He Turned a $60 Million Bank Into $200 Million — Then Sold It... | Joe Stewart

At 45, Joe Stewart flew to Florida for what he was told was a team meeting. It was not. His father's investor group had decided to sell the bank holding company Joe was running — and nobody had told him.

Eleven years later he walked away from a bank he'd grown from $60 million to over $200 million, on his own terms, at his own price. This episode is the whole arc: how a 20-year-old who wanted to work on the New York Stock Exchange became the entire collections department of a small Missouri bank by accident, how he clawed his way to owning the smallest bank in the group, and then exactly — step by step — how you sell a company. The investment banker. The two years of cleaning up financials so you're "the prettiest girl at the dance." Fifteen buyers down to ten, down to six, down to two. Highest and best. And the day the wire finally hits, which he describes as one part celebration and one part memorial.

Joe also gets into what most people get wrong about money — good debt versus bad debt, why "you don't want to be a slave to a payment," why your business should carry its own debt, and why just because you qualify for it doesn't mean you should sign for it. Plus 2008, PPP, flying a plane home from Oshkosh with a dead alternator, and why he steered both of his kids away from the business he spent his life in.

If you own something you'll eventually have to sell — or you're 25 and trying to figure out what to build first — this one's for you.