The Room After the Exit
Why the room exists, and why I won't tell you what happens in it.
This is the chapter I've resisted writing more than any other.
Not because it isn't important. Because I'm not sure it's mine to write.
What happens in the room stays in the room. That isn't just a rule. It's the foundation upon which the room exists. The conversations are about family, wealth, children, investing, succession, philanthropy, purpose, and sometimes fear. They are conversations that only happen because everyone in the room knows what everyone else has been through to get there.
I won't tell you what anyone said. That isn't my story to tell.
But I can tell you why the room exists.
One of the biggest surprises of selling a company is how lonely success can become. People assume you've won the game. What they don't realize is that you've also lost the game you've spent decades learning how to play.
As I spoke with other entrepreneurs who had sold their businesses, I noticed something. The stories were different. The questions were remarkably similar.
How do you invest a lifetime of savings without spending the rest of your life worrying about it? Who do you trust when everyone suddenly wants to manage your money? How do you talk to your children about wealth without allowing wealth to become the story of their lives? Do you start another business? If you've already got more money than you'll ever need, why would you? Is it the challenge? The identity? The competition? Or is it simply because you miss keeping score?
These aren't conversations that happen at dinner parties. They're difficult to have with friends who are still building businesses, because they're solving different problems. They're difficult to have with neighbours because, frankly, they can sound like the kind of problems nobody feels sorry for. Yet they're real.
In February 2020, a small group of us decided to create a room where those conversations could happen. There were ten of us. No agenda beyond curiosity. No speeches. No presentations. Just entrepreneurs sitting around a table trying to help one another answer questions that don't appear on a balance sheet.
That room eventually became the ICE Network.
Today there are thirty-five members. The number isn't what matters.
The room is.
Jeff Wiener founded Digitcom, a Canadian telecommunications company, in 1991 at age 23 and ran it for 27 years, growing it into an eight-figure business named one of Canada's fastest-growing companies five years running. He sold it to a private equity firm in 2017 and semi-retired at 49. He now invests in multi-family real estate and writes about building wealth, selling a business, and the second act.