Liquidity Events & Exit Planning
Intentional works with business owners and families navigating liquidity events to help them prepare thoughtfully, manage complexity, and transition wealth with intention.
Preparing Before a Liquidity Event
Liquidity events rarely fail because of the transaction itself. They fail because the decisions leading up to it were rushed, reactive, or disconnected from the broader picture.
Preparing well before a liquidity event means slowing down early — often years in advance — to understand what the capital will represent, how it will change risk, and what tradeoffs truly matter. This includes evaluating ownership structures, tax exposure, timing considerations, and the emotional weight that accompanies a significant transition.
Equally important is clarity around intent. Not every exit should be optimized for maximum price. For many families, durability, flexibility, or continuity matter more than a single headline outcome. Our role is to help business owners and families think through these decisions deliberately, before momentum and outside pressures narrow the field of options.
The most effective exit planning happens quietly, long before a letter of intent ever appears.
Managing Complexity After an Exit
Liquidity simplifies balance sheets, but it often complicates everything else.
After an exit, families are suddenly faced with new layers of complexity — from concentrated cash positions and tax consequences to a flood of investment opportunities and advice. Decisions that once felt theoretical become immediate, and the margin for error narrows.
This period requires restraint as much as action. The goal is not to redeploy capital quickly, but to create space for thoughtful decision-making, integrated planning, and recalibration. Risk profiles change. Time horizons shift. The role wealth plays in daily life evolves.
We help families navigate this transition with patience and perspective, ensuring early decisions made after liquidity don’t create unintended constraints years later.
Concentration Risk & Capital Transition
Many liquidity events replace one form of concentration with another.
A business owner may reduce operating risk only to assume significant capital concentration risk: whether through cash, retained equity, or new investment exposure. Without a deliberate transition strategy, portfolios can become misaligned with long-term objectives or personal comfort.
Capital transition is not simply about diversification. It’s about sequencing decisions, managing timing risk, and understanding how various exposures interact across the full balance sheet. Some risks should be reduced quickly. Others are better managed gradually.
Our work focuses on helping families transition capital in a way that preserves optionality, respects emotional comfort, and supports long-term intent — rather than forcing artificial timelines or one-size-fits-all solutions.
Life, Identity & Purpose After Liquidity
Liquidity events don’t just change financial statements; they often change identity.
For many business owners, the company has been a source of structure, purpose, and momentum for decades. When that chapter closes, even successfully, there can be an unexpected sense of dislocation. New freedom can feel unsettling without a clear sense of direction.
We believe this transition deserves as much attention as the financial planning itself. Wealth is a tool, not an answer. Without clarity around purpose, capital decisions can become reactive or hollow.
Our role includes helping families think through how wealth supports the next chapter (personally, relationally, and across generations) so that liquidity becomes a foundation, not a void.
How We Think About Exit Planning
Exit planning is not a transaction. It is a decision framework.
We approach liquidity events by integrating financial, tax, estate, and personal considerations into a single system of thinking. Each decision is evaluated not just for efficiency, but for durability (how it holds up over time, across changing circumstances, and through multiple generations).
Judgment matters more than optimization. Knowing when to act, when to wait, and when not to act at all is often the difference between a successful transition and a fragile one.
Our work is collaborative and coordinated, designed to complement legal, tax, and transaction professionals, not replace them — while helping families maintain perspective when decisions carry lasting consequences.
Who This Work Is Best Suited For
This work is best suited for business owners and families navigating meaningful liquidity events where decisions extend beyond the transaction itself.
We typically work with individuals whose wealth introduces complexity; concentrated positions, multi-generational considerations, or significant transitions that require patience and perspective. This is not transactional planning or short-term advice.
Exit planning of this nature requires time, trust, and a willingness to slow down before acting. As a result, we work with a limited number of clients where long-term partnership and thoughtful decision-making matter more than speed or scale.