What you focus on when you start in business has a massive impact on what happens when you grow.
Anna Halaburda has been focusing on quality service at scale. Not because she stumbled into it, but because she built Be Ready Exit Solutions with the end in mind from the very start. As a CPA, Certified Exit Planning Advisor, and founder of one of the few true exit planning firms in the lower middle market, Anna has spent her career helping business owners protect and transfer what they've spent their lives creating.
What makes Anna's perspective so sharp is that she doesn't just advise her clients on scalable systems and quality control. She applies those same standards ruthlessly to her own business. Be Ready is her most important client. And the way she's navigated growth, managed collaborating advisors, and protected her brand vision while staying true to what made her unique is a masterclass in principled scaling.
If you lead a service business and you've ever felt the tension between growing bigger and staying great, this conversation will give you language and a framework for that challenge you probably didn't have before.
There's a tension every leader of a B2B service has to navigate: How do you scale without compromising the quality of your services - or the values that drive them? The CEO's Heart for Service is where accomplished B2B leaders share hard-won insights on walking that tightrope.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Hey, folks. Before we begin the show today, just a quick note. We ended up recording this podcast conversation in two sessions, and Sarah was unable to join us for the second session. So if you feel like Sarah disappeared for a while and then returns, well, she did, but we just wanted you to know why.
Matt Wolfe: Hi everybody. Welcome to the CEO's Heart for service. We have a great interview today with Anna Halaburda, who is the founder of Be Ready Exit Solutions. We just got off the interview with her and Sarah, and there were definitely things I heard that I did not expect.
Sarah Pattisall: I think one of the things that listeners will be most surprised by is that business exit planning is inherently emotional, right? These business owners are taking their babies. What they have invested years in. The blood, sweat, and tears are so much into their business. And then they are getting ready to exit. And that is an emotional process.
And I think, Matt, what we learned from Anna is that because of that, her approach to scaling her business and her heart for service, it wasn't one without the other, right? She, she had these strategies from day one about how to scale her business with that heart for service. They were completely intertwined.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah. That, and I, we don't hear that very often, that people have been thinking about these things in advance, anticipating those issues and getting ahead of them. So really interesting. And the emotional thing, you know, I don't think that sounds surprising when you hear it. Of course, it's an emotional experience, and it's tied to all of that, but it's another thing for it to be acknowledged, right?
And to be really considered as part of the planning process. So, she is clearly delivering the service in a unique way that I think people will really find interesting.
Matt Wolfe: Something else you might find interesting is that I just forgot to introduce you when we, when we did this. This is, I'm with Sarah Pattisall today.
Sarah is one of our amazing brand strategists and copywriters. And just has a brilliant, insightful mind into the structure and the power of story. And I'm glad you're here today, Sarah.
Sarah Pattisall: You know, Matt, I take it as a compliment that you figured our listeners would already know who I am, and they should. So thank you.
Matt Wolfe: Alright, well, let's hop on over, and we're gonna share our conversation with Anna Halaburda.
Hi Anna, welcome to the podcast today.
Anna Halaburda: Thank you so very much, and thank you for the invitation. I am pleased to be here. I really am because it's always fun to deal with the folks at Bra,nd3 and, excuse me. Yes. I'm going to extol some of your vir virtues here. I've been a client for a while and entire body. The staff there has taught me so much about you know, not only branding and telling my story, but you know, what is the brand promise?
And boy, I just jumped into this conversation with two feet, didn't I?
Sarah Pattisall: Yeah, you're.
Matt Wolfe: Great.
Sarah Pattisall: Love it.
Anna Halaburda: Anyway, so that's the reason why I'm so pleased to be here. Do you think you're letting me tell my story, and I'm telling the Brand3 story in conjunction with my story?
Sarah Pattisall: Thank you.
Matt Wolfe: Thank you. We're so grateful to hear that it's had that impact on your work, and I know you've been through an interesting season of growth, and we're gonna dig into that. I mean, the whole big theme we like to explore here is. This tension that every service faces in trying to scale while maintaining the quality of their service, and being true to the values that founded the whole thing to begin with.
It is an interesting tightrope act to walk, and we're gonna dig in. But first, you know we think if you're gonna understand a, a leader's heart for service like you, we need to get to know the human, get to know the person a little bit outside of the context of, you know, what the business is. So here's just a fun question to drop us into this. What did you wanna be growing up? know when you were a kid, and how far off the beaten path are we, like how far off did we land here on the end?
Anna Halaburda: Know. I wanted to be a musician. My father was a musician. Before I was born, he played the trumpet in the jazz band in his local area. And then, being of the Lithuanian Polish background, my father also taught accordion. And so, you know, our music was. Filling our house all the time, and they would go to recitals, and my father would, you know, do skits and everything up on the stage.
And I always thought that was the coolest thing. And we also moved quite a bit every three years 'cause my father's profession and so on. Very early on, I bought my first guitar for $5, and that was my allowance for the summer. So I blew it all in one shot. So I bought an old St. Stellar guitar from an old classmate of mine. And I was living in Tennessee at the time. We had just moved down there from upstate New York. So there was quite a disparity there in the two regions of the country. So if you can think back to the late fifties, early sixties, and the United States was not just this, you know, I, I will call it a big corporate entity that it is now.
There's McDonald's everywhere, but each section of the country is unique within itself. So I ended up buying the guitar in upstate New York, where we were up there on vacation, and then when I went back down to a little town outside of Nashville, I started taking guitar lessons.
And, so, of course, I walked both ways, rain and shine, sometimes in the snow. And my parents thought that I would. If they made it difficult enough for me, I would give it up. And I was so tenacious and thought, no way. stuck with it pretty much my entire life. So when we moved, playing guitar was always how I comforted myself, and I also got to be exposed to lots of different guitar styles.
So initially, I wanted to be a musician.
Matt Wolfe: I love
Sarah Pattisall: Okay. Well, and I know that you obviously aren't a musician now, but you still get to get up on stage now and then, right? So you got your audience.
Anna Halaburda: Just before COVID broke loose, at the end of 2019, I put together my first music CD, and it was for friends and family. And I was on the board of a local nonprofit here, it's called Swallow Hill Music. And so. I recorded it in the Tel studios down in the basement of this old church, and just before I went to release it, COVID hit, and everything shut down. So I've got a box full of CDs if anybody would like one.
Sarah Pattisall: Cents on our way, please. I need this in my life.
Matt Wolfe: Love to hear that.
I'm thinking you need a theme song for when you do keynotes. No one would ever forget it. You open up with a guitar.
Sarah Pattisall: Yes,
Matt Wolfe: Just.
Sarah Pattisall: Yes.
Anna Halaburda: You know, I've recently moved into a new house, and we're doing renovations now, so everything is upside down. One of the things I'm doing in the basement is building out a hobby room. I call it my workshop. And within it is also going to be just a small place where the sound is right, and I can do some additional recording on my own.
So you never know. I may have a couple of instrumentals to open up podcasts. Things like that, and when I speak at conferences, that's a great idea. Thank you.
Sarah Pattisall: That's awesome. I can totally see you with your own theme song. So right, if this is what you wanted to be when you were growing up, and we fast forward a bit and you find your trajectory, who in that time really influenced you the most in how you think about work and business and kind of paved the way to where you're at now?
Anna Halaburda: I started at Trenton State. I was living on the East Coast at that time, know, so growing up on the Jersey Shore, I know what that was like. And in the first year of school, I got a full scholarship for one year. To Trenton State. So I went there, and then after that, I transferred to Livingston at Rutgers, which was their music school.
So I was enrolled in their music program, majoring in music theory, and then, being young and foolish, I decided to do things like hike the Appalachian Trail, you know, just go out and that whole wanderlust thing. And so, eventually, when I went back to college several years later, it was due to an accident, and I had injured my back.
And so I was mobilely challenged at that time. And so I talked to doctors and attorneys and accountants and everything else and said, " Know, if you were somebody in my position, you know, you may be mobility challenged for the, your rest of your life, what would you do? And they said, become an accountant because you can become a professional with just a four-year degree at the time. And you know, you can sit at a desk instead of, you know, traveling or doing anything else. And you can earn a decent living. My first accounting class. I thought, I hate these people. I hate the way they make you think. And it really turned out to be a love-hate relationship that eventually turned into something. It took me a while to be extremely good at it, and because I came at it later in life, I didn't just go from high school to college and then. know, went to work for a Big Eight firm at the time, or a small regional firm.
I had the hard stuff. Like, for instance, I went to New York City and went door to door with resumes to accounting firms. I can remember knocking on a, on a door because in some of these office buildings, if you didn't have an appointment, it was locked. The doors were locked, and somebody. The receptionist would open up the door and let me in, and I would say why I was there, and they'd just shoo me out, close the door behind me.
So my entry into the accounting world was a little difficult, but I was fortunate enough to stick to it. I was fired from the first job I hated being inside, and I hated the work. I didn't say that, but in retrospect, that's exactly what it was until it clicked. And once it clicked and I understood the power of understanding. Not only the accounting function and the theory behind it, and the compliance work, but also the complexity of the ideas that drive business decisions. That's when things really clicked in. And that was after I'd been in the professional a little while. I was fortunate that I passed the CPA exam right away outta college. So, you know, I wasn't one of those folks who had to go back again and again and again to pass it. And my accounting experience has taken me to New Jersey, where I was originally certified, and then to Florida, where I went. Transferred my license down there and started my own firm because I'm relatively unemployable. It's hard for me to work for somebody that I don't agree with professionally. And the way they think and the way they treat other people. And so.
Being independent has always led me to the entrepreneurs within business. For some reason, that was just. The spark that I was able to generate between a potential client and me, if they were a business owner or an entrepreneur. And from that point on, I was exposed to allotment. Different types of situations, like most CPAs are, are, you know, a client, somebody walked up and wanna buy his business. He wants to sell his business, and he wants to grow his business. He wants to know if he, if he can expand. So dug deep into those kinds of questions. I did the research and I, my first couple of years, I didn't make a lot of money simply because I needed to know the. The background of the questions I was being asked, and there was no internet at that point. I remember when I went back to college, they were still using punch cards in the computer lab. You know, you sat there, you know, with a little machine that punch that, the holes in the punch cards so you could do your programming. So.
You know, a lot of time in the library, whether it's the accounting or the legal side, and you know, reviewed from the Internal Revenue Code to letter rulings all the way down. And I got really good at that. And the better I got at that, the more successful my clients became. And a lot of what we're gonna be talking about today is exit planning. And from an early stage, I understood what it took to drive value in a business. I didn't couch it in those terms necessarily. I've gotten a lot better at talking about what I do; it was more along the lines of. I was building exit plans into my client's businesses day one, from the day they started it, or from the day I became their CPA or their business advisor. So I've been doing this most of my professional career, and when business exit strategies became a thing of the.
You know, the silver tsunami, like all of the people of my generation are retiring now, and I'm building, I'm still building, you know, I'm not looking to re-retire. I'm still building. And so the approach has gotten more sophisticated. During my professional career, I was also recruited from one of my clients that went public, and they had burned through a couple of CFOs. They hired me. I went over as ACEC, FO of a public company. We had subsidiaries in South Africa and Australia, and I was the person out there kicking the tires for them. know, the early internet service providers that we were buying, and I was the one creating discounts so we could get them cheaper, I understood the buy side and the sell side of how to create value, and then how to pay.
A fair price if the business did not have certain things built in certain attributes built in moving that through and, and that business sold after three years, and then I was back out on my own continuing to incorporate that into all of my client's business dealings and whether they thought that I was giving them something valuable or not, or whether they thought, oh my God, I'm creating an exit plan, and I just started my business. What I was doing. And so when it came time for them to sell or pass on their business. They had an easier time than most small business owners, especially in the eighties and nineties, and two thousands and the 2000s, and all the way up through today.
Matt Wolfe: It's incredible. So you really just followed a logical progression in your life. You've landed in an. The place where you should have landed is clear. Let's talk about that for a second.
Matt Wolfe: Can you just, how do you describe Be Ready Exit Solutions as a business, and what you do for people?
Anna Halaburda: So my elevator speech is we do business exit planning, profitability and value growth consulting, and transaction and transaction support services, and people will usually stop there and go, what? And I'll hand them a card and say, " Give me a call. Because really what we do is for some reason, and, and I'm still a little unsure why maybe I'm older than most people that I, you know, other professionals that I deal with, but.
The term exit planning seems to have this negative connotation, like to a business owner. When a, when a business owner says, what do you do? I do exit planning, and they go, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not ready to sell just yet. It's more along the lines of How many hours did you spend doing your business plan when you opened up your business?
Hopefully, you did at least some of it. And if you're serious, you did many hours of planning. You know what form of entity you are going to have, and why that form of vanity. How does it work for you, and is the entity just, you know, how you do your business, the bucket that you legally carry your business in, or is it also a tool to use? While running your business. And so when you look at building the exit planning conversation, I'm landing here.
I took a certification course in business exit planning through the, now it's the International Exit Planning Association, the IEPA. And I became an integral part of that organization. Not an ownership, but I contribute there. I get ideas there. I'm rewriting some of the training modules with a small group. So I landed up in exit planning, and Matt, you were right. It seemed like that's where I belong because that highlighted the strength that I just naturally had and developed.
Matt Wolfe: You
Sarah Pattisall: Yeah.
Matt Wolfe: it intuitively, clearly. Go ahead.
Sarah Pattisall: Yeah. I was just gonna say, you know, through my work with you, Anna, and what you've taught me about what you do, in my mind it always just comes back to this idea of long-term strategies for maximizing value. And as Matt said, that's something you've been doing your entire career. And I know that you've just shared so much with us about how you ended up where you are now.
I have a question for you along those lines, that day that you founded Be Ready, or the day when you decided I'm gonna found Be Ready. What did that look like for you?
Anna Halaburda: So this everything I do, I have a story behind it.
Sarah Pattisall: Mm-hmm.
Anna Halaburda: So, be Ready was actually. Formed by myself and a wealth manager who at the time worked for a local union, basically, you know, managing funds for well, it was the course Federal Credit Union, you know, out in Golden, Colorado. And so we had formed this company together. And she was the one who came up with the name Be Ready. And we were going to use it as a marketing tool so that we could both get exit planning clients. I would get the consulting side, she would get the assets under management, but her compliance department said, no, you can't do it. So we both had contributed, you know, money, you know, to form the entity and do all this stuff. So I bought her out. So when we say how, how did I end up doing Be Ready? Well, it started to be a marketing tool, but it ended up being my business where I offer these services, and the name is so. Right on the money.
I couldn't have done any better. And the gal's name was Naisha Firestone, and I will always give her credit for the name. I will never take credit for something that is not mine. But I am still in contact with her. We, we've shared clients over the years, but. How many times do you hear in a conversation? I just need to be ready for the next step. And so I say exactly,
Sarah Pattisall: That's free advertisement right there.
Anna Halaburda: free advertising.
So initially it was not what it turned out to be. What it turned out to be was a very focused. Company that dealt with more sophisticated approaches to owners transferring ownership, whether it was an internal transfer to a family member or a key employee, or an external third-party sale, or an ESOP, or permutations thereof. And for the lower middle market, which is basically where I deal with, and those are companies with a hundred million dollars value or less, and under, I've done work with some larger companies, but that's my sweet spot. There was not a bunch of advisors who were delivering quality information and services. To those clients. And there's a lot of certification programs out there where people take it to have certification so they can talk the talk, but their main way of making money is still whatever they were doing before, where they are an attorney, ACEC, PA, a money manager, a financial planner. So there are a lot of people out there who say they do exit planning, but they just use it to enhance the sales of their products or services that they already handle. And that's what really separates Be Ready is it's exit planning, it's profitability and growth consulting. It's, you know. Do you want your business to run more easily or in a business that's easier to run?
Or do you wanna build value? If you wanna build value? Are you willing to put in the money, you know, the resources, time, and treasure to do that? And a lot of people never think of their business as their largest investment, as opposed to. The job that they own. So once you get the business owner to look at, you know, my business is really my biggest investment, why am I, you know, degrading my investment? And that's really where the Be Ready Drive comes from. A lot of it's education.
Matt Wolfe: I can't imagine how much of that is actually needed. I wanna talk about those owners for a moment. It is just these owners that you work with, you know, we call this the CEO's heart for service, and we're always curious to see what it means to you to deliver great service. What does it look like to actually know that you have taken great care of the people in your, in your charge?
Anna Halaburda: I ask myself that all the time with each new client. have that conversation over and over again because I'm still learning. And that's one of the other fun parts about what I do,s I'm always learning. But when you look at the people side of it, and I've had people say, you know, a m and a attorney say, oh, the soft side, I don't wanna do anything with a soft side.
I just know, gimme the details of the transaction, and I'll get it done. What that client experience is should be a process. They understand, it's not all smoke and mirrors, or I don't keep secrets from them. It's a process they understand, built upon what their needs are. Express desires and outcomes are, and during the process, the client is educated so they can make a better decision to move forward. And whether they get to a point where they move forward with me or with somebody else is irrelevant because Be Ready is here to help the client accomplish their goals.
Sarah Pattisall: Yeah, it sounds like that's. Very, just an authentic way of coming at it, right? It's all about communication and not with the mindset of, oh, I have something to gain, but it's, I, I genuinely care about you and your success, and I'm gonna teach you what I know and just speak to you. And if you stay with me, great.
If not, that's okay too. Right? So with that in mind, yeah. And Anna, I know that you have all of the stories. I'm gonna ask for a specific one now. Do you have an example of what you just described with a favorite client or just a fun anecdote of how those communication skills, Matt Hart, for service really played out?
Anna Halaburda: There are actually a couple of stories that jump to mind, but one of the ones that I do like to share, I've actually done a case study at a conference with this client, so I feel comfortable talking about it in this setting, in this environment. It was here in Denver . The owner had built this wonderful aftermarket automotive business for four-by-four, you know, off-road vehicles. And it was, is known worldwide at that time. They were also known, known worldwide; he wanted to sell, he wanted to walk away. So I went through the normal sales process with him.
We eventually identified one of his suppliers. Did similar businesses or did similar businesses at the retail level, not just at the wholesale level, operate in different locations throughout the company? Wanted to get into the Rocky Mountains in the Front Range and thought this was a great investment. So they came in, and after negotiations took about a year, a year and a half, they came in and said. It basically is we'll give you 10 times your EBITDA, and most businesses were only trading for, at that time, in that industry,y for about four or five. Everything was good. I was almost counting my money on my success fee before the contract hit. And the client called me up, and he said, I can't go through with the deal. I say, that's fine. You know, I'm not gonna try to talk you into it, but why? Says, well, my wife and I could never have children.
So when I reviewed the latest. Version of the contract. They were going to change the name of the business from what it is today, their corporate name, and they refused to move from that position, so I'm not gonna sell it to him. That was his legacy. Now he's still a client of mine. He no longer owns the company, but I saw him last week. He was in here, and he was wearing a t-shirt with the logo on it still. And I said, Alan, I see that you're still wearing the logo. And he goes, you know, it's my baby.
So even after he sold, the strategy that we used took a little bit, and it took us four years after he walked away from the table. To find the right buyer in the right structure so he could protect his legacy. We've known each other a very long time. He still refers to the business as his baby. When he said it, all those memories just came flooding back, that this is true to his word, know, and he has gotten out of it what he needed to, and he's really now looking at. You know, he's in full retirement, but he still looks at the business as his baby. So that's, that's a fun story to tell.
Matt Wolfe: It's such a powerful point in people's lives that you enter into. With them.Not just selling it, but selling it the right way and honoring what that business means to people and how much of their lives they have poured into that. Those are the kind of things we like to explore here 'cause. As I said earlier, we're trying to figure out how to scale a business, a service-based business, without compromising the quality of the service or the values behind it.
Matt Wolfe: So I'm curious. I want to dig into that theme now for a while and just think about your growth story over the years. Where have you been? What are the big chapters? What are some moments where you've really hit some bumps in the road and realized, okay, we're growing and we have to figure out this puzzle, and it's not gonna be easy. How to maintain this level of service, how to take great care of people, but keep
Anna Halaburda: Well, that was thought out and planned. So it wasn't like all of a sudden, I got busy and I, and I now needed to figure out how to scale. I had helped a whole lot of my clients become successful in their businesses, and they did it by listening to me. The advice that I gave more often than not, when they disagreed with me, we would discuss it, and it was their business after all. I'm not gonna call 'em foolish. I, you know, they can do whatever they want with it, but the business was built from day one to scale.
Matt Wolfe: Hmm.
Anna Halaburda: And what that means is you have to have systems in place, processes in place. Just like you would tell a client if you were to go in there and they would say, I'm looking, you know,, I hit this plateau.
And this is a common theme in business advisory work for business owners, where they will max out, they can grow their business from zero, let's say, to 5 million. They just can't get it past that. And sometimes it's, they just don't know what to do next. They don't have enough capital to invest, hire additional staff, get new equipment, or whatever the situation is. So if I am telling people what to do, I don't do it myself, I shouldn't be consulting. And the term that is thrown around is. You gotta eat your own cooking. And the way I say it is, be read,y is my most important client. It comes first all the time. You know, I will spend the time and the money developing things and be ready, systems and processes.
Anna Halaburda: Let me throw a complicating factor in here. Because from the very beginning, when I worked with Matt Krist when I first started working with Brand Thre,e we came up with, you know, what is my business model? Well, I can go out there as an exit planner, and I struggled doing this to get business owners in the door.
And I, and I did seminars. You know, lunch and learns and things like that. Never got a lot of traction. And then I said, well, you know, you go back to the old story, and I don't know, you know, which bank robber said, " This is how come you robbed the banks? And he goes, well, that's where the money is. So where are the clients?
Where are the business owner clients that are already identified? As needing my services, it's other advisors that don't do what I do. So Be Ready was built as a collaborative. Business model where we will take individual clients and service them. But we are the business exit planning arm of other advisors who don't have the knowledge or the skillset, don't wanna do it, and are restricted by licensure. Or, there are a few other situations in there, but so we fulfill that function, so if there's an investment in it, I love telling this story, and all the stories I tell are based upon true life experiences that I've had.
I'm not making the stories up to make the point, even though I may embellish them from time to time. But, there was a, a, a money manager, financial planner, and this is from a client down in South Florida. He had been with his client, and this was a difficult client, I mean, a pain in the backside. And, you know, he had squirreled away some money. Started by putting money into an IRA first. And so eventually he built a business. He put in an in a 401k plan and started investing more money, and he started. You know, really having great cash flow. He goes to sell his business, and he eventually sells his business for you know, over $50 million. Now, the business advisor had been with this troublesome client, this annoying client, for about 1 to 14 years at that point, and when the business was sold.
One, and I was not the lead advisor on this. I was just called in to a specific role, said," You know, that guy was good for a couple hoof hundredhousand dollars worth of asset management, you really need to go to the guy that I'm gonna refer you to. when all of a sudden there's. of millions of dollars of investible money, the money manager ends up with nothing but the heartache of the initial building years, and ends up losing out on the liquidity event.
Anna Halaburda: So when be ready, gets a referral from, you know, say a money manager or ACEC PA. One of the first things we do, and we say this is that we protect your relationship with your client. You invite us in, and we become a player in your show. And you know, if you wanna be part of it, you know what Be Ready does. You can fill your part if you just wanna stand on the sidelines and be the cheerleader for your client.
I always say bring your pompoms. You can be your client's best friend and cheerleader. But we will protect that relationship unless you're obviously doing something wrong. And we will have that conversation. I'm not going to just refer that client away from you. So that's also when, when I look at, you know, where the clients are, it's other business advisors who ha, who have business owners as clients. And if I can. Show my value to them with one of their clients. The other 20 or 30 business owners become open to me when they are ready. Recently, there's this one investment company,y and we're still talking. So this is not, you know, I'm not gonna mention names here, but I was asked, well, how can I tell my advisors, know, what are the keys? What are the symptoms that they can understand when a business owner is starting to think about selling their business? And I glibly said to 'em. They come to the advisor and say, I wanna sell my business. But it really went further. It's, the business owner is, is starting to be, know, tired of, you know, going to work.
It's no fun for them anymore. They're burnt out, or they went from growing a portfolio, their money, to protecting it. It is like I'm no longer growing it, so I now need to make sure there's enough leftover. So the owner's risk-reward changes. So there are changes in the business owners' attitudes and speech that an investment advisor or ACEC PA, but this was geared towards an investment advisor.
So that wealth manager for the business owner will start to hear the clues and then say, " Gee, I've got a company you can talk to, you know, to plan out what you're eventually going to do so that you end up in the best position you can be whenever you decide. You know, to transition, sell your business, exit your business. And so when we look at servicing a client, they are our main focus. But when other business advisors re refer clients to us. Our focus is not only on the relationship with a client, which will always come first over the advisor, but secondarily, but a close second. It is. We make sure that the advisor has experience dealing with the key and that they understand.
We keep them in the loop. Do what we say, we say what we do, and we keep our promises.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Okay, so Anna.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: wanna spend a little time looking at what is the core theme of this podcast for us, this idea of, you know, when you're someone who cares about delivering great service to people, that becomes a real issue as you try to scale. How do you scale? How do you grow without compromising the quality of your services? And every service is really unique. Yours is really unique. Your approach is unique. And so we wanna explore some of the. The struggles and bumps along the way that you had. So I'm curious where your mind goes first. As you think about your journey, as you've been scaling and growing. Where have you seen some of the biggest challenges?
Anna Halaburda: Well, first of all, I spent the first several years just getting down what my messaging was, and brand three certainly helped me with that. As I started to grow, and first it, it was just a general presence on the internet, and then it really started to morph into what my core values are. What is my, what are my mission and vision statements?
And moving forward, how do I keep? My vision for what Be Ready is, or at that time what it could be when other outside influences w were trying to turn Be Ready into what they thought Be Ready should be, you know, into their vision of Be Ready, instead of my vision of Be Ready.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Can I poke in on that for a minute? Just to, I'm curious where your challenges were with the messaging and where you landed, 'cause I think that will give us some great context to understand then that new challenge that came up as you were growing. Okay.
Anna Halaburda: Well, initially, when I first started this, I came to the realization and the understanding after. Going into the business exit planning world as an exit planner. You know, again, my background is ACEC, P, A, and ACEC, FP, and a few other professional designations. So years ago when I was. Back in the early eighties, when I got my CFP certificate designation from the CPA standpoint, I saw that people were using the CFP designation simply to.
Do what they already do, whether they were money managers or CPAs or attorneys, stockbrokers, it was just a new way to cloak themselves in new wording, something that was new, exciting, maybe a little sexier than what they were doing, but they were still doing the same thing. And when the exit planning came out as an actual profession and industry.
I saw a lot of that as well, so I did not want to go there. And so if I can, about five or six years ago, this is pre-COVID, I had another professional advisor, whom I've met over the years, said, I've got a client, let's collaborate on this client and as we know, Ready was built as a collaborative platform.
So we collaborate, and at the time it was, I collaborated with other professionals. To deliver wins for their clients. And so as I started working with this one lady, she had her own vision of what Be Ready should be, and tried to take it back to the inception. And by that time, I had already had my mission vision statement down.
I had the first iteration or the second iteration of my website up and running. So she would always come in and say, " Well, let's figure out. You know what this is? Let, let's have SOPs in place. And I informed her that thi I've already built this. This is not something we have to reimagine. This is not a startup company, but we need to now take what you know.
Have you become knowledgeable in the bBBE-ready knowledge base, and then we can make alterations, changes, and updates. That makes sense. But I'm not gonna go in and rediscover the wheel or, you know,
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Yeah.
Anna Halaburda: Fire again.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: So what was that?
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Before we move on, what was that mission and vision? 'Cause I don't know if we've quite gotten to that heart behind what you do, that sense of purpose.
Anna Halaburda: Okay. So. Be Ready is uniquely placed in the industry not only to be the industry leader in the provision of business exit planning services, but it's also to build a platform for which additional exit planning advisors that are coming up can look to and have, be ready as that industry standard that is best in class.
So that. We're not only delivering wins for their clients, but we are also developing the industry. We, you know, like
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: to define and shape this new industry and take the lead.
Anna Halaburda: Absolutely. And part of that is because of my unique background, but it was my perception. Was unique in the industry, and I could, you know, take that 30,000-foot view at the time, number one, and not be driven by, gee, I have to create cash flow today.
I'm building something for the future. And so number one, becoming the industry standard. As far as the practice that. Caters to both business owners and other professional advisors. And that's always to remain true to the vision that this is what other exit planning firms eventually are going to say, oh, we need to incorporate these kinds of standards and this knowledge base if we're going to be best in class.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: What is it in the midst of all that, in those standards? And those things you were putting together that really made it unique, like what made it set apart from the rest of the industry, and how
Anna Halaburda: Well,
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Raise the bar?
Anna Halaburda: All right, well, number one, I wasn't using exit planning. As a tool to enhance what I was already doing, you know, if I were a money manager, this wasn't just to get more assets under management. If I were at ACEC PA, this wouldn't just be another enhancement to my client advisory services or CAS services, as they're called in the accounting profession.
But this was. This is the service. These are the services that we are providing to business owners and to other advisors and their clients. That's strictly built around exit planning and not using exit planning as a tool to deliver different services as an introduction to different services.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Yes. That makes a lot of sense. So it's easy to set your own vision when you're one in the company, and obviously, as you've invited people in, then that gets challenged or pushed to get. So yeah. What, what happened next then?
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: What was the next challenge that you hit as you were scaling and growing?
Anna Halaburda: Well, as I was scaling and growing simultaneously, what I was doingwass I was. You know, building my centers of influence. I was speaking at conferences, getting more visibility, and branding everything under the Be Ready moniker rather than anything else. So, number one, as the Be Ready brand grew and.
I ended up being an expert subject matter expert on exit planning, business strategies, general tax strategies, nd everything that business exit planning encompasses. That other professional advisors, senior-level advisors, who have already been doing business exit planning as part of their practice, whether you're a CPA or an attorney.
And oddly enough, CPA and attorneys were the first folks that were invited under the tent, so to speak. They had their own visions on how they. Delivered their services, and that was everything from an engagement letter. All the way down to how much time we take in delivering these services to what, what's included.
So what I like to call it is, you know, what's our inventory? What are we selling? You know, so we couldn't recreate the wheel every time we got a new client. Every client is unique, individual, different, even if they're within the same industry, but our internal processes. Have to be consistent to scale.
We can't reinvent the wheel for every new client, so.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Yeah, but that's a lot. Mean, as you explain, when you talk about merging basically their entire process with a whole new process, it's a huge challenge. How did you, you take that on?
Anna Halaburda: Well, first of all, what I did, and this is still my process when I collaborate with other professionals, if somebody brings a client to me and they say, " Well, this is my client. I'm taking the lead, but bring your expertise in. I watch and see how, how they. Fulfill their obligation, their contractual ob obligation to their client.
And I add what I can along the way, so as I observe and note the way they're providing services, how much time it takes them to do, you know, what,t and that's everything from how much time it takes for them to respond to a client request all the way down to, you know, what kind of engagement letter do we use?
And if we have a deadline of next Wednesday, are they staying up on. Monday night and Tuesday night, trying to get the work done. You know, what I call a hair-on-fire moment,s where everything is, you know, becomes critical because we've got a deadline tomorrow and it's not done. So, you know, it was workflow, ow, and I would analyze it, and I would come up with, yeah, some people think in Word, I think in Excel, and I think I may have said that before, but I would come up with an Excel spreadsheet.
That was relatively accurate,e and say, here are the steps we took. Here's the time it took us to do it. Here were the people involved. You know what we should be making was X. But what we really took, if we wrapped everything together, we're working for minimum wage, we're swapping hours for dollars. That doesn't make any sense to me at all.
We are a value. Deliverer, we deliver value to our clients. We need to have value billing. And the only way you can do value billing is to be, you know, highly aware of what your deliverables are, number one. Number two, how to deliver it. Number three, who's accountable for delivering it on a timely basis and basic Gantt charts.
Step number one is you meet a client, you have a coffee with 'em all the way down to delivering the final reports, and then either going on to your next engagement with that client or, you know, if it's a transition, then a successful transition in helping out both sides of that team.
So. When you really start to analyze it, and that's what CPAs do. You know, we filled out time sheets, and I hated them when I was,s you know, just coming up in the accounting profession. But it really gave me the, you know, the, shall I say, the understanding that if you're delivering a value service, you should be able to deliver it in a very efficient manner.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Yeah.
Anna Halaburda: And others.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: success, sorry? Was that successful? Then that approach
Anna Halaburda: Absolutely. And so one advisor,r in particular, there were actually two advisors on this one engagement where we went through that process, and they started saying, well, how can we change this? You know, does everybody need to be on every Zoom call or in every meeting? You know, how do we capture the information more efficiently?
Anna Halaburda: Now, when I was observing other folks' processes, other advisors' processes,s you know, everything from, you know, what documents do you. Get from the client right up front. How do you get them? Where are they deposited? Who has access to them? And when you're alone, that's an easy thing to do. You know, when you're a single shingle, or whether you're a small office and one or two people are sitting next to each other, that's an easy thing to do because.
You know, you're there and saying, " Oh, where's that document? It's over there. But when we are dealing with advisors in different parts of the country, and they have different software, they have different methods. We have to blend that in a way where we do a document request that gets all of the documents right up front, rather than going back to the client or back to the well to get more information, which slows down the process.
So every time you have to pick up a paper again. And go back to the client, not only does the client get fatigued from, you know, trying to continue to give you things, if they can have that pain point all upfront, and then from that point on, you are delivering value to them, that's way more effective than.
We did this first phase; now we need the other batch of information before we can complete the first phase. And I've been doing this long enough, and I have checklists, everything's PDF fillable so that a client can go through and say, yes, I have this answer, these questions, and it's everything from.
What's the ownership structure? Is there a single owner? If there are multiple owners? What are the ownership percentages? And I was at a conference last year, and one advisor said," Geee, I got all the way down to the end before I found out that there was a second owner. I mean, that's a rookie mistake.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Yeah.
Anna Halaburda: That's something that. No professional advisor should ever make. That's basic background, you know, so.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: This, this is all really interesting to me because in both of the examples you're talking about, whether it's the, the detailedness of the Excel sheet and the analysis that you were doing, the drive to get all of the information up front. What comes to my mind is I think we sometimes avoid steps like this. in our businesses 'cause we don't want to bother people or we think it's better to spread out the pain, you know, and not annoy people in terms of the documents or we are afraid to get that detailed in coaching somebody else, right? We, we, we let some of our instincts to not want to offend, not go in, not dive too deep, hold us back, and we're always looking for takeaways here, you know, in this podcast.
And that to me, that's a really basic human one of no, you win by. You win by digging in, you win by, and I love the idea of giving 'em one big pain point and then value, value, value on the end. It's those simple reminders to me that really move the needle for people.
Anna Halaburda: So if we really consider, and this whole conversation is about scaling. So part of scaling is. Keeping the quality, the consistency of not only how much time it takes you to do something, and yes, there are huge variables between one client and another as far as complexity, but If there is a single person or committee or whatever that is, that looks over the quality control of the, you know, information that's being presented back to the client doesn't make sense.
Is it delivering what we promised in the engagement letter, or, you know, some advisors use a statement of work to encapsulate that, and it changes, but what their engagement letter says?? Are the deliverables? Are we really delivering that? And I've caught many advisors, or you know, a handful of 'em under the Be Ready umbrella, delivering things that weren't in the engagement letter and omitting other things.
Those were included in the engagement letter,r and they had no idea that they had done that. So when you talk about scaling, what's your quality control look like? The only way you have quality control is if everybody knows. You know what the reports are gonna look like. You know what your inventory is.
What information do you need to gather to be able to generate the informati andn, the analysis for the client to make recommendations? And if that's not consistent. And we're delivering things that aren't included or omitting things that were included in the engagement letter. That's sloppy. That's sloppy work.
That's not the best in class. That's not industry. You know, setting the industry standard. That's not an industry standard. That's an industry failing.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Yeah. Can you draw a line for me? I mean, it seems obvious, but I would rather hear you draw the line yourself, like from the efficiency, the consistency, these kinds of things that you're building with your team to the client, you know, to the client's sense of how they're being served and taken care of.
Anna Halaburda: Well, one of the best examples I can give you there is.
Anna Halaburda: What clients hate the most is silence on the part of the advisor. Like there's a lot of activity up front, a long range of silence, and then all of a sudden the big range of activity. A lot of activity where the advisors were asking follow-up questions.
Making changes based on new information, and it extends well.
Anna Halaburda: What clients do like, and this is drawing the line, is I had mentioned the Gantt charts or, you know, the engagement map as I like to call it. Gantt charts are a little, you know, cold out there, but an engagement map, what it does is the client gets to see the engagement map.
They get to see. At what point is the engagement in who's responsible, as far as on our team for deli delivering, you know, or analyzing, or providing information to the advisor who's in charge of that engagement? Call it the senior or the partner in charge of that engagement. So if the client can see the result of all of the.
Checklists and you know, document requests and all of the other things that go on behind the scenes, they don't get to see that. But those are what drive the engagement map. The engagement map keeps us, shall I say, responsible to the client of delivering our promise. And if the client can see, you know, the line moving down, the engagement map.
That's the line you wanna draw from. The client is kept informed about our progress,s and that engagement map is driven by all the other collateral that's been developed behind the scenes, which keeps us efficient, keeps us responsible for our part of the engagement and the rest of the team. Then, when it comes down to the end, if we're missing things because the client hasn't delivered, it's on the client.
So that's a little hard to get other professionals. To follow a regimen like that if they've been on their own and they've had their own regimen, but it's kind of like, oh yeah, I just asked my assistant to do it. Well, let's put down your assistant's name and what those tasks are, so that if your assistant is out or gets another job, the new person stepping into that role gets to do it, you know?
Anna Halaburda: In our role as advisors, when we're building value in a company, say that they want to sell or transfer, what's one of the things that we always insist upon? Well, they're SOPs, standard operating procedures in place. These are just SOPs for our industry. It seems like people haven't identified or given enough thought to what the SOPs are for this industry.
That's all I'm doing, I'm using my experience of, you know, delivering audits, you know, and I've done audits of public companies, you know, in my CPA background. But what are the SOPs that keep us efficient? There's nothing worse than you know, and I like to call it because you know, like right now it's April 9th,h and the 15th is next Wednesday.
You know, like the whole tax season rush and everybody's running around, and there's that big pressure. That pressure shouldn't be on delivering client reports and analysis. If we get really busy and we get really overextended, I can understand that, but every client shouldn't be treated like a tax season.
It should be a systematic approach. Think of it as an assembly line. The raw materials come in as raw materials, and they go out as the product that you sell. In between those two raw materials in the product. That's what we're talking about as far as SOPs. And so if you think of an assembly line, and I don't wanna break what we do down because we're professional advisors, and strategically there's more to the conversation.
But if the first thing that we do is cut the wood, the size that's on whatever we make. So those SOPs have to be in place, and if we're telling our clients they need them, and we don't have them, we shouldn't be in business.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Well, one of the things I love about these conversations we're just really beginning, really, but we'll continue to have on the podcast is we get to. back and forth between people who speak Excel and people who speak Word. And I'm very much, I'm on the word side, right? I'm the creative strategist marketing guy.
I speak that language, you know, I speak French, you speak German, whatever. But, but cross pollination of that is so great because even now I'm picking up again on the value of things that maybe I would discount, like the, the, the specificity, the accountability, the, the detailedness of mapping out a procedure, which would be really helpful I think, to other, other services and other things where it could be easy to sort of miss that. But this really is the spine that protected you as you begin to scale and grow.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: I think now, I think there was another story you wanted to tell us about another sort of a fundamental shift in the road, too, right? With the business,s as you brought on new partners and in that moment of scaling.
Anna Halaburda: Well, that fundamental shift really starts in getting. To understand what's already been built as opposed to reinventing the process every time you, you know, like it's one advi professional advisor that is under the tent, you know, and he is an associated advisor with Be Ready. One of the first things he did when, you know, he.
We made our agreement, and he went out and contacted somebody who was a specialist in marketing. Now, you know, I kind of took a little umbrage to that because I've got brand three, and so it was like, well,
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: We should take some umbrage, too, but we're okay.
Anna Halaburda: Okay, so the next thing I know is I get an engagement letter from this marketing company. To sign with them, and I've never spoken with them.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Oh, wow.
Anna Halaburda: No,w I am still, you know, the controlling owner in Be Ready
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Sure.
Anna Halaburda: for somebody to do something like that. Now, this advisor did mention to me that they had spoken to these folks. For it to get to the point where they did not have contractual or signature authority over a you know, signing a contract that they're not financially responsible for.
That's, that's not partnership material, that's employee mindset. So a lot of. People coming in when you scale, you know, one of their first questions is, what is the revenue share? As opposed to how much of a cash call will I be responsible for, you know, so, and what can I bring to the company? You know, that's.
In the emerging marketplace, which we are, and that we are trendsetting within that marketplace. And so one of the big shifts I have is when somebody brings something to me, I always ask, so how are you gonna pay for this?
It was, well, the company can pay for it. And I go, " Alright, how's the company gonna pay for it? From my profits or from the company's profits?
You know? So the mind shift is that, if somebody wants to come in and have some equity position, they have to have not the employee mindset, they have to have the entrepreneur mindset. That partner mindset.
And so identifying that quicker and upfront is key to bringing anybody on. And that was, I know I went around the bush twice on that explanation to your question, but that's really what happe, ns is that.
Somebody who wants to be part of something growing that they can share in, you know, future revenue, future profit streams, then they have to be,
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: A lot of sense.
Anna Halaburda: They have,
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: as worried about you as they should be, as worried as you about how that thing's gonna get paid for,
Anna Halaburda: Yeah.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: know?
Anna Halaburda: You know, making the monthly nuts, so to speak. What does it take to keep the lights on?
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Yeah, this is a unique model. You know, not everyone listening to this will be building by bringing on partners, you know, scaling through partnership. We usually think about it, you know. Through the, the, the, the muscle and the effort of acquiring new clients. But this is a different way to scale, and there's so much to be learned from it. Were there any other big challenges that come to mind when you think about your journey and scaling and maintaining the quality of service?
Anna Halaburda: One of them was the proper messaging to other business advisors. We protect your relationship with your client that you refer over, and a lot of business advisors, even though it says it on our website, even though I mentioned that during our initial conversations when you refer us a client, we're gonna protect your relationship with that client.
Until you know, they decide what they wanna do, but you know, we are protecting your relationship. And that kind of fell on deaf ears, and I guess I've been saying it long enough and have tweaked how I say it to the point where all of a sudden these other advisors are starting to say, Hmm, it makes sense.
And I'm also thinking that. The awareness within the professional advisor industry. Those are CPAs, money managers, financial planners, and all the other professional advisors. They're now seeing the unique opportunity of partnering and collaborating with. Be ready, and I was gonna say somebody like, be ready, but there's nobody else.
Like, be ready out there in the marketplace. Now we've been there for 10 years. Alright, so there are new startups. Private equity reaches out to me twice a day, and not the same people,e saying, we're looking for businesses in your industry, in your vertical. Would you be open to a conversation for us to acquire?
Be ready now. This is the first time I've said that out in the open, but that's where this industry, you know, is trying to lead the industry, keep the messaging the same, and keep the quality of the services that we deliver the same, so that people believe it now. And so it's, it's almost funny for me to get these inquiries daily.
You know, family partnerships are looking to invest. Do you need to grow? And right now it's no, you know, I, I'm not looking for anything like that, but they see that there's a methodology with which Be Ready works.
And I speak at conferences where private equity groups are represented. So they've seen me over the past 10 years, especially over the past six or eight years, where I've presented at a lot of conferences around the country, that they're starting to say," Ohh. That's not somebody trying to sell a different service by cloaking themselves in the business, exit planning vernacular.
It's really, these are people actually doing business exit planning.
Matt Wolfe: And that's something that we see a lot. With B2B businesses, I mean, there's nothing, nothing digital, nothing electronic. Nothing in that vein of marketing can replace human connection and seeing a human with genuine passion and real care up there speaking.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: And you're right, people have to see it repeatedly to believe it, and it only highlights for me the need for people who own any kind of.
B2B service to do two things very quickly: get clear on your message, get out there and share it wherever you can,n so people can meet you, because this just isn't marketing as usual. That human component has to be there.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: So brand three, obviously, we did your. You know, we,
Anna Halaburda: Yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: To us, that's the foundation of everything as a brand strategy, which is often misunderstood, but I, I just like to say it's all about telling the right story to the right people.
It's making sure you have a great sense of who your ideal client is, and there's enough of an understanding of who you are as a business to tell a great story that invites them into the story that helps them discover trust. And a desire to move on in conversation with you. That's the foundation of everything. And then what we find is that it powers marketing, of course, but also sales and client experience. It impacts everything that helps you grow and scale. So I just wanna touch on those things real quick and just, I'm curious first of all, how did your. After we worked with you, how did your sense of how you tell your story change?
Or how did the story itself change after working with Brand Three?
Anna Halaburda: Well, Matt Krist, who was the founder of Brand three, yeah, so I'm not gonna call him Matt one and you, Matt two.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: That's okay. We do.
Anna Halaburda: But he spent a lot of time with me when we first started talking about, you know, building out the website, and we're talking about, you know, what the image was that we wanted to show to the world, what the messaging was that we wanted?
To consistently deliver what our inventory was now, what the products were, what we were selling, and who our audience was? And it was very early on when Matt and I were talking, and there were other folks involved at that time as well. But I said, you know, I've done direct marketing too. Business owners, and it's hard, especially eight, 10 years ago, you know, it's hard to get, you know, if you have 20 business owners or a hundred business owners in a room.
You may have five follow-ups, 10 follow-ups, you know, maybe a 10% follow up. And out of that 1,0%, you get one or two that you have a deeper dive in, and then you have a couple of successful engagements with those folks, and that's the whole repeatable process. And I told the story about the CFPs initially. You know, when I got my CFP back in the eighties, they, you know, a lot of the people who were CFPs and were selling the service didn't actually deliver it.
So they would refer that out to others, to real CFPs. You know, there weren't many of them around. And so I recognized. That dynamic was happening within the business exit planning community. And so those were the talkers. The business exit planning talkers that need business exit planning doers to re actually refer the clients to and be ready
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: great.
Anna Halaburda: are the doers.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Yes. And how has your marketing approach changed since you've, you know, defined your brand better, had that strategy behind you? How did it change the way you market? Be ready? I.
Anna Halaburda: Well, well, initially it was all client, you know, business owner facing, and then I realized, you know, other than just my personality, was one that I needed to be involved. So,o as some of the professional organizations I was in involved with, I started volunteering. You know, and my moniker is, you know, show up on time and over-deliver when it comes to you know, promoting your brand.
And that's what I've done. I've done it through the IEPA; the predecessor was Pinnacle. I've done it through Growth Drive in a couple of other organizations that I've been a part of. So. Relatively early on, I made the change that speaking to other advisors is way more efficient for me to get clients because if I'm in a room with 10 advisors and they all have five business owners who qualify, who would be a good fit to talk to me, I've got 50 hot, qualified leads from these.
10 advisors.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: And I think what we find is that that raises the stakes even higher for you to have a clear message because that's the key to your, the transmissibility of what you do, right? For PE people to be able to tell your story to pass on to their clients. This is the problem they solve. This is how they do it differently.
This is why you should speak to them. And without that, all of that effort can really just sort of float off into the breeze.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: About sales? How did your approach to sales, did it change the way you think about that much?
Anna Halaburda: It did change the way I thought about sales, but for some reason,n you know, over the years as an entrepreneur, I started my own accounting firm. I've had multiple firms. I've had firms bought out. I worked fr one of the top 100 CPA firms in the United States, and I was in charge of acquiring new clients.
I'm confident in what I am delivering, call it what I'm selling. So the messaging. Has always been, if you're not confident in delivering, whatever sales pitch it is. If you're not connecting with the client and you show confidence that you can deliver, not false confidence, but a real confidence, the clients can understand that and, vis-à-vis the other advisors, can understand it, and I know what their pain points are, so.
I never, you know, things I don't do is I don't immediately start to discount anything. Our initial meetings are always, and I got this strategy from a group called the Center for Enlightened Business. You know, they're, they've morphed into different things, but it was, this is an interview process.
I'm interviewing you as much as you're interviewing me, and if we're not a good fit, we're just not a good fit.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: I think there's a lot to be said for that mindset in a sales conversation. I think everyone feels better cared for in that way. You know, I just had a conversation with one of our past clients who is an IT provider, MSP, who just made a very successful exit. And to your point about the confidence of having that clear message, the fellow I was talking to there actually tracked. Even all the way, not only the growth of his company, but the exit itself and the negotiations for the exit,t and waiting for the right deal, to a confidence that he had acquired in really understanding the value of what he offered. You know, the messaging was all tied to that, 'cause when we developed that, we were really trying to figure out what it really is. about you and how you solve this problem in the industry. How does it stand out? And there's a real value
attached to that.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: the, and the last thing I'll ask you about is client experience. I'm guessing Matt did a customer journey map with you and some other things like that. Did you explore the client experience piece?
Anna Halaburda: Yes. And. Absolutely. And one of the things that Matt did for me is he got me to have these conversations out loud with him. You know, things that I knew intuitively but have never spoken. When it came for me to articulate it to him, it was surprisingly difficult. So initially, you know, what is our brand promise?
What is our deliverable? But when we started looking at the customer experience, that's one of the times where I started doing client onboarding checklists, and the Gantt chart or the engagement map, the client experience, even if they don't get the outcome that they wanted. You know, not because we fell, but those are just the facts and circumstances.
Like, oh, I wanna sell my business for $10 million so I can retire, and their business is worth a million, and they can't sell it for 1,0 and they can't afford to walk away from it or sell it for a million and get 404 or 500,000 net of fees and taxes. Then the client isn't getting what they want, but the experience of going through the process, their learning jour journey, their enlightenment journey of what it takes to build value in a company and to sell it, that's a positive experience, even though their outcome is not what they wanted.
And I make that clear upfront. So the client journey, which is one reason why that engagement map is so important. Without it, they don't, you know, they might as well be locked up in the hold of a ship. You know that when it's sets sail, they're thrown down there, and then when it lands at port, they're taken out.
No, we want them to, you know, view the stars, you know.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: That's so important. Setting expectations at the beginning of the relationship. So important
Anna Halaburda: Yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: And it is, I think what people don't expect, it is a byproduct of doing the brand strategy work because you're talking about a relationship, and what is the best way to make that relationship really. Between the business and the ideal client. There's just so much more going on than just, you know, marketing and sourcing leads and whatever. This is about the whole journey that they're gonna take
Anna Halaburda: Why?
Anna Halaburda: The other thing that I've learned,d as far as the client experience, I don't try to become the client's friend.d,
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Hmm.
Anna Halaburda: Like, I don't try, you know, when my children were growing up, I wasn't their friend. I was their parent. I'm not my client's friend. I'm their advocate. I'm their professional advisor. So.
There is a bit of an arm 's-length relationship that we have, and I know this is just my personal approach to it, but I find that the difficult conversations are easier to have than somebody saying, I thought you were my friend. It's like, no, no, I took that hat off, and I put my professional advisor hat on 'cause.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: That's a really unique dial to turn and to calibrate, you know, in the mix of all of this that I don't hear talked about a lot,t that level of how much do you get? And I think that varies by industry and by service. There are some services that turn on a friendship and engagement, and that personal connection. Could be a benefit and could work really well, but it makes a ton of sense to me that the kind of news you often have to deliver, the guidance you have to give, that bit of distance would be invaluable.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3So, so for this section, you know about scaling and maintaining quality of service. I just have one last question for you in this particular conversation. If you could go back in time and find younger Anna starting this whole thing. What would you tell her? What would be the most important thing to tell her about scaling and growth and the journey ahead?
Anna Halaburda: Stay the course and don't have so many self-doubts along the way. You would've saved a ton of energy, and you would've gotten many morenights oft sleep.
Matt Wolfe: It's incredible to hear more about how you serve people, Anna, the heart behind it, the values that are driving it. And what really stands out to me is that you were intentional from the beginning about thinking ahead, about scaling, about thinking ahead, about how to, how to maintain a great quality of service for people all along the way.
Matt Wolfe: We have a fun thing that we like to wrap up with, 'cause look, we believe that if you're gonna market B2B services, then. It has to be, it's relational. B2B services are all about relationships. They're all about trust. And so we're gonna have to give people something a little more than information and expertise. We gotta give them a glimpse of the human behind the services. So that's what we have here. This is our, is our behind the brand questionnaire.
It's a chance for anyone who might want to connect with you just to get to know you a little bit more. On a human level, at is mostly painless, and we'll go through it quickly. You up for it?
Anna Halaburda: Absolutely. And you know, I could talk all afternoon about what we do at Be Ready, but I am ready to jump into this one.
Matt Wolfe: Wonderful. We'll go through this quickly. Alright, Sarah, take it away.
Sarah Pattisall: Yes, I'm really excited for this first question. Let me ask it, and then I'll tell you why I'm excited. What is your go-to karaoke song, or what song do you wish you could sing at karaoke?
Anna Halaburda: House of the Rising Sun.
Sarah Pattisall: That is a good one.
Matt Wolfe: rising sun. Nice.
Sarah Pattisall: Anna, I'm gonna be planning a Denver trip in the next couple of years, rs and I'm gonna come find you and we're gonna go to karaoke night and perform House with the Rising Sun together.
Anna Halaburda: I hope you like hanging out in biker bars. We're gonna have fun.
Sarah Pattisall: I so do as long as they have good wings. And I actually know a few like that in Denver, so.
Anna Halaburda: Excellent. Okay.
Matt Wolfe: Amazing. Anna, what's the last thing that made you laugh out Loud?
Anna Halaburda: I was watching a movie last night. It's called unfrosted, and it was a comedy. I, I'd never heard of the movie before. And there were several scenes in there where a researcher got blown up. I laughed out loud. You have to see the movie to appreciate it.
Sarah Pattisall: Gonna add that to my list. Alright, next one. What is your favorite way to get away from it all?
Anna Halaburda: Play my guitar, and that can be anywhere.
Sarah Pattisall: Mm-hmm.
Matt Wolfe: That's wonderful. I like this. Next question, what smell reminds you of a specific place or time?
Anna Halaburda: Baking bread.
Matt Wolfe: What does it remind you of? What time or place does it take you to?
Anna Halaburda: It takes me back to smells growing up, but even more so to my own kitchen, where I bake my own bread. And that is another thing that I do. I love to cook. And if I stood up, you'd say, " Oh yeah, that girl loves to cook, but just the feeling of home that baking, the smell of baking bread, just always puts me in that level spot.
Sarah Pattisall: All right. What is one day in your life that you would like to relive?
Anna Halaburda: There's a bunch of 'em that I wouldn't, but I would say the first time I walked again after breaking my back,
Matt Wolfe: Wow.
Anna Halaburda: The light bulb just came on, like. You know, I never believed the doctors, but when I did that, it was like I've got this,s plus it also said that I was in the bonus round for the rest of my life, and that was over 40 years ago that that happened. So I've been in the bonus round of my life for the past 40 years.
Matt Wolfe: What a great way to see life. That's incredible. What are three words that your loved ones would use to. You?
Anna Halaburda: Off color or three saying not three words. I, I, I would say unpredictable,
loyal and loving.
Sarah Pattisall: All right.
Sarah Pattisall: Last question here. What would it mean? To you to have truly succeeded. What does true success look like for you? And not necessarily in your company or your work, but for you personally.
Anna Halaburda: I've got. Three more big things I want to accomplish that I'm not gonna share with you. And they have nothing to do with work and, you know, hitting money milestones. But there are three things that I wanna accomplish. And those, one of 'em is playing piano, 'cause I. Never learn how to play, but I'm, that's something I just committed to this year. Plus two other things. So when I look at it, if I were to retire today, I would have so much to do. I would not become one of these home bodies. It was, oh, I got so much to do now that I don't have to get up and go to work, there's so much I can still do.
Matt Wolfe: I would just guess that the fact that you see life from a holistic point of view, that you value things outside the business, that is probably of great value to people who are thinking about their exit plan. If folks want to reach out to you, we have bereadyexits.com. It's all one word. Be ready.
exits.com. Folks can find you there. Learn more about the services.
Anna, thank you so much for your time today, for the insights, the stories, and the heart that you've shared with us. We just can't thank you enough.
This has been Matt Wolf and Sarah Pattisall for the CEO's Heart for service hosted by Brand3, and we'll see you next time.
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