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Business & Exit Planning | Joel Gardner, RICP® & CEPA®
Strategies for every stage of your business. Protect, grow, and exit on your terms.
Schedule with Joel
Strategies for every stage of your business. Protect, grow, and exit on your terms.
Schedule with JoelGrowth, taxes, risk, liquidity, and people issues all demand decisions — often long before there is time to step back and consider how those decisions relate to one another. What is missing is a way to connect those choices into a coherent picture that extends beyond the next problem and toward the eventual transition out of ownership.
Exit planning is simply good business strategy. Leaving a business is not a hypothetical event. It will happen, whether it is planned or not.
When protection, growth, and exit are treated as separate concerns, the outcome is usually reactive and constrained by timing. When they are addressed as part of a single, organized strategy, the business has room to mature, options remain open longer, and the transition becomes something shaped over time rather than forced by circumstance.
Joel leads the Business & Exit Planning practice at The Attorney's Advisor Team. As a Certified Exit Planning Advisor, he specializes in helping law firm owners and business owners protect what they have built, optimize for growth, and execute successful transitions — on their terms.
It is more than insurance. It is about keeping your business and your family protected no matter what happens. Legal structure, cash flow, ownership continuity, and risk reduction — coordinated into a single picture.
More money does not mean more mess. Growth is great — but only if your structure, tax strategies, and team can keep up. Your growth should build wealth, not just busyness.
Most owners wait too long to plan the end. The result is fire drills, tax hits, and regrets. Whether you are handing it off, cashing out, or somewhere in between — make sure you walk away prepared.
Develop and implement strategies to help you attract and retain your best employees. Mitigate risk and build your balance sheet with incentive and retention plan design.
Optimize your current and future tax strategies with coordinated qualified plan design, implementation, and ongoing service. Keep more of what your business generates.
Create a plan to sell your business to a third-party buyer. Understand this path from a financial, business risk, and cash flow perspective — with a clear view of what you will actually net.
Selling to a child, family member, or key employee might be a dream come true, but this exit brings unique challenges. We help you navigate both the financial and personal complexity.
We use this time to understand your business at a high level, your role in it, and what prompted you to start thinking about valuation or exit planning. We explain how our process works and how we typically help business owners in similar situations.
There is nothing extensive you need to prepare. We will ask questions based on what you already know. By the end, you will have a clear sense of whether our approach aligns with how you think and what the next steps would involve.
At a minimum, we request the last three years of business tax returns, profit and loss statements, and balance sheets. Depending on the business, we may also request revenue by customer, asset and liability detail, recurring versus one-time revenue breakdown, key employee information, and growth trends.
Once data is collected, we input it into BizEquity across all seven analytical areas — business fundamentals, income, assets, liabilities, growth, and operations. This stage includes industry benchmarking, analysis of value drivers and detractors, and initial scenario modeling.
We walk through the results in detail: multiple valuation perspectives, a value range based on current market conditions, and benchmarking against comparable businesses. The goal is not just to give you a number — it is to help you understand why the number looks the way it does and what influences it.
After the valuation presentation, you decide how to proceed. Some owners choose to stop here — they now understand what their business may be worth and can use that information however they choose.
Others decide they want help improving value, planning an exit, or coordinating their personal finances around a future sale. In that case, the next step is a comprehensive planning engagement.
We build out both business-focused and personal planning strategies. On the business side: exit scenario modeling, tax optimization coordination with your CPA, and a value-improvement roadmap. On the personal side: Living Balance Sheet® completion, retirement income projections, protection analysis, estate planning considerations, and investment strategy for both pre- and post-sale periods.
We review your complete financial picture and the strategies that address it. We present a clear roadmap outlining what to address now and what can wait, with an emphasis on sequencing decisions appropriately. We do not move forward until you understand the analysis and agree the strategies make sense.
Once strategies are agreed upon, we move into implementation and ongoing oversight. You receive continuous access to your Living Balance Sheet® through a secure web and mobile dashboard — showing your updated business value, net worth, retirement readiness, protection status, and scenario modeling.
We conduct quarterly strategic reviews to track progress, update assumptions, adjust strategies, and set priorities for the next period. We also coordinate with your existing professional team — CPA, attorney, and business broker if applicable.
When offers come in, we help evaluate them objectively: comparing them to your valuation, reviewing deal structure, modeling the impact on your long-term plan, and advising on positioning during negotiations. After a sale, our work continues with proceeds management, investment strategy, tax coordination, and planning for the personal transition that follows.
The Living Balance Sheet® (LBS) and the LBS logo are service marks of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America® (Guardian), New York, NY. © Copyright 2005-2026 Guardian.
Without planning, business owners often accept offers without understanding whether they are fair, are forced to sell under pressure, or discover after the fact that proceeds do not support their intended lifestyle.
Planning provides clarity around value, time to improve outcomes, and the ability to evaluate decisions objectively rather than reactively. The earlier the process starts, the more options remain available.
Our process is designed to support you beyond the transaction itself. Many clients continue working with us after a sale as their financial situation becomes more complex, not less.
Ongoing services typically include investment management, tax strategies coordination, estate planning updates, and continued oversight to ensure the proceeds of the sale support the life you intend to live.
The introductory meeting is a no-pressure conversation. We will understand your business at a high level, explain how our process works, and give you a clear sense of whether our approach is the right fit. Gain clarity on whether this is the right fit for you.