For advisors of business-owner clients

Help your client see the personal math before an LOI sets the terms.

Many business owners know the headline value they hope to receive. Fewer know what may actually reach the family after debt, deal structure, fees, tax, payment timing, and family capital need are put on the same page.

Exit Studio helps clarify whether the client's expected transaction value is likely to support the family outcome they are counting on, while the planning levers still exist.

Discuss a Client Situation See the Diagnostic Paths
Exit diagnostic showing after-tax proceeds against family capital need

The friction usually shows up late.

A client enters a sale process anchored to a headline number. Sometimes that number comes from an old valuation, a peer transaction, a banker conversation, or a rule of thumb that no longer fits the business. Then fees, debt, tax, escrow, earnout, rollover equity, shareholder dilution, and family capital needs compress the outcome. The owner realizes the number they expected and the amount likely to reach the family are materially different. By then, the advisory team is often managing expectations from a locked-in position instead of shaping options while the client still has control.

Late-stage friction

Exit Studio is designed to surface that gap before the room gets expensive, emotional, and hard to reverse.

The risk is not that your client lacks advisors. It is that the personal math arrives after the strongest levers have narrowed.

The diagnostic gives the advisory team a clearer fact pattern before expectations harden: what your client expects, what the model suggests, which assumptions are fragile, and which specialist should review them.

Compressed gap exhibit

Your client hears the headline number. The family experiences the usable number.

Headline value has to be tested against the family capital target and the modeled proceeds that may actually be available after tax, structure, timing, and risk are considered.

Illustrative diagnostic example only.
Headline Value $18M

What the client may believe the business is worth.

Family Capital Target $12.69M

The approximate capital required to support the post-sale life they described.

Modeled Usable Proceeds $9.65M

After estimated tax, deal structure, timing, and risk adjustments.

Planning Gap $3.04M

The shortfall that should be identified before terms are set.

Against a $12.69M family capital target, the modeled outcome leaves a $3.04M shortfall.
Why This Matters Before LOI

By the time many owners ask what they may actually keep, the best planning levers have already narrowed.

Sometimes the gap is not a negotiation failure. It is a timing failure. The window does not close all at once. It closes option by option while your client is still running the business.

Timeline showing the point of no return around LOI, where key planning levers start to close across deal and planning tracks.
24–60 Months Out
  • Tax structure can still be optimized
  • Share restructuring remains possible
  • Trust elections can still be implemented
  • Holdco purification can still be completed
  • Family alignment has time to happen well
12 Months Out
  • Some tax planning may still be possible
  • Share restructuring becomes harder
  • Trust elections may no longer be practical
  • Holdco work becomes more limited
  • Family alignment is often rushed
LOI Signed
  • Most structural options are closed
  • Diligence friction becomes harder to fix
  • You cannot unwind prior planning gaps
  • Buyer pressure increases on terms
  • Missed alignment becomes more costly

QSBC eligibility. Holdco structure. Family trust elections. These windows do not reopen after LOI. This is why the conversation belongs before the process, not during it.

What Exit Studio is

A guided pre-transaction diagnostic for the planning questions that still have time to move.

Exit Studio connects business value, deal structure, tax exposure, payment timing, ownership structure, and personal capital needs before an LOI or transaction timeline reduces flexibility.

Exit Studio Is

A guided pre-transaction diagnostic that turns a headline value assumption into a clearer personal-outcome discussion.

  • Business value in personal contextConnects expected enterprise value to the client’s family capital target.
  • Structure and timing visibilityShows how tax exposure, payment timing, rollover, escrow, earnout, and ownership structure affect usable proceeds.
  • Pre-LOI decision supportIdentifies the gap while planning options may still exist.

It Can Surface

Issues that may reduce proceeds, create friction, or require specialist review before a client goes too far into a process.

  • Deal-blockersValuation positioning, corporate structure, shareholder agreements, and readiness issues.
  • Value leversTax and trust structuring, Holdco strategy, financial independence planning, and business growth priorities.
  • Housekeeping gapsBanking facilities, estate documents, filing readiness, and CPA coordination.

Exit Studio Is Not

It does not replace the professional advice or transaction work already surrounding the client.

  • Not a formal valuationIt does not provide a valuation opinion or fairness opinion.
  • Not legal or tax adviceIt flags areas where legal, tax, valuation, or corporate finance advisors may need to review the facts.
  • Not a replacement teamIt supports transaction counsel, tax counsel, corporate finance, and the client’s current advisors.
We are most useful when a business sale stops being only a transaction and becomes a family capital, liquidity, governance, and decision-readiness question.
One diagnostic.

Two Owner Situations. Two very different exit problems.

Exit Studio is the gateway. Owner Exit Studio is the owner-managed and family-business path. Founder Exit Studio is the founder-led path when cap tables, dilution, preferences, and deal structure materially change the personal result.

Owner-Managed and Family Businesses

Owner Exit Studio

For owner-managed and family-owned businesses where the core question is whether the likely after-tax outcome supports the family’s post-sale needs.

Focus:
  • After-tax outcome
  • Family capital target
  • Minimum exit required
  • Pre-LOI readiness
Owner Exit Studio page →
Founder-Led and Investor-Backed Companies

Founder Exit Studio

For companies that have taken institutional capital where dilution, preferences, and deal structure materially affect what the founder actually keeps.

Focus:
  • Founder proceeds through the waterfall
  • Waterfall-adjusted personal outcome
  • Break-even exit value
  • Pre-LOI readiness
Founder Exit Studio page →
Not sure which fits? Start with the client situation. We can route owner-managed, family-business, founder-led, and complex shareholder files from there.

What your client actually receives

The diagnostic is not a software tour. It produces a concise set of decision exhibits that help the client and their advisors compare headline value, likely after-tax proceeds, payment timing, ownership structure, and family capital need before a process begins.

Cap table and ownership

For founder-led files, shows how ownership, investor shares, and preferences change the founder’s outcome.

Deal structure assumptions

Frames the sale path, adjustments, fees, rollover, earnouts, and advisor-review items before terms harden.

Family capital need

Shows the spending, assets, income offsets, and planning assumptions behind the client’s target.

Headline versus net result

Puts the client’s expected value beside the modeled proceeds that may actually support the family plan.

Shortfall or surplus

Makes the gap visible before the client enters a process anchored to a number that may not fund the goal.

Payment timing and liquidity

Separates cash at close from escrow, earnout, rollover, and other timing effects that change usable liquidity.

For founder or investor-backed files, the same framework can add preference stacks, dilution, and founder-specific proceeds analysis without changing the pre-LOI purpose.

How the help unfolds

The first step is an advisor-to-advisor conversation. We can start with a de-identified fact pattern, clarify whether the situation fits, and determine whether a guided Exit Studio review would be useful before anyone speaks with the client.

1.

Advisor-to-advisor conversation

Talk through ownership structure, timing, value expectations, and the basic fact pattern before deciding whether an introduction makes sense.

2.

Guided diagnostic, if appropriate

A structured review focused on likely after-tax outcome, family capital target, deal structure, payment timing, ownership structure, and readiness.

3.

Short Exit Studio brief

The client receives a concise brief showing the modeled outcome, the family capital target, the planning gap, and the assumptions that need advisor review.

4.

Coordination with the existing advisory team

If the file points to tax, legal, banking, valuation, governance, or family planning work, the brief gives those advisors a cleaner fact pattern to work from.

Exit Studio is designed to support the client’s existing advisory team, not replace the lawyer, accountant, banker, valuation advisor, or transaction team already involved.

Prefer to talk through a case first?
What this diagnostic is for

Built for the part of a transition many clients do not see clearly enough, early enough.

Exit Studio is designed to help your client and their advisors understand what a transition may actually mean after tax, structure, timing, and family capital needs are considered together.

The goal is to test the likely client outcome while there is still time for tax, legal, banking, valuation, governance, or family planning work to matter.

Bongard Wealth Advisory Group, part of BMO Private Wealth, brings senior advisory judgment, transition-planning perspective, and modeling discipline into one pre-LOI conversation.

Before You Introduce a Client

How do I know if this is right for a specific client? +
It is usually most useful when a business-owner client is beginning to think about a sale, succession, recapitalization, or liquidity event, especially if they have a value expectation but have not yet connected that number to after-tax proceeds, deal structure, payment timing, family capital need, and readiness. It is most valuable before an LOI, ideally 24–60 months before a potential transaction, while planning levers still exist.
When is Exit Studio most useful? +
Usually 24–60 months before a planned exit, while structure, tax, governance, and family capital decisions can still be addressed. After LOI, many options have already narrowed.
Is this legal, tax, or valuation advice? +
No. The diagnostic begins with your client’s own target, what they would be happy to receive, not an independently derived valuation. That expectation becomes the input. Where that assumption has not been recently validated, the diagnostic flags it as an area where a formal CBV review would sharpen the picture before your client relies on the result.
What does my client walk away with? +
A concise Exit Brief designed to support better conversations with the client’s existing advisors. It summarizes the modeled after-tax outcome, the family capital target, the gap between them, the key assumptions behind the case, and the issues most likely to require specialist review next.
How does this help the existing advisory team? +
It gives the advisory team a shared fact pattern: what your client expects, what the model suggests, which assumptions are fragile, and which specialist should review them.
Will you contact my client directly? +
No. You can start with a de-identified fact pattern. We contact the client only if you direct it and the client agrees. The first call is about fit, not a handoff.
Who handles the client conversation

A small advisory team built for business-transition files.

Exit Studio is delivered by the Bongard Wealth Advisory Group at BMO Private Wealth. The team combines senior client judgment, transition-planning training, CEPA-informed planning, and the analytical modeling behind the diagnostic.

The work is most useful when it helps your client see the personal math clearly enough for their existing advisors to do better work, sooner.

$400M+ Advised
200 Families
40+ Years Client Experience
Debbie Bongard headshot

Debbie Bongard

Senior Wealth Advisor
CIM · FCSI

Senior advisor with 40+ years of client experience and advanced training in financial transitions. Debbie brings the judgment needed when a business sale becomes a family capital, governance, and identity decision.

debbie.bongard@bmo.com 416-359-7592
Christopher Bowlby headshot

Christopher Bowlby

Portfolio Manager
CFA · CFP

Leads the analytical and planning framework behind Exit Studio, including client-outcome modeling, family capital targets, proceeds timing, and sensitivity work used in the diagnostic.

christopher.bowlby@bmo.com 416-359-7453
Mark Parent headshot

Mark Parent

Portfolio Manager
CIM · CEPA

Certified Exit Planning Advisor who works directly on business-transition files. Mark brings CEPA discipline to readiness, sequencing, advisor coordination, and the issues that often surface before an LOI.

mark.parent@bmo.com 416-359-7593

Start With an Advisor-to-Advisor Conversation

Before a client is locked into terms, we can help clarify whether the expected sale outcome actually supports the family’s financial life after the business.

Discuss a Client Situation

Share the ownership structure, rough timing, and the question keeping the client stuck. A de-identified fact pattern is fine.

Discuss a Client Situation Compare Owner Exit Studio and Founder Exit Studio
What To Expect

Advisor-to-advisor first step

A short conversation focused on the file, timing, and whether Exit Studio would be useful.

Specific issue map

The goal is to identify whether the constraint is value, tax, structure, payment timing, governance, financing, or family capital need.

Direct access to the team

The conversation stays with the advisory team behind the diagnostic. No form, no calendar funnel.

Debbie Bongard debbie.bongard@bmo.com 416-359-7592
Christopher Bowlby christopher.bowlby@bmo.com 416-359-7453
Mark Parent mark.parent@bmo.com 416-359-7593