Sessions Overview

The Sunrise Table Talk will take place on Tuesday morning. Attendees can sign up for special topics featured in these Table Talks and collaboratively discuss these topics in a small group setting.

Aaron Stremick with REAG
Title: The Second Bite of the Apple: How Rollover Equity Creates Winning Outcomes for Business Owners

Session Description: Rollover equity is an essential component of lower middle market deals — yet many advisors struggle to explain its strategic value to business owners.

In this session, we'll explore how rollover equity reduces risk for buyers (leading to higher valuations), creates a powerful "second bite of the apple" for sellers through EBITDA growth and multiple expansion, and often allows owners to rediscover what they love about their business by shedding administrative burdens.

We'll discuss how to identify which clients are good candidates for rollover structures, the typical percentage ranges and tax considerations. An essential aspect of any exit is education, planning, and preparation. Waiting until it is time to sell is 1 to 5 years too late and will not maximize value.
Join us for a practical conversation about positioning rollover equity as a wealth-creation strategy rather than a compromise.

Amy Wirtz with Family & Business Success, LLC
Title: Legacy & Logic: Exploring and Navigating Your Own Family Succession
Session Description: More CEPAs than ever are bringing their family into their businesses. But how do we shift client perception from "the founder's child/niece/ grandchild" to "the future successor"? Join us to discuss strategies for professionalizing the transition and successfully onboarding the next generation into your advisory firm. We will discuss client and staff perceptions, professionalizing onboarding, and mitigating risks in the practice. Join us for an engaging conversation about a dynamic and exciting transition.

Vivek Sarin with Juvo Company, LLC
Title: Earning the Right to the Deal: How Trust-Based Owner Conversations Lead to Real Exit Readiness
Session Description: Most advisors want to help business owners achieve successful exits, yet many exit conversations stall not because of valuation, financial strategy, or deal structure, but because trust has not yet been earned. Business owners who have devoted decades to building their companies are often tired, anxious, and wary of pressure. They are not looking for urgency or salesmanship. They are looking for sincerity, listening, candor, empathy, and at the right moment, a trusted, experienced voice willing to challenge them to prepare well and finish strong. In this Sunrise Table Talk, CEPA and business owner Vivek Sarin explores how trust-based conversations become the gateway to real exit readiness and why skipping this step leads to avoidance, false starts, and poorly prepared exits. Drawing on his experience as a second-generation owner who exited his family business to launch another, and his current work guiding owners through value acceleration and M&A, Vivek shares how patient, owner-centric dialogue builds confidence over time, helps advisors distinguish readiness from curiosity, balances empathy with accountability, and positions advisors as long-term trusted partners who guide owners toward thoughtful preparation and stronger outcomes when they are truly ready to move forward.

Mark Russell with SES ESOP Strategies
Title: Unlocking the Power of ESOPs: A Smart Exit Strategy for Business Owners
Session Description: Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) offer a compelling and often overlooked exit strategy for business owners seeking liquidity, legacy preservation, and continued company success. At this session, we will discuss how ESOPs work, their tax advantages, and the strategic benefits they provide for both owners and employees. Whether your clients are planning retirement, succession, or just exploring their options, we can discuss real-world examples and whether an ESOP is the right path for your client’s business exit.

Laura Malone with Charitable Solutions, LLC
Title: From Fear to Advantage: Using Charitable Planning to Enhance Business ExitsSession Description: Charitable planning can be one of the most rewarding—and misunderstood—elements of an exit strategy. Owners can unlock significant tax and financial benefits—but it often comes with perceived risks and misconceptions that stall or derail great opportunities. In this interactive Sunrise Table Talk, we’ll explore the most common fears and unexpected twists that arise when integrating charitable strategies into exit planning.

Mark Osborne with Modern Revenue Strategies
Title: The Next Frontier for Value Accelerators: Quality of Revenue and the Rise of Enterprise Value Revenue Systems
Session Description: Marketing and sales systems are the next big opportunity for value accelerators to win more clients and deliver bigger exits. Financial and operational levers are already optimized. Today, buyers and investors increasingly focus on Quality of Earnings, and just as closely, the Quality of Revenue systems that deliver earnings.

Predictability, customer concentration, revenue retention & durability, acquisition efficiency, and founder dependence are often scrutinized just as heavily as financial statements during diligence. Weakness in these areas erodes enterprise value, delays transactions, and forces late-stage price concessions.

This session introduces Enterprise Value Revenue Systems: revenue architecture designed specifically to improve Quality of Revenue, reduce buyer risk, and strengthen transferability.

Fractional CFOs, CEPAs, and M&A Advisors are often the first to see these risks, yet most lack a structured way to address them without stepping into marketing or sales execution. This session shows how leading advisors are closing that gap by treating revenue as a system that must be designed to withstand diligence, not just produce growth. You will learn: the revenue system failures buyers flag during diligence, how advisors can bring in outsourced revenue specialists in the same way they bring in tax, legal, or other subject-matter experts, without owning execution, how Enterprise Value Revenue Systems integrate with valuation and exit planning frameworks

As Scott Snider put it, “This is the future.” Not as a trend, but as a requirement for businesses that want to protect enterprise value under scrutiny.

Chuck Mohler with Eagle Corporate Advisors
Title: Value Acceleration vs. Value Growth: How Advisors Build Teams That Drive Both
Session Description: This Sunrise Table Talk goes beyond theory and into the real world of orchestrating measurable increases in company value. While most CEPAs understand the importance of collaboration, few know how to do it. We’ll move past frameworks and dive into what it really takes. Although value acceleration is widely discussed, the path to actual value growth is often misunderstood. Join this interactive session to explore how wealth advisors can align with value growth advisors, clarify roles, and build a unified strategy to transform outcomes for owners.

Jason Cross with Redbrick LMD
Title: Client Selling or Sold a Business Generating Significant Capital Gains? Discover How Tax-Efficient Opportunity Zone Investing is Poised for a Resurgence in 2026 & Beyond
Session Description: With clients exiting businesses and markets near all-time highs, many advisors are rebalancing portfolios and considering harvesting capital gains amid the current volatility and uncertainty. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) highlighted the impact of over $100 billion of Opportunity Zone (OZ) private capital invested in communities across the country and made OZ a permanent part of the tax code. Come explore the benefits of Opportunity Zone investing today and after January 1, 2027, with a nationally recognized OZ fund manager. Redbrick LMD is an experienced, vertically integrated developer, owner, and asset manager of high-impact real estate in Washington, DC, and strategic defense-related projects located across the country. Working with advisors and their clients, alongside select Family Offices, Redbrick LMD has raised and deployed over half-billion dollars of OZ capital since 2019, delivering multiple projects and providing a tax solution for investors harvesting short and long-term capital gains. Many people believe the “opportunity” for Opportunity Zones is dead until January 1, 2027, either because… The tax benefits are currently minimal, or they should just wait until the new OZ benefits go into effect. Neither is true. In fact, the primary tax incentive of OZ today remains the same after the new legislation goes into effect in January 2027. Come separate fact from fiction and explore how Opportunity Zones may fit into exit planning for your clients.

Michael Brady with Vanilla
Title: The AUM Growth Formula: Valuation + Estate Planning
Session Description: Vanilla helps advisors move from valuation work into the estate planning strategies that drive successful exit outcomes. In this Sunrise Table Talk, Michael Brady, CEPA shares a real client story where a valuation engagement quickly evolved into complex gifting and succession decisions as a business owner prepared to transition the company to his two sons. Michael will show how Vanilla supports advisors through education and scenario modeling tools that make estate and legacy planning conversations easier to explain, easier for clients to understand, and easier to execute alongside attorneys and other professionals. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for using Vanilla to create clarity across planning strategies and build stronger multi-generational client relationships.

Mark Froehlich & Jodi Rosen with Vanguard Charitable
Title: The Third Lever in Exit Planning: Using Philanthropy as a Strategic Asset
Session Description: When philanthropy is treated as an afterthought, value is often left on the table. This session highlights one of the most underutilized and often overlooked levers in exit planning: strategic philanthropy. Learn how a Vanguard Charitable donor-advised fund can be thoughtfully deployed to manage risk, optimize outcomes, and support multi-generational planning. Attendees will gain practical, real-world scenarios demonstrating how philanthropy enhances rather than replaces traditional exit strategies. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain clarity, inspiration, and actionable strategies for your next chapter.

 Kaveh Gilanshah with The Capital ESOP Group – UBS Financial Services, Inc
Title:  Investing in the 1042 Rollover
Session Description: This session will help attendees understand the significant requirements that a business owner must fulfill before being able to take advantage of the tax deferral options offered by IRC Section 1042. We will review how an owner of a privately held business can sell a part or all of his or her business to an ESOP and consequently defer the recognition of long-term capital gains taxes from the sale.