Why ExitSmarts?

Why ExitSmarts?

ExitSmarts ™ BUILDING EXIT OPTIONS

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Why Exitsmarts

PorteBrown ® ACCOUNTANTS & ADVISORS

Why ExitSmarts Why should you include ExitSmarts™ in what will most likely be the largest financial transaction in your life? The best way for me to answer that question is to tell you why I created the company to begin with.

The numbers that characterize the current state of Exit Planning should be nothing short of daunting to any business owner. According to the Exit Planning Institute , 76% of owners plan to transition over the next ten years, but 49% of them have no transition plan. Eighty percent of the companies that go up for sale will not sell at all. In terms of dollars, the math is even more sobering. That 76% represents 4.5 million businesses and over $10 trillion in wealth, so more than 3.6 million businesses will not sell, and as much as $8 trillion in wealth may be lost. Business owners spend their lives working way too hard to end up on the wrong side of those statistics. Baby Boomers currently make up a significant majority of business owners, and their lack of preparedness is only part of the problem. Another reality is that Boomers significantly outnumber the people in the generations immediately behind them. There are, for example, five million more Boomers than Millennials. The result is what John Dini calls “…the worst imbalance between small business sellers and buyers in history.” In other words, business owners are facing an almost unimaginable buyer’s market . There has been considerable attention paid to exit planning for companies in the middle and high-end markets, but many of the practices used there do not translate to businesses with lower revenue and fewer people.

Let’s look at the lack of Exit Planning team leadership. Multiple advisors may be involved in the sale of a company – accountants, financial planners, wealth managers, attorneys, bankers, and others. Even a modest Exit Planning team will include two or three advisors. Any team of advisors results in complexity, and individual advisors may be too focused on their own area of expertise to be good team players. Hence the need for the conductor, the quarterback. ExitSmarts is delivered through the business owner’s Most Trusted Advisor – his or her accountant. According to CPA Practice Advisor , 86% of business owners call their accountants a Trusted Advisor, but only 53% strongly agree. When their accountants offer “the right level of service,” however – such as Exit Planning advisory services – all of them strongly agree. It only makes sense that the accounting firm should be the quarterback of the owner’s Exit Planning team. It reduces complexity, increases focus, and provides trusted leadership. The lack of a Value Advisor on the team is equally problematic. We at ExitSmarts are Value Advisors who deliver our services in full collaboration with accounting firms. By focusing on the key areas of your business that influence value, we help you move beyond the sale price you think you want to the sale success you are capable of achieving. They may be quite different. 2.) the lack of a Value Advisor on most teams – someone who can help the business owner build a more valuable company at each stage of the process. I founded ExitSmarts™ to address what I see as the two greatest obstacles to the successful sale of a Main Street business: 1.) Exit Planning is a multi-specialty process requiring leadership – a conductor/quarterback; and there is a lack of leadership among Exit Planning teams, even teams of only two or three people; and

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We deliver value through a library of workshops that are used to address specific areas of your business on both an if-needed and as-needed basis. We only deliver what your success requires. Value is created – and compounded – throughout the process, and our clients have regular opportunities to say, “Yes’ it’s time to sell,” or “No, I like what we’re building here and where this is going, so I think I’ll continue a bit longer.” At that point, Exit Planning becomes Exit Options, with you, the business owner, as your own most powerful driver of value. Those are the two reasons I started ExitSmarts – two voids in the Exit Planning model for Main

Street businesses. If that makes sense to you, please know that we start our process with one simple action on your part – the completion of an assessment that will help you, your accountant, and ExitSmarts better understand where you are today, and where you want to be. That’s where this work begins, and regardless of how many times we talk, our conversation will always end with me asking, “Have you taken the assessment?” There’s absolutely no cost other than your time and focus, so here’s the link .

WhY Exitsmarts?

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ExitSmarts ™ BUILDING EXIT OPTIONS

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AExP, A dvanced E xit P lanner WORK 8 I 5 . 790 . 9007

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PorteBrown ® ACCOUNTANTS & ADVISORS

Elk Grove Village, IL 60007 Phone: 847-956-1040 Fax: 847-956-6780

www.Portebrown.com