John F. Dini | The Exit Planning Coach®
I’ve helped business owners achieve their goals for over 30 years.
Today, I limit my practice to helping them plan for successful transitions.
I’ve successfully owned a manufacturing company, an importer/distributor, and a medical practice management firm. I’ve been a business broker and one of the most successful facilitators of business owner peer groups in North America. My experience working with over 500 owners is combined in my advisory work today.
The ExitMap is my proprietary system for helping owners understand their transition options and make critical choices about accomplishing their life goals. It’s been purchased by hundreds of advisors to assist in their planning and consulting practices. In five meetings, we complete a series of exercises that result in a written plan that contains your goals, a Personal Vision for your life after the business, which priorities to address first and detailed action plans to accomplish those priorities.
Every word in Your ExitMap is authored by you. My job is to help you understand where you stand right now and help you think through where you want to go. ExitMap is suitable for any size company, and is highly successful in planning for family succession, sales to employees, partner transitions, management buyouts, and third-party sales.
Our process begins with a 15-minute multiple-choice Assessment of your readiness to transition, followed by a complimentary debriefing meeting about what your answers indicate. If you are thinking about transitioning in the next 3 to 8 years, and want to have control over your timing, method, and proceeds, please take the initial assessment to initiate our proven system for making it happen.
Featured Book!
Hunting in a Farmer’s World Celebrating the Life of an Entrepreneur
Winner of the National Independent Publishers’ Association Silver Medal for business books and “Best Business Book” at the New York Book Festival.
All men (and women) are created equal, but that doesn’t mean that they are all the same. Entrepreneurs are different. Small business owners make up 3% of America s population, but they create two-thirds of the new jobs in our economy. They are hunters, and hunters have provided for others for thousands of years.
Management books tell entrepreneurs how to become farmers. They try to teach hunters to run their businesses using a farming cycle. Ancient farming wisdom has been translated into the modern-day management tasks of planning, budgeting, standardizing, and measuring. Entrepreneurs hunt. They don’t manage. They explore rather than analyze. They build companies with vision, creativity and tenacity; not with policies and procedures.
“This book doesn’t feel like the usual big-company how-to business book. It is more personal than that, and more focused. John’s breakthrough is to take a fundamental truth about human nature and apply it, with laser focus, to the act of starting and running a business.” – Seth Godin, Author of Fifteen International Bestsellers
“Dini ties together several threads I have often seen in my own experience of mentoring and helping aspiring entrepreneurs. Our civilization has evolved and the vast majority of the people in business are farmers (managers and employees). For those of you who have the hunter gene, or the yearning to learn, the time has never been riper to be an entrepreneur.” – Marty Zwelling, Veteran Start-up Mentor, The Huffington Post
“How Refreshing! A celebration of the drivers of our economy. This book is clarifying, validating and incredibly helpful. A must read for any entrepreneur.” – Gino Wickman, CEO, EOS Worldwide, author of Traction and creator of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS®)
Other books by John F. Dini
With over 300 color illustrations, Your Exit Map is a lighthearted look at the impact of the Baby Boomers. From split-session elementary schools to a 600% increase in college graduates and the longest economic expansion in history, the Boomers changed everything about business (including the rise of franchising.) This book examines what it means to transitioning business owners – today and in the future.
Business owners are not merely high-net-worth individuals. This book examines those differences, and why financial planners and consultants must employ a different approach to working with owners – one that recognizes the identity bond between owners and their companies.
This short (120 page) primer on selling your Main Street (under $3,000,000 appraised value) business. From preparing your financial statements to selecting a business broker, it’s a quick overview of the process and the pitfalls of taking a business to market.
A collection of articles from John’s blog Awake at 2 o’clock in the Morning? consolidating fifteen years of helping business owners exit their companies.