BEI or Business Enterprise Institute helps many entrepreneurs exit their businesses, choose their successor, and carry on with their dreams by supporting advisors. Jared Johnson and Elizabeth Mower, CEO and President of BEI respectively, share how they focus on working with advisors who help business owners in exit planning. They discuss how vital it is to create tools and online resources that can help advisory firms, CPAs, attorneys, business consultants, and coaches accomplish, deliver, and implement action plans for their clients. Moreover, they share why much emphasis is given to systematized education and training in helping advisors and their clients.

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How BEI Exit Planning Solutions Works with Jared Johnson and Elizabeth Mower

At BEI, we believe that these small and medium-sized business owners and the companies they run are the lifeblood of our economy. Our mission is to help as many of those business owners as possible exit their business when they want, with the money they need, choosing the successor that they’d like to see carry on their dream. We do that by supporting advisors to the business owner community: financial planners, attorneys, CPAs, wealth advisors, insurance advisors, and any advisor who works with the closely held business owner is somebody that we support. We want to provide the tools and resources to allow them to be the quarterback of an exit planning team.

We have https://www.exitplanning.com/user/482 (Jared Johnson), the CEO of BEI. We have https://www.exitplanning.com/user/211 (Elizabeth Mower), the President of BEI. We’re at the world headquarters of BEI in Denver, Colorado. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Bob, thanks for having us. We’re excited to share what BEI does and how we support the business owner community through their advisors and support and help other entrepreneurs understand how we operate. Maybe they can learn a little bit from our successes and certainly some of our failures in running up small and medium-sized businesses.

Tell me about your business and who you serve.

Our business is generally focused on helping business owners benefit from their lives’ work. We had to try and figure out a way to do that. In the distant past, we were helping one business owner at a time to figure out what they wanted to do with the future of their business. We quickly figured out that it was going to take a long time and we wouldn’t be able to get to everybody. We thought it was important work to do. We ended up realizing that we could have a much greater impact on the business community across North America if we work with advisors who help those business owners in each community. We’re on the ground every day meeting with business-owning clients and helping them figure out solutions to their problems and paths to their futures. What we decided to do is create tools and online resources that help advisory firms, CPAs, attorneys, business consultants, coaches, and people like that accomplish, deliver and implement action plans for their business-owning clients. We’re a behind-the-scenes tools provider.

It starts with education and making sure advisors truly understand what we believe is exit planning. A lot of business owners sometimes think, “When I’m ready to sell, I’ll call somebody,” or “I’m never going to transfer this business. I’m going to die at my desk. This is who I am.” That’s fantastic, but we need a plan for that as well. Even more, we see business owners out there who want to transfer to key employees, management staff, and kids, but the challenge with that is none of those people have any money. How do we help them accomplish their financial goals and objectives? Working with folks who don’t have any money to buy...