Our Story

Why I decided put My Business Exit Team together

As a Certified Financial Planner™ with my own independent investment advisory firm since 2012, my business is managing and diversifying the wealth of my clients. While helping individuals ease into retirement confidently is a challenging endeavor at the best of times, I began to realize that helping business owners exit their business takes financial planning to a whole new level.

First, the majority of a business owner’s wealth is often tied up in just one undiversified asset- his/her business! Second, he usually gets just one shot at monetizing that asset for the right price, at the right time and in a manner that takes care of their stakeholders- his family, clients, employees and their community.

It also became clear to me that it takes a village of professional advisors to help a business owner exit and that moreover, most business owners do not have that ready team of experts to hand – experts with collective knowledge base spanning the skillsets necessary to help effect a successful business transition. There was no way that I personally could ever become an expert in all those fields and I am also not aware of any one firm that could house such a variety of professionals under one roof.

As a fiduciary, I am legally obligated to put my client’s interest first, so I started there, with the premise that I needed to be agnostic as to whether the business owners I dealt with needed to do an inter-family transition, a management buyout / ESOP, bring in private equity, sell their business outright or simply stay and grow their business a while longer before they exit. The client, not me or anyone else, gets to call the shots in terms of the timing and the manner of their exit.

In addition, because I have always been hyper-sensitive that a bad referral reflects badly on me personally, I needed to be able to refer these business to people I know well and very much trusted. After several years of extensive networking and learning about the skillsets and personalities of various professionals with whom I had shared clients, drinks and meals, I finally felt comfortable launching My Business Exit Team.  I am both proud of and humbled by the quality of the team assembled as well as their individual commitment to increasing and promoting the extensive body of knowledge around business exit planning.

One final note, and in line with how I have marketed by wealth management business based foremost on transparency, please be aware that while none of these professionals pay to be listed on this site, they may have in the past and may in the future refer business to my investment advisory firm, Fair Weather Strategies, Llc.

Sincerely,

Thomas Kilgallen, CFP®, M.B.A.

Principal, Fair Weather Strategies, Llc.