In September 2025, a new project is kicking off called “Early Exit Planning”, working to implement the ideas introduced in the XPX Next 2025 segment titled “Advancing the Conversation: Engaging the Owner in Exit Topic Before It Becomes Urgent”. I hope you all were able to attend, but here’s a link to the recording of that presentation in the XPX Knowledge Exchange.
If we’ve not met, let me briefly share that I was a long-time management consultant and was co-founder and founding President of XPX Charlotte. In spite of the great work done by XPX chapters across the country, business owners largely tend to defer any thought or planning around an eventual exit until they have their first conversation with an Investment Banker or Business Broker. This too-little-too-late scenario leads to unprepared exits or deals that fall apart, and great financial damage to owners.
I believe XPX chapters can and should take the lead in solving this problem. After all, it is central to the mission of XPX. The Early Exit Planning Project organizes a movement within XPX for cross-chapter collaboration to develop best-practices for business owner outreach and organizing referrals to XPX members for exit planning and value growth consulting services. I hope your XPX chapter will have representation on this project!
There are two cross-chapter working groups being established to begin collecting and vetting ideas to design best practices to be shared with all chapters:
- Outreach Working Group. This group will design a marketing effort to build awareness of the need for early exit planning together with a response mechanism to funnel inquiries back to their local XPX chapter.
- Inquiry Handling Working Group. This group will design how XPX chapters might respond once the outreach efforts succeed in generating inquiries from business owners. The overall goal is to refer these owners to professionals within XPX chapters who can help them move from “exit-planning-curious” to “exit-planning-completed” and finally to “exit ready”.
The overall project will be directed by an Early Exit Planning Steering Committee. This committee is still being finalized, but initial volunteers include several participants from the XPX Next 2025 discussion group:
- Tom Bixby, Chair
- Michael Stier, Outreach Working Group Chair
- David Shavzin, Inquiry Handling Working Group Chair
- Michelle Fritsch
- Ann Marie Williams
A meeting of XPX Chapter Presidents is being scheduled for 3pm on September 11th to discuss overall project and working group objectives and answer questions to allow chapter leaders the information needed to determine their chapter’s involvement in the project.
Going forward, the monthly XPX Newsletter will include brief updates on this project to keep everyone in the XPX community informed.
I’m excited to see this project be a sparkling example of XPX member collaboration aimed at improving exit outcomes for business owners. Thanks to Mike Oleksak, Cheryl Centeno and the entire XPX Global team for their support for this effort!
Tom Bixby
XPX Early Exit Planning Steering Committee Chair
XPX Charlotte Co-Founder and Founding President
EvaluSys CEO