What's a business owner's retirement plan? It's often based on the business itself. And to retire smarter, that means you need a sound exit strategy.
Don't Put Off Your Exit Strategy
An exit strategy is easy to put off. But it's a crucial component of retirement planning for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Putting it off can create unnecessary risk and uncertainty. In fact, a surprisingly high percentage of business owners do not know the valuation of their business. And that leads to the possibility that you won't be able to retire on your own terms when you're ready.

Our guest today is Ashley Micciche, QPFC®, CRPC®, who specializes in qualified retirement plans like 401(k)s, Profit Sharing Plans, and Cash Balance Plans. Ashley shares her wisdom on developing an exit strategy and what she sees with business owners planning for retirement.

We discuss with Ashley:

How she became involved with exit planning
What she thinks are the essential components of a good exit strategy
What gets in the way of having a sound exit strategy in place
How far in advance of retirement should business owners develop an exit strategy
The unique things business owners need to think about with retirement planning
What she hears from business owners these days on planning for retirement

Ashley joins us today from Portland, Oregon.

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Wise Quotes
"What I found was a lot of these business owners I have been working with and was working with at the time; a lot of them were close to retirement. A lot of them had pretty much everything tied up in their business. And when you're a business owner, the decision to retire is much more complicated because not only do you have to figure out what you're going to do about when you retire. [There's ]Social Security and do I have enough to retire? All those things. But then you have this big elephant in the room, which is the business."

"And so that led me down this path to focusing more on, 'Okay, how is your business a component of your retirement?' It's usually a pretty big component. And so I started talking with my business owner clients more and more about that. And then about eight years ago, one of my business owner clients died very suddenly of a heart attack. And he had done no planning or anything. And I watched from the sidelines as his business crumbled, his long-term employees were very quickly let go and laid off. The company was sold for pennies on the dollar to an East Coast competitor. We're on the West Coast here. And just everything that could have gone wrong after he died did go wrong. And it was very hard to watch. And I thought, I need to go deeper into this with clients; talking to them and helping them and carving out a plan for exit. And along with that, what happens to your business? How can we protect your business and protect your family, if things don't go as planned."

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Bio
Ashley Micciche specializes in qualified retirement plans like 401(k)s, Profit Sharing Plans, and Cash Balance Plans, and has earned both the Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor® and the Qualified Plan Financial Consultant® designations.

Ashley works with her business owner clients to help build and maintain successful retirement plans that recruit, reward, and retain good employees while controlling costs. Most importantly, her goal is to help maximize the number of employees who retire with adequate savings.

Ashley started her career as a financial advisor in 2007 after graduating magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Finance from Portland State University.

When Ashley joined David as a financial advisor in 2007, she jumped in with both feet. “My dad threw me to the wolves,” she laughs,