Donald Bielen is the Managing Director of Capital Eleven Advisors, an investment firm specializing in private equity, early-stage venture capital, and real estate development. Donald has completed over 300 business transitions and exit plans for clients across the United States. Before joining Capital Eleven Advisors, he led the Business Transition Services team as Principal at Perkins and Co., was the Director of Business Advisory Services at the Rainier Group, Inc., and was an Operations Manager at a Fortune 100 company. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Finance and Economics, followed by an MBA, and holds certifications as a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) and Certified Merger & Acquisition Advisor (CM&AA).
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [4:08] Donald reflects on his early experiences working in the family grocery store
- [9:35] How to start building a transferable business well before selling
- [11:10] The distinction between investment banking and M&A advisory
- [14:35] How hiring a broker over an M&A advisor cost a pet food company the deal
- [20:39] Why business owners struggle to let go: the emotional factor
- [22:43] Donald explains the concept of a cultural index
- [25:14] Case study of a mental health treatment company with five locations
- [31:39] PitchBook’s role in identifying potential buyers and roll-ups
- [35:24] Donald announces his new venture with Capital Eleven
In this episode…
Too many business owners wait until they’re ready to exit before thinking about what it takes to transition out of their company successfully. But leaving a business isn’t just about legal documents and financials — it’s deeply personal, emotional, and strategic. How can leaders create a long-term plan that protects their legacy and maximizes business value?
Donald Bielen, a seasoned expert in succession planning and business transitions, explains why planning for five to ten years is critical to a smooth exit. Donald shares actionable insights on grooming internal successors, aligning personal and professional goals, and avoiding common pitfalls — like undervaluing the emotional aspect of letting go. He also illustrates his points with real-world stories, including a failed deal involving a pet food company and a successful strategy for a multilocation treatment center.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Donald Bielen, Managing Director at Capital Eleven Advisors, about the strategies behind effective succession planning. Donald shares how to build a transferable business, assess readiness for transition, and avoid costly missteps. They explore emotional readiness, internal succession challenges, and aligning strategy with long-term value.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Special Mention(s):
Quotable Moments:
- “Relationships are everything in the business that I currently occupy my time with, but also more importantly, growing up.”
- “Price is only one-tenth of the component. We need to look at deal structure — what’s called cap structure.”
- “For an individual to go someplace, to leave one destination to go someplace, you need to know what that destination looks like.”
- “You have to really dissect the business and break it down into well over 100 components to get an idea of its potential.”
- “We’re now talking with Strategics and we know how Strategics think; they’ve bought and sold 5 or 6 of these operations already.”
Action Steps:
- Start succession planning 5–10 years in advance: Early planning gives you time to build leadership, strengthen business value, and reduce the emotional toll of transition. Waiting too long can limit your options and lead to rushed or failed exits.
- Groom internal successors intentionally: Investing in the development of your next-generation leaders ensures business continuity and preserves your company’s culture. It also boosts confidence among clients, staff, and stakeholders.
- Align personal and business goals: When owners clarify their personal objectives alongside business strategy, they make more informed and sustainable transition decisions. This alignment helps reduce regrets and ensures the exit supports their broader life goals.
- Prioritize transferability overvaluation: A high valuation doesn’t guarantee a successful sale if the business isn’t operationally independent or attractive to buyers. Ensuring your business can run without you makes it far more appealing and easier to transition.
- Choose advisors with the right expertise: Engaging experienced M&A advisors instead of general brokers can protect you from costly missteps. Specialized support leads to better outcomes, especially in complex or emotionally charged transitions.
Sponsor: Rise25
At Rise25 we help B2B businesses give to and connect to your ‘Dream 200’ relationships and partnerships.
We help you cultivate amazing relationships in 2 ways.
#1 Podcasting
#2 Strategic Gifting
#1 Our Predictable Podcast ROI Program
At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 200 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.
We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.
What do you need to start a podcast?
When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.
The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.
We make distribution easy.
We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.
Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
Are you considering launching a podcast to acquire partnerships, clients, and referrals? Would you like to work with a podcast agency that wants you to win?
Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
#2 Our Comprehensive Corporate Gifting Program
Elevate business relationships with customers, partners, staff, and prospects through gifting.
At Rise25, thoughtful and consistent gifting is a key component of staying top of mind and helps build lasting business relationships. Our corporate gift program is designed to simplify your process by delivering a full-service corporate gifting program — from sourcing and hand selecting the best gifts to expert packaging, custom branding, reliable shipping, and personalized messaging on your branded stationary.
Our done-for-you corporate gifting service ensures that your referral partners, prospects, and clients receive personalized touchpoints that enhance your business gifting efforts and provide a refined executive gifting experience. Whether you’re looking to impress key stakeholders or boost client loyalty, our comprehensive approach makes it easy and affordable.
Discover how Rise25’s personalized corporate gifting program can help you create lasting impressions. Get started today and experience the difference a strategic gifting approach can make.
Email us through our contact form.
You can learn more and watch a video on how it works here: https://rise25.com/giftprogram/
Contact us now at [email protected] or message us here https://rise25.com/contact/
Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
All right. Today we’re talking about how to prepare your business for sale to maximize its value. My guest today is Don Bielen. I’ll tell you more about him in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:13
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:29
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of this show. You know, every week we get smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs, and we twist their arm and get them to come on the show and share a bit of their wisdom for all of you, for your benefit.
And if you check out the archives, you’ll see we have Netflix, Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinko’s, YPO, EO. Lots of great episodes for you to check out there. And before we get into this, this episode is brought to you by Rise25. Rise25. We help businesses to give to and connect to their dream relationships and partners.
How do we do that? We do that by helping you to run your podcast and content marketing. We are the easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do three things: strategy, accountability, and full execution. We like to say that Rise25 is a team of magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for a company and the host, so they can create amazing content and amazing relationships.
In fact, we invented what some are calling the Wix of B2B podcasting, our platform called podcast Copilot, and we got Don here today. And Don, I know that you put a premium on the importance of relationships for me. I do the same thing as well. Relationships have led to every advance in my life, personally and professionally, and so I love having the opportunity to do that and to use these conversations in order to forward those relationships and establish new ones like us who have never met before today. So have you ever thought about podcasting?
You should do it. Go to Rise25.com, or you can email us at [email protected]. And before we get into today’s guest, I have to give a shout out to Adi Klevit of Business Success Consulting Group and the Systems Simplified podcast. Adi has been such a great friend and advocate. She’s been a client for a number of years, and I just love hanging out with her.
And she recommended today’s guest. All the best guests have come from other guests’ recommendations. His name is Don Bielen. He’s the principal at Perkins and Co, but he’s moving on to something new, a new opportunity, which we’re gonna talk about in a second. He’s also a certified financial planner and certified M&A advisor, mergers and acquisitions advisor.
So if you have a company and you are considering maybe selling it one day in the future so you can get value from all that work that you’re putting in for your business. Well, we’re going to be talking about all of that here today. And he’s got about 20 or 30 years of experience in that area. But Don, such a pleasure to have you here today. And it starts with a family business, a grocery store that your parents ran and you worked in it.
And tell me about what that was like. I find sometimes we find people that grow up in a family business, and then they just run as far as they can away from that experience. Other times they’re like, hey, I like this. I like running my own business. I could see myself doing it. So what was it like for you working in your parents grocery store growing up?
Don Bielen: 03:11
Well, John, thank you for this opportunity and thank you for the forum and to share some of my background and experience. I’ve been very blessed. When you talk about relationships. Relationships are everything in the business that I currently occupy my time with, but also more importantly, growing up, you mentioned the grocery store. The experience that I think really helped shape my life is the fact that my dad worked for a large corporation for about 20 some years, and he was very entrepreneurial. So he took his retirement plan, cashed it out, and invested in a grocery store in a small town in Montana. I saw that as.
John Corcoran: 03:49
The beginning of like a maybe a rom com or a Netflix movie of the week kind of thing?
Don Bielen: 03:55
Yeah, absolutely. Where we had four, four children. My dad put everything on the line, bought this grocery store. He had actually been a department manager for this large company.
John Corcoran: 04:05
Were you living in Montana at the time or you moved to Montana?
Don Bielen: 04:08
No. We were born and raised in Montana. I was born in central Montana, and this is northern Montana, where we bought this grocery store. So, of course, being part of a family of four, our parents expected that we work in the grocery store. So actually starting in sixth grade, I was working full time in the summers.
And I learned a lot about work ethic. I learned a lot about business. And that’s where the beginning of my education was about , like inventory control systems and shipping and finance and business operations, etc. we had three different departments in this grocery store. So subsequently we did well. We had the store for about four years, and then my dad wanted to move to another town that was close by about 40 miles and expand and do something even better in a nicer town.
So we bought, sold that store and bought another store. And I was involved in that store. And my dad, even when I was a freshman in high school, involved me in keeping the books and monitoring revenues and costs and profitability and.
John Corcoran: 05:15
A lot of responsibility for a 1415 year old.
Don Bielen: 05:18
You know, I was learning a lot. And the thing that you’ve probably experienced with grocery stores, people in grocery stores are very relationship oriented. They really know their customers. They care about their customers, they’re in touch with their customers and they’re very outgoing. And my dad was an inspiration for that because he was extremely customer focused, extremely relationship oriented. And I looked just by pure experience and almost involvement, I was able to glean a lot of his skill set and knowledge and ability to develop relationships.
John Corcoran: 05:55
You, your parents, eventually decided that they wanted to consolidate that business and exit, and you were in your early 30s and they turned to you to help with that. So talk a little bit about how that inspired the next chapter for you as well.
Don Bielen: 06:09
Perfect. And leading up to that, John, the second grocery store unfortunately was not very successful. And that was a very painful experience for our family where I could watch my dad try to be innovative and creative and restructure maybe our products or services or offerings. And we decided that we needed to consolidate.
John Corcoran: 06:29
So why was getting back what the other one sounded like successful? Then he moves to a larger, more prosperous town and then it’s less successful. So looking back on it, why do you think it wasn’t successful?
Don Bielen: 06:41
Well, it was a significant investment. It was really placing all the chips on a new, bigger store, larger bakery, larger meat department. Larger overall inventory, bigger risk. Well, there was a lot of competition in that marketplace, so we weren’t able to accomplish what we thought and still had additional market share. So my dad, I remember talking about how we want to take the elements of the business that are profitable and eliminate the parts that are not.
So we started a meat processing company and then a deli, bakery, sandwich shop, which my dad completely built out himself. We bought a shell of a building and built this roughly 20,000 square foot of business out of it. So when I was just out of college and I was actually working as a manager in a large fortune 500 company, I wanted to go into finance because my college was all focused out of an undergraduate and finance, corporate finance, and then have a minor in economics. And so I’ve always wanted to be in finance. In fact, when I was younger I used to read all kinds of money magazines and stock and stock portfolios, and I always wanted to be a financial planner, and I wanted to be really with more corporate finance.
So after several years of working for a fortune 500 company, I shifted over to a firm called the Rainier Group. They’re based in Seattle. And I was just getting enough experience in the mergers and acquisition area. We specialize in business transition and succession planning. And my mom and dad wanted to retire.
So they called me up and I then helped them structure their transaction. That was the first of many transactions that I’ve done. And it was really an opportunity to understand the human dynamics, the business dynamics, what it was like to be a seller, what it is like to be a buyer. And but you learn a lot of what, what not to not to do. And I took away a lot of lessons about things that fail. And unfortunately, that transaction didn’t go as well as planned. If I were doing it today, it’d be a very different deal.
John Corcoran: 08:56
Why? Looking back on it, what could you have done differently?
Don Bielen: 09:00
Well, in hindsight, my mom and dad were very good at their trade, but they were not good at finance. They didn’t understand clearly what the value drivers are in a business. They took for granted the culture that they had created. They took for granted the processes and procedures that they had developed over an extended period of time is something that’s transferable with little or no knowledge. So the individual that purchased the business had a great skill set, but they had poor business skills, poor operating experience, and from a knowledgeable and educated M&A advisor. You’re going to look at the cultural fit. You’re going to look at the probability of success and the ability for the buyer to finance the deal because it was a buyer or a seller finance deal, where it’s going to be.
John Corcoran: 09:57
Dependent on payments. So it wasn’t a big lump sum upfront payment. It was dependent. So you really needed it to be successful. Or else if it’s not successful, then those payments will stop.