My Wife Sold Her Company and She Doesn't Care That You Know

I am writing this while my wife Jennifer is receiving a wire transfer that will have a substantial impact on our family's net worth. And instead of looking back at her accomplishments — all the things that got her to the sale of her business — she is doing nothing but looking ahead, and maybe wanting a nice dinner.

She's opening a new Pilates studio in a new city in three days. She is already years in on a functional medicine business. The biggest transaction of her career and she is already onto the next thing(s). I've wondered about her mindset for years.

And now I understand it.

She does not care at all about the exit. It's just another step in her, and our, journey.

My wife Jennifer at the Ranch

The sale will change our lives, but maybe not hers.

The sale itself is substantial by any metric. Four-point-seven times EBITDA. All cash at closing. No earn-out, no non-compete outside the industry, no lingering responsibility to the acquirer. A substantial percentage of our family's net worth walked in the door in one wire transfer. If you draw the exited-founder profile on a whiteboard, this is exactly the box you'd check.

I spend a good bit of my professional life in rooms with exited founders. I lead retreats for them. I run peer groups for them. I've had my own exits. Almost all of us, myself included, hold up our exit as the sign of arrival. We tell you what we sold, and how, and to whom. Sometimes we tell you before you ask. Deep down, we want you to know.

Jen doesn't want you to know.

To understand why, you have to walk backward nine years.

This journey started with something not professional.

Our twin girls were three. Our youngest was one. One afternoon Jen said to me, more tired than dramatic, "I need some time with adults." A few weeks later she was in yoga teacher training. She got her certification. She started practicing. Eventually I joined her.

That one decision — driven by the smallest, most human impulse — was the start to something that changed the entire trajectory of our family.

Eight years ago, as the girls were now young women and starting to think about college, Jen took over three struggling franchise studios: one spin bike concept, two Pilates. You'd know the names. All three were underperforming. She ran them, grew them, bought a fourth. Then she sold two of the four that couldn't be made to work, and focused hard on the two that could. Over the next several years she built those into something a strategic buyer wanted enough to write a check for at 4.7x.

What I think drove my wife.

What I've watched during those years is a slow, honest, purposeful arc of what actually drove her. It shifted in phases, and I can name them now that I can see them in context:

• At first, it was filling space. The kids were older, her days had room, she wanted to put something meaningful in them.

• Then, it was proving she could do it. Not to me. Not to her father. Not to anyone external. To herself.

• Then, it was expanding. Herself and the business at the same time. New skills. New capacity. New identity.

• Then, it was creativity. What could she build here that hasn't been built.

• Then, it was partnering in new ways. New products, new relationships, new business models.

• Now, it's legacy. What do we leave for our daughters, their future families, and our communities.

Six phases. Six different motivations. None of them was ever "and then the world will know I sold a company."

Though the money has always been nice, I asked her once whether she loved the money. She laughed. "I love the money. And in my experience, money loves me."

Money is not a driver, but a really nice reward that makes Jen feel a sense of safety she hasn't always felt.

What I've learned from Jen.

Her fuel — filling space, proving, expanding, creating, partnering, legacy — is real. So real that she doesn't need to stop when one phase ends. She still has it, and will for the foreseeable future.

And her kind of fuel doesn't depend on having an audience, which might just make it last as long as she wants it to.

She wasn't building for your recognition. That's the part I'm still learning.