Three moments, and the one you are in
You spend the year running the business. Then a moment arrives that has nothing to do with running it, and you have had no practice at it, because nobody gets practice at these. Pick the one that sounds like you.
You're working out what the next chapter looks like.
What a business earns and what a buyer will pay for it are two different numbers. The gap between them was built years earlier, in decisions that didn't feel like exit decisions at the time.
Two things, and they are the ones that cost the most. The first is that the business has to be able to run without you before anyone will pay properly for it, and that takes years to build rather than months. The second is that what you end up with personally is set by structure decided long before the sale, not by the price on the day. Owners tend to negotiate hard on the second number and never look at the first.
Succession planning
Whether it goes to family, to management, or to a buyer, and what each one asks of you.
Exit strategy and timing
When to start, and what has to be true before you do.
Valuations
What it is worth now, why, and which parts of that you can still change.
Deal management through to close
Running the process so you can keep running the business.
Where you are on the clock: Exit
Questions owners ask about exit
Three to five years if you want the choice of when. How much depends on you, how the group is structured, and how the numbers hold up under someone else's scrutiny, are the three things that set the price, and all of them take years rather than months to change.
How this usually starts
A conversation with no decision attached to it. Someone wants to know whether the idea they keep coming back to is worth doing something about, and what that would involve.
Start a conversation