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by Exit Planning Institute on August 19, 2024
Wealth advisor Tommy Bernard wasn’t looking for EPI, but when he found it, he soon discovered it was the missing piece of the puzzle he hadn’t known was missing.
He was attending a conference where a team of money managers talked about the CEPA® certification and exit planning modeling they use. As Tommy listened, he realized the services they discussed were things he’d devoted his career to doing for clients: personal financial planning, estate planning, wealth generation, etc. While his focus hadn’t been on his clients’ businesses, he understood that for many of them, their wealth came from their business. So providing a strategic approach to exiting a business was an essential—and missing—piece of serving his clients more completely.
The Puzzle Metaphor
“When you start solving a puzzle, you put a thousand pieces on the table, and it makes no sense,” Tommy explains. “It can be chaotic, confusing, and disjointed at first.”
Most puzzlers strategize by putting the corners and borders together first. To Tommy, it was immediately clear that the Value Acceleration Methodology represented the corners and borders.
“With the corners and borders in place, you can put the rest of the puzzle together,” he says. “You can solve a puzzle without that framework, but it’s more difficult and usually takes much longer. The same is true in exit planning. You can still do it, but the Value Acceleration Methodology makes it easier to strategize. It contains the first pieces you need and then provides the steps for the rest.”
Putting the Puzzle Together
With the “corners and borders” framework in place, Tommy says you can proceed logically through the three gates in the Value Acceleration Methodology:
- Discover: Focus on assessments, measuring and vision-planning
- Prepare: Focus on improvements (i.e., documenting processes and procedures)
- Decide: Focus on what an owner’s transition looks like
Aligning the Pieces
The framework is also essential for helping owners decide where their team of advisors best fit. Before learning the Value Acceleration Methodology, Tommy’s experience with advisors was that each operated in a silo, providing advice that while good, was often disjointed from the rest of the team’s objectives.
“We’ve witnessed client paralysis numerous times when different advisors focus too much on the details of their particular solution without crafting the necessary framework for a master plan,” he explains. “When this happens, you’re typically left with incomplete and competing information which promotes inaction.”
He just thought that was the way it was until EPI introduced him to a common sense, step-by-step approach.
“The Value Acceleration Methodology is a proven system that helps you increase the value of your business and secure wealth while preparing you to think beyond the next day of business,” Tommy says. “EPI gave me the knowledge and language to put the pieces of the puzzle together for my clients and give them a step-by-step structure to construct a successful business transition plan.”
