Host Nick Anderson sits down with Shawn Slattery — entrepreneur, former banker, and now CEO and partner at OneAccord — to trace a career that moves from chaos to clarity. Shawn tells the hard parts: childhood trauma, a reckless youth, and the discipline that followed. He explains how learning to “do the work” in banking—reading the agreements, mastering the details—became the same habit that later let him build courses, consult, and ultimately join OneAccord as CEO.

This episode pulls back the curtain on what we actually do for owner-operated companies: reduce owner dependence, tighten operations, put interim leaders in place, and build the bridge between where a business is and what a market will pay for it. Shawn walks through real cases — rescuing sales drives, standing up new divisions, improving margins — and the human questions underneath every transaction: who will you be when you no longer run the company?

You’ll hear a simple operating mantra: “make time to prepare for a time when there is no time.” If you care about succession, exits, or turning long work into lasting value, this conversation gives practical next steps and a straight, human view of what ownership really costs — and what it can return.

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