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Carry change
Carry change
Almost every exit involves some kind of earn-out, and almost nobody is ready for what that actually feels like. Not just the mechanics — the targets, the new owner, the investments you suppressed that are now queuing up. But the identity shift.
Structure disappears. Purpose changes. The thing that got you up every morning belongs to someone else now. You can see the finish line. But you're half in, half out, faking a smile and counting the days.
The best exits don't just end well. They start something right.
Those stepping back and those stepping up are rarely in sync.
Sellers want to protect what they built. New leaders want to make it their own. Both are right. Both are pulling in different directions. For the team watching it happen — and the clients who can feel it — the overlap is distracting and demoralising in equal measure.
Nobody wins when the handover drags. The sooner both sides find their rhythm, the better it is for everyone.
The deal gets all the attention. The transition gets all the problems.
When you end well, others can start right.
The earn-out looked achievable — it always does.
Then the reality sets in. The investments you suppressed to keep the numbers clean are queuing up. The new owners have different priorities. And the motivation that powered you through dries up fast. Most deals miss their final earn-out targets, not from under-performing, but through exhaustion and disengagement — sometimes it's even rigged that way.
Stepping up to lead a business you didn't build is hard. Doing it while being watched and judged by those who did is something else entirely.
The problems don't disappear when ownership changes. They just land on someone without the relationships, authority or confidence to deal with them the way the previous owner could. The first year sets the tone for everything that follows.
Bringing two businesses together is harder than buying one.
Duplicate teams, clashing processes, competing cultures, confused clients — none of it resolves itself. Integration is almost always treated as an operational side task rather than the strategic programme of work it actually is. Neglected, minimised and ignored. Nobody owns it. Everybody suffers.
The question isn't if your culture is transferable. It's whether it survived.
You assembled it slowly — through the work you chose, the people you hired, the standards you refused to drop. But transitions are brutal — integration overlaps, new faces and new priorities. When certainty is scarce and change is everywhere, culture is either the thing that binds people through it, or the first thing that fractures.
Futureproof your equity by supporting the next generation of leaders inheriting the opportunity and the obligation.
To help the business absorb the change, the engagement shifts towards more sustained support focussed on helping new leaders step up and boards find their rhythm.
£1,500 PQ
To help newly formed EOTs, I blend the lived experience from my own employee-ownership journey, with the context and objectivity of Different Tuesday's approach to succession-design, serving as your Independent Trustee Director.
£ POA
If the fit is right, I take on a small number of NED appointments where my unique perspective from buying, scaling and exiting can help those navigating significant succession changes, bridging the gap between those stepping down and those stepping up.
£2,500 PM
No formal appointment. Just an independent voice in your corner during the most complex period of any succession. Someone distant enough to see — and say — what others won't. Someone close enough to course-correct before small problems become expensive ones.
Selective, personal, and reserved for one ambitious individual per year to grow their creative impact and influence.
