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I had a conversation last week with two financial advisors at a firm in the Midwest. Both are CEPAs. One has held the designation for nearly five years. The other just earned his about a month ago.
Within the first ten minutes, the senior advisor said something that stopped me cold. Not because it surprised me, because I’ve now heard some version of it from dozens of advisors in private conversations over the past three years.
He said: “We’ve tried several of the platforms out there. I couldn’t get into any of it. None of it felt intuitive for someone in my world. And most of it didn’t stick.”
Then came the thing that really matters: “I’ve been on this island trying to figure this out. And I’m a financial planner and wealth manager.”
An island. That’s the word he used.
If you’re a CEPA who is also a practicing financial advisor, I’d bet money that sentence hits close to home. You earned the designation because you care about your business owner clients. You went through the coursework. You understand the value acceleration framework. And then you got back to your desk and tried to figure out how to implement any of it inside a compliance-regulated advisory practice.
And what you found was friction. Everywhere.
The Implementation Gap
Here’s what I’ve learned from three years of conversations with financial advisors who hold the CEPA designation: the collaboration model at the heart of exit planning is one of its greatest strengths and one of the most underestimated implementation challenges successful financial advisors face.
The theory is beautiful. Build a team of professionals around the business owner (value advisors, M&A attorneys, CPAs, EOS implementers, business consultants) and quarterback the process. You’re the trusted advisor. You coordinate. Everyone does their part. The client gets comprehensive exit planning. You deepen the relationship and protect the AUM.
The reality is different.
You introduce an outside value advisor to your client. That person may not operate under the same regulatory framework you do. They have their own fee structure, their own timeline, their own communication style, and their own relationship with your client.
And now you’re managing all of that. For free, usually. Or worse, you’re spending hours cleaning up problems you didn’t create and managing anxiety you didn’t sign up for.
I call this the Collaboration Tax. It’s the real cost of working with outside professionals who don’t understand your world, your regulatory environment, or your relationship with your client.
And almost nobody is talking about it publicly.
What the Collaboration Tax Actually Costs You
Let me be specific, because I think advisors underestimate how expensive this really is.
There’s the direct cost: the hours you spend vetting outside professionals, briefing them on the client situation, managing their communications, and fixing things when they go sideways. If you’ve ever had an outside consultant send an email to your client that made you wince, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
There’s the opportunity cost: the time you spend managing collaboration is time you’re not spending on revenue-generating activity. Every hour you spend as a project manager for someone else’s engagement is an hour you’re not deepening relationships with your other clients.
There’s the compliance cost: how do you disclose what an outside consultant is getting paid when the engagement runs completely outside your firm? How do you supervise the advice being given to your client when you have no contractual authority over the advisor giving it? If you’ve been a registered principal and I have, these questions keep you up at night.
And then there’s the relationship cost, which is the one that really matters. Every outside professional you introduce to your client is a potential point of friction in the sales process. Every handoff is a moment where trust can erode instead of deepening. Every new personality is a variable you can’t control.
I’ve personally spent significant time and resources over the past three years working through these challenges with my financial advisory clients. And I know I’m not the only one who’s felt the weight of this tax.
The Question Nobody Is Asking
Here’s what I keep thinking about. The CEPA community rightly emphasizes building teams, collaboration, and the exit planning ecosystem. That framework is sound.
But I think there’s a question worth asking: what if the way we’re executing the collaboration model is creating some of the friction?
What if the reason so many financial advisors earn their CEPA and then struggle to implement isn’t a knowledge problem or a motivation problem, but a practical challenge in how the collaboration gets executed inside a compliance-regulated firm?
What if the answer isn’t finding better outside professionals to collaborate with, but fundamentally rethinking where the expertise lives?
I’ve been working on this question for the past three years, ever since I first became a CEPA.
The current model may have a gap worth examining. And we think we’ve found a way to close it.
What I Can Tell You (and What I Can’t, Yet)
I’m not ready to lay out the full model publicly. I am still pressure testing it with a small number of advisory firms, and I want to make sure it works before I start writing about it as if it’s the answer to everything.
But I will tell you this much.
The approach we’re developing is built on a few premises that I think will resonate with anyone working inside a compliance-regulated environment.
First, the financial advisor is far more qualified to serve their business owner clients than they often give themselves credit for.
Second, the biggest source of friction in the exit planning process may not be where most people assume it is.
Third, there is a way to deliver value acceleration expertise to business owner clients that reduces the friction and strengthens your position as the trusted advisor.
How you can start thinking of a ‘new’ way to collaborate as a CEPA
What collaboration really works for you right now? I remember, from my time as an advisor and registered principal, working with some amazing wholesalers. What made them stand out from all the other people I worked with was their focus and understanding of what made my business work for me. They worked to augment and enhance my relationships with my clients and to increase the revenue of my firm and myself beyond what they personally sold.
Most importantly, because they were licensed, they understood how to reduce risk at a level unmatched by any other professionals I worked with. To borrow my own analogy from my ‘Can I Borrow Your Car? How Successful Financial Advisors Can Grow Their Business and Love Their Life” book: they were the safest drivers I had to deploy.
Because they were ‘inside’ my model and seamlessly helping…they were absolutely the best collaborators I worked with, and I suspect you have one or two of them in your memories or current network. That is my hint as to what makes our model so different and effective.
More to come. If this resonates, reply to this email and tell me about your experience with the Collaboration Tax. I read every response, and the conversations I’m having privately with advisors like you are shaping what I am building.
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