#299: From Accidental Entrepreneur to an Intentional Exit with Sandy Hansen-Wolf

After her husband passed away in his early 30s, Sandy Hansen-Wolff had two choices: close down shop or take over and run the one-million-dollar-in-revenue business. Sandy, a former insurance agent, chose to take over the business with her A+ team and continue her husband's legacy.

In this episode, Sandy talks about how she took over the business with little operations knowledge to scale it to eight million dollars in yearly revenue. She shares how it was a “we,” not “I,” effort because of the great employees she had who knew the business inside and out, how partnerships were her secret to scale when she couldn’t hire salespeople, and what personal drivers were at the helm when she sold. This is a great entrepreneurial story about starting with uncertainty and ending in success when tragedy hits.

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What You Will Learn

How Sandy transitioned into leading the business after her husband passed away
What Sandy’s first step was when taking over the business
How the broken business helped Sandy develop and scale the company
How partnerships helped Sandy scale the business when they couldn’t hire salespeople
Why company culture was such a huge driver to Sandy
Why Sandy describes the feeling you get after selling as a “hangover”
What led Sandy to sell versus just shut down, and why she considered just shutting down
What led Sandy to choose the eCommerce route to be the next stage of her business and what disruptive product she chose to sell
Why the buyer didn’t want Sandy’s other eCommerce company (New Heritage)
How Sandy felt after selling the company and how she describes it as “ripping the band-aid off”

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Bio:

Sandy began her speaking and consulting career after she was thrust into entrepreneurship in 2003 when her young husband of one year died of leukemia. She was determined to keep the business going despite industry pressures as well as challenges with the near-bankrupt business.

Sandy turned around that multi-million dollar company from near bankruptcy to a successful sale and exit.

Now Sandy uses these key insights as the platform for her work with high-level business leaders and entrepreneurs so that they too are empowered to move from struggling to successful and profitable.

Interview Quotes:

08:05 - “It’s hard to sell a company that isn’t financially sound.” - Sandy Hansen-Wolff

14:24 - “Even though it’s a small company, how do we cross-train? And how do we document even the simplest procedures?” - Sandy Hansen-Wolff

14:34 - “My main goal is that these employees–these dedicated employees–would never have that happen to them again, if something were to happen to the owner now, which is a great business model to have.” - Sandy Hansen-Wolff

16:36 - “When you don’t have a lot to lose, you can try.” - Sandy Hansen-Wolff

24:24 - “The joy about not knowing the history is that you can think about everything so differently.” - Sandy Hansen-Wolff

47:13 - “How do you stay relevant as a small company against big players? You do that through people.” - Sandy Hansen-Wolff

49:04 - “What vision do I have when this gets better? What is it going to look like when this gets better?” - Sandy Hansen-Wolff

60:18 - “Going back to the roots of, ‘Your business should always be for sale, Sandy,’ I said, ‘I’m always willing to entertain a conversation.’” - Sandy Hansen-Wolff