The wire cleared, the number on the screen is bigger than anything you have ever managed, and suddenly everyone has a plan for it. You do not need a plan this week. You need to not break anything.
The fear is not that the money is gone. It is that you will be the one who had it and fumbled it. For years the business told you who you were: the person who built the thing, the one with the answers. The wire replaced that identity with a balance, and a balance does not know your name.
So you start measuring. The founder in your feed who sold for more. The friend who put his exit into one deal and posts about it every week. You are seeing winners, and you are not seeing anyone who ran the same play and went quiet. That is dread wearing a party hat, and nobody has ever been reasoned out of it with a valuation multiple.
Underneath it sits the real question, the one that catches most founders flat-footed: what do I actually do with it? You have never managed money at this size, and the people who want to manage it for you all seem to have arrived at once.
Before you take a single meeting, run your own math, free and with no email gate, so you argue with your own numbers instead of someone else’s pitch.
Enter what your life actually costs and see the Full FI number, where you never need to work again; if the wire already clears it, every decision from here is about design, not survival.
Drop in the proceeds, what you would spend each year, a return and an inflation rate, and watch year by year whether the money outlasts you or the other way around.
Run that same spending against four real historical bad starts, including the 2000 and 2008 crashes, and see which ones would have broken your plan at your withdrawal rate.
If the sale pushed your estate anywhere near the federal exemption, compare doing nothing, annual gifting, and an irrevocable trust side by side and see what actually lands with your heirs.
Four pages from the Field Manual, the back-of-book toolkit from Who’s Steering?, each one a rule you can run this week whether or not you feel calm.
Every exit story you hear right now is a numerator; this system makes you find the people who ran the same play and lost before you copy anyone.
The business set your number for you; this is where you write your own, as one monthly figure, and find out how much of the old one was performance.
Open the whole picture once, proceeds, taxes owed, what is actually yours, not to fix anything yet, just to replace the fog with a known number.
Write the rules for this money now, while nothing is on fire: how much stays in cash, what you will not buy, and how long you wait before any large move.
First we agree on what does nothing for a while. No product gets bought and no deal gets funded until the full picture (proceeds, taxes, what you owe, what you actually have) sits on one page.
A half day or a full day on what the money is for, then the pre-decisions: your spending number, your cash buffer, and the conditions under which you would ever concentrate again.
If you want the portfolio managed, it gets built around your life and your tax position, low cost and diversified, with the behavioral coaching that keeps you in it through the years that test it.
A half-day session is $750 and a full day is $1,500, there is no minimum, the full day is built for people facing a transition like an exit, and the fee is credited toward any later engagement.
If you are looking for someone to put the proceeds into a hot private deal, pick stocks, or promise a return, this is the wrong page and the wrong firm. The work here is deliberately slow for the first stretch, and some people find that frustrating.
Nothing fast. Park the proceeds somewhere boring, look at the full picture once (what you received, what you owe in taxes, what is actually yours), and write the rules for the money while you are calm. Post-sale portfolio strategy and the ‘what do I do with the money’ question are the part that catches most founders flat-footed, and the fix is a plan that predates the pressure.
Fee-only, meaning you pay directly and nobody else pays anything. Most people in this situation start with the Purpose Pit Stop: $750 for a half day or $1,500 for a full day, no minimum, credited toward a later engagement. Ongoing comprehensive planning is a $1,000 to $3,000 one-time setup plus a $150 to $500 monthly retainer with a 12-month minimum, and investment management is a percentage of assets starting at 1.00% a year and stepping down at higher levels, with a $500K minimum when combined with planning.
Core portfolios are low-cost, globally diversified ETFs built around your life, your horizon, and your tax position. There is also a separate rules-based options strategy, $1.1M minimum, details on request. It is not the default and it is not for everyone.
Run the calculators first; they are free and they do not ask for your email. If the numbers raise more questions than they answer, that is what the conversation is for.