What is Holistic Exit Planning?
Traditional exit planning has mostly been thought of as tax and estate planning work. While those are important pieces of the puzzle, business owners and their advisors have not always incorporated business readiness and personal mental readiness into the equation. This has contributed to:
- Businesses not be able to sell, crushing owner’s ability to meet their lifestyle and retirement aspirations.
- If the business can be transferred, they may harvest only a fraction of what their businesses could be worth with proper planning.
- Business owners dealing with anxiety over the question of “What’s next?”.
- Confusion over what exit options are best for an owner and not understanding the potential consequences of their exit decision.
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Business owners not understanding how much money they need for retirement and failing to correlate that with their business value.
The truth is, if they had undertaken exit planning years before their exit, these mistakes could have been avoided.
A holistic exit plan should answer three critical questions:
i) Is my business ready to transfer and if so, will I obtain the price I need or want? We call this ‘business readiness’.
ii) Am I personally and emotionally ready to exit? This is referred to as ‘personal readiness’.
iii) Will transitioning from my business harvest enough money to satisfy my lifestyle and retirement needs? This is your ‘financial readiness’.
What is the process?
Our Holistic Exit Planning process can be divided into three steps:
- Analyze – We gather financial information, utilize assessment tools, and conduct personal interviews to identify key gaps and issues that need to be addressed before exit. This also includes preparing a business valuation so you know where your starting point is in your Road to Exit.
- Planning – From the above information, we develop a prioritized action plan for you that addresses each of your Business Readiness, Personal Readiness, and Financial Readiness factors.
- Execution – We keep you accountable and on track as you execute your Road to Exit. Additionally, through our extensive network, we make can make helpful introductions to trusted professionals in a variety of areas who can be a critical part of your Exit Team.
