How Involved Should You Be in Exit Planning?

By Hightower St. Louis on August 21, 2025

A big hurdle that business owners struggle to get over when creating an Exit Plan is, “I don’t have enough time to do all that.”  

On its surface, it’s an intuitive argument. Planning for a business exit is indeed a lot of work. It’s complex. It can take years. So, how do business owners find time to do it?  

The key lies in knowing how involved you need to be in planning your exit. And to the surprise of many business owners, they don’t need to be as involved as they first think.  

Let’s look at some of the key things that you need to be involved with when planning your business exit and where your Advisor Team fits into the process.   

Who Is Best to Help You Through Your Transition  

Not all advisors are Exit Planning Advisors.  

An Exit Planning Advisor is an advisor who leads a team of other advisors to help business owners pursue their business exit goals. They may have a specific, additional field of specialty (e.g., an Exit Planning Advisor may also be a financial advisor, a lawyer, or a CPA) that they can also leverage as part of your Advisor Team.  

But the Exit Planning Advisor is the one who helps you build your Advisor Team, coordinate with your Advisor Team, and create the actual Exit Plan that allows you to pursue your business exit on your terms.  

The Exit Planning Advisor can fill out the entire Advisor Team for the business owner, incorporate the business owner’s preferred advisors on the team, and anything in between. 

When business owners discover that they don’t need to build their Advisor Team all by themselves, it often breaks down a big barrier to starting an Exit Plan. 

Tell Them What You Want (What You Really, Really Want) 

Another challenge that business owners face when approaching the Exit Planning Process is believing that they need to have the plan set out for the Advisor Team to follow. That would be an incredible amount of work for an already busy business owner.  

In reality, it is the Advisor Team that does the bulk of the leg work in creating the plan based on what the business owner wants. The business owner’s primary responsibility is telling the Advisor Team what their goals are. 

From there, the Advisor Team will determine whether those goals are realistic—and if not, show the business owner why those goals aren’t realistic and what they recommend instead—create plans that they believe best pursue the business owner’s goals, and then implement those plans with the business owner’s approval.  

Perhaps most importantly, the Advisor Team will help business owners determine how much money they need upon their business exit to achieve financial security. In Exit Planning, this is the most important goal.  

An Advisor Team can help you create a plan to exit your business on your terms in this important context. 

This isn’t to say that Advisor Teams can turn straw into gold. For example, if you expect to sell your business for $25 million despite only treading water over the last 10 years, your Advisor Team may not be able to make that expectation a reality. However, they could help you focus on what you need to do to achieve financial security and work toward that goal.  

In short, your Advisor Team can help you determine what you need for financial security and then help you pursue your other goals in the context of achieving financial security.  

Trust Your Team 

Some business owners feel compelled to have a rough sketch of an Exit Plan to present to their Advisor Team. Other business owners like to be involved in the minutia the planning process. Still others want to take a hands-off approach.  

No matter how you prefer to manage, your Advisor Team works for you. It’s their job to ensure that your goals are realistic, and after they determine that your goals are realistic, to pursue them in ways that allow you to exit on your terms. 

To borrow a sports analogy, you are the owner of the team, the Exit Planner is the head coach, and the advisors on your team are the players. You give the coach the general guidance about what you want to have happen, the coach creates the strategy, and the players execute the strategy. You don’t need to get on the field and execute the plays yourself, but you do have the authority to ask the coach and the players to change course as needed. 

And throughout the process, your Advisor Team may present alternatives to the initial goals that you provided that allow you to exit on your terms more efficiently and effectively. For example, your Advisor Team may find an external key employee who could help you grow your business’s value more quickly if you were to hire them. 

Focus on Your Business 

A benefit of having a dedicated Advisor Team is that you can focus on your business while they focus on your eventual exit.  

Of course, you still have a say in the Exit Planning Process. However, you don’t necessarily need that to be your primary focus. 

As the Exit Planning Process plays out, many business owners find that they can focus more on the parts of the business they truly love while others—specifically, next-level managers—focus on important parts of the business that the business owner is less enthusiastic about.  

Remember: One of the most important parts of Exit Planning is positioning the business to succeed without you at the helm. With fewer responsibilities, you might be able to dedicate more time to the things you’re really passionate about, whether that’s traveling, mentoring, or yes, getting more involved in your Exit Plan. 

We strive to help business owners identify and prioritize their objectives with respect to their businesses, their employees, and their families. If you have questions on this topic, we can help with more information or a referral to another experienced professional.

Neal Furlong, ChFC ®, CEPA ®, CLU® 

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This is a fictional situation. Specific financial advice references provided herein are for illustrative purposes only and are not representative of decisions that have been made since the case study was published nor of decisions that would be made in the future. Advisors’ services, investment strategies and conditions for accepting accounts may vary.

Exit Planning is a discipline that typically requires the collaboration of multiple professional advisors. To the extent that our firm does not have the expertise required on a particular matter, we will always work closely with you to help you gain access to the resources and professional advice that you need.