Summary

What happens after an entrepreneur builds the company, scales it and ultimately lets it go?

For Shelly Sun Berkowitz, the answer is, "another chapter of purpose."

Shelly founded BrightStar Care in 2002 after her own family struggled to find comprehensive care for her grandmother. She began franchising the concept in 2005 and went on to build one of the most recognized brands in home healthcare.

But the journey came with sacrifices.

During COVID, Shelly describes working 20-hour days protecting caregivers and patients. At the same time, her son Luke needed more of her. Family, legacy and the kind of life she wanted beyond BrightStar began taking on new importance.

Then came the extraordinarily personal process of selling the company she had spent more than two decades building. Shelly discusses walking away from a potential buyer whose values she felt did not align with hers, and ultimately completing the transaction with Peak Rock Capital.

Today, she's putting all of her lessons learned to work for other entrepreneurs.

Through Founder to Founder, Shelly provides founders with the emotional and tactical guidance she believes is often missing when preparing to scale or sell. Through Next Phase Capital, she's also working to provide patient capital designed to help founders grow while preserving ownership and equity.

The conversation goes deeper into exit strategies, financial literacy, the barriers women entrepreneurs continue to face in accessing capital, and why the biggest number isn't necessarily the best outcome.

Most of all, it's a conversation about what success looks like after you've already achieved the success everyone else can see.

This week, Franchise Today closes out Season 17, with Stan Friedman revisiting his 2025 conversation with entrepreneur extraordinaire, Shelly Sun Berkowitz. Stan labels this conversation as Top 10 of all time, which includes 600+ Franchisor interviews.