What is the Number One Mistake When Exit Planning?

The number one mistake business owners make is waiting too long to begin the exit planning process. 

If you wait until the last minute to start exit planning then you might get less value out of your business than you would have otherwise. 

This could be because you didn't do proper tax planning and therefore the tax effects of the transaction are not favorable to you. 

Many times business owners don't think about selling their business until the opportunity is right in front of them. 

They're responding to an unsolicited offer from either a potential broker, an advisory firm, a customer, or even a competitor - somebody that reaches out and says, "Hey, are you interested in selling the business?" And they decide they are tired of running it and they just want to be done. 

Don't let that be you, here are two things that you can do right now to make sure your business is ready for sale:

1. Make sure your business can run without you there. 

If your business isn't prepared to run without you then it isn't ready to sell. 

You'll need to come up with a plan to determine what needs to be done in order for your business to continue to run smoothly after you are gone and put the initiatives in place to get it there.

2. Gain a realistic, true market understanding of your business' worth. 

Many times business owners think their business is worth more than it is, and they don't have a real sense of how the market would value their business. 

They can have an unrealistic view of what their business is worth, and then when we get to market and they spend a lot of time investing resources into getting the business ready for sale.

Then, they realize that they're not going to be able to achieve what they wanted to achieve, what they thought they would achieve with the sale. 

That's why it's important to know so they can plan accordingly. 

We talk about this concept in more detail in this short video.

As a business owner, you have a million other things to attend to but the number one mistake business owners make is waiting too long to begin the exit planning process, so don't make the same mistake so many others make by putting it off. 

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