What is Dental Exit Architecture?
Dental Exit Architecture is Tim McNeely's name for the plan that shows you what you will actually keep before you sell your practice. It ties together your tax picture, your entity, any rollover equity, your estate plan, and the cash left after closing. A broker or qualified appraiser values your practice. This is the plan around that number.
How does Dental Exit Architecture differ from a practice broker or a DSO deal?
A practice broker finds your buyer and runs the sale. A broker or qualified appraiser values your practice. A DSO deal is one buyer path, with its own price, equity, and terms. Dental Exit Architecture is the plan around all of that. It asks what you will keep after tax, entity structure, rollover equity, and your estate plan. Tim does not value your practice, and he does not replace your broker.
Who is Dental Exit Architecture for?
It is for you if you own your practice and a sale is in sight: a DSO offer, a private buyer, or an associate buy-in. You want one plan for the tax, the entity, any rollover equity, your estate plan, and what you keep after closing. Your CPA, your attorney, and your broker can each do excellent work and still be looking at separate pieces. This plan holds those pieces together.
What does Dental Exit Architecture cover?
It covers the decisions that change what you keep: tax on the sale, the entity your sale runs through, rollover equity if a buyer asks you to keep a stake, your estate plan, and the cash and obligations left after closing. It also keeps your CPA, your attorney, and your broker on one plan. Your CPA sets the tax specifics. Your broker or a qualified appraiser sets the value of your practice.
When should you start Dental Exit Architecture?
Start before a letter of intent locks the structure. Entity choices, tax timing, and your estate plan are hard to unwind once your deal is on paper. If you already have an offer, book your Exploratory Call before you sign.
How does Dental Exit Architecture work?
It starts with a complimentary 25-minute Exploratory Call, also called the Dental Exit Stress Test. It is the same call. You leave with a one-page written gap analysis showing where your biggest gaps are across the five areas of wealth management: investment consulting, wealth enhancement, wealth protection, wealth transfer, and charitable gifting. The call qualifies you for the wealth management process, which has five steps.
The path runs in this order: Dental Exit Stress Test (complimentary), then Wealth Architecture.
Dental Exit Stress Test (complimentary)
then
Wealth Architecture
1. Discovery Meeting: you find the structural gaps, tax exposure, and how ready you are to exit, across your whole financial picture.
2. Initial Findings Meeting: a first look at your wealth and your planning priorities.
3. Mutual Commitment Meeting: the investment strategy built for you and the roadmap for moving your accounts.
4. Implementation Meeting, the 45-day follow-up: delivery of your finished plan covering tax, transfer, protection, and charitable giving.
5. Regular Progress Meetings: ongoing review of how the plan is going and adjusting the strategy before problems come up.
Where does the CEG research fit?
Tim helped underwrite research from CEG Insights on what entrepreneurs need from their advisors and what they actually receive. The Advisory Gap page summarizes that research. Dental Exit Architecture is Tim's own name for the coordinated plan. It is not a CEG term, and it is not a finding published by CEG. Tim holds the CEPA designation from the Exit Planning Institute.
Where can you read more?
- What you will actually keep after selling your practice.
- Stress-test your exit plan before a letter of intent.
- DSO multiples in 2026, and who sets the value.
- When rollover equity in a DSO deal is taxed.
- How a DSO sale is taxed.
- The Exit Architecture framework.
- High-Value Exit, the book.
- The Advisory Gap research Tim helped underwrite.
- About Tim McNeely.
- Is Dental Exit Architecture Right for Your Practice?
- Tim McNeely's CEPA listing at the Exit Planning Institute.