Living Capital™

Dee isn’t in crisis. Her business pays her well. Her team is solid. Her calendar isn’t crushing. On most days, she tells herself she’s lucky.

But the panic comes anyway—when she imagines getting sick. Or stepping away. Or needing to take care of her mom. The thought scares her: If I stop, the money will stop too…

Her business is stable, yet something feels fragile. Income is flowing, but wealth—real, transferable, durable wealth—feels elusive…

Today’s BlockbustHER BrainteasHER:

If you focused on leveraging instead of selling your business, how would your decisions change today?

Patty’s Perspective . . .

How can you build wealth when you’re constantly reinvesting—hiring carefully, upgrading systems, supporting teams? The business grows. Your personal balance sheet doesn’t.

These are the sacrifices we make to build value for a future buyer, right?

But what if the goal isn’t to sell your business at all?

What if your real power-move is designing a company that pays you extraordinarily well while you own it—and continues to do so on your terms?

What if your business can become a wealth-building tool so you don’t have to wait for some imagined, high-risk reward for endurance?

• The Corporate Model Isn’t Neutral—It’s Gendered

“Modern business is largely based on the corporate model developed in the early 1900s. It has a top-down hierarchy of leadership, is focused on beating the competition, and was developed by men for men. This model never worked for women in the past, and I would argue it doesn’t work well for women today.

Most of us are products of this model and its frequently toxic work environments. We were taught to suppress our emotions, intuition, and perceptiveness in a business setting.”

– Excerpt from Patty Block’s bestselling book, Your Hidden Advantage: Unlock the Power to Attract Right-fit Clients and Boost Your Revenue  

The corporate growth-and-exit paradigm rewards aggression, detachment, and delayed fulfillment. It assumes someone else is carrying the emotional, domestic, and relational load while the founder builds ‘enterprise value’.

We didn’t opt into that model because it was a good fit—we adapted because it was the only one offered.

So we contorted our businesses—and ourselves—to match a definition of success that constantly requires us to hide behind ‘everything is fine!’

• The Myth of ‘Someday’ Wealth

In corporate mythology, value is something you extract at the end. You suffer now and cash out later. That works—sometimes—when you’re building an asset that runs without you.

But most women-owned service businesses are built on something far more nuanced and fragile: Judgment. Relationships. Pattern recognition. Trust. Reputation.

In other words: you.

When buyers look at these businesses, they don’t see a transferable asset. They see risk. They discount the very things that made the business successful in the first place.

Then they layer on deal structures that protect them, not you: Earn-outs. Holdbacks. Performance clauses. Golden handcuffs disguised as ‘alignment’.

By the time the deal is done—and the lawyers, accountants, advisors, and your tax bills have all been paid—I see too many women left feeling demoralized and angry.

That corporate growth-and-exit model was never designed for women, and what about the promised payday at the end of your business? For most women, it’s a mirage.

• Living Capital™

My research shows a consistent paradigm that is not recognized as ‘success’ but should be.

Women founders list these as their highest priorities:

1. “Make sure my staff is respected, has good working conditions, and is valued.”
2. “Ensure my clients are cared for at the high level of service we have always provided.”
3. “That my eventual transition out of the business is under my control and on my terms.”
4. “That I have something to show for all my hard work.”

You can achieve all of these priorities without selling your company.

In fact, for women running companies under $5M in annual revenue, I’ve come to believe that you have more control, better focus on your real priorities, and better odds of building wealth when you build Living Capital™, instead of trying to sell your business to a stranger (what I call Latent Capital™).

Living Capital™ strategies foster creativity and flexibility:

• Revenue design for profitability and durable cash flow
• Income extraction to build personal wealth
• Ownership structures that allow partial liquidity without total surrender
• Advisory, licensing, and intellectual property-based revenue that decouples income from constant presence
• Succession strategies that don’t require erasing the founder to unlock value
• Intentional ‘micro-exits’ over time instead of a single, high-risk event

Living Capital™ doesn’t ask, How do I figure out, navigate, and maximize my exit?
It asks, How do I design my business to serve my life—starting now?

And that question changes everything.

Now What?

Exiting your business is complex and confounding. Since 2006, I’ve seen women get harassed, hurt, and hustled. All. The. Time.

That’s why I help women founders achieve an Elegant Exit™—because you deserve better.

My research and decades of experience now have me challenging the basic premise of building wealth through a business sale. Not because selling isn’t certain—because it’s contingent.

The Elegant Exit™ provides two viable paths: Latent Capital™ or Living Capital™.

Both create freedom. Both build wealth. Both reduce stress. But they require different truths, different emotional muscles, and different definitions of ‘enough’.

1. Latent Capital™: selling, merging, or creating a deal that moves you out of the business.

The math can work IF you’re generating upwards of $5M annually, with consistent, predictable revenue. You have a strong leadership team. You’ve actively built real business value. And you have the patience and commitment to handle the emotional rollercoaster of the sales process.

2. Living Capital™: extracting value from the business while you still own it.

This is not about passive income—it’s about portable power. Generally, this is a better fit for businesses generating less than $5M annually. Women who choose this path tend to be deeply loyal—to clients, teams, and the identities they’ve worn for decades. Their exit comes in the form of evolving and extracting.

An exit is elegant only if it increases a woman’s personal wealth while decreasing the stress required to maintain it.

Anything else is just endurance with better branding.

When women choose their path—truly choose it—something surprising and exquisite happens.

The noise disappears. The constant internal negotiation—the second-guessing, the ‘should I be doing more’, the quiet dread that you’re missing the right move—goes silent. What replaces it is not certainty, but consent.

You are no longer bracing for the future or apologizing for the present. Wealth—however it arrives—stops feeling conditional.

And in that quiet, you discover that decisions become cleaner. Time stretches. The business no longer feels like a test you must pass, but a tool you are finally allowed to use.

That’s the power of your Elegant Exit™ when the right expert is by your side. As your advocate, I’m looking out for your best interests, guiding you to discover right-fit options, execute critical decisions, and cultivate personal wealth.

Contact me to learn more.

What are your biggest blind spots in crafting an exit? Find out at: http://she-exits.com/