The Deal Can Close While the Founder Remains Unprepared: Jerome Myers to Address the Transaction Illusion at EPI Greater New York

The Deal Can Close While the Founder Remains Unprepared: Jerome Myers to Address the Transaction Illusion at EPI Greater New York

The July 28 session will help advisors identify risks that can remain hidden when transaction readiness is mistaken for transition readiness.

Most exit-planning conversations begin with enterprise value, deal structure, tax strategy, or transaction readiness. Jerome Myers’s July 28 session for the Exit Planning Institute’s Greater New York Chapter begins with a different question: What is the founder expecting the transaction to solve?

Myers will present “The Transaction Illusion: How to Identify the Hidden Risks Founders Carry Into the Exit” on Tuesday, July 28, 2026, from 10:00 to 11:15 a.m. Eastern at McCarter & English, 250 West 55th Street, 13th Floor, in New York City.

The Transaction Illusion is the assumption that liquidity will automatically deliver the freedom, clarity, identity, fulfillment, or peace a founder has been pursuing through the business. A well-executed deal can change ownership and create wealth. It does not automatically answer the deeper questions the company may have been holding in place.

That distinction matters because transaction readiness and transition readiness can move on different timelines. The documents may be signed while the founder is still renegotiating daily structure, relationships, purpose, significance, and the role work will play next. When advisors treat the closing as the finish line, those unresolved risks do not disappear. They simply become harder to see until the founder is living inside them.

During the session, Myers will show advisors how to recognize early signs of the Founder’s Exit Paradox: the possibility that a founder can achieve the liquidity event they worked toward and still feel disoriented, uncertain, or unprepared for the life that follows. He will also demonstrate how the Exit Risk Assessment can surface gaps in personal readiness, emotional alignment, legacy vision, and post-exit structure before the owner reaches liquidity.

This is not an argument against the transaction. It is an argument for preparing the person with the same seriousness applied to the deal. As Myers wrote when announcing the session, “The best advisors are not just preparing owners for the transaction. They are helping them prepare for the transition.”

The Greater New York Chapter event is designed for exit advisors and other professionals who serve business owners. Attendees will receive one Value Acceleration Knowledge Hour. Registration is available through the Exit Planning Institute event page.

Founders and advisors who want to examine the risks that may be forming before a transaction can begin with the Exit Risk Assessment at exittoexcellence.com/era.

Event detailsFid

Session The Transaction Illusion: How to Identify the Hidden Risks Founders Carry Into the Exit

Presenter Jerome Myers, MBA, CEPA

Date and time Tuesday, July 28, 2026 • 10:00–11:15 a.m. Eastern

Location McCarter & English • 250 West 55th Street, 13th Floor • New York, NY

Event fee $35

Knowledge hours 1 Value Acceleration Knowledge Hour

Registration: Exit Planning Institute event page

About Jerome Myers

Jerome Myers, MBA, CEPA, is a business builder, private equity investor, exit strategist, and founder of Exit to Excellence and the Founder Observatory. He built a Fortune 550 division from $0 to $20 million in revenue and 175 employees, then led private equity acquisitions, recapitalizations, and exits—including a 4X equity multiple and a recapitalization returning 70% of investor capital. He created the Founder’s Exit Paradox and Exit Expedition™ frameworks and serves on the Exit Planning Institute faculty and the Executive Advisory Council for the Willie A. Deese College of Business and Economics at North Carolina A&T State University.

About the Founder Observatory

The Founder Observatory is the research and intelligence arm of Exit to Excellence. It examines the business, financial, personal, and identity risks conventional transaction planning often leaves unmeasured and converts founder evidence into research, frameworks, commentary, and practical tools for founders and the professionals who serve them.