“I Wish I’d Done This First” – Why CLARITY Reports Are the Missing Link in Exit Planning

In a recent candid exchange with a newly-certified exit planner, he looked me in the eye and said, “I wish I had learned about the Growth-Drive system first.”

Let that sink in.

This wasn’t a knock on his certification. Quite the opposite—he is rightfully proud of the credentials he’s earned. But what he recognized was profound: while exit planning teaches how to plan, Growth-Drive equips you to do. It’s the difference between drawing a map and building the road. He's now deep into the C3D certification and thrilled. 

The CLARITY Reports: Real Planning with Real Numbers

Your CLARITY ‘Equity Value Planner’ and ‘Protect Value’ tools don’t just help owners prepare for an eventual transaction. There's a reason my good friend and C3D candidate Mike Garrison is so amped: They help you educate COIs and CEOs—with data and a disciplined structure—how to lead with intent, understand Strategic Capacity, and drive up the only metric that matters: transferable equity value.

These reports are action-based education. They are built to translate theory into execution:

• The Equity Value Planner defines lifestyle needs and reverse-engineers the business value required to support them. It pinpoints the wealth gap, quantifies the net proceeds needed, and calculates the enterprise value target to support the owner’s goals.
  
  
• The Protect Value Report confronts owners with hard truths: “Is your continuity planning aligned with your business value and life goals?” Spoiler alert: It rarely is. This tool educates while it evaluates, and the gaps it uncovers (often $20–30M or more) make a compelling case for proactive value protection. It literally uncovers advanced planning, succession planning, sophisticated comp and insurance product opportunities. 

These are not reports for reports’ sake. They are client learning experiences that drive action.

Exit Planning Is Equity Planning—But It’s Incomplete Without This

In my article “Exit Planning Is Equity Planning”, I break down why traditional exit frameworks miss the mark for 83% of the market. Most businesses are not ready to exit. And guess what? They don’t want to talk about exit yet either. If you’re expanding your reach and relevance with CEOs and business owners…

Here’s the reality:

• 62% of CEOs want to grow
  
  
• 21% want to make their business easier to run
  
  
• Only 17% are preparing for sale

If you’re leading with exit planning, you’re only speaking to a fraction of your total addressable market. Growth-Drive helps you serve them all.

The Three Dimensions of Growth = Relevance with Every Business Owner

Business growth isn’t linear. It happens in three dimensions:

1. Predictable Profits & Cash Flow
   
   
2. Sustainable Growth
   
   
3. Transferable Equity Value

The CLARITY Reports—especially when used early—help advisors like you and business owners diagnose where they are in these dimensions and identify the levers they need to pull.

When used as a tool for education, the CLARITY Report changes the conversation entirely. Exit planners become growth advisors. Wealth advisors become more relevant upstream. And business owners see a clear path from status quo to achieving their wealth and legacy goals.

Educate First. Plan Second. Exit Last.

The best exit planners—and the best growth advisors—know that strategy without execution is empty. This is why your colleagues are using Growth-Drive not as an alternative to exit planning, but as its foundation.

If you're a CPA, CFP, CExP, CEPA asking yourself “What might I be missing?”—this is it.

This is why the smart ones realize: “I wish I’d done this first.”

Want to see how the CLARITY Reports create client breakthroughs? Ask for a demo. You’ll never look at exit planning the same way again.

We are attending a targeted series of conferences this year - I'm at the Lido conference in LA now. While the EPI conference is excellent, as a community we're choosing to pass—not because of the content, but because the audience isn’t aligned with our ideal member profile. We have a number of members headed to Florida, and we'll participate vicariously through them. Want to meet with one of them and learn more? Shoot me a private note. 

We’re intentionally investing our time and resources into growing our membership among Advisory 2s, 3s, and 4s: the client educators, architects, and general contractors who drive real value. We’re also laser-focused on collaborating with the right exit-planning wealth advisors—key players in the transferable value ecosystem.