Elizabeth Shea chats with Sara Evans, founder of Sara G. Evans Consulting and an industrial-organizational psychologist, to discuss one of the most overlooked aspects of selling a business: preparing yourself for life after the exit. Drawing on her experience leading succession planning for Marriott's executive team and coaching founders through major transitions, Sara explains why so many business owners achieve the financial outcome they wanted yet still struggle with a loss of identity and purpose. She shares how she helps owners prepare years in advance by strengthening both their organizations and their personal vision for what's next. Through compelling client stories, Sara also reveals why understanding what truly motivates you— not just what you think you enjoy doing —can make all the difference after a sale. This episode is for founders who want to prepare not only their business for an exit, but themselves as well.
Connect with Sara on LinkedIn here.
Elizabeth Shea (00:43)
Well, welcome to Branching Out. Thank you for joining us today. We have in our studio Sara Evans. Nice to see you, Sara.
Sara Evans (00:51)
It's wonderful to be here. Thank you, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Shea (00:53)
Thank you. So, I'm really excited to hear Sara's story today because I met her just a couple of months ago at an event where she spoke at the Exit Planning Institute. There's a new DC chapter in town. And she spoke on the topic of how to prepare the human side for a business transition. She comes to us as an Industrial and Organizational Psychologist, so we can dissect what that looks like. And she’s been working with a lot of organizations on succession planning and again the human side of either a founder or their team making a transition. So, thank you for joining us today, Sara. I'm excited to hear your story.
Sara Evans (01:27)
Thank you for having me again. Yeah, it's great to be here.
Elizabeth Shea (01:30)
Okay, so let's start from the beginning. Tell me how you got into this business because as I understand it, you worked for Fortune500 companies. You've also worked for small businesses and now you have your own company, Sara G. Evans Consulting.
Sara Evans (01:42)
Yes, yes. So it's kind of a long story. I feel like the story of how I got here is as important as where I am. Often in working with people, that's the part I find fascinating in and of itself is that what we become is such a mix of where we've been.
So, I started my career in Public Relations. I worked in Boston and mind you; I was working in 2000 for a consumer technology team. We served all consumer technology clients, and I got laid off from that job because there was a big blow up in that field. So navigated that, then went in house to a medical device company where I became the spokesperson. Somebody who I worked in the agency with introduced me to her client and I worked there for two years. I wrote the press release for my own layoff. Half the company was laid off. I didn't realize I was part of it. I got laid off.
And I often say those are two of the best things that could have happened to me. I think they really helped me learn how to be resilient but also learn how to network and learn how to build relationships. And from there I did a lot of independent consulting, and I got the entrepreneurial bug. That's where that sort of respect for the entrepreneur came in and the grit.
Then I moved to the Washington DC metro area. I got a job working in the career office of University of Maryland's business school, which is the Smith School. And I really caught the coaching bug. So, working with students, helping them sell themselves. I actually sat on the admissions board to help the school get their rankings up. I really wanted to better understand who we were selecting and make sure the right people were coming in so that the experience could be the right one for them. And at the end they had good things to say, and employers had good things to say, and the rankings would follow.
So I was there for a great while, probably about eight years, and ultimately decided that I love the people side of business. So I was in a business school working with people. And I realized that in order to convince decision makers to invest in the people side of a business, you need facts, you need data, you need quantifiable metrics. But you need to be able to use them in a way that people understand them and will make decisions. And that's exactly why I went into Industrial and Organizational Psychology. IO Psychology, as it's often referred to, is the science of people in the workplace, really looking at what factors contribute to success and satisfaction in the workplace.
And so you've got your “I,” which is “industrial,” which is all the research, the psychology, the business side, all of this sort of really in-depth research that goes into understanding people in business. And the “O,” the organizational side, which I gravitated to. I think I've always been more on that “O” side, which is how it's applied. How do you go into a workplace and use those data points with live humans to influence their decisions and to really make an impact in a way that people can get behind? Because you have the data to show that there are results associated with human action.
So, I worked for an HR risk management firm. And then ultimately, I also worked for a management consulting firm doing a lot of organizational development, change management work, largely for the federal government. I also did some communications work, did a lot of different kind of work and landed what was really my dream job working for Marriott International in a change management role, working for global change management through HR.
And lo and behold, about a year later, Marriott acquired the Starwood brand of hotels, which many would say would be the largest change that Marriott encountered in its history. And I was able to lead a number of global change management initiatives around HR systems and really helping properties from the Starwood brand of hotels — so your Westins, your St. Regises, and Sheratons — migrate over to the Marriott Way. And then I moved to an organizational design team where I led reorgs of sales, marketing, and revenue management teams in the Americas for Marriott International, and then ultimately led succession planning for Marriott's Chief Sales and Marketing Officer in the Americas.
And that, I would say, was such an eye-opening experience working with these C-Suite leaders for Marriott International who, in some cases, didn't have people to speak with and help them navigate all of these changes and these decisions. Marriott put me through certified coach training, and that was an added tool for me that has really informed where I am now. So, I led succession planning in 2019 in Toronto and in 2020, we all know what happened. COVID hit. I ended up on furlough.
While I was waiting for to be invited to come back to work, after watching about a month of Netflix, I thought “I've always wanted to start my own business” And I thought, well, maybe I'll just hire a business coach to help me do that and put my shingle out there and see what happened while I was waiting to go back to work. And ended up getting a few clients and loving it, and thought, “I think this is my time” and I took a buyout. Marriott offered managers a buy out for anyone who was willing to take it. So, when it was my time to come back to work, I said, “I'm going to take a buyout” and the rest is history because here I am.
Elizabeth Shea (08:06)
Great, and you started this business! Congratulations. That is a great story. So, tell me the focus of your company today. I know at the event you talked quite a bit about founder dependency and trying to create succession plans, things like that. Where do you most focus your efforts? What do you find that's most important for your clients?
Sara Evans (08:35)
I'd say I have three main clients. I have clients who are experienced professionals, often leaders, navigating career transitions. So, it could be navigating the sale, sort of going from being the CEO of my business to something else after I sell, right? It could be “I'm an executive somewhere and I'm doing fine by monetary standards or even in my business, they say I do great work, but I'm just not motivated. It's stressful, I'm overwhelmed. The work life balance doesn't work for me.”
I also work with business owners and their teams. So, looking at if they have the right teams, making sure they have the right roles in place and also make sure they have the right people in those roles. That often applies to businesses looking ahead to when they want to sell but also how they want to operate, making sure that they have, I like to say, the right butts in the right seats. And also working with high potential leaders to help them grow. So oftentimes a leader will reach out to me and say, “I have this leader who is amazing and wonderful, and I see them as a future mainstay in my company. But they could use help with this one area or they're looking to grow in this area. Can you work with them directly?”
And then the third group is the sort of larger organizations like a Marriott who bring me in to do change management, help them with larger initiatives, redesign, communication, succession planning, larger scale initiatives. So, I work with the very small business and the business owner just one-on-one. And I also can go larger than that and work with teams and groups.
Elizabeth Shea (10:17)
Well, that's great. So, we've had a lot of guests who talked about the transition post-acquisition and how it was difficult for them. Many of them are surprised by that. Has that been your experience when you work with clients and they go through a transaction or a transition of some sort? What's been your experience?
Sara Evans (10:38)
I wish I got to people earlier. Price Waterhouse Coopers did a study, and the Exit Planning Institute also validated these results through their research. I think it was 75% of owners who sell regret their sale a year after they sell. I've had owners call me crying from their beautiful backyards at their beautiful vacation homes. They got everything they wanted, or they thought they wanted, and they're miserable. And it's very sad. Loss of identity, loss of purpose. Some of them feel guilty that they left their teams and they loved their people and it got acquired by a company that's not treating them well or doing their own rework. And in some cases, they just didn't foresee the importance of thinking about themselves and where they would go and where they would fit. They were so focused on selling and getting the money that they overlooked and undervalued the importance of finding their place in the world after.
So, to answer your question, I am fortunate enough to have some clients who have reached out to me while they're planning. Five to eight years before they want to sell or exit, getting in touch with me. Often, they get in touch with me to make sure their org is in a good place, right? “Help me with the human capital stuff. Help me make sure that I can exit and my business can run without me,” which is a very important factor when it comes to how businesses are valued. But I often help them very gradually think about themselves. “So, what is your plan after? Here's why it matters. Let's start thinking about both the legacy you want to leave, but also what you're leaning into.”
Elizabeth Shea (12:35)
Do you find that the people are receptive? For the people that you're talking to, is it “well, let’s figure that out later,” or is it more along the lines of, “I never really thought about that”? What do you extract from them that helps them to understand that this is a challenge?
Sara Evans (12:50)
I think there's a little of everything. Some people seem to get it almost automatically. Maybe they'd be the 15% that sells and has already thought about it, right? Because they've reached out to me. I have partners, my finance partners, who will know that this is a very critical component. So, they'll have encouraged their client to get in touch with me. And maybe they need a little convincing, like, why is this important? “I'm not really sure, but I'll play along.” Then they get to a point where they are glad they did. Oftentimes the people who are open to it say, “Yeah, I have a friend who sold and got a divorce after, and it was like a whole crisis that they went through because they hadn't planned for this.”
And then there are those who don't necessarily feel it's on their radar. So, you asked how I get them there? Tactfully, slowly, and asking them questions. You can bring a horse to water; you can't make it drink. I'm not going to tell somebody something. I'm going to help them explore what they need to explore at the same time that I'm helping them accomplish whatever goal they hired me for. So, help them think about their people, ask them questions about what their life will look like after, how they'll know they made the right decision, who the supporting actors will be in their life, and how much money they need to save and account for is also very important. These go hand in hand, right? Like a financial planner also needs to know how much money you want to have after the sale to support your lifestyle. They have to know what their lifestyle is, right?
Oftentimes I'll partner with the financial planner on stuff to really flesh out, “what is your life going to look like? What brings you satisfaction? What role do you want to play in your business?” Some people want to stay tethered. They want to either have a role in the business, or to be an outside consultant for a period of time. Helping them think through how they want to sell it, how they want to transition it, and what role they want to play naturally starts to lead into who they will be afterward. So it's a gradual process. I don't like pushing anybody into any conversation they can't feel comfortable with or envision for themselves. It's a process.
Elizabeth Shea (15:26)
Sure. Well, I imagine it's based on a lot of trust established over time and probing the right kind of questions. A lot of the people that have been on our show talked specifically about the fact that, “no one prepared me for that, but I figured I'd be fine.” It is a challenge and so I imagine that if you start early with someone like yourself, then you can have the opportunity to build that trust and be able to have a safe place to talk and communicate. 'Cause it sort of feels like a ‘soft’ thing to think about, but it's really very important because it's the human side of it.
Sara Evans (16:00)
It does and it's interesting. I mean, not everyone has a perfect plan and a perfect vision and they leave with a package and they say goodbye to me and they sail off into the sunset and everything's perfect. I think a lot of times I get people to a place where we know each other well and they've prepared themselves and they've researched and they feel like they are in control of what's next.
Some of my clients continue to work with me after they make the transition to flesh out any pieces because life changes, right? Unexpected things happen, but they feel prepared. They feel in in the driver's seat, and they can navigate what's next confidently. They’re in a place where they feel empowered versus feeling like the rug has been ripped out from under them and they're just kind of sitting there looking into the beautiful sunset of Greece or wherever they are where they're supposed to be so happy and they're not. It's an awful feeling.
Elizabeth Shea (17:06)
Exactly. It really is. Has anybody ever come to you post transaction when they're in that state looking for support, help, or questions for how to navigate their life afterwards?
Sara Evans (17:17)
Yes, and I can help them. I feel sad for them because there's a trauma associated with “my whole life revolved around this baby that I built, and I thought I controlled for everything and it's not exactly what I expected.” There's one client I remember he was sitting in his backyard and feeling like, “my gosh, what now?" He said, “I'm a nothing now. I'm a nobody with a lot of money. I don't know what to do with myself.” And we really thought about it together. He had a lot of transferable skills and there were a lot of things he could do. It was helpful, I think, for him to have me there to challenge him. “Have you considered doing this? What would it look like to try to be a member of this board or to do some community service” Like to really ask the question “what motivates you?” Some people like working with children. Some people like working out in nature. I had one gentleman who wanted to actually get a job.
Elizabeth Shea (18:20)
Yeah, that can happen, certainly. I know I went through that when I sold my company. It was definitely a transition that I had not anticipated. I didn't know you then, so I wish I had. I really wish I had. But I know you now.
Sara Evans (18:29)
Through EPI, to be honest with you, I think I've told you this, I've discovered that there's this whole market of people who don't know I exist and how would they know, right? Like they don't see the statistic about people selling. They reach out to the logical mentors, the logical advisors who do their best and they don't realize that their own . . . I'm not going to call it “mental health.” It's not this is not therapy. This is not necessarily all about mental health. This is about strategic preparation for your career beyond the sale of your business. Because when you've gone at 150 miles an hour and when you're an overachiever Type A, which many of us, I'm in there too, are. And so much of our self-worth is aligned with building something and selling something, and then we just stop.
It is very much it is against who we are as people. Then we start driving people around us nuts also, which I've seen men and women alike do to their spouses, their children, their grandchildren. We need other places to use our brain and exert our energy.
Elizabeth Shea (19:50)
Isn't that the truth? It sort of harkens back to the days when they said someone will retire and they want to play golf all day and then, the spouse is saying, “go back to work, do something, you're driving me crazy!” That's so true.
Sara Evans (20:01)
Yeah, you've just displaced my retirement plan with your retirement plan, right?
Elizabeth Shea (20:06)
Right. Exactly. Well, those are great stories. This is super informative and helpful. I really appreciate all your insight. Any other any other stories that you'd like to share that might help some of our listeners who are typically people that are looking to exit within the next few year, other than to make sure that they give you a call?
Sara Evans (20:27)
Yeah, there is somebody I worked with. He owned a business with his brothers. I work with a lot of family-owned businesses, whether it's transition where the father or the parents want less of a role and they're handing it over to children or other relatives, husband and wife teams. I work with a lot of husband-wife teams. You know, there's this assumption that if we life well together, we should be able to work well together and often a third party to just sort of identify roles, responsibilities, expectations can be helpful. I worked with a client and he is the youngest of three brothers that inherited their parents' business, ran it very successfully for many years, and then decided to sell. and he reached out to me. He was very aware. Again, there are some people that are just very aware. He said, I need to figure out what my next move is because I'm very aware that I will not it will not be good for me to be sitting there looking out into space. I'd like to have a plan and a transition for myself. And we work together to really think about who he is, the value he brought to the business, and what motivates him. And a lot of people don't think about or recognize what motivates them. And I think that, you know, recognizing what motivates you is different than recognizing what you like to do.
Right, like he said, I love to play basketball and I love golf and I love being with my family and all this, but what motivates me is operations. I love solving problems, right? And I can't do that by going to the beach with my family necessarily, or at least they don't want me to be that I I I can't be that role all you know in my regular life all the time. And so he concluded through our work together that he wanted to start his own business. But it took him a while to like his own personal business doing operations. So he goes in and helps companies that want to outsource a lot of the, you know, in the weeds work, right? Developing process procedures, etc. It took him a little while to realize that he could do this on his own and that it was worth doing and what it would take and why that motivated him and how he could fit that into the life of a retired person who also goes to the beach and also makes time for himself because he hadn't done that in his previous job. So how to be both healthy and productive, and hold himself accountable. I found it to be a very personally satisfying client to work with. He was very self-aware, but he was also very aware of what he wasn't aware of.
Elizabeth Shea (23:15)
Right, right. That's a great story. That is an amazing story. And did he end up selling in the end and he went off to do that's amazing.
Sara Evans (23:26)
They did. And what's fascinating is I have since heard that there were a lot of issues. A lot of the people that he really cared about got laid off. they came in, they changed things around.
But he was very much aware of what he could and could not control. And he was able to sort of say, let them, right? I can't control that. And I have all this stuff now. And and make peace with that chapter in a way that I think served him. yeah.
Elizabeth Shea (23:53)
Yeah, that's a great story. how can people get a hold of you? What's the best way of people for people to reach out?
Sara Evans (24:03)
Yeah, email is great. Sara at SGE/careers.com is one way.
Elizabeth Shea (24:09)
Okay, I'll put that in the in the chat.
Sara Evans (24:14)
I think that's probably the best way. On my website, there's a place for people to say request a free consultation. So my website's always a good way. I'm actually putting together a new website, which we'll be launching soon. So I'm excited about that. Same address, so you'll have that.
And yeah, I mean people can always call me too, but I think email or through my website is is the people get a response quickly and they can see what I'm about.
Elizabeth Shea (24:34)
Sure. Well, you were fascinating to listen to at the EPI event and I do encourage any of our listeners to look for their local chapter of the Exit Planning Institute. and I look forward to seeing you in the next couple of meetings, miss the next couple of events. Thank you so much, Sara. I really appreciate it.
Sara Evans (24:55)
Thank you, it's been my pleasure. Bye-bye.