In this paper, we bridge the entrepreneurship and family business literatures and argue that exit is a dynamic process, which is driven by the owner-manager’s perception of exit. Inspired by construal level theory, a psychological construct accounting for the connection between perceptions and actions, we develop a typology of four exit perceptions. We argue that each of these perceptions facilitate and hinder particular owner-manager actions, which shape the exit process. The typology is applicable in research as a framework to study and understand the exit process and in practice as a tool to work strategically with exit planning.