Pirate or Steward: What Your Exit Plan Says About Your Values

“Peter … you’ve become a pirate.”

I think about this scene from the 1991 movie Hook way more than I should. It’s when elderly Wendy meets a grown-up Peter Pan, who is suited up and very proud of his important work. Peter had become, by all definitions, a corporate plunderer. And Wendy is naming a truth he can’t see about himself. 

Wendy’s statement captures something important about leadership: what we do eventually tells the truth about what we value, whether we intend it to or not. Which brings me to my (perhaps unpopular) belief: 

A firm’s succession plan says more about its values than any mission statement, business plan, or award ever could.

Values can be easy to write. Succession plans are often harder to fake.

As leaders, we can say we’re people-first. That we’re long-term oriented. Or that we care about stewardship and culture, sustainable business practices, and meaningful change, not just profits.

But eventually, every leader has to answer one important question: Who should benefit from what I’ve built when I’m no longer in charge?

That answer, quietly embedded in contracts and deal terms, is your real values statement.

The Allure of a Big Exit

I had my own Peter Pan moment.

As the CEO of Abacus Wealth Partners, a California-based B Corp, I had a responsibility to explore all options on the table. When the opportunity came to learn about selling a minority stake in Abacus, I took the meetings. 

Consultants promised big numbers — numbers that would let me fully retire at the age of 39. The pitch was polished. The projections were compelling.

So, I started asking questions.

I asked about the upside and downside. I dug into who actually benefited from these deals. And the more I probed, the more the answer became uncomfortably clear: the people who won were the largest owners on their way out.

I kept thinking: Who is left holding the bag after all these deals go through? How does this serve our clients? And just as important, how does this serve our team?

We at Abacus have spent 20 years building a company that models the type of world we’d like to live in, one that demonstrates it’s possible to prosper financially while also living a more fulfilling and purposeful life. If we sold a stake in our company, we couldn’t guarantee new owners would uphold those same values.

Could I honestly sit across from the people I’d spent all these years building trust with, those who I fought to protect during hard times, and tell them this was better for them? Better for our clients? Better for the business we’d built together?

I felt it in the pit of my stomach. We’d spent years at Abacus doubling down on our B Corp roots, on being purpose-driven, on building something that mattered beyond profit.

That’s when Wendy’s line hit me. Accepting a deal like that would turn me into a pirate.

Why Private Equity Often Signals a Succession Planning Failure

Whether your company is in financial services, manufacturing, retail, or something else, you’re likely also grappling with the idea of what’s next. Thinking about who will step up to lead when you’re gone. Or wondering who will carry the torch and remain dedicated to the same values that have led your company to where it is today.

For purpose-driven businesses, your exit plan matters even more. And if your exit plan involves selling to private equity, that’s a succession planning failure.

I don’t say that to be provocative. Private equity is very clear about what it optimizes for: time-bound returns, leverage, and exit. That’s not hidden. It is the model.

But in the world of purpose-driven models, the private equity model is the ultimate pirate ship. It pulls into your harbor not to invest in the local community or maintain the lighthouse, but to load the gold onto the deck and sail away with it. Maybe not immediately, but in the next five to seven years.

When a firm that claims to value people above all else hands control to capital whose job is to extract value on a fixed timeline, actions start speaking louder than words. Succession planning forces a choice most of us would rather blur: Is this firm something to be stewarded or something to be monetized?

The Difficult but Rewarding Path of Internal Succession

Internal succession can be harder. Employee ownership can be messier.

It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes patient, thoughtful education and internal communication. It can take a decade to do right. You’re working with people and emotions and money, and all of that gets complicated. People need to opt in, but they also need to understand what they’re opting into, and more importantly, what happens if they don’t.

You don’t get one big check. You don’t get a clean exit. The blueprint isn’t simple or clear.

Once again, you’re forced to answer uncomfortable questions. Do I actually trust the people who helped build this place? Am I willing to earn enough instead of maximizing? And do I believe in my firm’s values beyond my own tenure?

But the upside is so, so sweet.

You get something less flashy and far more revealing: alignment between what you say and what you do.

The founding generation of leaders at Abacus trusted me and the next generation with a vision of stewardship and shared prosperity. We crafted a succession plan by investing in people, not just extracting value.

That’s what it looks like to choose stewardship over plunder.

It’s Time to Take a Look in the Mirror 

A company’s succession plan is its values in action.

So, before you polish your next mission statement or redraft your core values, take a hard look at your succession plan.

Does it match who you say you are?

Or are you becoming a pirate?

Hook’s Peter Pan may have temporarily lost his way, but in the end he rediscovered who he truly was. And while he had sought big adventure, he finally realized that “to live … to live would be an awfully big adventure.”

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