Planning Your Next Act Before You Exit: How to Find Purpose After Selling Your Business.
For successful owners, the business is far more than income. It's a source of purpose, identity, and meaning, built over decades of serving employees, customers, vendors, and the community. Many owners imagine life after the business as more freedom, more time, and fewer responsibilities. Yet surveys from PwC and the Exit Planning Institute report that 75% of owners are unhappy within a year of exiting.
That's an ExitReadiness® issue. The reason so many owners struggle isn't usually financial; it's that the purpose they found in the business disappears unless they've planned to replace it. A truly successful exit includes a plan for what comes next, and the best time to build that plan is while you're still running the business.
In this episode of the ExitReadiness® NEXT ACT Series, Pat Ennis and Joe Markovitch talk with David Young, founder and managing member of David K. Young Consulting. David brings more than five decades of business leadership and 40-plus years in employee benefits and retirement planning, along with a life of service through Civil Air Patrol leadership, humanitarian aviation, and a ministry feeding thousands of families along the Texas-Mexico border. He shares how he began building his next act long before stepping away, and what owners can do now.
Key Takeaways
Start your next act before you exit. David's service work began decades before any sale. When he steps away, he'll be moving toward something he already knows gives him purpose, not starting from scratch.
Leisure alone rarely satisfies. David loves camping, but after a couple of weeks he gets bored. His wife of 53 years says he'd be climbing the walls within weeks without work to go to.
Test-drive retirement. Extended time away from the business shows you how you'll really feel without it, while you still have time to plan.
Find something beyond yourself. For David, meaning comes from helping people who have no hope. Owners who look beyond themselves and their possessions tend to find lasting purpose.
Volunteer work is a bridge. The owners David knows who are happy in retirement were already volunteering. It gives you somewhere to go and an outlet for your talents.
Use the talents you already have. David's flying served the Civil Air Patrol and the Veterans Airlift Command, and his love of cycling led him to lead a charity ride. Whatever your skill is, it can serve a cause.
Your expertise doesn't have to retire. A business built on knowledge can let you keep consulting on your own terms, from anywhere, even after a sale.
A partial sale can be a transition path. David sold parts of his firm over time and is considering selling a minority stake to a partner who will grow the business, giving him a gradual runway to exit.
Where to Start: Building Your Next Act Now
Notice what gives you purpose. Ask what you love about your work beyond the money, whether it's the people, the problem-solving, or the impact.
Get involved now. Start volunteering with a church, community organization, or cause while you're still in the business, so it's already part of your life when you leave.
Match your talents to a need. Look for places where your skills, hobbies, and experience can serve others.
Take extended time away. Use longer vacations to learn how you really feel without the business, and adjust your plan accordingly.
About David Young
David Young, MPA, CEBS, is founder and managing member of David K. Young Consulting, LLC, a Texas-based employee benefits and retirement plan consulting firm he founded in 1992. He brings more than five decades of business leadership and over 40 years in employee benefits and retirement planning. He holds a BA from McMurry University and an MPA from Angelo State University, and is a Certified Employee Benefit Specialist (CEBS) through the Wharton School and IFEBP. His industry involvement includes leadership and advisory roles with the SPARK Institute and Transamerica. Outside of work, he has served as a Civil Air Patrol commander and in humanitarian aviation, and he supports SkyCross, a ministry providing food, medicine, and clothing along the Texas-Mexico border and beyond.
Connect with David: dkyoung.com · Support SkyCross: skycross.org
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Disclaimer: The information presented in this podcast is provided for educational purposes only. Neither the presenters nor ENNIS Legacy Partners are engaged to render legal, accounting, tax, or other professional services. Consult a qualified professional regarding your specific circumstances. ENNIS Legacy Partners assumes no legal liability for any loss related to information contained in this presentation.
Full Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and lightly edited for readability. It may contain minor errors.
Hey there, this is Pat Ennis of ENNIS Legacy Partners. Welcome to the ExitReadiness® PODCAST. I'm here with Joe Markovitch. Our mission here on the podcast is to provide you, the business owner, with subject matter expertise on topics pertaining to building transferable or sellable business value and then for planning your eventual exit from the business. We want to help you build a business that can be transferred, and then we want to help you realize a successful exit.
Today's episode is another in our ExitReadiness® NEXT ACT Series, a series dedicated to helping owners plan for life after the business, after the transaction. As a successful owner, you have found purpose, meaning, and fulfillment in serving many people and many stakeholders: your employees, your customers, your vendors, your suppliers, the community, the economy. It's a long list. And so you've made a significant difference in many lives. Once you exit, that purpose and meaning you experienced as a business owner is gone, unless you plan to replace it in some other way.
Some owners exit one business and buy another one for those reasons. But most of the owners we're working with are baby boomers who are planning, "No, I'm not going to buy another business. I'm not going to build. I'm going to do something else." Well, we want to help you with that. We want to help you think through life after the business. 75% of business owners are not happy within one year of exiting their business, according to surveys done by PwC and the Exit Planning Institute.
And the reason is they haven't planned for life after the business in the sense of replacing the purpose, meaning, and significance they experienced. So with this episode, like others like it, we want to do what we can to help you plan now so that statistic doesn't happen to you. So today, again, we're going to talk about life after the business. Our guest is David Young. David is the founder and owner of David K. Young Consulting LLC.
He brings a depth of experience: more than five decades of business leadership and over 40 years dedicated to employee benefits and retirement planning. As the founder and managing member of David K. Young Consulting since 1992, he's guided organizations and individuals through complex benefit planning decisions with clarity and practicality. He holds a BA from McMurry University and an MPA from Angelo State University, and he's a Certified Employee Benefit Specialist through the Wharton School. His industry involvement includes leadership and advisory roles with the SPARK Institute and Transamerica, while his personal commitments reflect a strong service ethic through Civil Air Patrol leadership and humanitarian aviation efforts supporting veterans and nonprofit missions. I'm sure we're going to hear a little more about that today.
So David, we're excited to have you with us today. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Glad to be here. Hey David, nice to see you again. Nice to speak with you again.
I was talking to Pat and mentioning to him that, while you haven't completely transitioned out of your business, what's valuable about having you on is that you had the foresight, or insight, or whatever you want to call it, to think about what life was going to be for you after the business and what was important, and actually started to work on that. Many owners believe life after the business will feel like Shangri-La, with more freedom, more time, and fewer responsibilities. Yet we know that after exiting, like Pat mentioned, many of them struggle with something they didn't expect: the loss of purpose, identity, and connection. What interests me about your story is that you began planning your next act before leaving your business. So let me start here: what prompted you to begin thinking about life after the business earlier than most owners do?
Well, I've been very involved with humanitarian efforts to help feed the poor along the Texas-Mexico border. We help about 30,000-plus people with food, medicine, and clothing, and we've expanded that now into Ethiopia, Kenya, and India. So that involvement was always a future I wanted to pursue beyond just owning a business. Now, I get requests to buy my firm almost on a weekly basis. Somebody's wanting to buy me, and they have for over a decade now.
A gentleman up in New Jersey approached me back in 2018 about my shop up in Detroit, which was a defined benefit pension administration firm, with an actuary and all the things that go along with defined benefit administration. I told him initially I did not have any desire to sell. He wanted to buy my whole TPA, and I did not really want to sell at that time, but he kept pursuing me, and I sold him the DB shop in Detroit. He stayed after me for another two years, and I ended up selling my defined contribution book of business, which most people know by the term 401(k). It was profit sharing mixed in with cash balance administration, complex retirement planning, and it was administered here in San Antonio.
He wanted to keep the office in San Antonio and have me and some of my team continue to oversee the book of business here in Texas. We had other clients around the country, but most of the business was here in Texas. He did not want anything to do with nonprofit, school district, or governmental administration, which is called 403(b) administration, so I kept that portion of my retirement plan administration here, and I sold in 2020. The intent was to partner and develop the firm beyond just the business I had here in Texas, but as you know, in 2020 we were in the midst of COVID, which really damaged our planning for that purpose. I had bought his health and welfare book of business, which was rather small, because the other side of my firm does Section 125, HSA, and COBRA administration, and another big portion of that book was also with school districts, which has been a major portion of my revenue and continues to be.
We still maintain that partnership. If you look at the signature block on my emails, you'll see the New Jersey office at the very bottom, and they're quite large. They have probably 14,000 to 15,000 clients and over $15 billion, that's billion with a B, in assets under management. They're one of the major players with Transamerica. So I've continued to partner with them and maintain the book of business I have now.
I do have a gentleman who wants to buy 49% of my firm. He doesn't want to be a majority owner; I would maintain 51%. So that's where I'm headed right now, if he decides he wants to buy, and he's very eager to buy it. He's gone through the evaluation process, and I had already done a valuation and determined what the business was worth. It was a quick-and-dirty valuation, but it came out reasonably well, because it's easy to value a third-party administration firm; it's usually based on a multiple of revenue.
That's where I am today. I probably will not exit the business totally for another three years, because he wants me to maintain my role with my book of clients as he brings in more clients. He has no knowledge or understanding of the third-party administration business. My elevator speech, for people who may be watching, on what a TPA, or third-party administrator, is: it's like being a CPA and an attorney rolled up in one, but we're neither. We work for CPA firms and law firms as well as directly with clients.
So anyway, that's where I am today. He wants to build the business up, he has quite a bit of business to bring, and he thinks he can increase the value of my firm by $2 to $3 million in two to three years, and then he wants to flip it, and I'm willing to do that. So this is all likely to happen in the next three years, and you're going to be out of the business. How much time are you spending in the business now? I still spend probably 40 hours a week. So you're pretty much full-time.
Okay. I know you've dipped your foot into other non-business things with a social purpose behind them for a number of years. So what are you going to do when you've got another 40 hours on your hands? I could make the ministry, the nonprofit work I do, full-time if I wanted to. My team here actually helps support that ministry, which is called SkyCross, as well as my own direct involvement. There are two other people here who spend quite a bit of time with it, and I don't charge that back to the ministry.
It's totally voluntary. There's no overhead for that ministry; 100% of the donations go to feed the poor. Okay. Because that is a big mission for you, what prompted it? There are so many social causes out there, with good reason to support them. Why this particular mission?
Well, Pat mentioned earlier that I've worked with the Civil Air Patrol. I was commander of the Bexar County Senior Squadron here in San Antonio. Bexar County is the county San Antonio is in, which is why it was named the Bexar County Senior Squadron, and it's a squadron of pilots. Other squadrons are made up of cadets and so forth in the Civil Air Patrol, but they set up the Bexar County Senior Squadron to put all the pilots in. And I met Terry Bleke, the founder of SkyCross, back in 1998.
He started SkyCross as a retired bird colonel out of the Air Force. I had a lot of men in the Civil Air Patrol who had been pilots in the Air Force. I had one colonel who had been a B-17 pilot with thousands and thousands of hours. There was another colonel who flew quite a bit with me who was the operations director for the raid on Gaddafi. The F-111s had to fly around France to get to that raid.
It was an all-night mission, and when he arrived back home, his wife met him at the door and asked, "Did you see the news?" And he said, "I was the news," because it was a very quiet mission. I flew with men like that, and that's how I got to know Terry. Terry and I flew many, many missions together, because we did counter-drug work along the border. That was back in the day before they had the balloons they have now to monitor traffic coming over the border, and before they had drones and so forth.
It was the Civil Air Patrol. We would fly missions up and down the Rio Grande River. I've flown the entire length of the river multiple times, between 500 and 1,000 feet off the ground, looking for drug activity, and we would report it to U.S. Customs and the DEA. We wouldn't interact with the people, because under the Posse Comitatus Act we were considered military, part of the Department of Defense. We would note the GPS coordinates and give them to U.S. Customs, and what they were looking for was trends.
They would begin to see the trends in where the drugs were crossing the border. And they claimed, back in the late '90s and early 2000s, that the Civil Air Patrol helped bring criminals crossing the border to justice more than anything else being done. I went from being commander in the Civil Air Patrol to director of counter-drug activities and homeland security in South Texas. So that's a long story to tell you how I got involved with Terry, and Terry got me involved with the SkyCross ministry. Right. Okay.
So are you still flying? Are you still doing some of that? Yes, I still have my airplane, a Piper Malibu Mirage, which is an excellent cross-country plane, but it's very expensive to operate. I've got it up for sale now, and some people are interested in buying it. I've owned airplanes for almost 25 years, and I've decided I want to get out of the airplane business and start renting.
Many owners think they're going to fill their time with activities like golf or travel or fishing or hunting. What advice would you give them around that, as you think about your own purpose and future after the business? I think, at least for myself, I need something that goes beyond just me and spending time on myself. I love camping. I've got an RV trailer I love to go camping in, and I've thought, well, I'll just go camping once I'm completely free of the business, spend weeks out camping, maybe become what they call a full-timer.
But I've been out camping for a couple of weeks at a time, and I realized there's a point where I just become bored with it. My wife works with me here in the company, and she says, "David, within two or three weeks you'd be climbing the walls if you didn't have a job to go to." And she knows me very well; as I was telling Pat, we've been married for 53 years. She knows I need to have something going on, even when I'm on vacation or camping. I'm still thinking about work, and I'll still take a phone call when I need to or if the office has a question.
I'm always available. I've got Starlink on my RV trailer for that purpose, and it works great. I can log on as if I'm sitting right here at my desk, because I leave my computer on. In fact, I was involved with another ministry down in Peru, a K-through-12 school. I was on the board of that school, and I would spend as much as two weeks down there and conduct business while I was in Peru.
As long as I've got the internet, I'm good. So to answer your question, I think it's staying involved. Some businesspeople have a shop they have to walk away from; they can't continue doing their business like I can. But I can, simply because of the type of business I run. And I love doing consulting work. I have clients who ask me to help them figure out employee benefits, look at a health plan, or whatever, and I can do that sitting in my camper at Yellowstone.
Wow. That creates a lot of flexibility. Do you think that's one of the important things that helps you stay engaged in what you're doing? Yes, absolutely. Being able to do that also gives me peace of mind that I can continue to do what I do even if I sell this firm. People need my expertise, understanding, and experience in the employee benefit world, and I can continue to do that work on an ad hoc basis. I don't have to have this firm.
Right. Often owners tell us their business really defines who they are; it's an expression of their sense of purpose and identity. What do you think is at the core of what you do? Why does this particular work have so much meaning and purpose for you? Well, I love what I do. I can be sitting in front of the managing partner of a law firm in the morning and sitting across the desk from a blue-collar worker that afternoon.
The variety of people I talk to makes my job very interesting, so I can stay engaged with it as long as my mind works, because I love what I do. Hey Joe, can I ask a follow-up question? David, you mentioned something almost in passing a few minutes ago that I wonder is a key point to draw out. You said, "I need something beyond myself." Can you talk more about that? What do you mean by that?
I don't know if you read my email and the response I got from the missionary in Ethiopia, but he loves to write epistles. Cindy and I are both involved with that ministry, and he loves Cindy, but he also commends me for the work I do, because it helps people who have no hope. That's what I mean when I say going beyond myself. I want to help people who are really in need. I've been in the colonias on the other side of the border many times over the years.
I've seen them cooking fish heads for a meal. I've seen them living in shacks with dirt floors, no running water, and no electricity. They are the poorest of the poor. Some of them, when they came up to the border, lived in a garbage dump south of McAllen, Texas, in the city of Matamoros. They would dig holes in the city's garbage dump, put tin over them, and that's where they lived.
So when I work with people in that state of life and help them, that's going beyond myself. I'm taking a portion of myself and helping those people, and I think that's important to have value in your life. So many people get wrapped up in themselves, in their business, or in whatever they own and possess, and they forget that there's a role that goes beyond just them and maybe their family. Yeah, that's good. So while you're still an owner, you've gotten involved with and committed to interests outside the business, and you've committed time and resources to them.
And so when you exit, and at some point you will, you've got this to go to, which has the same, maybe even more, purpose, meaning, significance, and service to other people as you've experienced as a business owner serving your clients and employees and so on. A lot of the business owners we serve and help plan their exits and transactions haven't done what you've done. Their whole life has been in the business, really. Their family, hopefully, but they've also just poured themselves into the business. Many of them haven't done what you've done along the way while they're still an owner.
I guess you've already told us the story, but was it an interest in airplanes first, or an interest in ministry first, or both at the same time, that drew you more and more toward investing time and resources? It really was interesting: both. We'd have a Civil Air Patrol squadron meeting every other week and do mission planning and training and that type of thing, and at one of those meetings, Terry Bleke, the founder of SkyCross, brought up that he was working on developing that ministry. That was probably 1995 or '96, before I became heavily involved with it. And it perked my ears, because as a young man in my 20s, I had learned to fly.
I wanted to fly; I had aspirations of maybe flying professionally. I'd actually talked to a recruiter about going into the Marines and flying for them. At that time I'd just gotten my graduate degree, and he was very eager to recruit me. He said, "Oh yeah, we'll get you a pilot slot." I went home and thought about it. I have a master's in public administration, and if you know anything about recruiters, they'll tell you that you can own the sky with them.
And I got to thinking, he's going to put me on a desk job or push me in that direction. I'll never touch the controls of an airplane, and I'll have to go through Marine boot camp and everything Marines have to endure. So I turned that offer down. But I'd always had a desire to fly. I'd heard about a ministry called Mission Aviation Fellowship, which has pilots all over the world, and to be a pilot with Mission Aviation Fellowship, you've got to be a mechanic, because you have to take care of your airplane if you're out in the bush in Africa.
So it's a long process, and at that time I was starting a family, and I didn't feel like I could afford to go through that process and be away from people. That is a very interesting story, and an interesting life you've had. You've found quite the balance between the work you do, which you love, as you say, which you must be very good at, which there's a need for, and which you're obviously rewarded for. That's the ikigai idea. And second, you've had this other passion for doing something beyond yourself, being able to give back in some way.
As some closing thoughts: for owners who are at the stage where they're thinking that life after the business is going to be an important period for them to make a meaningful difference, how would they go about figuring out what that is? Without knowing the individuals and where they are in their business role, I'd say they need to become involved with volunteer work. Most of the owners I know who have gone into retirement and been happy in retirement are men and women who volunteered their services beyond just their business. Volunteer work, I think, is probably one of the best ways to shift from owning or running a business into life beyond the business, because there's always something to go to. Yeah.
I think being involved with volunteer work, whether with the church or some community organization, is very important, because it gives you an outlet for your talents. My talent as a pilot was used both in the Civil Air Patrol and in flying wounded warriors and veterans. The Veterans Airlift Command flies men who have been wounded or have mental health issues and can't deal with being on a commercial aircraft. We pick them up and take them wherever they need to go. It's very important work.
It's not a ministry; it's a volunteer organization of pilots who have planes and are able to take off and fly, and a lot of times it's businesspeople, because a lot of the trips are on weekdays, not weekends. So something along those lines, using whatever talents you can contribute to the community, is important. The other thing I was involved with was the American Diabetes Association's Tour de Cure bicycle ride. I love riding bicycles on the road; I've done rides as long as 75 miles in one sitting. So I got involved with the ADA's Tour de Cure and became executive director for one of the rides here in San Antonio.
We had over 900 riders in that ride. It was a blast. It was a lot of fun. So you don't have to fly airplanes. Whatever your talent is, if you can contribute it to the community, I think that gives you an outlet after the business. That's wonderful. And it sounds like, for you, it's keep moving.
Yes, absolutely. All right. Well, Pat, would you like to wrap it up? Yeah, Joe. I think we would agree that David is set up for a successful next act. He's already got it structured; he's already doing it.
He's easily going to replace, or simply continue, the purpose and meaning in his life after he actually leaves his business, if he ever does. If he ever does. And he's tied what he loves and what he's good at to it as well. Yeah, I think there are a few things he said that will be helpful to listeners. He loved airplanes and he loves bikes, and both of those things ended up with him serving in ministry or social causes with purpose and meaning.
And one of the things he did that I think is very helpful for owners: he took some extended vacations and monitored his mindset, his contentment, during those vacations, and learned, "Oh, wait a minute. It's nice, but I need something more." And his wife was telling him he'd go nuts without it, and that was after being in a camper with him for a couple of weeks. So that's helpful information, along with the point about getting involved in things bigger than himself, in service to others, with his gifts and talents. Right. Where there's a need. Right.
So I think there are a lot of things listeners can take from you, David, and from how well prepared Joe and I think you are for your next act, based on what we know and what we've observed. So thank you again for joining us today. We're very grateful. Sorry about the connection; hopefully we'll be able to do all the editing we can to make this good, because it's been a great conversation. If someone listening wanted to contact you and just talk to you, would you be willing? Absolutely.
Okay. And how could they reach you if they wanted to talk to you? My email address, of course: send an email, text my mobile phone, or just call my office here. I'd be available through all three. Is all of that on LinkedIn, if they go to your LinkedIn? It should be there. Yeah, and we've got your contact information, so we can share that in the notes.
Yeah, that's right. If someone wants to reach you, they can contact us, and we can provide that information for them. Sure. We always ask our guests if there's anything they'd like to promote before we wrap up. Well, the SkyCross ministry is one, and there's a website for SkyCross: simply skycross.org.
We could always use contributions toward that, if people want to contribute to the ministry. Luckily, we have a very large trust that we've been accumulating money in over the years that will help operate the ministry regardless of our donor pool, which is shrinking, because a lot of the donors are getting older and are no longer owning a business or employed, and finding new donors is not easy in this economy. So any help we can get there, I would appreciate. Okay. SkyCross Ministries, skycross.org. Yeah.
Well, David, thanks again for joining us. It's been a pleasure meeting you and talking to you, and we think you've provided some very helpful information to listeners today. And listeners, if you want help maximizing the value of your business, its sellability and transferability, planning for that next act after the business, or anything having to do with your eventual exit, you can reach us through our website, exitreadiness.com or ennislp.com; either one works. And if you've benefited from today's episode, please consider liking it and sharing it on social media. Thank you for listening, and until next time on the ExitReadiness® PODCAST, this is Pat Ennis with Joe Markovitch signing off.
