Growth, Value & Optionality: A Forum for Established Business Owners

A practical one-day forum for established business owners who want to grow value, reduce risk, and create better future options.
About this Event

Growth, Value & Optionality: A Forum for Established Business Owners

Build Value Now. Create Optionality. Exit On Your Terms.

Build a Business That Creates More Value, More Freedom, and Better Options

Most business owners are focused on growth.

• More revenue
• More customers
• More people
• More momentum

But growth alone does not always create a more valuable business.

A company can grow and still be overly dependent on the owner. It can generate strong revenue but lack clean financials. It can have loyal customers but weak systems. It can look successful from the outside while still being difficult to scale, finance, transition, or sell.

The EPI Denver Business Owners Forum is a one-day event designed for established business owners who want to build stronger companies, increase enterprise value, reduce risk, and prepare for whatever comes next.

This is not a traditional exit planning seminar. It is a practical business owner forum focused on the decisions owners can make now to create more optionality later.

Whether you plan to sell someday, transition to family or leadership, recapitalize, keep growing, or simply build a company that does not depend on you every day, this forum will help you see your business through a different lens.

Who Should Attend

This forum is designed for owners of privately held companies who are actively working to grow, professionalize, reduce owner dependence, and create future options.

This event is especially relevant for:

• Founders of established companies
• Second-generation and family business owners
• Owner-operators in the growth or stabilization stage
• CEOs of privately held companies
• Owners who are 2–10 years from a possible transition
• Owners constrained by people, process, financial clarity, or leadership depth
• Owners exploring future liquidity, recapitalization, succession, or sale
• Owners who want the business to create more wealth and freedom

This is not built for brand-new startups, solo operators, general networking attendees, or salespeople looking to prospect the room.

What You’ll Learn

At the forum, we’ll explore what makes a business more valuable, transferable, and ready for the future.

You’ll learn how to think through:

• Whether your business is actually growing in value — or just growing in size
• What buyers, lenders, investors, and successors look for in a company
• How owner dependence quietly reduces business value
• Why leadership depth, systems, clean financials, and recurring revenue matter
• How to connect business growth to personal wealth creation
• What personal readiness has to do with a successful future transition
• How owners who have already exited prepared before the transaction
• Where your business may be losing value today
• What practical steps you can take now to build a stronger company

The goal is for every owner to leave with clearer thinking, better questions, and practical next steps.

Keynote & Workshop: What Big Brands Know: and How It Grows Your Business

Featured Keynote: Gerry O’Brion

Gerry O’Brion has worked with some of the world’s most recognized brands and brings those big-brand growth frameworks to business owners in a practical, usable way.

His keynote and workshop will help owners think more clearly about positioning, differentiation, customer decision-making, and how to build a company that is easier to grow and easier to value.

The sponsorship package identifies Gerry O’Brion’s keynote and workshop as the centerpiece of the day, focused on practical tools owners can use to grow value immediately.

Why Attend

Because the best time to create options is before you need them.

Too many owners wait until they are tired, burned out, approached by a buyer, forced into succession, or ready for a change before they start thinking seriously about value.

By then, the business often has issues that take years to fix.

This forum helps you step back from the day-to-day and ask better questions:

• Is my business actually becoming more valuable?
• Could it run without me?
• Are my financials clean and useful?
• Do I have the leadership depth to scale?
• Would a buyer, lender, or successor trust what I have built?
• Is the business creating the personal wealth and freedom I actually want?
• What should I fix now while I still have time?

You should attend if you want to build a company that is stronger, more transferable, less dependent on you, and better positioned for whatever comes next.

Featured Speakers & Sessions

Conversations with Exited Owners: How We Built Something Worth Selling

The day begins with a moderated conversation featuring owners who have already gone through a successful business transition.

This session is built around real owner stories, not generic theory.

You’ll hear what these owners did before the exit that mattered most: the leadership decisions, financial cleanup, operational improvements, advisor conversations, and personal preparation that helped shape their outcome.

The point is not to glorify the transaction. It is to show what smart owners do years before one.

Business Readiness: Is Your Business Actually Growing in Value?

Featured Speaker: Sean Hutchinson
Business Value Growth & Closing the Value Gap

Many owners assume that if revenue is growing, business value is growing.

That is not always true.

This session will challenge owners to look at their company through the eyes of a buyer, lender, successor, or investor. You’ll explore the value gaps that often sit beneath the surface: owner dependence, customer concentration, weak systems, unclear accountability, messy financials, and lack of transferable leadership.

Sean Hutchinson helps business owners identify and close the gap between what their business is worth today and what it could be worth in the future. The sponsorship package identifies his session as focused on business value growth and closing the value gap.

You’ll walk away with a sharper understanding of where your business may be gaining value — and where value may be leaking.

Personal Readiness: Are You Building a Business or a Better Life?

Featured Speaker: Cindy Carrillo
Personal Readiness & Life After Exit

A business that cannot run without the owner is not just harder to sell.

It is harder to live with.

This session explores one of the most overlooked questions in business ownership:

Who are you when the business no longer needs you every day?

Cindy Carrillo works with business owners on personal readiness and life after exit. The sponsorship document frames this session around the personal side of transition, including identity, purpose, and what comes next for the owner.

This is not a soft topic. Personal readiness affects delegation, leadership, decision-making, succession, and the owner’s ability to actually enjoy the freedom they worked so hard to create.

Financial Readiness: Are You Really Growing Wealth?

Featured Speaker: TBD

Revenue does not equal wealth.

Profit does not automatically create freedom.

And a larger business does not always mean a stronger financial future for the owner.

This session will help owners connect business growth to personal wealth, liquidity, risk, and future options. It will challenge owners to ask whether the business they are building is actually making them financially stronger — or just busier.

You’ll explore questions like:

• Are your financials clean enough to support a sale, loan, investment, or recapitalization?
• Do you know what your business needs to be worth to support your personal goals
• Are you building transferable value or just taxable income?
• What risks could limit your future options?
• How can growth create wealth instead of just complexity?

Agenda

🕑: 11:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Arrival & Networking

Info: An open chance to meet other attendees, speakers, sponsors and presenters before the event kicks off. Food and beverages will be provided.

🕑: 12:00 PM - 12:15 PM
Opening Remarks: Why Growth Alone is Not Enough
Host: Wally Waldron

Info: Hear from the EPI Denver Chapter President framing the central question of the day: Is your business simply getting bigger, or is it becoming more valuable?

Many companies grow revenue while quietly becoming more complex, more owner-dependent, and harder to transition. This opening session will set the tone for the day around growth, enterprise value, owner freedom, and optionality - the ability to sell, transition, recapitalize, or keep growing on your terms.

🕑: 12:15 PM - 01:15 PM
Expert Panel: Conversations with Exited Owners

Info: Hear directly from business owners who have already gone through a transition and can speak honestly about what mattered most before, during, and after the exit.

This panel will focus on the proactive decisions they made years before the transaction: strengthening leadership, improving financial clarity, reducing owner dependence, building transferable systems, and preparing personally for life after the business. The goal is not to tell generic exit “war stories,” but to help current owners understand what actually creates options when the time comes.

🕑: 01:15 PM - 01:30 PM
BREAK
🕑: 01:30 PM - 01:40 PM
Owner Insights Segment
Host: LiveOak Bank

Info: Hear from the event Anchor Sponsor about supporting growth of business owners

🕑: 01:45 PM - 02:10 PM
Business Readiness: Is Your Business Actually Growing in Value?
Host: Sean Hutchinson

Info: Many owners assume that if revenue is increasing, business value is increasing. That is not always true.

Sean Hutchinson, owner of ReadyForNext, will help owners look at their company through the eyes of a buyer, lender, investor, or successor. This session will explore the gaps that can quietly reduce enterprise value: owner dependence, customer concentration, weak systems, inconsistent financials, limited leadership depth, and lack of transferable processes.

Owners will leave with a clearer understanding of where value may be trapped inside the business — and what needs to change to build a stronger, more transferable company.

🕑: 02:10 PM - 02:35 PM
Personal Readiness: Are You Building a Business or a Better Life?
Host: Cindy Carrillo

Info: A business that cannot run without the owner is not just harder to sell. It is harder to live with.

Cindy Carrillo, 4x exited owner, current owner of Find Your Nxt, will lead a session on the personal side of business ownership and transition: identity, purpose, freedom, decision-making, and what comes next when the business no longer needs the owner every day.

This session will challenge owners to think beyond the transaction. Are you building a business that gives you a better life, or one that has quietly become your entire identity? Personal readiness affects delegation, leadership, succession, and the ability to make clear decisions about the future.

🕑: 02:35 PM - 03:00 PM
Financial Readiness: Are You Really Growing Wealth?
Host: TBD

Info: Revenue does not equal wealth. Profit does not automatically create freedom. And a larger business does not always mean a better financial future for the owner.

This session will help owners connect business growth to personal wealth, liquidity, risk, and future optionality. The focus will be on the questions owners need to answer before a major transition: Are your financials clean? Is your business helping you build transferable wealth? Do you know what the company needs to be worth to support your personal goals? Are you growing in a way that creates freedom, or just complexity?

🕑: 03:00 PM - 03:15 PM
BREAK

Info: Step away, recharge, and continue conversations with other attendees. This break is intentionally placed after the three readiness sessions so owners can reflect on their business, personal, and financial readiness gaps before moving into the keynote workshop.

🕑: 03:15 PM - 03:20 PM
Strategic Sponsor Recognition

Info: A brief recognition of the strategic partners helping make the forum possible. This segment will be short, controlled, and tied to the broader purpose of the event: supporting Denver business owners with the education, relationships, and resources needed to grow value and create better options.

🕑: 03:20 PM - 04:45 PM
Keynote & Workshop: What Big Brands Know and How It Grows Your Business
Host: Gerry O'Brion

Info: Gerry O’Brion (https://whatbigbrandsknow.com/) will lead a keynote and interactive workshop focused on helping business owners become the clear choice in crowded, competitive markets.

Using his Because Framework, Gerry will show owners how to sharpen their positioning, influence customer decisions, drive more referrals, attract better employees, and stand out when competitors all start to sound the same. His framework has been used by thousands of companies across dozens of industries, and his work includes the rollout of the color-changing blue mountains on Coors Light, an innovation credited with generating more than $1 billion in incremental sales.

🕑: 04:45 PM - 05:00 PM
Owner Action Plan & Closing Remarks

Info: The day will close with a practical action-planning exercise. Owners will identify their biggest takeaways, readiness gaps, and next steps to bring back into the business.

The goal is to make sure attendees leave with more than notes. You should leave with a short list of practical priorities around growth, value, owner independence, financial clarity, and future optionality.

🕑: 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Rooftop Happy Hour & Networking

Info: Stay after the formal program for casual networking with business owners, speakers, sponsors, and EPI Denver members. This is a chance to continue the conversations started during the day, build relationships, and connect with others who are serious about building stronger, more valuable companies.