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Patrick Ungashick brings over 30 years of experience helping business owners and leadership teams maximize company value. He is the CEO of NAVIX Consultants, an exit strategy firm that has guided more than 500 owners through successful exits. Patrick is also a partner in three other ventures spanning private equity, investment banking, and wealth management.

 

 

In this episode, Jason and Patrick discuss:

  • How leadership lessons from D-Day apply to today’s business challenges
  • Why company culture is the starting point for organizational success
  • Common pitfalls business owners face when planning their exits
  • The importance of building a great team before building a great company
  • How leaders can leverage AI and technology without fear

Key Takeaways:

  • Historical events like D-Day offer more than just stories—they reveal enduring truths about leadership under pressure. When applied to today’s business environment, these lessons can guide leaders through complex challenges with clarity and purpose.
  • Strong companies don’t build strong teams—the reverse is true. Exceptional leaders know that investing in people first sets the foundation for long-term success.
  • Exit planning isn’t just for the end—it's a strategic mindset that should begin early. Waiting too long can limit your options and reduce the value you've built.
  • A business that relies entirely on its owner is a fragile one. True sustainability comes when systems and teams can operate smoothly without constant owner involvement.
  • Rather than fearing disruption, top leaders lean into it. They treat tools like AI and emerging technologies as allies, using them to sharpen strategy and strengthen team performance—even amid market noise.

“I think we’re unknowingly, unintentionally, accidentally misinformed about what it means to be an effective leader. Many of us believe our job is to build a great company—but that’s a mistake. The real job of a great leader is to build a great team, and the great team builds the great company.”

- Patrick Ungashick

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Listen to the podcast here:

 

 

Patrick Ungashick- A Day for Leadership

Hello and welcome everybody to this episode of The Insight Interviews. I'm pumped about our guest today. You know, I can't tell you the amount of solicitations that we get for Rewire, as I'm sure all business owners do about hey, companies are interested in buying yours and whatever, and most of the time that's actually not the case, there's just some sort of a hook or whatever, but it is the case that most business owners need to think about their exit. Well, it's 100% time the case that they need to think about their exit strategy, whether that means selling, whether that means giving to the next generation, or some hybrid thereof. Well, my guest today, Patrick Ungashick, happens to be an expert in all of this. Patrick is the CEO of NAVIX Consultants. They're an exit strategy consulting firm that has helped more than 500, yes, 500 business owners plan and achieve successful exits. Patrick's also an author with some Amazon awards in his back pocket, to his credit. He's also quite a historian, and often uses lessons from history to guide how he helps the leaders of today. Patrick, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Jason, it's my pleasure. I'm really looking forward to our conversation today.

You know, I did enough research on you to be dangerous, and I saw that your latest book relies, and maybe some of your other books as well rely on a lot of history lessons, D Day specifically, and a lot of history lessons. My father was a navigator in World War Two in the Air Force, and at the time it wasn't even called the Air Force,

Right.

I think it was called the US Army Air Corps.

Perfect.

And so, you already have my attention. Just, gosh, you're doing leadership stuff, you're doing exit stuff, you're a historian of World War Two, and other history. So, I'm excited about our conversation today.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it as well. I think there's a lot of tie-in there that sometimes surprises business leaders, how those lessons and those powerful stories from history have real application today. And so that's the reason for my newest book, which I know we'll get to in a little bit, but yeah, I mean, business leaders need powerful stories of leadership in action, and what better place to go to than periods of history, which are basically bottomless sources of stories of leadership in action, and finding those connections to apply to our careers and our companies and our organizations today?

I find a lot of people, and this is just outside not data researched related material here, but just outside observation, I see a lot of leaders in the beginning of their career, not really interested in history, but towards the tail end of their career, they start getting interested in history and then are applying it to their leadership, and it really seems be hugely helpful. I'd love to know just your story, your own journey of, yeah, why are you connecting those dots, and how did it happen that you got really interested in history and how it relates to today's leaders?

I was that nerdy kid who was when my peers were reading comic books, I was reading history books. So that was already instilled in me at an early age. I had a chance, specifically D Day and Normandy France, I had a chance to go there for the first time when I was 21 and that made just this huge impact on me. Yeah, so that's part of it, but I think the other part of it is we all have our own paradigms and our experiences that we carry with us everywhere we go. I mean, I'm not a chef. I can barely cook, but I imagine when a great chef goes out to a nice restaurant, they can't help but see things through the lens that only a chef can see, right? So, when I read history books or movies or talk to people who lived through historically significant events, in my nature. I'm a leadership person, I'm a leader myself, I work with other business leaders, so when I read history or see history, I see leadership moments. I can't help but unsee them. And as we said before, a lot of those leadership moments do apply towards the challenges and the opportunities, and the steps required to build great organizations today.

So much so that you ended up writing a book that included a lot of that.

I did.

Man, I'd love to hear just some big ideas from the book. As a fellow author, I know that when you get passionate about something and it's rolling around in your head, and then you finally put pen to paper, what ends up happening, what's on the page is kind of like the distilled best of the best, if you will. At least that was my personal experience. So, for you, I'd love to know some of the big ideas from the book and how they came about and what you're seeing as far as how they correlate to today's leadership.

We have three hours for this episode, right?

When I said distilled, Patrick, I mean really distilled.

Well, so, the book is a day for leadership, and it talks about D Day, which is the Allied, American, British, Canadian and a dozen other countries invasion of Normandy France during World War Two, because France and most of rest of Europe was occupied by Nazi Germany, right? That's a quick context. And there are, of course, a library full of books out there about D Day, and there's movies. Saving Private Ryan is something that really changed cinematic culture here in the US. So, there's all kinds of stuff, and most people are broadly familiar with it, but when you read a lot of the D Day stories, there's often mentioned little tidbits of leadership events that usually don't get a lot of coverage in a lot of the history books, because don't get me wrong, when soldiers are charging across a beach in the face of gunfire, that is awe inspiring. I mean, that's almost knee buckling in terms of the courage that's involved, and courage is the leadership skill, but I don't know how transferable that is to today's business challenges, right? Most of us as business leaders do not have to literally rush through machine gun fire to delete our troops. But what happens is, what I started to notice over many years is there were these little tidbits, little hints of leadership stories that I wanted to know more, and I wanted to learn more, and I had to research more. I'll give you just a quick example, because the book, “A Day for Leadership”, has eight separate case studies, eight separate stories. Each one of them explores a leadership dynamic, and the first one is about culture. It's first in the book, because chronologically, the book tells the stories through the D Dayay battle, but I think it belongs first, because, I mean, doesn't everything start with culture in our business?

For sure.

And a succinct, quick story there. Jason is so on D Day, most people certainly have heard of D Day on many people have heard of Omaha Beach, which was that scene where the battle was really touch and go. That's Saving Private Ryan’s opening scene in the movie. On D Day on Omaha Beach, the US division that had the lead role was the First Infantry Division, and they were the most prestigious, most accomplished army division. That's why they were tasked with this most important objective here in D Day. The story that doesn't make in a lot of the history books is the commanding general, the leader of that division, and an army division has about 14,000 people in it, 14,000 soldiers, 14,000 soldiers was fired 10 months before D Day, and it was fired because the division, the culture in that division, the culture in that organization, had gone astray. They were elitist, they were non conformist, they were angry, they were disgruntled, they did not want to be a part of this because they felt they had served, they had committed, they had sacrificed, and they wanted to go home. And so, 10 months before the most important battle and the most important day in all of Europe and World War Two for the United States, the division, the leader was fired. It sent the division into turmoil, and the new leader had to come in, and he had to fix the culture. Now, many of us as business leaders have experienced moments where we had to deal with cultural change, we had to drive cultural improvement. But how many of us have had a situation where we had to work with 14,000 employees, all of whom are literally armed, sharing weapons, who are disgruntled and unhappy? And so, that first story, that first case study in the book, tells the story of how this new general with 10 months before this most important day, remolded, reshaped this organizational culture so that eventually there could be victory on D Day. For any business leader who deals with culture on a regular basis, it's a fascinating story.

Yeah, no kidding. I mean, I'm imagining all that, even as you're talking, Patrick. I know you give talks around the country, and you help organizations with these types of things. Is there a story or I don't know, almost like a white paper, or anything that you can think of, where you're like, yeah, yes, I wrote that in the book, but here's what I'm seeing in either with leadership in general today? Or a specific instance where you're like, yeah, this type of thing was helpful, or is helpful for these types of leaders, or was helpful for this organization, not mentioning any names or anything, but I want to draw that dotted line. I want to make it more of a straight line for our listeners.

Yeah, a couple. I mean, my own career experience. So, I've founded and led a number of different companies. The first company that I had an opportunity to be CEO of, I took over in a leadership succession event almost 20 years ago now, and the leadership team that I inherited as the new CEO of that company was not a team of my choice. And at the time, I didn't know what I didn't know, and I didn't realize how much change I would need to drive people change. Getting the wrong people off the bus, getting the right people off the bus. That was a multi-year journey. It was a lot of learning on the job, and a lot of a lot of mistakes, and eventually, a lot of painful progress. That's exactly what General Eisenhower went through when he took over the effort to lead all the allied forces on D Day. So, there's a story in the book about him inheriting this team, and then a team was dysfunctional, and there was a lot of silos in there, and he had to go through that. He handled it far better than I did. There are amazing lessons in there. But then also just beyond my own experiences, I'm having a lot of fun, Jason. Now that the book is out and it's initially doing quite well, I'm having fun. I talked to a business leader just a week or so ago, a CEO of a very good sized company in the Midwest, and he was sharing with me, coming out of the book, and having read it and shared it with his team, that they're really challenged from a strategy standpoint. They have too many things they want to do and not enough resources to go around. And that's a pretty familiar observation of high growth companies. And one of the stories in the book deals with an issue on the German side of things. I mean, Nazi Germany was a hideous nation and regime in its time, but they had to deal with strategy. They had to deal with strategy, with defending the beaches on D Day, and they didn't have enough troops, and specifically, they didn't have enough tanks to go around. And the book tells the story of how the Germans flubbed that. They applied no real process for figuring out and aligning around the strategy. I was talking with the CEO of this very successful company last week, and he shared with me, you know, Patrick, the biggest problem we're having is we don't know where to put all of our tanks. And I gotta chuckle out of that, Jason, because if anybody had been overhearing that conversation, they would have been like, what? Why are we talking about tanks?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

The story, just has lessons that that we can apply to today's business challenges.

Oh, so good, so good. I want to get to exits and what, what you all do for a living, because I'm just fascinated by that topic, but as we're still on leadership here, I'm sure every generation thinks this, every leader thinks this of their time in leadership, but boy, it's just an ever changing, very different world, geopolitical environment that we're in, climate politics, whatever is happening. Some industries are doing really well right now. A lot of industries aren't. There's a lot of people that are just on pause because they're not sure about certain things. So, anyways, lots of changes, lots of turmoil these days. What are you observing right now that some of the best of the best leaders are doing? As you and I are recording July 1, 2025, what are you seeing some of the best of the best leaders actually doing right now?


I think what some of the best leaders do that keep them in the best of the best, is they're leveraging all those things that are new. They're leveraging new technology, they're not they're not running in fear from it. They're not putting their head in the sand in it. Whether it's AI or any other manifestation of technology, they're leveraging that, so that their teams and their organizations can strategize and execute at a higher level. When there's noise in the market, right now, here we are, you know, mid 2025 recording this, tariffs, has been the word of the year, and, you know, that's just the current noise. Six months from now, and maybe a different set of conditions that create noise is in the market. Three years ago, it was covid and all the implications for us as a society and as employers and employees. So, there's always stuff out there that runs the risk of being a distraction, but if I can figure out how to leverage it to allow our organization to maintain focus and execute at a higher level, I think that's what the best of the best do, which is a blend of what's new, new challenges, new conditions, new resources, new tools. But what doesn't change is leadership and people and alignment.

So I hear all that, and I'm nodding my head yes. Leverage the tools that you have available to you. But I know as a leader myself, and then I'm thinking about people that we coach that are leaders,
they're going to nod their head when they listen, right?

That's right.

And oh, man, just the day-to-day stuff, and then the human resource problem, and then the client, you know? What is your advice, or your suggestions, or your insight for the leader who goes, man, I hear you and that's great, but how? Like, I'm so busy, or I'm overwhelmed, or I have this thing. I don't know. Anything that comes to mind when I ask that, Patrick?

I think there's one probably consistent piece of perspective and insight that I keep coming back to. I learned it in my career, and I didn't know it in the beginning. I think a lot of us as business leaders, Jason, I absolutely put myself in this category, I think we are unknowingly, unintentionally, accidentally misinformed about what it means to be an effective leader. I think a lot of us as business leaders believe that basically our job description, when you distill it down, is to build great companies. I think that's a mistake. I think it's misplaced. I think the job description of a great leader is to build a great team, then the great team builds the great company. And I don't think that's wordplay, because if you think about it for a moment, you and I are both business leaders. Let's just say you wake up every day and you think, okay, my number one responsibility today is to build a great team, and I wake up at the same time every day and I say to myself, my number one responsibility is to build a great company, we have those two different perspectives, you are going to do different things every day because your orientation and your mission is, how do I build a great team than when I'm going to do? I'm going to be stressing about that next technology, the next challenge, the next noise in the marketplace, that next client, the next project, the next RFP, the next monthly financial statement.

True.

You're going to be approaching this going, what do I need to do today to build up and support my team? And yeah, there's going to be some overlap, and there's going to be some days where business and life throws you a curveball, but I think when business leaders embrace and focus on my number one responsibility is to build my team, then I approach where do I have holes in my team? How do I need to fill them? How do I need to train and develop my team at a higher level than they are already? What obstacles do I need to knock down for my team to and to set them up for even further success? And then how do I get out of their way? And it is a very different approach, and it absolutely increases scalability and increases empowerment and increases retention of customers and employees. All the trickle-down benefits from there. I think it all starts there.

I appreciate that answer, Patrick, because just some of the greatest interviews that I've done, there is this common theme, I love the way that you articulated it, but there's this common theme of man, hire the best of the best people, invest a ton in them of time and resources and energy, financial, capital, whatever it is, and then just let them go do their thing, because together, you all will build a great team, but focusing in on people first. So yeah, thank you for that. I feel like this is a good lever switch. So okay, I've built a great team. Thanks Patrick, for your help. That's really good. Years go down the road, and now I need to think about exiting, and I know that this is such a big Pandora's box, right? But you're the expert. You've helped over 500 organizations with this. What are some of the things? Because people that are listening to us, they have in the back of their head, maybe even in the front of their head, yeah, what does my exit look like? Maybe that's years down the road, maybe I hope it's in the next couple years, but I don't even know what that looks like. What types of things should they start to think about?

Great question, Jason. So, you're right. At NAVIX Consultants, we've helped over 500 at this point. First of all, Stephen Covey said it in like five or seven words better than anybody else, which is you got to begin with the end in mind, right? So, it's never too early, and it can very easily become too late for business owners to at least be thinking about where do I want to go with this? Where do I want to end up my own self and my family? Where do I want my organization to be one day? And the sooner we at least have some understanding as to what my desired eventual outcomes are, then you can make strategic decisions today that I know are at least oriented and aligned with where I want to end up. Some of the key questions are, what's my likely exit strategy? You actually touched upon that in your introduction. Is this an outside sales scenario? Am I selling my business through some method to my team, my employee or employees, or is it a family business? Am I gonna be passing it down to the next generation? Those are just three potential exit strategies, but they're very different from one another. You’re going to do different things, depending upon to execute an exit strategy along those three different pathways. And then my timeline. Do I have two years before ideally I want to exit or do I have 10? If I'm two years away, well, we're well under crunch time. If it's 10, time is generally my friend, and I've got lots of options and lots of runway to work with. So, exit strategy and exit timeline are two questions that, really, I think every business owner should at least have a pretty good idea how they feel about that question already answered and laid out in front of them.

Yeah, I'm almost thinking, and I don't know how your business works, but I'm almost thinking there's some sort of Q and A, whether that's verbally or you have somebody fill out an intake for, I don't know what it looks like, but there's probably some pretty initial questions in those. I'm sure that's one of the ones at the top of the list. Okay, what type of timing are we thinking about here, right? What are some other initial things? I'm just trying to get the listener to start thinking about their own business and just what other initial questions do you have where they might hear that and go, huh, yeah, maybe I should start getting that part of my house in order.

Great question. So, we talked about knowing your exit strategy, and there's a pretty short list of options out there. Know your desired timeline. Those came up already. A couple more that are really important and this ties back to some of what we were talking about earlier, which is how owner independent does your company run? A lot of business owners have built organizations that depend on them for day-to-day execution, sales, business development, client service, problem solving. If your company is dependent on you for a day to day function and profitable operations that can be exciting and rewarding now, and it can drive a lot of growth now, but that doesn't translate well at exit, because if the most skilled, most important employee walks out the door, when the owner walks out the door, what do we have left to sell or to pass along in the next generation or transfer to the employees? So, in order to get a company ready for this future exit event and exits are inevitable, nobody lives forever, in order to get a company ready for exit, business owners have to build teams and systems and resources that allow that company to operate profitably, at least on a day to day basis, week to week basis, without their direct involvement. We call that owner independence.

Owner independence, yeah. So, timeframe. What type of exit strategy are you thinking about, meaning generational or outside or internal, or whatever and owner independence. Again, I know we're just scratching the surface of this topic. I get it. What other types of things, the business owners that are listening to this conversation right now, what am I not asking you when it comes to their own exits, their own exit strategies that might be good for us to talk about right now?

Yeah, let’s go back to time. A lot of a common question that comes up is, how early should I be thinking about this? And I already said now. At least have your broad questions answered, but the real final stretch is when business owners are looking in the mirror and telling themselves, you know, I think I might want to do something the next five years. And Jason, five years is 60 months, right? It flies.

It's quick. No question.

So when a business owners start to say, you know, I think I might want to do something next three years, five years, seven years, you're in the final stretch, and it's time to really allocate significant effort to at least get an education on what this means. A lot of business owners, for example, and you said this yourself as well you as a business owners, you get a lot of the emails that come in, hey, is your business for sale? And, of course, a lot of that's junk mail and people on fishing expeditions, but some of that is legitimate. There is a real benefit to having some conversations with people, especially before you're planning on doing anything, when the risk is and the threat is low,ow and the emotional level and the time commitment is low. So, get an education. Talk to your peers. Be active in industry trade groups and associations where you can learn from the experiences of other business owners or leaders in your industry. Go to educational events, webinars, workshops. Read a couple books about this topic. The business owner who has taken just a few hours, a few 10s of hours here or there, to get a foundational level of understanding as to the steps involved to get themselves and their company ready for exit is so much farther ahead than the business owner who hasn't spent any sort of time really diving into these issues, and is going to be scrambling more than anybody would want to later in the process.

Makes sense. Yeah, makes sense. Thank you for that. I don't want to let you go without asking you about AI, just because that's such a buzz. You know, it's in everybody's news feed, it's in everybody's conversation. Heck, we're even grappling with it at Rewire, we're using it to some degree, but not a ton, and just different things. I don't know. From your chair, when I say AI, what do you think of, Patrick?

I had my first AI shock when- so my newest book came out about a month or so ago, and we were sitting down with potential publishers, call it two years ago and these were, you know, very well respected publishing firms and one of them looked at me and said, so how much AI did you use to write this book? And I was like, what? Are you kidding me? I mean, at first I was like, you could do that?

Well, of course, yeah.

That was my own ignorance showing through, but the answer was none. But either way, yeah. It's not going away. I think it's really challenging. I know I feel the challenge as a business owner myself and involved in consulting and working with other business owners. It's challenging to get our arms around it, because it keeps moving all the time. The field keeps changing all the time. Use the sports metaphor, the goal posts keep moving all the time. So, that’s inherently making all this even more disorienting for a lot of people.

That’s right.

But there is something there, and I think business owners are wise to have internal, if you're not naturally technology oriented, you know, somebody in the organization needs to be. Somebody in the organization needs to be bringing these new ideas to the rest of the team. That might be somebody internal, that might be an exterior resource that you rely on, because the technology landscape has taken a really significant jump. I mean, it's been taking jumps every two, three years for a long time now, but feels to me, as a non expert, but as a business owner leader, it feels to me like the rate of acceleration of change has really accelerated in the last two, three years exponentially and I don't think that's going to slow down.

Yeah. What type of projects are you most excited about these days? As you look over the horizon, what types of things get you jazzed up these days? Heck, I don't know. I was gonna ask about professional, but what are you excited about these days, Patrick?

It's a longer list than I'll ever get to, to be honest.

What are some of the top ones right now?

Top of my list is, I do a lot of speaking today. I've been doing a lot of speaking for 10 plus years, which I love doing especially with business owner audiences about exit strategy and getting ready for exit. I've done a little bit over 600 workshops at this point in time, but my new book “A Day For Leadership”, we're gonna be doing some workshops and keynote around that content, bringing those amazing and powerful leadership stories to a broader set of audiences. Not just business owners, but leaders, executives and managers. A broader audience. That's probably top of my mind. I'm really excited. I'll be very blunt and candid, I'm a little bit nervous about that, because when you've done something five or 600 times, and now you're going in a slightly new direction with material, you gotta do a little bit more prep than maybe you've been doing for a while. That's at least my situations. That's probably top of my list as what I'm professionally most excited about.

Yeah, yeah. I can empathize with you. It is exciting and a little scary at the same time. And I don't know, Patrick. I find that to be a line that is good for you. It's good for you to be there. So, I'm pumped for you as far as that goes.

Thank you. Yeah.

I have a feeling people are going to want to reach out to you as a result of this conversation, at least I hope that that's the case. If people want to learn more about you, find you, connect with you, reach out to you, what's the best way for people to do that?

Thank you, Jason. The first place to start is my website, which is Patrickungershik.com. I know you'll probably put it in the notes for this wonderful podcast episode. And besides, like most people do, there's some resources that you can find the website, including, Jason, there's a secret chapter from “A Day for Leadership”, and what I mean by that is a lot of people will offer a free chapter, get the first chapter of the book, but we wanted to do this a little bit differently. I mentioned there's eight different leadership stories in the book. Jason, when we eventually identified a publisher, it's published by Fast Company, I had like, 17 stories that I wanted to put in the book, and we're like, oh, slow down here. There is a word count limit. So, we took one of the stories that didn't make it in the book, and we made it into its own chapter. You can get it at Patrickungershik.com. It's a free download for anyone who has either picked up the book and they want more or wants to try this out before they get the book. And in addition to that, there's other resources, including information about how to learn about our exit planning services that link over to NAVIX Consultants.

Well, the whole secret chapter thing, I'm intrigued. I want to read that chapter first, because it's secret. I love the branding around that. Very well done, Patrick. I certainly appreciate you bringing your expertise, giving us your time. I feel like you gave us some powerful lessons on leadership. I wrote a page worth of notes, which is always fun for me, that I'll be referring back to, and then just some things for our audience to think about when it comes to exits. At least a little bit of an on ramp, how to take the first couple steps on the on ramp. So, thank you so much for that. Thank you for your expertise, and until next time, my friend.

Thank you, Jason. Appreciate the time today and all the great work you guys do over Rewire. Thank you so much.

Gosh. What a great episode from Patrick. I just really appreciate his conversational style, what he does. He gives off a quiet humbleness and confidence at the same time, which I really appreciate. Some of the insights that I had, I really like the title of his book, “A Day for Leadership”. I feel like every day that we wake up should be a day for leadership, so I really appreciate that. He talked about the importance of culture and what that meant leaning into new technology, even if we're scared of it or we're not technologically inclined, then hire out, but stay up on it. And so, I just really appreciated that. And then just what he said about AI and technology and some of the things that he's excited about. So, those were some of my insights, but as we say at the end of every episode of The Insight Interviews, it doesn't much matter what me as the host, what my insights were, but what really matters is what insights did you have?


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