E284: Breathwork, Business, and Big Exits: How Monica Garcia Uses Calm to Crush M&A - Watch Here

About the Guest:

Monica Garcia Dugal is an investment banker turned entrepreneur, financial consultant, and breathwork evangelist. With decades of experience spanning institutional finance, entrepreneurship, and real estate, Monica brings an unmatched blend of analytical rigor and human insight. She’s also the author of The Power of Breath: The Gift of Self-Actualization Through Meditation and is currently developing offerings in personal and business finance to help people scale or exit with grace—and clarity.

Summary:

In this refreshingly unique episode of the How2Exit podcast, host Ron Skelton sits down with Monica Garcia—a former investment banker, serial entrepreneur, and breathwork advocate—for a dynamic conversation that fuses the hard numbers of finance with the soft power of emotional intelligence. Monica unpacks her journey from English major to high-level financial analyst, her path to launching and exiting a successful company, and the surprising role breathwork played in helping her—and her clients—make smarter business decisions.

What starts as a conversation about buying and selling companies becomes a masterclass in how personal awareness, emotional regulation, and intentional calm can make you not only a better businessperson, but a wealthier one. With over 30 years of financial experience, Monica proves that deep breaths and deep spreadsheets are not mutually exclusive—they’re complementary.

Key Takeaways:

1. Monica's Unique Origin Story: She started as an English and rhetoric major aiming for law school but fell into investment banking through a temp job—and never looked back.

2. From Analyst to Operator: After earning her Series 7 and 63 licenses and getting deep into finance, she pivoted into real estate investing, entrepreneurship, and consulting, eventually launching and selling a company after 16 years.

3. The Exit Process: It took Monica and her team three years to prepare their business for a successful exit, including rebranding and building SOPs that made the company operate independently of its founders.

4. Post-Exit Transition: Unlike many founders, she stayed on for three years post-sale to support the acquirer’s team—a 100-year-old company that had previously struggled with a hands-off acquisition.

5. Breathwork as a Secret Weapon: Monica discovered breathwork during a personal health crisis and now teaches it as a tool to improve decision-making, reduce stress, and regulate nervous system responses—especially during high-stakes transactions like exits.

6. Combining Logic and Intuition: Monica advises founders to create a “contract with themselves” about their exit terms and to use breathwork to stay grounded when emotions or outside pressures threaten to override those decisions.

7. Breathwork = Better Returns: She claims that making decisions from a calm, regulated state can improve your financial decision-making by up to 30%.

8. Beyond Money: Wealth, according to Monica, is not just financial—it's emotional, physical, and relational. Breathwork enhances all of it.

Article:

“Exhale to Exit: Why Breathwork Might Be the Most Underrated M&A Tool on the Planet”

In a world where M&A conversations often drown in spreadsheets, EBITDA multiples, and LOI acronyms, this episode is a radical reset. Monica Garcia’s appearance on the How2Exit podcast offers a different lens—one that zooms out from data rooms and dives into boardrooms, nervous systems, and breath patterns.

Monica's journey from English major to equity research analyst at a top San Francisco investment bank is unlikely, but deeply relevant. With a toolkit sharpened by real-world exits, financial modeling, and capital raising, she speaks the language of business fluently. But she also speaks another language—one of inner mastery. Her integration of breathwork into financial strategy is more than new-age fluff; it’s battle-tested. From migraines in college to the boardroom negotiations of selling a 16-year-old company, breath was the throughline.

Her insights aren’t just theoretical. Monica shares how reprogramming your nervous system through breath work can put you in a calmer, more decisive mental state—what she calls “executive brain.” And that’s where the gold is. Better decisions. Less regret. More alignment.

Ron keeps the conversation light, flowing, and relatable, digging into both hard-won financial lessons and soft skills that often get ignored in M&A. Whether it’s knowing your BATNA before a negotiation, identifying when to step away for clarity, or simply regulating your stress during due diligence, the tools Monica shares are as practical as they are transformative.

This episode is a must-listen not just for entrepreneurs looking to exit, but for anyone serious about playing the long game in business. It's a reminder that sometimes the best business decision doesn’t start with a spreadsheet—it starts with a breath.

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