Photo Courtesy of Kelly Grandmaison
In a sleek conference room overlooking Los Angeles, Kelly Grandmaison, co-founder of Impact Ventures International (IVI) and recently named among the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2025 Women of Influence in Finance, leans forward, her gaze intent.
“Most business owners are so consumed with running their companies day-to-day that they never see the cliff coming,” she says, tapping a folder containing exit valuation projections for a client.
This is not hyperbole. According to recent data, 75-80% of businesses that go to market never sell. “That’s the real tragedy—not that these businesses fail, but that they could have succeeded with the right preparation,” Grandmaison says. This unfortunate statistic is what the self-made entrepreneur aims to change as she stresses exit planning in her holistic business consulting.
The Invisible Crisis in Business Ownership
The reluctance to confront business succession is as old as entrepreneurship itself. Owners pour their energy into scaling, innovating, and weathering crises, but rarely pause to ask: “What happens when I’m ready to move on?” A 2024 survey by Wilmington Trust found that 58% of small business owners have no formal exit strategy.
This gap between perception and reality is growing more dangerous in today’s volatile economy. With baby boomers retiring in record numbers, businesses for sale are flooding the market. At the same time, changing regulations and tighter lending standards mean buyers are more selective than ever. The result: even strong companies can languish on the market for months, or never sell at all.
“Without proper exit planning, decades of work can evaporate in months,” Grandmaison stresses. “And we haven’t even touched on the personal side—the identity loss, the financial insecurity, the family dynamics.”
Why Exit Planning Matters Now More Than Ever
The urgency of exit planning is not just about market timing. It is about resilience. Due to the pandemic, businesses face heightened risks—supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and regulatory uncertainty. She emphasizes scenario modeling: “What happens if the owner gets sick, if the market crashes, if a key customer leaves?” For Kelly Grandmaison, owners who wait until a crisis hits to consider their exit options negotiate from a position of weakness.
Grandmaison grounds her perspective in the belief that exit planning should start years before an owner is ready to sell. She argues, “You can spend a lifetime building something great. But if you don’t plan for your exit, you risk losing everything you’ve worked for. Exit planning is the greatest investment you can make—not just for yourself, but for everyone who depends on your business.”
Inside the IVI Holistic Exit Method
At Impact Ventures International, exit planning is a holistic, multi-year process. It begins with a candid assessment: “What is the business really worth?” “What are its vulnerabilities?” “How dependent is it on the owner’s daily involvement?” From there, Kelly Grandmaison and her team work with clients to put the right systems in place—financial controls, documented processes, and a clear growth strategy.
“The mistake most owners make is thinking exit planning is just about maximizing a number on a piece of paper,” she argues. “In reality, it’s about creating optionality—the freedom to choose your timing, your successor, and your terms.”
The Two Approaches in Exit Readiness
Kelly Grandmaison’s outlook on exit planning revolves around two essential strategies: VentureMax360 and CEPA (Certified Exit Planning Advisor) Services. The team structures these strategy offerings around two distinct timeframes and methodologies to accommodate different business needs.
For instance, IVI specifically designed its flagship program, VentureMax360, for businesses planning to exit within a 12-18-month horizon. This accelerated technique focuses on quickly streamlining operations, identifying growth opportunities, and implementing strategic enhancements to maximize valuation before sale.
Grandmaison shares how the program has demonstrated impressive results, helping clients double or triple their valuations within just 24 months by creating a comprehensive roadmap that aligns every aspect of the business from accounting to marketing to succession planning.
Meanwhile, for business owners with longer-term exit aspirations, Grandmaison uses her CEPA credentials to implement what they call the Value Acceleration Methodology™. This more comprehensive slant integrates business, personal, and financial planning through three strategic stages: discover (assessing owner goals and current business value), prepare (developing strategies to enhance value and mitigate risks), and decide (determining optimal exit options and executing transition strategies).
According to Grandmaison, unlike the shorter-term VentureMax360 program, the CEPA methodology aims to increase business value by up to 10 times the current valuation, position clients to achieve the highest industry multiple, and provide extensive planning that encompasses not just the business itself but also the owner’s financial future and legacy goals.
Addressing Exit Plans Beyond Numbers
Drawing on behavioral economics and organizational psychology research, Kelly Grandmaison addresses personal factors that often derail exits. She stresses, “Traditional exit planning focuses almost exclusively on the business itself—financials, documentation, and oftentimes superficial growth initiatives,” she mentions. “But that’s just one dimension.”
Grandmaison also stresses the personal dimension in exit planning. Many exit plans overlook this area, but it addresses the emotional and identity issues of transitioning away from a business that may have defined an entrepreneur for decades. This holistic viewpoint has proven crucial in family businesses, where succession issues become intertwined with complex interpersonal dynamics.
Grandmaison believes that owners are not just selling an asset but transforming their entire life when considering a business exit. She mentions, “We’ve seen perfect deals collapse at the eleventh hour because no one addressed the founder’s fear of what comes next. This is why emotional readiness is as important as financial readiness in exit outcomes. This is what makes an exit plan complete.”
Beyond the Transaction: Legacy Planning
Many of Kelly Grandmaison’s clients do not measure a successful exit solely by the final number on the purchase agreement. Increasingly, business owners are concerned with their legacy—the impact their company will have after they have departed. For some, that means creating foundations with the proceeds. For others, it means structuring deals to protect employees or preserve company values.
This adaptability extends to the exit planning process itself. Rather than treating the exit strategy as a document, Grandmaison advocates for continuous reassessment as market conditions and personal circumstances change.
“An exit plan should be a living blueprint that evolves with your business and your life,” she emphasizes. “It’s not something you create once and file away—it’s something you revisit quarterly.”
For Kelly Grandmaison, who once had to reimagine her future during her battle with CRPS, helping business owners prepare for their next chapter is not just a profession—it is her calling grounded in personal experience.
She concludes, “When you’ve had to rebuild your life from uncertainty, you develop a certain clarity about what matters. What I want for every business owner is the freedom to choose their ending—and their beginning.”
