Preparing for Strategic Exits with Alexandria Seydel

In this episode of the DealQuest Podcast, I'm excited to welcome Alexandria Seydel, founder of Ripples Edge Advisors, which helps growth stage executives go from feeling stuck and stagnant to feeling clear and confident in their next stage of business growth or strategic exit planning. Alexandria brings a unique perspective to business growth, combining her legal expertise in mergers and acquisitions with a passion for hands-on business development and supporting business owners through their journey.

Alexandria played Division I soccer at the University of Iowa, starting every game of her career. Before law school, she worked in banking and mortgages, which gave her invaluable experience helping people through one of the biggest transactions of their lives. This early exposure to understanding people's pain points and emotional connections to deals would prove crucial to her approach as both a lawyer and business strategist.

The Power of Early Deal Experience

Alexandria's first real deal experience came through her work in banking and mortgages before law school. "When someone's buying a home, it's often one of the biggest transactions they do in their entire life," she explains. This work taught her to assess what people really cared about and feel their emotions around major financial decisions.

What made this experience particularly valuable was having a mentor who taught her "how to kind of listen for people's pain points and feel what they cared about." This skill would become foundational to her approach with business owners facing exit decisions. The ability to understand the deeply personal nature of business transactions sets Alexandria apart in the M&A space.

From Law Practice to Business Strategy

After practicing M&A law for years at a firm with about 30 attorneys, Alexandria experienced a major life shift when her fiance died suddenly. This tragedy forced her to step away and reevaluate what she wanted from her career. When she tried to return to private practice, "it just wasn't a fit anymore."

The transition happened organically when business owners started calling her not just for legal work, but for strategic conversations. "Every time I get off the phone, you know, I feel better after we chat," clients would tell her. "We chat so much more than just legal. We chat strategy or mindset. But I don't call you because I don't want to pay the billable hour."

Her solution was simple: "What about once a month you buy me lunch and we go for 90 minutes and you get my brain. Bring whatever you want." These lunch conversations energized her in a way traditional legal work hadn't, leading to the realization that business strategy and growth planning was her true calling.

The Exit Readiness Assessment

One of the key tools Alexandria uses with clients is an exit readiness assessment. "It's this questionnaire takes us about an hour. We walk through it together and it kind of just takes, it takes a temperature and a pulse of all the different parts of your business."

The assessment asks a hypothetical question: "If, gosh forbid, I got sick tomorrow and had to sell my company. What would the market say? How would it view my valuation? How would it view my readiness for the transaction?" This exercise helps business owners understand that buyers look for much more than just growing revenue and strong margins.

The assessment produces a report that categorizes different aspects of the business into three columns: value adds, value detractors, and deal killers. "As lawyers, we know corporate legal house. Is that in order? Everybody knows financials and accounting, if that's a mess, right. And someone comes and loves everything about your business, and then they go and look under the hood and they're like, I'll go buy a competitor."

The Visioning Process

Before diving into tactical improvements, Alexandria starts with visioning. "What do you want your exit to look like? There are so many different flavors," she explains. The exercise involves closing your eyes and thinking about what life looks like five years post-exit: "What do you do every day? Because so much of that answer really helps us build backwards."

This process reveals whether someone cares most about legacy, their team, or maximizing dollar value. Each priority leads to different strategic choices. "If we really care most about legacy and team, we know that private equity's goal and thrust is maybe not focused on that area, and that's okay. So now if we're looking for a strategic buyer, obviously we're going to do different things as we grow to appeal to that strategic buyer."

Post-Exit Depression Reality

Alexandria has witnessed firsthand the phenomenon of post-exit depression, even among business owners who achieved life-changing exits. "There were so many times post deal, whether it was a post closing adjustment period... the ones I would really, almost always the ones I loved the most would come back and be like it's not what I thought it was."

This happens for various reasons - some business-specific, some money-specific, but often related to lifestyle or personal expectations that weren't properly considered. "There is like there's work to be done there and if you're proactive about it instead of reactive again, I think there were so many folks too that had built beautiful little businesses and an alloy would come through the door and like you said, it was life changing money that they had never even contemplated."

The solution is being proactive about exit planning rather than reactive to unexpected opportunities.

The Gap Analysis Advantage

When business owners identify gaps early, they can address them before being forced to sell. Alexandria emphasizes the importance of this work: "If you're not having to sell tomorrow, right, if you're doing it five years in advance or whatever, is that you can address them."

Common gaps include customer concentration risk, lack of documented processes, and key person dependency. "Everyone says they have processes in their business and you're like, okay, I believe that you do. Are they written down? Well, yeah, they're written down. Okay. Are they sitting on some digital shelf somewhere where no one ever actually uses them or references them?"

Standard operating procedures (SOPs) represent a huge opportunity: "Every business has those. It's just a matter of which ones of yours do you have written down? Do you have contemplated written down and used, you know, by the team?"

The Team Approach

Alexandria's firm Ripples Edge Advisors operates as a team with her partner Kimberly Wasney, who brings operational expertise. Kim was employee one at a startup and "really took them entire department, sales, marketing, and operations from the ground up, hired the teams, managed the teams, takes them to 9 million by year four."

This partnership allows them to help clients not just with strategy but with identifying and filling gaps in their team. "We absolutely have two big networks that we can introduce you to to make sure that you do get the support you need. Or sometimes it's like, okay, my bookkeeper might be great, but actually I probably need either controller or fractional CFO at this point."

Market Trends and Opportunities

Alexandria is seeing strong activity in tech-adjacent businesses that aren't traditional tech but have tech flavors. "Legal tech, agricultural tech, accounting tech and climate tech that are all just adding a little bit more tech application to more traditional areas that just have been slower to adoption."

These markets are hot right now: "There are some people that are again coming to me and we're meeting them at some time and they're like, well I got three LOIs last week. And at minimum two of the three are like serious, they're real, they're legitimate."

She attributes this to strategic buyers seeing opportunities to build collective services rather than operating as stratified, one-off providers.

The Human Touch Advantage

Looking ahead, Alexandria predicts a backlash against over-automation. "I think there's going to be a backlash from just general consumers and people... Like to add something, to have a great little solid business that doesn't need AI but says, hey, we're actually human showing up, doing the job, we just do it well, I think there's going to be like a interesting swing back to that."

This mirrors the post-COVID trend where people craved human experiences after being forced into virtual everything. "We all were like, give us a human. Like we want a human experience."

• • • Listen to the full episode of DealQuest Podcast: • • •


FOR MORE ON ALEXANDRIA SEYDEL
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandria-seydel/
Company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ripples-edge-advisors/
Website: https://www.ripplesedgeadvisors.com/

FOR MORE ON COREY KUPFER
https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreykupfer/
https://www.coreykupfer.com/

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator, and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author, and professional speaker. He is deeply passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

Get deal-ready with the DealQuest Podcast with Corey Kupfer, where like-minded entrepreneurs and business leaders converge, share insights and challenges, and success stories. Equip yourself with the tools, resources, and support necessary to navigate the complex yet rewarding world of dealmaking. Dive into the world of deal-driven growth today!