Eight out of ten businesses that go to market never close a deal. Not because the businesses are bad but because the owners weren't ready. Drawing on his experience vetting over $75 million in acquisitions, John Franklin Wiley reveals the blind spots that kill deals before they start. MORE >

By 15, John Franklin Wiley was on the streets. By 20, he was aboard a nuclear submarine. He went on to become a top income earner, a pastor, a CEO, and the founder of a nonprofit that turned an abandoned hospital into housing for homeless families. MORE >

The transition from military service to civilian leadership is one of the most underestimated challenges veterans face. It’s not about losing discipline – it’s about translating it. John Franklin Wiley served aboard nuclear submarines, where leadership under pressure wasn’t optional. After the Navy, John applied those same principles to build companies, lead nonprofits, and navigate private equity deals worth tens of millions. In this talk, he shares what military leadership actually looks like in the boardroom, the jobsite, and the small business – and why the skills veterans carry are exactly what today’s organizations need. MORE >

Most business owners have a number in their head – what they think their company is worth. Most of them are wrong. Not because they’re bad at business, but because they’ve never looked at their company through a buyer’s eyes. In this straightforward, no-pitch talk, John Franklin Wiley – a Certified Exit Planning Advisor and strategist who has evaluated over $75 million in acquisitions – walks your group through what actually determines business value, and the one mistake that routinely costs owners 25–35% of their potential sale price. MORE >

The self-help industry has spent decades telling you something is wrong with you – that you need to be fixed, healed, or optimized before you can live the life you want. But what if the entire premise is the problem? What if you’re not broken at all – just blocked? In this thought-provoking talk, John Franklin Wiley draws on his own journey – from incarceration and transformation in his early twenties to leading companies, building nonprofits, and publishing a book on consciousness – to challenge the stories we’ve inherited about what’s wrong with us. This isn’t self-help. It’s self-recognition. An invitation to stop chasing arrival and start noticing what’s already here. MORE >

We live in a world obsessed with data, metrics, and analysis. But the most consequential decisions – the ones that change a career, a company, or a life – almost never come from a spreadsheet. They come from the quiet knowing that something is right before you can prove it. John Franklin Wiley has spent 40 years operating at the intersection of strategy and intuition – as a CEO, a private equity strategist, and a leader who’s made high-stakes decisions by trusting what he calls “the knowing in your knower.” This talk explores how to develop, trust, and act on your intuitive intelligence – without abandoning logic. MORE >

After decades of building, leading, and sometimes losing – what comes next? For many people over 50, the answer feels unclear. The career is winding down. The identity you built around what you did is shifting. And no one’s talking about it honestly. John Franklin Wiley knows that moment. He’s reinvented himself more times than he can count – from the Navy to business, from ministry to private equity, from loss to rebuilding. In this reflective and energizing talk, he shares what he’s learned about purpose, identity, and the surprising freedom that comes when you stop performing and start becoming. MORE >

Every life has a moment where the plan stops working. A career ends. A business fails. A health crisis hits. What separates the people who stay stuck from the ones who rebuild isn’t talent or luck – it’s the willingness to pivot without losing yourself in the process. Drawing from his own experience rebuilding across multiple industries and life stages, John Franklin Wiley delivers a talk that’s equal parts strategy and soul. He shares the pivots that worked, the ones that didn’t, and the quiet internal shifts that made the difference. MORE >

In 2009, John Franklin Wiley walked into a 150,000-square-foot abandoned hospital with no funding, no staff, and a vision that made everyone nervous. Within a few years, it became River of Refuge – a fully operational transitional housing campus for homeless working families. This talk isn’t about nonprofit work. It’s about what happens when you lead from conviction instead of a business plan – when the resources are thin, the critics are loud, and the only thing you have going for you is an unwillingness to quit. John shares the real story: the financing nobody thought would work, the volunteers who showed up, the moments when the project should have died, and the lesson that transformed how he leads everything since. MORE >

You started it. You grew it. Now it can’t grow because of you. It’s not a failure – it’s a pattern that hits the best founders. John Franklin Wiley has lived this as a CEO and helped dozens of owners break free of it as a strategist. In this candid, story-driven talk, John unpacks why founder dependency is the #1 value killer in small and mid-size companies – and what it actually takes to build something that can run, grow, and eventually sell without you in every chair. MORE >