Most business consequences do not arrive all at once.
A shortcut may solve a problem today. A half-truth may smooth over a difficult conversation. A policy exception may feel practical under pressure.
But those decisions rarely stay isolated.
They shape standards. Teams notice what gets excused. Repeated compromises become habits, and habits become culture.
That is why ethics in business is not just about personal integrity. It is an operational issue. Owners teach the organization how to behave through what they allow, justify, and repeat.
A useful question before any pressured decision is simple:
What does this choice set in motion?
That shift helps leaders think beyond the immediate result and consider the longer-term effect on trust, performance, and value.
Read the full lesson and access the Action Plan at
Exit Coach Bill Black interviews Top Advisors for Tips, Ideas & Precautions for Business Owners who want to grow and protect their company value and plan for a successful Business Sale or Transfer. Listen daily so you can be well-planned!
Curators1
People who have contributed edits to this page.
Oct 2026
Zolid AI
+0/−0
Published
April 23, 2024 Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for. Their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach, Bill Black. Well, welcome everyone. Thanks so much for joining us. Uh, my next guest is Chuck Gallagher from Ethics Resource Group in Greenville, South Carolina, and, uh, you know, Chuck's, uh, focused on helping businesses get back to ethics, understand the fact that every choice has a consequence. Chuck, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. Bill, it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me on. My pleasure, Chuck. They they tell us a little bit about how you came to start the ethics resource group and what it's all about. Um, well, Bill, years back, a long time ago, back in the 80s, I was a tax partner in a CPA firm. I testified before Congress, written articles in national tax magazines, taught genuine education courses, thought I had a great career, but you're the exit coach, and there's two ways to exit. There's an exit that's planned and thought about and that you help people accomplish, and there are exits that are unintended. Well, in my exuberance of the, the late twenties and my age at the time, um, I ended up having an unintended exit. I was, uh, how do I put this overextended and underfunded, or maybe the best way to put it is I had too much debt and instead of making the ethical choice. I made an unethical choice. To help solve an immediate short-term problem. I stole money from a client's trust. Now, not proud of it. But I found That it was easy. And the end result of that in creating a Ponzi scheme was it all collapsed, as did my career with an unintended exit. And the end result of it was in the mid-nineties, even after making restitution, I was admitted to the federal prison club, became an inmate, 11642058. And found that in fact every choice has a consequence. Mm wow, I'm, I'm speechless and uh uh I'm sure I'm I'm sure our listeners are wondering what's next, what you, what you must have learned from that horrible lesson and the consequences of that at the time you did it, where you, you were just thinking that uh this will get me out of a jam and and uh what could possibly go wrong? Yeah, actually, absolutely. In fact, not to be funny with this, but I, today I'll go out and speak to groups all over the country, and one of the questions, because people will fold their arms and say, well, you know, I would never do that. I would never do anything unethical because we all believe we're ethical. Sure or not. But I'll ask a group, how many of you would voluntarily make an unethical choice? Nobody raises their hand. How many of you believe breaking the law is unethical? Most everyone raises their hand. Then the next question, how many of you have driven on the interstate highways in the past two weeks? And as the grins start to appear on their face, the last question is, and how many of you have exceeded the speed limit voluntarily by 5 to 10 MPH. And most everyone raises their hand. So through that simple example, you sit back and you start to look and you think, OK, wait a minute, as long as it seems socially acceptable or as long as it seems kind of OK in in other words, as long as we can in our minds rationalize that our behavior is, is OK in my case, I'd pay it back. Uh, the age old story for anyone that does what I had done back in, back in those days. As long as you can put that in your head, you can rationalize unethical behavior, and the outcome typically is an unplanned exit. OK, I get you. Yeah, so for, so for a lot of people that are thinking, you know, I would never do something that would be unethical or against the law, it just really depends on where the, where they draw the bright line of of where you've crossed it. And again, in most cases, situations like yours, you're justifying it by saying I'll get it back before anybody even knows it's gone. Absolutely, that's absolutely correct, and Bill, when, when I was. When I was there, uh, incarcerated. The thing that number one, the experience really sucked. It just was quite unpleasant, you know, it's everything you see in TV minus a little of the sensationalism, but it's not a pleasant experience, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me because I was able to connect the dots with that simple phrase that you used at the beginning of the interview that every choice has a consequence. Now When I got out, of course, I was a convicted felon. No one wanted to hire me. Uh, so I had to think about how do you put life back together? And in my case, I started selling cemetery property door to door. Um, Mama always said death and taxes, and I screwed up taxes quite effectively, so I thought, well, at least everybody breathing happens to be a potential prospect. And the more important part to that was nobody wanted to do it. So, I, I made the choice to, to, to enter that field. I decided I was going to be the top performer, uh, and within 6 to 8 months, I was the number one salesperson within this organization. They asked me at the time, could I teach other people? I thought, well, yeah, I probably can do that, so I did. And then they asked me if I could manage other locations. And eventually, fast forwarding, uh, in 2006, a decade following my release from federal prison, I was a senior vice president of sales and marketing in a publicly traded company. Then people started asking the question, how is that possible? And it occurred to me that, you know, with Sarbanes-Oxley and WorldCom and Enron and all the famous disasters and, and, and the tightening up of uh Of responsibility in the corporate environment, it was highly unusual to have a convicted felon in a C-suite role. And that's when I began my career consulting and founded the ethics Resource Group to, yeah, to help people, uh, make sure that they're able to do the things that they need to do in a healthy ethical manner. So, uh, that, that makes perfect sense. I mean, now you're, now you're able to talk from the, the side of experience, um, and, and really help people to uh understand about the consequences. How did your choices in life, how did it change your life? I mean, I understand about reconstructing. What were some of the other immediate changes that happened when you were found out? Well, there were several things built that took place. Number one, when the uh Ponzi scheme collapsed, as they all will. Um, of course, the immediate outcome was, uh, involuntarily involuntary termination from my company. lost my license as a CPA, lost all physical possessions that had any value other than maybe clothes that could have gone to Goodwill. And it was a uh a dramatic moment of going from, um, you know, fairly lofty upper middle class position to nothing. Uh, that was deserved. Prison was a different change that took place. Um, I think, however, following that, the thing that has been most significant has been um The ability to transparently take the information that I learned while in prison and the transformation that is taking place afterward and help people connect the dots between their own choices. And the process that one goes through, there's actually a, a clear process that takes place whenever you're moving from ethical to unethical. So helping people understand that is incredibly powerful. So in your when you consult and when you talk with people, do you, do you, uh, obviously your story is very compelling, but do you help people to identify what some of those signposts are along the way and. Um, I mean, I could see like a kind of a scared straight type of a campaign, right? I mean, don't do it because it's, it's horrible. What happens is horrible, but on the other side of it, it's, do, do some, do you hear from people that thank you for that because I, it helped me realize that um uh you know, I, I don't want to go there, but I, I may be tempted and I know the consequences now, so I won't. Yeah, Bill, that happens and that happens fairly frequently. I think probably today scared straight is valuable, but you know, with due respect, if you're in a if you're in a meeting someplace and you see it and you're impacted by it and there's an emotional connection, it's like, wow boy, I better not do this. And then when they walk away, the question is what do you have to carry with you that will help you to remember. And for most of us, for any of us, frankly, There's 3 components we're going to go through to make a decision. I have to have a need. OK, so let's just, I'm going to make it very simple for our conversation. I, I, I need to eat lunch. OK, I'm hungry, so I have a need. Second, the question is, and that let's assume I'm on a diet. The second is, well, where is the opportunity presented to me to eat. Now, today, I'm traveling from Long Island to Dallas. So in an airport, I'm probably not going to find the Most nutritious, healthy food available. It's going to be pretty fast food, but I'm hungry, so I've got to find a place to eat. There's the opportunity, the rationalization. Do I stop someplace quickly, get a cinnabon? smells so good, realizing that it completely destroys my diet. But gosh, I'd really like one. And if I could rationalize in my head, well, I, you know, it's just a trip, it's just a quick trip and it's one cent of money, and it's not gonna hurt me. And you know what, tomorrow, I won't do that. I'll, I'll do some extra exercise. Well, as soon as I convince myself by rationalizing my behavior that I can break what it is that I should be doing. I'll probably make the choice. The same is true with money, or the same is true with being uh uh monogamous to your spouse. As soon as you can rationalize that, you can make a choice. And there's probably not gonna really be a significant outcome. There is a greater chance you'll make that choice. And when you make it the first time, The odds are dramatically improved psychologically, you'll make it again. And potentially again and again and it becomes a slippery slope into making choices that are not full and effective in our lives. So you, you have need opportunity in the rationalization and when you compromise your, your uh values or your guidelines for that to rationalize, you're on the slippery slope. That's correct. So then with that, then it does it start, then it really starts with your disciplines and your values and your being very strong, strongly uh uh tied to those um disciplines and values. Is that, is that the opposite of that formula? But that's, that's, that's important. Um, let me put it this way, when life is in balance, You know, if income is good, if uh the marriage is fine, if the kids are doing well in school, life is in balance. It's very easy to stick to one's values, to, to live by them, to uh stand up by them, to operate under them. When life gets out of balance, however, it's when the real challenge takes place. You know, if, if, if I'm sitting here and let's assume I'm married and my wife makes $100,000 a year and I make $100,000 a year and we're living a $200,000 a year lifestyle and everything is great and it's 2005 2006 going into 2007. I mean, it's just, it couldn't be better. Houses going up in value, man, life is good. And then all of a sudden 2008 hits and we roll into 2009 and she loses her job, but we're still living the $200,000 a year lifestyle. Oh boy, I tell you what, I need just got really, really skewed. And when that takes place. Then all of a sudden, the objective, the psychological way that we operate as human beings is we want to get things back in balance. So therefore, because of the natural innate lizard brain drive is to get life back in balance, then the question is, need just got increased dramatically. We begin to look for opportunity to solve the need, and even though the opportunity might fall outside of our value base, if we can rationalize it. We can make the choice. Hm. It makes a tremendous amount of sense, um, and I applaud your um your comeback. Um, it must have been incredibly difficult to make those decisions when you're faced with the fact that nobody, nobody wants to hire you and now and coming from where you were coming from and to, to have the discipline to start back on the path and um it's it's an incredible story, it really is. Um, have you, do you see you talked to groups all over, uh, that will listen to you on this? Is that, is that, are you a speaker on a circuit now? Do you speak to, um, I, I, I do, yes, I, I do speaking and consulting. with the ethics Resource Group, I will speak to corporations, associations, business school, university groups, so a fair amount of time is spent speaking, but the more significant and valuable time with organizations is helping them move past the concept of, OK, ethics and compliance is just boring. Fundamentally, and so we have our ethics and compliance guidelines and everyone signs it, and for some reason people and organizations feel like, OK, well, we've done what we're supposed to do. The question that's the wrong thing to be thinking. I mean, it's great that they've signed it. But that's not the point. The point is, you see, so they signed it. Well, tech in the Bible, you've got the 10 Commandments. We all know what we should be doing. That's not the problem. The problem is why do we do different and how can we prevent it? So to be able to help an organization see the process of what goes on in their employees' minds that causes them to stray off the straight and narrow, so to speak, and to be able to help guide and put systems in place to help keep them between the lines is incredibly valuable. Because when life gets out of balance, We can't control everything that happens in our employees' lives, but what we can do is great employee employers is help recognize when that happens and then how we can coach them and guide them and mentor them through those challenges so that they stick with their values instead of straying from their values. Very, very important, giving them, giving them the, uh, the thought, the system, the methodologies. To, to actually, uh, it's kind of beyond the signature like you say on those ethics. I will do as, as it says here on the form, but why will I do it and what will keep me from straying from that? Chuck, uh, very interesting, very, uh, a real roller coaster ride there that interview you had me at the at the beginning I was, I was speechless and I learned a lot from you in just a very short period of time. How do our listeners get in touch with you best? The easiest way to do that is to go to chuckgallagher.com. Gallagher is G A L L A G H E R, and there's a contact tab on ChuckGallagher.com. My phone number is there along with my email address. Both are are quite public, and I am certainly happy to talk with people and help them see the possibilities of trying to avoid, let's put it this way, avoid the choices that I made and the consequences that followed. It certainly is fascinating, and it's, I can tell it's your passion and your life's work now, and I'm very happy our crops, our paths crossed, and I hope that someday we can go deeper on this and talk again about some of these issues in more depth, Chuck, but thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a real pleasure. It's been my honor. Thank you, Bill. We're gonna take a short break. We'll be right back after this, so please stay with us. Hi everybody, this is Spike Riel with the Exit coach. Business owners, can you name the 8 key value drivers that you and your manager should be focusing on to increase the value of your business? Introducing the Sellability score index. Visit our website and answer 25 questions about your business, and you will instantly receive your sellability score, showing you how well you stack up in the 8 value driver areas. It's a great management tool. It's absolutely free for our listeners. Just visit exitcoachradio.com and click Get My Sellability score. Just thinking about what will happen to your business if you're gone keep you awake at night? Will you get the price you need from your business to carry you through retirement? The BEI Network of Exit Planning Professions is the world's leading advisor network with the power to help business owners transition out of business on their own timeline and terms. Ask your most trusted advisor to create a BEI plan for you, or visit us at exitplanning.com. That's exitplanning.com. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.
