. So it's a little bit different.

[A]

Yeah, you know, firing people. Thank God I'm in a company where I have an HR department that, that deals with that for the most part. But it always gets under my skin because, you know, I live by a model coach up or coach out. And you continue to coach them. If you can't coach them up, you have no choice but to coach them out.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And it's basically, you have a responsibility. Right. You choose them and you made a mistake. So, yeah.

[A]

So when you've navigated some massive growth through various acquisitions and various crises, what was your toughest low before knowing that you were actually on the right path to success?

[B]

Okay, let's give you a little of background. Super quick. To answer your question, 2000, we started the company Bespoke Internet Development Company. 2003, we acquired electronic document management software company for banks. Grow that from 2003, 2008, 2008, we are 1012 million revenue company. Two and a half, 3 million profit. And I'm the king of the world. I'm so smart, I'm so bright. I really convinced. I know everything. Every money, every penny we make, we spend money, we hire more people, we open more offices, we develop the product more. And then 2008, we are a banking software company. 100% of our clients are banks. And on a regular Monday morning, the clients are calling me and say, by the way, for the next two, three years, we're not buying anything from you. Revenue drops 75% on like literally in a day. And that's when I realized that was, was really, really not that smart. And I, I, I, I didn't forget your question. And I had to grind. From 2008 to 2014, like literally to the point, like I mortgage my house like every, every month. You said, like, is it, are we throwing good money at bad money? Is it really worth going on? And 2014, we were just kind of break even. And then the private Equity came by 77% of the company. And to answer your question is the moment the private equity money reached my bank account, that's where I knew, not one day before.

[A]

You took a lot of risk. How did you deal with the 2008 crash? Like, I didn't even think about European companies, how it impacted them. I, I've been in mortgage for, you know, 20 years. So I went through the ups and downs and I had to pivot my mortgage path in the great crash. But I didn't think about European software storage companies or I didn't think about all the other. Obviously the whole world was impacted. But you know, you only kind of think within the confines of what companies were impacted here in the United States. But you, I mean you were obviously impacted in Europe at a, I mean it just, it wiped you out. And you weren't even in the mortgage banking or mortgage brokering world. You were just providing the technology for them. So how did you really navigate that?

[B]

Firing 3/4 of the company, reducing cost as much as possible, begging the client to at least not cancel what they were paying and try to find smart way to open new lines of profit that are kind of countercyclical. Like the crisis brought new challenges for banks. So they were not spending on everything related to growth, but they started spending on stuff that are more crisis related. If you think like bank stability, know your customer, all that stuff, compliance in general. And yeah, try to develop new stuff that the bank were actually buying. That's how we grew back from like, I don't know, you were, we were 12 million in 2007, 3 million in 2008, and back to 12 million in 2014. 15.

[A]

Some big jumps. That's amazing. So you've said you left $50 million on the table because you didn't understand PE private equity. How did that realization shift? How you now define success?

[B]

Well, 50 million in five years. That's what I said. That's the cost of my mistakes in general. Not only pe, to be honest, the PE who acquired my company have been fantastically honest and have been incredibly lucky because with the knowledge I had that could have like led me dry and they decided not to do it. So I got lucky. Now I know private equity, I actually speak private equity, which is very, very important. There's lots of stuff. So private equity is a very uncomplicated business. It's very similar to real estate that we'll talk to you. It's a leveraged business. That's all it is, right? It's you, you more, you get a mortgage, you leverage your investment, you buy a building, you, the, you, the building takes 10%. You resell the building, you double your investment, right? Basically that's real estate, private equity, same kind of thing. It's a leverage business. So when you understand that all the jargon they put around that they use to make you feel stupid and make you think you don't understand, it's actually pretty simple. And more than that, you have to understand what they want. And that's the absolute key. Now when I help my clients selling, it's like we talk private equity and it actually helps the client and it also helps the private equity.

[A]

On that note, can you give me a one minute explanation or crash course on private equity?

[B]

Yeah, very simple. Let's say you want to buy a company. Very, very simple. Number, on average you pay 10 times EBITDA, 10 times profit. So you want to buy a company that make 1 million profit, your private equity. So you're going to pay the company 10 million, you put 3 million of your cash, you borrow 7 million from the bank, you keep the company for seven years. And during these seven years you just pay back the bank with the million of EBITDA you have, right? Everything being equal, you didn't generate a penny of growth. You just keep the company exactly the same. You basically didn't do anything. So now your bank loan is paid, you resell the company for the exact same price, which is 10 million and then your 3 million has tripled. Fair enough. It's a leverage business. You reimburse the debt with the company's ebitda. And the genius part is the debt is on the company, not on you. So you have zero risk in terms of debt. The risk is in the company you bought and that's it. So your risk, capital risk is 3 million and your risk is that your 3 million. And obviously that's not the game. The game is to grow the company. And for example, the total cash my private equity put in the company is around 17, I would say total cash with the initial buy in the earnout and the subsequent M&A. 17 million. And they sold north of 100, 500 or 100 north of 100.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So they, they made time six and I made a lot of money and everybody's Happy.

[A]

A lot of people don't know pe. I didn't even know that PE works like that. I didn't know it was a total leverage business myself. You know, I didn't know that they're just taking, taking bank loans. It's basically like buying a house. But you're buying a business.

[B]

It's exactly like buying a house, except your leverage is a little lower. You get like 70% leverage, not 90. And it's a little higher risk, but it's way, way better rewards.

[A]

Way better rewards. I mean, the payouts are insane as long as you're calculated on the risk that you're taking for the, for the company, you know, it's, you know, and you study your leadership, etc.

[B]

Yeah. And that's why at some point you think 2016, 2017, the valuation the PE were ready to pay were completely crazy. They were massively overpaying. And it's calmed down a little bit now.

[A]

Now, now you're building a roadmap, your APEX method. And it came after your own exit experience. When did you realize your story could actually guide so many other entrepreneurs?

[B]

It's a, it's, it's a process, right? I sold my company 2019, 2020, retired, did nothing for three years, get a little bit bored and start an executive MBA in Oxford University here in London. During my mba, I started meeting entrepreneurs and they were telling me their story. I'm like, fuck. They're doing the exact same mistakes I've been doing my whole life. So let's see if I can give them a hand. Just tell them, no, no, that's stupid. Don't do that. Have a war chest. Stop confusing. What's urgent is what's important, like basic concept. And then I started actually building that because when you don't take money, people don't listen to you and started to work pretty well. And after a while say, well, you know what? Like, okay, I'm going to be able to help 10 entrepreneurs, but if I write a book, it's going to be more. So that's why I wrote the book, pretty much.

[A]

So the book is called the Apex.

[B]

Method for Cashing Out.

[A]

Cashing Out. Okay, where can we find that? And is it on Audible?

[B]

Yeah, it's on Audible, it's on Amazon, it's everywhere you find. I'm lucky enough that I have a complicated. A complicated name. So if you search everything, when my name will either find a helicopter or my book. So don't buy the helicopter.

[A]

And what is your APEX method?

[B]

Listen, it's A method, because it's nice to have a method in a book. But basically it's four concepts. First, you analyze your company. You talk with entrepreneur all the time. You are amazed by how little they know about their own company. They don't know what they have. And I'm talking like I do not talk with startups, that's not my business. I do not talk with solo entrepreneurs or with $1 million company. So I talked to like minimum 5 million revenue companies and they don't know anything. They don't know, they don't have the proper numbers, they don't know their clients, they don't know what makes them unique. They don't have a plan. And especially the most important, they don't know where they're going. Lots of them have massive engines and no steering wheel. Like why, where are you going? What are you doing? When are you selling the company? Are you selling the company? Is it a lifetime business? Is it a growth business? Do you want to leave this company to your kids or do you want to sell it? Do you want to make 1 million per year to finance your lifestyle in the company or do you make going to make a quarter million and all the rest is growth? All these questions like very basic. They don't know. The reason they don't know is they're grinding and they spend way more time in the company that they spend on the company. And that's one of the things I bring to these people. So analyze basically two, three months, understand your company. Then from that you, you have a plan. So let's say your company is now making 10 million. 2 million in bidda, it's worth 20 in four years max. I don't work plans that are more than four years. In four years we go to get to 100 million valuation, which is basically we have to multiply your EBITDA by 5. What's the path to do that? Where is the growth? Is it M and A, is it organic, is it new product, etc. And how do we organize that? So that's going to take another like 6, 9 months depending. After that I'm going to leave you alone. I'm going to let you execute your plan. We're going to touch base from time to time, like once a month to be sure that your execution. I usually end up being in the, in the board, in the board meeting so I can follow on a monthly base that we are on the plan. So that's the execute part. And then two years, three years max, four years later, we exit the Company.

[A]

Wow. How many and how many of those with using that methodology, how many use cases do you have?

[B]

At the moment I have three, but none of them have exited yet. It's a brand new project for me, so it takes two, three years. I have one that's very close.

[A]

Now you retired for three years. Someone like yourself, a super high achiever, like what did you do to fill your time?

[B]

Travel, midlife crisis, new country, new wife, new kids, new new hobbies, Golf, scuba diving and making kids basically.

[A]

Nice. So. So some of your favorite hobbies is golfing. Scuba diving.

[B]

Yeah. And I'm really, really pathetic at golfing. So.

[A]

Get golfing.

[B]

It's terrible. It's the worst sport in the world. So I've been doing that for 20 years and not get any better.

[A]

Pick up pickleball. You know, you'll see rapid improvement. Now writing Cash out meant distilling complex lessons. What personal experience did you wrestle with most when you were writing that book?

[B]

Sorry, can you repeat the question? I'll show understand you what are the.

[A]

Personal experiences that you really had? It like that really impacted you the most when you wrote the book cash out.

[B]

2008 crisis is a big one.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Having to fire half of my company the same day twice. So Switzerland has a strange law that if you fire more than 10% of the company, you have to do it in a certain fashion. And the fashion is you have to tell them to tell your whole staff that you're going to fire ex employees and you have to give them three weeks and you're not allowed to tell them who you're firing. So basically you tell them I'm going to fire half the company in three weeks. But I cannot tell you if you are in the list or not. And then on the actual day you send people in a conference room and tell them you're out. And I had to do that twice. And that's hard.

[A]

That sounds hard. Now, now you're just, you're. You're an advisor, you're a board member. What internal hurdles do you find with founders that you. That. What internal hurdles do you find founders usually face that mirrors ones that you overcame. I know you mentioned that you like to teach them. What are some like ones that you could think of off the top of your head that the founders usually deal with?

[B]

Okay, in order, first one, no plan. They don't know who they want to be personally, not the company, they don't want if they. They don't know if they want to exit. They don't know if they want to grow the company. They don't know any of that. That's number one. Number two, they tend to confuse what's urgent with what's important. So like that's super, super common. I'm yet to meet a founder who didn't have this problem. You spend your time extinguishing fires instead of doing strategy. It's completely normal and there is a methodology to get out of that. Then wall chest you like, I'm a wall chest Nazi. Like I. The first thing I make with my client is I want nine months of your monthly burn rate in your bank account because 2008 will happen again. It's not the question if, it's the only question is when. So you need to be prepared.

[A]

For war chess for 2008.

[B]

No, nothing was enough for 2008. But I could have not mortgage my house if I had nine months of burn rate. So in nine months you can fire a lot of people and reduce your cost considerably and not completely exhaust your war chest. So you can shrink down a company pretty efficiently in nine months. I'm not saying like, oh, we don't going to do anything and we're going to live on our watches. It's just a question of how reactive could you be. So, yeah, you have to scale down. Scaling down is a skill is very, very hard. It's way harder than scaling up. And yeah, so the world chest is one and then is the one I'm helping the most to solve now is needing good people. Not being able to afford good people. That's the one that's gonna actually, that keeps most companies in the 10 million range. It's a very hard one to overstep. It's a hard one to solve when, when you really need like you need a proper cfo, but you cannot afford a proper cfo. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. And it's hard to get top talent when they're already pretty happy wherever they are.

[B]

Yeah. So my, the way I did it is I have 12 people in my, in my virtual C suite in my company, which are people that I've been working with for, for decades that are either retired, which is a very good pool of people like just retired and still very skillful, or that are in a job that are bored and will be able to work at night. I have lots of stuff like that. So the reason they do it is because they find it fun. They don't need the money, but they find it fun. It's fun to help a company at that stage. So, yes, these people are hard to find and to my knowledge, nobody does fractional C level people except for cfo. Lots of people pretend they do fractional cfo. Lots of them actually do bonafide accountants. But like fractional CFO you find. And what we need at that point, and that's tricky is we need to send people who actually work together. And that's tricky. That's a skill as well.

[A]

Now what belief about yourself or, or leadership in general did you have to really unlearn or purge from your mind to scale from founder to strategic advisor?

[B]

I had to understand I'm not a manager. So that's the one thing nobody teach you is people confuse manager and leaders and not only they are not the same, but they kind of opposite skills. Very rarely do you meet somebody who's a leader and a manager. And that's one of the main, main realization I had to have, which I had way after I sold my company. Why was that so bad at that stuff? And it's because it's not my skill set. I don't know how to manage.

[A]

I'm a terrible manager. Like yeah. Whenever anyone. I can't even manage one person.

[B]

Yes. Yeah. But when you, when you know that then you, you work on your skill and you hire people.

[A]

Yeah. Not only that, but people like me and you, we could probably easily be taken advantage of just because we can't manage them. So they could just whatever all the time.

[B]

But if you, if you a good leader, the people who work for you do not want to take advantage of you. Yeah, that's one of like how you know you're a good leader.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Because you serve. Now how is your definition of freedom changed from your early hustle days to now you're helping others exit on their own terms.

[B]

Freedom is a number, right. In that universe, freedom is how much money do you need in your bank account to never have to work a single day in your life if you don't want to? That's freedom. Freedom is being sure like your kids will have a roof on the head and you will be able to give them a good education and your wife can have a nice car and you can have two nice houses. That, that's freedom. I'm not being political. That, that's like in our universe, that's freedom. It's what. And one of like when I do client prospect interviews, that's one of the four or five question I always ask, what's your number? What number do you think you need to be free? And that's my target for selling the company.

[A]

Minimum target yeah, but you know, once you're free, then what? You know, founders always ask themselves, then what? You, you had that then what moment?

[B]

Yeah, boo who? You know what I mean? Like poor, poor rich boy. Now you have 40 million in your bank account and you're a little bit bored. Like, get over it. Lots of people don't get that and most people are struggling. So just leave me alone and go see a shrink you can afford.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Now a couple last questions. Now if you were to tell your younger self your 15 year old Alexis could hear your, your story now, what would you be most proud of and what wisdom would you offer that 15 year old Alexis?

[B]

What I'll be the most proud of is the work I'm doing now. Actually it's pride comes from helping others, not from your own success. Everybody can be successful. I'm more proud of my book than of my exit. I'm more proud of the work I'm doing with my founder than of exit and wisdom. It's like, oh, it just always sound like supermarket wisdom. But like, just know what you don't know. Like know what you're good at, know what you're bad at and have a plan. Try to have a plan.

[A]

Now I have a question about family because you got four kids. I got four kids and you grew up, you know, not very wealthy. You definitely didn't grow up as wealthy as your kids. How are you instilling that same level of grit, mindset, hustle in your children now as a father so that they could kind of emulate you? How are you teaching them that?

[B]

I'm not, I'm failing miserably on that point. I don't know how to do that. I literally don't know how to do that. I don't know how to explain to a kid that been brought to school in a Bentley with a driver that you need to grind. I don't know when you try, they laugh at me. My only chance is telling them I'm still alive. You'll need to deal yourself on the time before I die. And so far it seems to be working. The older one is just finished his masters in, in quant in, in at Georgia Tech, so he's doing good. The young one in is in a hospitality school in Switzerland. So it's working. They're doing stuff with their life, but if you tell them life is going to be hard for you, they laugh. They know they're smart. It's not working. And the little ones, I'm two are too young. So I'll be very, very old when this problem arise. So my wife's problem, I mean it's.

[A]

A struggle, you know, like we grew up not very wealthy right now. We had to really fight for success. And then teaching kids how to be successful when they're brought up in, in a fluent world is not easy.

[B]

What I'm trying to do is, I know, trying to tell them you're not going to have any money, it's not going to fly. So I'm trying to tell, tell them that with money comes responsibility. So I'm Jewish and for us Jews there is a terrible, terrible rule that we have to give 10% of everything we make to charity. And I teach them that, I teach them like you can be rich, you're not allowed to be an asshole. You're never allowed to be an asshole. So you don't go in restaurant and pay $1,000 for a bottle of wine. We don't do that. And that also they saw this example. I'm not, not at all a flashy person. I'm not at all like I don't wear $100,000 watches. And like I tell them, try to teach them that like with money comes responsibility.

[A]

Good lessons. Now a couple last questions about goals. What's a personal goal you have for yourself, A family goal that you have for the family and a business goal that you have for your firm now?

[B]

So personal goal, that's a little bit personal, but I've been officially diagnosed with adhd. Like most founders I think, yeah, grats.

[A]

You know, we're all yeah, but.

[B]

It'S starting to get annoying and it's all especially starting to get annoying for my family and for my friends because like I don't have time, I don't listen, I, I have 500 stuff and in my head I exhaust every one around me. So my personal goal is to tackle that. Let me know.

[A]

Your first wife probably hated you for that, as did mine.

[B]

So. Well, my first wife hated me in general. So that was just one of the issues for my family. My 3 years old daughter has ASD so it's bringing her to a world that's comfortable for her. And professional goal, I don't care. I want to have a few nice exits and meet nice founders and help them. I don't have like a set number of money or I, I, I don't always do what I teach.

[A]

And last question, when you're in front of the pearly gates of God, what do you think he's going to tell you.

[B]

It's too soon. Go back.

[A]

Alexis, you've been a pleasure to have on the show. Thank you so much for joining today.

[B]

You know, for having me.

[A]

Amazing. I look forward to chatting with you more. I hope you come back on again. If people want to connect with you, how do they find you?

[B]

Just look for me on LinkedIn. I have a, I have easy name to find on LinkedIn.

[A]

Alexis Sarkiski. We'll leave the the information in the show notes. Thank you so much for jumping on the show today, guys. If you're not following Alexis, make sure you follow him. He's a brilliant leader, he's a brilliant founder, and he's going to guide many, many founders to financial freedom. God bless you. Thank you guys for joining SA.