The Challenge: Doing the Work Without the Formal Process

Ryan Sullivan started Off the Beaten Path Financial as a traditional advisory practice built around investment management and financial planning. An engineer by training, he gravitated toward the industry he knew best and focused on business owners in architecture and engineering. He had built and run an engineering group inside another company, and he had been through that company being acquired himself.

Over time, his work moved closer to the business itself. He found that for his owner clients, the company was the thing they cared about most, so he did more business planning and value improvement work to help them grow it. Looking back, he was already doing much of what exit planning involves, without naming it that way.

“I realized I was basically doing exit planning, just without the valuation piece. As far as value improvement, that is what I was already doing.”

What he had never done was run the formal exit planning process, including a business valuation. He understood the concepts from reading, but he had never been trained in the process or delivered it for a client, and he had set his own pricing with little outside reference. He weighed a formal certification, then chose the Launch Program because it was built around the question he cared about most: how to actually offer and sell exit planning in his own practice. He set up Off the Beaten Path Advisors to handle the exit planning work, operating in tandem with Off the Beaten Path Financial.

“The Launch Program was more geared toward how do I actually get and sell exit planning services, which is really what I cared about.”

— Ryan Sullivan, Founder, Off the Beaten Path Advisors

The Program: A Practical Path, Built Around Coaching

The Launch Program runs over eight weeks at about an hour a week, alternating self-paced Maus Academy courses with live coaching sessions. That structure let Ryan keep running his practice while he worked through the material, and the back-and-forth rhythm was the part he valued most.

“I liked the format. One week of self-study with the videos and the course, then one week meeting with my coach to talk through it. I really liked that back and forth, the cadence and the balance of it.”

He credited the coaching for the outside perspective it brought to the exercises.

“My coach was very, very good. She had a lot of knowledge and had worked with a lot of similar advisors, so she could bring that perspective, help me work through the exercises, and answer my questions.”

One idea stayed with him: the way the program frames exit planning for financial advisors. If most of a client’s net worth is locked in an illiquid business, an advisor is not fully managing that client’s risk without addressing the exit.

“I thought that was an interesting framing. I never thought about it that way, and it made me think a little differently. As a way to position my services to a client, I think it works.”

The Engagement: Confidence to Take On His First Valuations

The program’s value showed up on a live deal. Ryan had an existing client who was in talks to merge with two other firms, guided until then by an outside consultant. The client kept pushing for Ryan to get involved, and Ryan ended up running a business valuation for all three firms, the first valuations he had ever done. The timing lined up with the program, which gave him the confidence to step into work he had not done before.

“The program gave me the confidence to feel good about pitching that, and then actually doing it. Then it was bang, bang, bang, three valuations.”

— Ryan Sullivan, Founder, Off the Beaten Path Advisors

The program also gave him a reference point he had never had on pricing and scope. He had set his fees in isolation, and seeing typical ranges and service levels helped him benchmark where he stood.

“I had come up with my pricing in isolation. Getting that feedback on what is typical for this level of service was really helpful for benchmarking where I was.”

— Ryan Sullivan, Founder, Off the Beaten Path Advisors

The Outcome: A New Tier, and an Engagement That Paid for Itself

The merger engagement alone more than covered the cost of the program. More lasting, Ryan came away with the confidence to talk about exit planning specifically, not just general advisory, and he is now building it into how he packages his work.

“I did not change a ton from what I was doing before, but I have way more confidence in it, and I can speak to the exit planning side, not just general advisory.”

He is turning that into a distinct tier of service for new engagements.

“It will be an option for new engagements. Here is my regular strategic advisory, and here is strategic advisory plus exit planning on top of it. The whole engagement is more focused on increasing the value of the business.”

Asked whether it was worth the time, he did not hesitate.

“I landed that engagement, so it more than paid for itself.”

— Ryan Sullivan, Founder, Off the Beaten Path Advisors

How the Launch Program Made It Work

Two things stood out to Ryan about how the program was built:

• A self-study and coaching cadence. Alternating a week of on-demand Academy courses with a week of live coaching kept the time commitment light and gave him someone to work through each step with.
• Practical benchmarks and positioning. Instead of staying conceptual, the program gave him real reference points on pricing and service levels, and a way to frame exit planning that felt natural in a client conversation.

More than any single lesson, Ryan points to the confidence the program gave him to formally offer a service he was already halfway delivering.

“If adding exit planning is something you have considered, the Launch Program is a great way to get the knowledge and the confidence to actually offer it.”

— Ryan Sullivan, Founder, Off the Beaten Path Advisors

He sums it up simply.

“The Launch Program helps you figure out how to offer exit planning through your advisory business.”

About the Launch Program

The Maus Launch Program is an eight-week program that helps financial advisors, accountants, and M&A professionals add exit planning to their practices. It pairs self-paced Maus Academy courses with live coaching from a CEPA-certified coach, and it is built around the three things an advisor needs to launch the service: a validated offer to sell, a strategy for reaching the right clients, and a delivery system for running engagements on the Maus platform. Advisors move through it in about an hour a week, so they can keep serving clients while they build the new capability. Learn more at maus.com.