Exit planning, without the seminar

The first question is simple to ask and uncomfortable to answer: what would this business sell for right now, as it actually operates, to a real buyer using real financing? That is a Broker Opinion of Value, not a certified appraisal, and it is the honest starting point for every other decision in a plan. We explain how that number gets built on what is my business worth, and the local process is described on business valuation in San Antonio.

Owners sometimes resist getting this number early because they assume it commits them to selling soon. It does not. It gives you a fixed point to measure against instead of a feeling.

Once you have today's number, compare it against what you actually need the sale to produce — for retirement income, for debt payoff, for whatever comes next. The distance between those two figures is the real subject of exit planning. Some owners find there is no gap at all and are pleasantly surprised. Most find some distance to close, and a smaller number find a gap wide enough that the timeline needs to move.

Planning does not make a gap disappear. It tells you, while there is still time, what it will take to close it.

Not every improvement to a business moves the sale price, and the ones that do rarely move it quickly. Reducing owner dependence — building a team that runs the business without you in the room — is usually the largest lever and the slowest, often twelve to twenty-four months of deliberate delegation. Cleaning up financial statements so that adjusted earnings are clear and defensible can move faster, sometimes within a single fiscal year. Reducing customer concentration by winning new accounts is valuable but slow and not always within an owner's control on a fixed timeline.

We lay out this work in sequence on preparing your business for sale and describe the specific factors that move a multiple on what increases business value. The honest version of exit planning is choosing two or three of these levers that fit your actual timeline, not attempting all of them at once.

Exit planning works best as a coordinated effort among a small group, each handling the part they are qualified for. Your CPA understands your tax position and should be involved from the beginning, particularly on how a sale is structured and what it will mean at tax time — that is not something we advise on, and we will always point you back to your CPA for it. An attorney handles the purchase agreement and any entity or contract issues specific to your business. A financial advisor can tell you whether the proceeds, invested a certain way, will actually support the retirement or next chapter you have in mind. We handle the market side: valuation, positioning, buyer outreach, and negotiation.

None of these roles substitutes for another. An attorney is not positioned to tell you what the market will pay, and we are not positioned to give tax or legal advice — we will say so plainly whenever a question crosses into that territory.

The order of operations affects the outcome. Getting a realistic Opinion of Value before making improvements tells you where to spend your limited time. Bringing in your CPA before you talk to a broker about structure, rather than after a buyer has already made an offer, gives them room to plan rather than react. Deciding on a rough timeline before you begin reducing your role in the business tells you how aggressively to delegate.

Done out of order, these same steps still work, just less efficiently — a valuation done after a buyer conversation has already started, a tax conversation started after terms are agreed. Exit planning, at its most useful, is simply doing the steps you would do anyway, in an order that gives you options instead of taking them away.