Exit & Succession Planning

In all likelihood, you are critical to the success of your business. Without you, there is no business. With a little luck and a lot of hard work, we can help you become an Inconsequential Owner. 

Having said that, perhaps a bit of explanation is in order. All owners understand (at some level anyway) that they will someday leave the businesses they have created. Let us assume for a moment that tomorrow you leave your business permanently. If you are an Inconsequential Owner, your exit will have no impact on the business, and that’s good for business value. Buyers pay for business value – not for the departing owner. If you constitute a significant part of your company’s value (aka a Consequential Owner), and you have left the scene, there will likely be a few buyers interested in their company, and those who are will likely pay significantly less than they would had you been an Inconsequential Owner.

Exit Planning is the process you can use to help transform you into an Inconsequential Owner – for your sake, for your family’s sake and the sake of your company. Your Exit Plan should answer this question: “What has to happen to your business by the time you leave it, to (1) enable you and your family to achieve financial security and (2) allow you to move forward with the rest of your life, secure in the knowledge that you have been a good steward of the business?”

For most owners, one of the first and most important things that “has to happen” after figuring out where they are (current business value) and where they want to go (their exit objectives) is to create and sustain business value.

When we talk about value in the context of Exit Planning, we divide the discussion into three areas: Building Value, Protecting Value, and Minimizing Income Taxes.