Exit Planning Services: Prepare Your Business for Sale on Your Terms
Exit Planning
One year of planning for every decade you've been in business.
Selling your business is a crowning achievement. It's also guaranteed to be gut-wrenching, and the owners who come out well are the ones who started early. Our exit planning services are built for the 12–36 months before a deal: the window when the numbers can still be changed, the value drivers can still be fixed, and you're negotiating from preparation instead of from surprise.
We're not brokers. We don't list your business. We sit on your side of the table, set the target, and get the company ready to hit it, so when the offers come (and once word gets out, they come), you know exactly what the business is worth and why.
1. Set the Target Valuation
Before “what’s it worth?” comes “what does it need to be worth?” We calculate the price your business must sell for to fully fund the life you want after it, the Target Valuation, and compare it to today’s number. That gap sets the timeline and the work. Sometimes it’s a year. Sometimes the honest answer is “sell now.”
2. Fix the value drivers a buyer prices
Revenue and profit get you in the room. What earns a premium is a handful of variables: gross margin and pricing power, how dependent the business is on you, recurring or contracted revenue, working capital discipline, management depth, customer concentration. We identify which ones move the price for your business and build a plan to move them.
3. Build the financial track record
Buyers expect due-diligence-ready financials: a clean multiyear snapshot with the story already told. We tighten the books to M&A and banking standards (adjusting things like depreciation strategy, owner add-backs, and category structure), so the numbers are not just tidy but attractive, and warrant a premium.
4. Decide the path: family, employee, partner or outside buyer
Exit planning isn't only about a third-party sale. We model every path (transferring to the next generation, selling to a key employee, buying out or being bought out by a partner, a strategic acquirer, private equity) with the cash, tax and lifestyle consequences of each. Then you choose with the numbers in front of you.
5. Assemble and run the deal team
When it's time, we coordinate with your attorney, CPA and (if you want one) an M&A intermediary, defend the valuation during negotiation, and politely educate the buyer as needed. After the close, most of our clients stay with us on the personal side: investing the proceeds, funding the trusts, and building the life the exit was for.
Signs it's time to start
You've had the first unsolicited offer and didn't know whether it was good
The business would struggle for a month if you took a month off
You're 3–7 years from when you'd like to be done
Your kids or a key employee have started asking about “someday”
You've said “I used to love running this business, now it runs me”
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Our rule of thumb is one year for every decade in business, so a 30-year-old company should give itself three years. The minimum useful window is about twelve months; that's enough to clean the financials and fix one or two value drivers.
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A broker finds a buyer and earns a commission at close. Exit planning is the 1–3 years of work before that, making the business worth more and the owner ready. We do the second. If you need the first, we'll help you choose one and manage the relationship.
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That dependence is usually the biggest value driver to fix. We start by measuring it, then build the management depth and reporting that let the business run without you, which, incidentally, is also how you get a real vacation.
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Yes. Business valuation is the first step of every exit engagement. See our valuation page.
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See family business succession planning. Same process, more chairs at the table, and we're the non-family voice in the room.
I knew I’d have to get out eventually. I also knew we’d gotten to the point where continuing to grow the business would require a greater investment of time and capital than I was willing to invest at my age. It just felt like time.”
Henry, printing company owner. Valuation hit target within a year; sold to a private equity group at a premium to comparable sales.
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