Post Exit Life Template (5 Steps)

Photo by Lanju Fotografie on Unsplash

When you’ve sold your business and you’re financially free from having to generate income to sustain your spending, you must navigate your day-to-day life differently.

We’ve been trained to attend school, get a job, save money, and retire at 65. This model breaks when you’re financially independent earlier than 65. What if you’re 40 or 30? How do you spend your time now?

When you hit your financial goals, you experience Arrival Fallacy. It is “the mistaken belief that achieving a goal will lead to lasting happiness.”

I’ve used the template below to help re-point me in the right direction.

This template is great for folks who are within the first few years after selling their business. It will help you create a sense of what you want to spend time on, and “no boundaries”. As in, if opportunities arise that don’t fall within these new lanes, it’s a “no”.

It’s best to print this out and write it on paper first, allowing yourself to wonder. Revisit it every few months to see how you may want to change your responses.

The sole goal is to answer the question, “What’s the life you want?”

1. What makes you happy?

What does an ideal day look like for you that leaves you feeling relaxed, present, and excited for more?

When would you wake up, what would you do, and how would it make you feel?

You may not know yet, so feel free to stay high level

My Response

• 6:30am - Wake up

• 7:30am - Surf or gym

• 9am - Dog walk

• 9:30am - I feel most productive in the morning so complete important tasks (family tasks, house issues, email, finances, etc)

• 11:30am - Dog walk

• 12pm - Lunch

• 1pm - Read or other projects

• 4pm - Wife is home from work

• 6pm - Dinner

• 7pm - Family walk outside or unwind

2. What are the core principles you want to live by?

These are guardrails to help you make future decisions. They begin the create the things you want to dive deeper in, and other items to say “no” to.

Begin to question your responses. Ask “why” “how much?” and “when?” a lot. This helps you understand the specific responses and reasons behind your responses.

My Response

I want to be more present with my wife, family, and friends daily.

• Why? I haven’t been as present as possible, creating conflict in my marriage.

• Why? I want to focus less on what’s next, and more on enjoy what I have now.

• Why? I want to enjoy the time I have with my parents now vs always be on my phone or laptop. One present hour, is better than four hours sitting nearby but not engaged.

I want to improve my skill sets regarding hobbies and a future business.

• Why? I feel if I’m improving, I’m not stagnant and it creates a challenge for me

• Why? Helps create excitement when I feel I’m improving at something. The challenge is time balance with family life.

• Why? I enjoy reading business and self-improvement books.

Create a healthy lifestyle via marriage, food, and fitness.

• Why? It’s important to me to be in a 60/40 marriage. Continue to keep things fresh and surprising.

  • Why? Relationships can get stale over time if I don’t continually add value.

  • Why? Quality time makes her and I happy

  • How? Mentally be in a state of dating long-term. Experience new things together (bike rides, restaurants, locations, games)

    • Use social media less. Why? Instagram/X are very addicting with little to no value-add.

    • Use Do Not Disturb more. Why? Notifications are very addicting to check.

• Why fitness? I’ve seen people 60yrs+ who are virtually immobile. Sad way to live out your life and don’t want to be in that state.

  • How? Exercise 5x+ a week (run, surf, strength training). Maintain good cardio and strength exercises to be mobile for longer.

• Why food? US food quality isn’t great and eating more unprocessed foods make me feel better.

  • Why? Via Peter Attia’s practices, healthy eating helps reduce the 4 iceberg health issues (cancer, diabetes, dementia, heart disease)

  • How? Increase protein to 130g+ a day to be full and not crave snacks. Don’t eat til filling stuffed, 80% is perfect. Swap natural foods in for unprocessed options.

Keep life simple. Be very careful with adding possessions and more “weight” to our lives.

• Why? More things means more upkeep and less flexibility. We value flexibility.

• Why not? Buying certain things does feel good. Maybe it’s more of being particular. Can items over $1,000 have a “pause time”, wait one week before pulling the trigger?

• Why? It’s easy to say “yes” to opportunities, but these may add weight overtime. Ideally saying “no” more helps me with this core principle.

• How?

  • Keep finances/investments simplified. There is no need to add additional risk, you can be in conservation mode. Avoid the feeling of investment FOMO and stick to the plan.

  • Allow myself to not worry about illiquid investments. Losing money feels worse at this stage than the joy of additional gains. I don’t want to squander away such a powerful/lucky opportunity.

Spend time carefully. Spend time on things I’m passionate about or get positive energy after I complete them.

• Why?

  • It’s easy to say “yes” to meetings, coffee, consulting arrangements, etc.

  • Because I shouldn’t feel obligated to anything. It’s easy for me to have momentum and say “yes” to calls or meetings I’d rather not attend.

  • You always regret being involved, stop repeating the madness.

  • I don’t want to work 70hrs+ per week again

    • Or do I get naturally obsessed? Just don’t conflict with family is the goal.

    • Why? I end up getting an unhealthy addiction (reduced sleep, activity, stress, takes away from marriage).

  • ⁃ Why unhealthy? I sacrifice everything possible for the business to improve, sell, support, and grow

• How?

  • It’s okay to say “no”. The other person will understand respect your decision.

  • Think for a few minutes if this is something I’m excited about or if I’m just being nice.

  • Let myself build projects without expectations that can limit starting things. Treat the first success as luck.

    • Why? The fun gets sucked out when you think too much about future planning projects.

3. What are your financial goals?

Think about how you want to generate your income. Should that be actively or passively created?

What about spending? What do you want to spend and can that be covered in your new life?

Lastly, how will your portfolio be managed, and how much time do you want to spend managing it?

My Response

• Build and sell a software company for $100m

  • Why? This would beel like a powerful achievement and also give the ability to have higher annual spend through the 4% rule.

    • How? Grow a company to $20m ARR profitably could create a $100m valuation from a 5x multiple.

    • Why $100m? Why not $50m or $10m? $100m feels like a large achievement.

      • Why? Is this ego or a financial need?

      • Would your life be much different after sacrificing 10 years on this? No

      • What are you looking to have? Nothing

  • In conclusion, additional money plus violating family terms of not overworking isn’t the right direction. I’m striking this point.

• Be able to wake up every day and spend time doing things that get me excited. Not have to worry about working full-time to cover expenses.

  • Why? Financial flexibility feels like the crown jewel. Maintaining a reasonable spend gives long-term flexibility.

  • Why? Because we enjoy the freedom to plan our day with things that excite us vs what we have to.

• Work on an income-generating software product while balancing personal life/passions.

  • Why? I enjoy working on businesses that can help people and also generate income as a reward.

  • Is this the income-generating ego peaking through? A little. But it feels good to have active income vs passive.

    • Could the income generated by limited? I don’t think it’s limiting the income, but it's limiting the time spent on generating income.

• Live within our annual spending means.

  1. Why? I want to never need a job again, only if I want one.

  2. How? Have discipline on larger spending items. It isn’t the smaller day-to-day expenses, it’s the larger, one-off that through a budget off.

• Keep our portfolio allocation simple. 60% equities, 40% fixed income.

  • Why?

    • I don’t want to worry about investments that I don’t understand or worry about getting cash returned. This goes back to, “keep life simple.”

    • It creates considerable upside while generating tax-advantaged income for us to life on.

    • I want to reduce mental cycles around investments and less worry about money.

  • How? Utilize a financial advisor to manage the fixed income side and advice when needed.

• Be thankful for what I have; recognize what I don't have is “envy” and move on.

  1. Why? It’s easy to continue wanting more, which feels like a never-ending quest.

  2. Why, you could buy it anyway? I’d rather not continue acquiring things to maintain, especially if they don’t give me long-term joy.

• Don’t work 70hrs/wk or a crazy schedule again. Or do I get naturally obsessed? Just don’t let it conflict with family time.

  • Why? Ended up getting unhealthy (sleep, activity, stress, takes away from marriage)

  • Why unhealthy? I sacrifice everything possible for the business to improve, sell, support, and grow

4. What are your personal and family goals?

Separate from work, what are the goals you want to accomplish personally? How do you see yourself in a year?

How do you see your family going forward and what does life look like in regards to family?

My Response

• To continue having empathy and put in proactive effort into our marriage

  • Why?

    • Important to me to maintain our relationship and allow it to thrive

  • How?

    • My wife’s love languages are quality time together & gift giving. Excel there.

    • Plan 2x a week unique experiences together. (ex. bike riding, new coffee shop, tennis, weekend trip etc) to continue keeping things fresh.

    • Reduce phone usage at night and weekends. Utilize Do Not Disturb.

• Continue to improve surfing

  1. Why? I truly enjoy spending time in the water and always leave with positivity.

  2. How? Utilize weekly coaching.

• Lift weights 3x/week and run 1x/week

  • Why? Following Peter Attia’s optimal health program, I want to be mobile for as long as possible.

• Eat healthier through 130g+ of protein a day, reduce processed foods.

  • Why? Crappy foods will come back later in life to increase chances of heart disease and cancer.

• As we live further from family, fly to see them every 1-2mo

  • Why? Our parents won’t be around forever and we want to create memories with them to not have reg’t have regrets later about not spending enough time together.

• Annual trip with college friends

  • Why? It’s easy for us all to get stuck in our routines but we always have the fullest laughs and create great stories when we’re together.

5. What’s on your lifetime wishlist?

What are the things you’ve always wanted to buy or experience? Don’t let inhibitions hold you back. List as many material and non-material things as you can think of.

How much would those items cost?

No need to justify these items with a “Why”.

This is a fun exercise to understand what you may want to invest in the future.

My Response

• Material

  • Ocean view from our house or condo

  • My wife would like 1 acre of land

  • ✅ Buy a van and surf up and down the coast

• Non-material

  • See big wave surfing in Nazare

  • Visit Thailand

  • Visit Japan

  • Visit Chile

  • Surf in Indonesia

  • ✅ Get PADI certified

  • Get sailing certified

  • Try mountain biking

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Keep your responses saved somewhere so you can look at them again in the future. It’s exciting to start having a guidebook of where to and not to spend your time.

Thank you to Michael Richman for helping craft this exercise.