One-Year-in-Advance Exit Playbook
Easily one of the most common questions we receive is this: How much is my business worth?
It’s a natural question. People want to know how much their baby will command when they take it out to market. In our opinion, however, a better question to ask yourself is this: What levers could I pull, which would raise my valuation range?
What actions would increase my odds of earning the highest potential offers?
In all the years that we have spent buying and selling companies, we find this question somehow goes chronically overlooked. A lot gets written about decks, and one’s rolodex, yet precious little attention is given to the more mundane but critical questions of preparation.
Yet in any exit process, a good, “acquirable” business is by far the best source of negotiating strength you can have. This is work you do way in advance of coming to market.
So with this in mind, today we share something very exciting, which we have spent many months putting together for business owners: The One-Year-in-Advance Exit Playbook.
Inside, we share the framework we use to help business owners prepare for an eventual sale. We walk you through the three factors we believe have the greatest influence on exit value: building a business that can thrive without you, maximizing sustainable earnings, and cleaning up operations, financial reporting, and documentation before due diligence begins.
If you’re thinking about an exit, and you’re hunting for one big checklist on your “prep” to get you started, this might be it.
Along the way, we draw on real transactions, practical examples, and the lessons we’ve learned helping owners buy, grow, and sell businesses.
We’ve embedded the full playbook below. We hope you find it useful. Let us know what you think.
