Beyond the Exit: How to Embrace Your Fourth Quarter with Purpose with Scott Couchenour

Welcome to the podcast that’s dedicated to helping business owners to prepare for exit so you can maximise value and then exit like a boss. This is the Exit Insights podcast presented by Succession Plus. I’m Daryl Bates- Brownsword and today I’ve got a pretty special guest. I’ve got Scott Couchenour joining me. Scott is an expert on exactly the things that I’m not. And that is that he helps business owners prepare from the personal side and make sure there’s no regrets when they exit the business or when you exit the business, really making sure you get to do it on your terms. Scott, hey, welcome to the show and thanks for joining me today.

Darryl, it’s a pleasure and I’m really looking forward to the conversation.

Yeah, likewise, Scott, me too. Scott, why don’t you just give the viewers just a quick heads up on who you are and how you would define the topic that we’re going to be talking about today.

Sure, I am a fourth quarter strategic partner for my clients. Largely everything that I do today is birthed out of the experience that I had when I was 50. I experienced an unplanned, unwanted, untimely exit from our family business. And it threw me into a huge learning experience that I am now leveraging.

Well, we’ve got to get our skills and experience from somewhere, whether it’s planned or not, guess, by the sounds of it for you. So a fourth quarter coach, that’s a new one on me. Tell me about that. What does that mean?

Okay, well the fourth quarter I took a look at the average lifespan of an American male it was about 78.5 years rounded it up to 80 and broke that into four 20 year segments so the first quarter is your learning quarter so where you’re going to school being nurtured you hit 20 hit your 20s and 30s that’s what I call the building quarter you’re building your name your finances and your you know your family and then you reach the third quarter, which is your 40s and 50s. And I call that the reaping quarter because by then you started to reap some of the things that you have built in your building quarter. Kids are getting older. Finances are getting a little more stable and that sort of thing. And then you hit the fourth quarter, which is your 60s, 70s, 80s, and hopefully 90s. And I call that the impacting quarter for a very specific reason. I believe that in our fourth quarter, we can make more of an impact than all previous quarters combined because we have four things. have more time, we have resources, and we have, based on our experience, we have wisdom and knowledge. And when you combine that with the fourth thing, which is a sense of urgency because we become more aware of our mortality, we are motivated to use this time, resources, and experience to do something of great impact. And that’s what I do is help people strategise that fourth quarter.

Okay, so I’ve not heard it described like that before. And the way you describe it sounds very aspirational. And the fact that, know, once you get beyond 60 by the sounds of it, just rolling, rounding things in your final quarter. We talk when we use sports analogies, that final quarter, you know, the third quarter is the important quarter where you have, you know, there’s some terms around the third quarter and then the fourth quarter is, is where you bring it home, where the pros bring it home.

And that sense of urgency is you’re running out of time, as you suggest. How many people think like that with that big aspirational, almost altruistic mindset?

Well, I think in general.

As a percentage, I guess, will work.

Yeah, yeah, I would say that a vast majority of people will reach what I call an awakening. They, of course, mileage varies. Everybody’s awakening is different because you could be in your mid thirties and experience a say a diagnosis or a death of a loved one that kind of brings all of this home. But by and large, I think it’s the 60s, 70s where or maybe in the late fifties where we begin to look at our life. nd we pause and reflect. There’s an example, one of the triggers of an awakening for a business owner can be the birth of a grandchild. You you’re going along doing your business and you love what you do and you’ve got everything figured out and then this little bundle of joy comes into your life and you don’t know what to do and it just opens it up. So I think majority of us have at some point reach that place where we say, my word, I’ve only got a dozen thanksgivings left based on average lifespan. I’m going to do something more about this. I think it’s the discerning individual who tends to move from what Bob Buehpert used to say in his book and movement called Halftime, used to say, going from the search for success to the search for significance.

Okay.

And I think that the meaning and purpose begins to take more of a forefront.

Okay. Okay, so greater whole of life meaning and impact, I guess, rather than just what you’ve done in your career. So it’s got this fourth quarter coaching. Is this something you work with with entrepreneurs, business owners or only, or do you work with anyone who’s ready to start or seeking that bigger personal picture?

That’s correct. Right. The foundation of what I do, I would describe as living by design as opposed to living by default. That can apply to anybody at any stage in any position. But because of my upbringing and being a part of a family business for nearly 30 years and being COO for 24 of that and CEO for a couple of years.

I have a special spot in my heart for the business owner. And so I’ve aligned myself with the exit planning community and where so many people focus on getting the business ready, cashflow, standard operating procedures, getting the owner out of the middle, all that kind of stuff. While I come alongside and say, while you’re working on the business, let’s work on you and get you ready.

Great. So, let’s bring it to life a little more. Let’s imagine you meet a business owner, they’re working with someone who’s helping them to prepare their business to be exit ready. They’re working on all the commercial elements to make sure the business is attractive to be acquired and a great valuation. The business has eliminated owner dependence. The business can run without the owner and then the exit planner perhaps says, hey, look, let’s have a yak with Scott. And you need to start thinking about what you’re going to be doing next. What are some of the first questions you ask, Scott?

Well, the questions that I ask are related to a sense of agency. I’m looking for agency. Like, what are you going to do? The Monday after you have sold the business, what are you going to do? What’s your plan? If there is a question of, I don’t know, or I’m going to play golf the rest of my life.

Some of it’s a naive approach to their exit and and so I’m listening Bottom line is I’m listening for and a lack of agency now I spoke with someone just a little over a week ago and It was fascinating to me because this doesn’t happen very often But this business owner said I plan to sell my business in the next 18 months

And I know exactly what I’m going to do. And he laid out exactly all the things he would. And it was related to mission. was related, related to purpose and giving back to the community. He had everything figured out. That’s rare. That’s not very, that really is. And so I’m looking for that. You know, I’m asking questions like, you know, how are things going from a, from a conflict standpoint?

That’s unusual.

How are you internally processing this exit? Like are you feeling some cognitive dissonance? Should I stay or should I go? I’m looking for an emotional attachment to the business because a lot of business owners have experienced some very significant highs and significant lows with some very significant individuals who have become like family over decades.

And so there is an emotional attachment I’m looking for. I’m also looking for any kind of retirement anxiety. Like, what am I going to do after I leave this business? And am I going to have enough to fund the rest of my life? And then I’m also looking for a sense of regret. You know, how…

How are they thinking about this exit? Are they worrying about some future date when they look back on this sale and say, I wish I’d done it differently. Are they worried about, is this the right time to leave? Is this the right amount? Is this the right buyer? And so that’s the sense of regret. And then I’m also looking for the loss of identity asking questions related to who are you if you’re not leading the business that you’ve led for so many years. That’s the single greatest thing that I experienced when we had to close our 44 year old family business and I was suddenly without a career and without income and without an identity at the age of 50. And so I spent 18, 24 months or so trying to figure out who am I? because I’d attached who I was to what I was doing in my title. And it was… I mean, it’s a very natural thing for us to do because we’re asked, what do you do for a living? Which implied underneath the surface is, who are you? And if who we are is attached to what we do and what we do is gone, then we’re naturally going to wrestle with who are we? And what I’ve discovered, if I could take this a little further.

Yes it is.

What I have discovered from my journey is that there is a distinct difference between who we are and the business we run. Who we are is related to core values and personality type and strengths and weaknesses and skills and gifts and all of that. What we do is an expression of all of that. And when I share that with my clients, that’s one of the greatest sense of freedom that they sense is I don’t have to be tied to this business for me to feel like I’m a person. They’re separate. The running of a business is an expression of something deeper that is inside of me and that means I can shift to something else and still be who I am.

And are you, so you’re using all this information, you’re detaching the person from the business, I guess, especially if there’s a sense of ownership and identity between the owner and the business, especially if their name’s on the door, I’m guessing, it becomes even stronger. Most entrepreneurs and business owners have a sense of, well, even if they’re out of the business and they’re operating in just a chairman style of role, there’s often a sense of, yeah, well, the business needs me. I’ve got all of the history, the legacy sticks with me. What happens if I’m gone? And the corporate memory is gone as well. And what will happen to the culture? And we built the business on these foundations. And I guess it’s very similar to when our kids grow up. You mentioned family and grandkids.

I guess it’s similar to when your kids grow up and you’ve imparted all your skills, your beliefs, your values on your kids. And at some point they go and leave home and you hope that they just become a valuable contributing member of society. And you’ve done everything you can at this stage, but then they leave and there’s a sense of empty nest. we’ve been through that, my wife and I. Yeah, it takes a little while to adjust.

It absolutely does. Yeah, I’ve also been through the empty nest. Been there for probably a dozen years now.

And there is an adjustment. I can remember taking our first child to college and we drove the two and a half hours back and we turned the corner to our house and saw the light on in upstairs in the bedroom of our daughter and all the emotions just kept flooding. You know, we thought we had it under control and we turned the corner and see her light glowing from her bedroom is just like, it’s it is there is a sense of loss. In exiting your business and I don’t think we can avoid that especially if it’s it’s been a part of our life for for decades and it’s been the majority of our waking hours throughout those decades so that’s a dynamic that’s going on which I think leads some business owners to stay too long and they become that proverbial cheese in the refrigerator that starts to stink and it starts to mess up all the other food in the refrigerator because they’re just not willing to let go and that’s why we need a strategic plan for what we’re going to run to because when you experience something like an empty nest syndrome You start to realise there are other things that take its place.

And for us, it was the two or three other couples who were also losing their last child and we all became empty nesters at the same time. So what we decided was we’re going to get together once a month and we’re going to go out to dinner. And we started doing that. We’ve done it for all these years and developed really strong relationships with these individuals that before we really didn’t have that deep relationship. So I think when you shift from being the owner of your business to no longer being the owner, what you need to realise is, and this is the thing I have about the word exit, the word exit carries with it such a terminal perspective that we need to be careful. There needs to be also an entry. Seeing it more like a threshold than a burial.

Yeah.

I think it’s interesting in college and in high school in the States, we use the term commencement or graduation. But in most of the cases, we think that’s the end of school. You we go through commencement, we’re done. But look at the word commencement and graduation. We are commencing, we are starting, and we are moving to a new level. We are graduating. So if we can change the perspective of exit planning to threshold into a new and exciting era of our lives, then we are beginning to prepare ourselves for that impact that I referred to.

For sure. I see it when we’re working with businesses, a lot of business owners, they’ll get excited about the idea of moving on and they’re moving on to their next project, their next challenge, the next chapter, whatever it is for them. But sometimes if they’re not real sure of what they’re moving on to, something will come up that’ll halt a deal from proceeding. if you’re, and what, so.

How I’ve correlated that is to go, okay, so what’s the energy behind that? And where I’ve arrived at Scott is that business owners, the people who have got the energy, the commitment, the drive to start a business and own a business and take on that responsibility of owning and running a business tend to be quite forward looking characters.

whether you call them visionaries or entrepreneurs, it doesn’t really matter that much to me, but they tend to be the sort of people that see a problem to be solved or something that needs to be done, and they just go on and make it happen and get working to it. And they keep working to it because they can see that things need to always be done.

And when it comes to the, hey, they’ve gone, the energy may be starting to dwindle with the business or they’ve taken it as far as they can take it. They can see that the next generation or a different owner is actually best for the business to drive, take it forward. When they reach that point, I see part of our role is to help them find a new vision. Because if they don’t have that new vision, which I think is effectively just paraphrasing what you’ve shared with this and pulling it together.

If they don’t know what they’re running onto, these type of people, once they do see what they’re running onto, will grab it with both hands and it’ll take all of their attention, all of their energy, and they’ll just drive forward to that new project, that new goal, that new problem that needs solving, which actually helps them let go and move on and grieve or whatever’s required from the past, the previous project. And if we use language that maybe even helps them disconnect from the past. I’ve seen that as being beneficial in some situations of helping business owners unplug, unlock from the past and then lock onto something new. Even if it’s, hey, look, I’m gonna be chair of the golf club. Yeah, I’m gonna play golf and they all have that vision. Yeah, I’m gonna play golf every day. And I go, yeah, what happens in the third week? Because you’re gonna be excited playing golf every day for two weeks or or sitting on a beach drinking pina coladas every day. But you’re going to get bored with that. It’s not real challenging. What are you going to do in week three when the dust settles and you start to think, you know, because you’ve still got a brain, you’re still energised, you still you still need that addiction of doing things. And as my wife said to me, I’ll still need you to be out of the house every so often. So because we still need our own our own interests, our own projects and then

Mm-hmm.

And then come back to reconnect and reengage and do things together. Is that the sort of things that you’re working on, helping them find that new challenge?

Yeah, definitely. But not just a new challenge for the sake of a new challenge. So there’s a

It’s connected to their mission, their drive, their purpose. Forget it.

Absolutely. You know, the big why. Why are you going to this?

And where they can pull all of their talents for this final quarter with the intensity and focus and wisdom and experience and knowledge and skills and everything they’ve pulled together over their years. How do I use all that and tie it to my purpose to give me meaning and fulfillment in the next phase? Pull it together?

It does. And I think it’s good also to look at life. You know, as we go through our lifespan, we’re going to go through two things. We’re going to go through seasons and we’re going to go through stages. Seasons are things that come to pass. You break your leg. You can’t drive for six weeks. You get your cast off. You learn how to drive again. That’s a season. You go through season stages, however, are linear.

Yeah.

I ran a marathon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when I was in my mid thirties. if I were to do that now as a 59 year old, I would have to train totally different because I’m in a different season of life. And, and I think it’s important to understand there’s a lot of dynamics that go on in a business owner’s life when they’re exiting their business. And, and to know that when you start something, you’re not starting it as a 20 year old, you’re starting it as a 60 year old. Now it’s possible and a lot of businesses, very well known businesses were started by people over 60. And so it is very possible. It’s just that you need to come to terms with how you do what you do will be different than what you did when you were in your second quarter, your 20s and 30s. And I think that’s really helpful pieces of information because we don’t want to set ourselves up for failure. But the ambition to want to do something, you asked the question a while back, what percent of people have this deep desire to do something meaningful? I think for the most part, I’d say the majority will eventually get to this point where they want to do something that tends to be outward focused as opposed to gaining something for themselves. Now there is a residual recipient, you you receive something when you give to others. That’s a dynamic in life. But I think the focus is primarily for how can I leave a legacy in the lives I’m going to leave behind when I’m gone? And that’s a general theme in most people in their fourth quarter.

The ones who don’t sense that and are still very selfish, you know, I kind of gravitate away from them anyway. No, that’s correct. That’s correct. Because here’s, Darryl, the thing is, it’s not just what are you going to do next. It is also why are you going to do what you’re going to do next?

Yeah, or they’re not attracted to you, similarly.

And that’s very much tied to your core values, which is related to your identity. You know, we’re, we’re talking about a readjustment of the application of our identity. And so sometimes for, for many of, well, for the clients that I work with, a reestablishing of what those core values are is a, an early step in the process. We redefine who am I.

Why am I still alive? What’s my purpose and then every application? Whether it’s a philanthropic Endeavor or they join a board or they just basically Stop all work and spend time on the floor with grandkids There has to be a why behind that. Why are you doing that? What’s the purpose of that and that energises and fuels that next step? That next act.

Yeah. If they’re working to their purpose or living to their purpose now, that’s what gives them energy. It’s like the sun, isn’t it? If they’re heading in that direction and fulfilling their purpose and working to their or living to their why, there’s fulfillment in life by the sounds of it rather than just going, you know, yeah.

What am I leaving? then, and I think you touched on it before, there’s why did I leave my business? Why? And having a sense of regret. So let’s eliminate the regret. Let’s attach it to fulfillment. And to get to fulfillment, we need to identify the why and reconnect to our values. And it’s a bit like, and you’ve already said that we need to do some strategic planning on ourselves as business owners to understand what our next chapter or our fourth quarter is going to look like.

That’s right. There are two major meta themes when we’re pursuing that next act. And you referred to it, the fulfillment and regret. So there are some leaders who are more jazzed in what can I obtain? What can I grab? What’s there in it for the hunt? Then there are other personalities who are looking to preserve and avoid and keep from happening certain things. Well, when you’re pursuing your next act, strategically, you are doing both. You are achieving something in your fourth quarter, your second act, your next act that gives you fulfillment in today, while at the same time you are mitigating or reducing the growth of regret tomorrow. So you’re handling today as well as tomorrow. We are all as one famous writer once said, in the end we all sit down to a banquet of consequences. And so we are going to have regrets, all of us. The key is in your second act, what will you be pursuing that satisfies both columns, increasing the fulfillment through a sense of meaning and purpose, while at the same time reducing regret?

And I think the only way to do that is to be strategic. And the clients I work with, they all understand what strategic planning and execution is with strategic initiatives. I just pull that up out of the professional realm and apply it to the personal realm.

Yeah, it’s a case of being deliberate. You’re doing it on purpose. You’re doing it consciously rather than just letting it happen.

Absolutely.

So Scott, if someone’s listening to this and they’re going, yeah, that’s resonated, I’m feeling a bit stuck or unsure, what would you suggest they do from here to help start questioning that themselves?

Well, I started answering that question long before this podcast. Where do I start? What do I do? You know, if I’ve been illuminated to the fact of this transition in my life, what do I do next? I have created an assessment that business owners can take that will give them a sense for where they are on these five most common emotions that are present in an exit. Those five common emotions are conflict, and we kind of referred to that, should I stay or should I go? And there’s also external conflict, like stakeholders dealing with, is this the right successor in culture and vision? That’s the first emotion. The next one is emotional attachment, being attached to the people and the experiences. The third is a retirement anxiety. What am I going to do? And am I going to have enough for the rest of my life?

The fourth one is a fear of regret. Is this the right time to exit? Is this the right way to exit? And is this the right amount? And then that loss of identity. Who am I and what’s my purpose? I have an assessment that owners can take to get a report as to where they stand on all five of those most common emotions. And then we can unpack that and it kind of pinpoints the low hanging fruit so that while they’re working with their business advisor, their broker, their business growth consultant, whoever they’re working with, they can add this element to that and begin to think of it from an emotional perspective as well as a practical perspective, thereby keeping them from delaying the process. And, you know, I work a lot with advisors helping them to pinpoint early warning signs of these emotions in the business owners they’re working with so that they can be more strategic. had a, I was talking with an advisor once who said that there was a $4 million sale on the table and it came to the day of the sale and that owner called and said, I’m not ready. And he said, well, why not? He said, well, over the weekend, I started talking about this with my wife and she said, I don’t want you home all day.

And so it brought up this whole unaddressed set of circumstances that were present or were going to be present in this exit. The advisor had not processed all of the ramifications from all different angles on this exit, thereby delaying that particular sale. And I think the first stop step to answer your question Darrell is take stock of where you are on the most common emotions that are related to exit and then go from there.

Take stock. So I’m still processing the assessment that you talked about, Scott. Is that something that we can put a link to in the show notes so that people, if they are starting to question, they can go and have a look at and learn a little more?

Absolutely. Yep. You can put a link to that in the show notes. It is a very simple, no more than 10 minutes, 30 questions that you simply ask or answer and within a day or so you’ll get the results of where you stand with some suggested reading, a bullet point list of actions that you can consider taking.

Brilliant. So really practical, helpful guide. I assume if they want to explore further, they can get in contact with you.

Absolutely. Right.

Brilliant. Scott, look, you’ve really hit some key points, I think, for us today to be considering about for business owners when they’re starting to think about their next project, what’s next for them, their fourth quarter, the big issues, the emotional, the human issues. We’ve touched on it before with other guests on the podcast, but you’ve got quite a different angle to what a lot of them have, which is we need that variety out there.

Look, what’s the, if, you know, I ask this of everyone who joins me on the show. So it’s my wrap up question. There’s no, no hiding that, but what their regular listeners will be going, okay, what, what’s Scott, what’s the most important thing Scott wants me to, to remember from our conversation.

I will tell you this, Daryl, the most important thing is to take pulse, take your pulse on how much agency you have. And let me explain that for a moment. Every single thing we face in life has context. There is always a bigger context to whatever we’re facing, which means that nothing is ever as bad as it seems, and nothing is ever as good as it seems. So you look…

Yeah.

If you’re facing if you ever feel like you’re being controlled by circumstances or other people’s Step back when you step back far enough you begin to see options Options then lead to choice and when you have options plus choice you have agency and the best way to regain your agency is to download Grab a piece of paper grab your favorite app, whatever it is and start a bullet point list of everything that’s going through your mind. Just get everything down on paper because that positions you to be able to look down on that list which gives you that agency. You are reminded that whatever you’re facing is not the whole picture. And I think if there was anything I could do to make this world a better place it would be to create a mechanism for people to regain their agency as quickly as possible as life throws things at us. So that’s what I would say, bottom line, download, reflect, get everything out of your head so that you can think clearly with that extra space. You can dream and plan and regain that sense that I have options. I have choice.

Yeah, it sounds like you’re suggesting put yourself back in the driver’s seat and know the route you’re going on. You’ve plotted out a course on your sat nav. So you’re in control because you know where you’re going and you’ve assessed the bumps and detours along the way. So that puts you in the driver’s seat. Scott, that sounds brilliant. Scott Couchenour, I really appreciate you sharing your exit insights with us today. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Darryl. It’s been a pleasure.

About Scott Couchenour

Scott Crouchenour serves as a “fourth quarter” life and business coaching. With nearly three decades of experience as a visionary COO and CEO, Scott empowers individuals over 45 who, despite their success, seek more clarity in life and business.

Specialising in guiding owners of small to mid-size companies, he helps them master their next chapter by crafting breakthrough strategies and gaining momentum through a refined, iterative process. His clients unlock extraordinary results, reaching milestones they once thought unreachable.

Beyond his professional achievements, Scott treasures his roles as husband, father, and proud “Pop Pop” to his grandkids. When he’s not coaching, you’ll find him diving into piano melodies, perfecting spreadsheets, or savoring new coffee shop discoveries.

Scott Couchenour’s Personal Readiness Assessment Tool click here.

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