Sell-Side: Exit Planning & Selling Your Company

What we do

Three ways in, depending on where you are.

Most owners come to us two to five years out, wanting to know where they stand. Some arrive with an offer already in hand. Both are fine — the work just starts in a different place.

01

Exit Planning

The strategy. Where the business stands, what it's worth, what's holding that number down, and the sequence to fix it.

Personal, financial and business readiness assessment
Range of value and your three gaps, quantified
Prioritized action plan run in 90-day sprints
Business, personal and financial goals aligned

02

Sell-Side Advisory

Running the transaction end to end, so you can keep running the company while it happens.

Positioning and marketing materials
Buyer identification and outreach
Offer analysis, terms, and net proceeds
Diligence management through close

03

Valuation & Benchmarking

Not a single number — a defensible range, and the specific reasons you sit where you sit inside it.

Recast earnings: the real number, not the tax number
Industry multiple range and your position in it
Attractiveness and readiness scoring
Add-back discipline that survives diligence

The measurements

Three numbers every owner should know. Most know none of them.

Everything starts by putting real figures on these three, because you cannot close a gap you have never measured.

The Wealth Gap

The distance between the wealth you'll need to fund the life you have in mind and what you're worth today without the company in the picture. For most owners it's far too wide to save across. It closes by unlocking what's trapped in the business — which is exactly why the value of the company belongs inside your financial plan rather than beside it.

The Profit Gap

The distance between what you earn on your revenue and what a top operator in your industry earns on the same revenue. It's money leaving the business every year, it compounds quietly, and unlike the other two you can start closing it this quarter.

The Value Gap

The distance between what the company is worth today and what it would be worth run at best-in-class. The two effects multiply rather than add, which is why two companies with identical revenue routinely sell for two and three times different amounts.

More on what exit planning involves → · See the timeline, start to finish →

From the other side of the table

Two things that quietly decide the outcome.

The number in your head is the most common reason deals die

Asked what kills transactions, 95% of M&A professionals named the same thing: the owner's overestimation of what the business is worth. Not financing. Not a diligence surprise. Not personalities. The gap between the number the owner had decided on and the number the market was willing to pay.

I have been on the buying side of that conversation more times than I can count, and it is a miserable one for everybody. By the time it happens the owner has usually spent months and real money getting there, and there is no version of the meeting that ends well. The fix is unglamorous and it is early: get a defensible range of value from someone with no incentive to flatter it, then either close the distance or reset the expectation while there is still time to do either.

A business that can't run without you is worth less than one that can

Nearly a quarter of owners take fewer than two vacation days a year, and three quarters of those who do get away keep working through it. That usually gets described as commitment, and it usually is. A buyer reads it as something else entirely — if the company needs you in it every day, then part of what they are buying is you, and you are the one thing that is definitely leaving at closing.

So it comes out of the price, or out of the structure as an earnout that keeps you there for three more years. Owner dependence is the most expensive habit in the lower middle market. It is also one of the most fixable, given a couple of years and a deliberate plan to build the second layer of management you have been meaning to build anyway.

Sources: Alliance of Mergers & Acquisitions Advisors, cited in Exit Planning Institute, From Successful to Significant; owner working-hours figures from Forbes and the Exit Planning Institute, 5-4-3-2-1: Five Things Every Business Owner Must Know About Exit Planning.

How it works

Four steps, in the order that protects the number.

Nothing here commits you to selling. Most of the value shows up in steps two and three, whether or not you ever go to market.

STEP ONE

Intro call

Thirty minutes, no cost. What you've built, what you want, and roughly what the timeline looks like. You leave with a straight answer about whether we can help.

STEP TWO

Assess

A fixed-fee assessment across three fronts — you, your finances, and the business — tied to a real range of value. You end up holding your real earnings number, your range, your three gaps, and the specific factors pinning the multiple down.

STEP THREE

Build

The plan, executed in 90-day sprints: no more than five business priorities and five personal ones at a time. Owner dependence, customer concentration, reporting quality, management depth. Quarters, not weeks.

STEP FOUR

Decide

Every quarter, the same two questions: keep growing, or shift to exiting? And when it's time — which option, inside or outside? Then we take it to market and run the process.

Is this you?

Owner-operated companies along the Front Range.

We work with a small number of clients at a time. The fit is usually clear inside one conversation.

$2M to $80M in revenue, profitable, owner-operated
Colorado and the Front Range first — selectively national
Commercial and home services, distribution, light manufacturing, B2B services
Two to five years from an exit, or already fielding inbound offers
Planning to transfer to family or management, and wanting it to survive the handoff
Or not planning to sell at all — and wanting a business that could

Not sure you're ready?

That's the normal starting point, and it's the cheapest problem to fix. A short conversation will tell you whether you're two years out or five, and what the gap actually is.

No pitch, no pressure. If the answer is "keep running it for now," you'll hear that.

Book an intro call

Questions

The ones owners actually ask.

When should I start?

Two to three years before you want to be out, at a minimum; done properly the work takes three to five. The things that raise a valuation — reducing customer concentration, getting yourself out of daily operations, clean financials, a management team that stays — take that long to fix and can't be faked in diligence. And roughly half of all exits are forced rather than chosen, triggered by death, disability, distress, divorce or partner disagreement. Preparation is the only defense against a timeline you don't control.

I'm not planning to sell. Why would I do this?

Because the work is identical either way. Everything that makes a company transferable — management that runs it without you, systems that survive turnover, customers contracted to the company rather than loyal to you personally — also makes it more profitable and less dependent on your presence. If you never sell, you've spent a few years building a business you can step back from. That isn't a consolation prize.

Isn't this just business consulting with a different name?

There's overlap, and the honest answer is that the difference is the endpoint. Consulting usually optimizes for this year's performance. Exit planning optimizes for transferable value, which means weighing everything against a buyer's eye and against your personal and financial plan at the same time. It also refuses to treat the three as separate: what the business needs, what you need financially, and what you'll do with yourself afterward have to line up, or the exit stalls at the last minute.

What does it cost?

The intro call is free. The assessment is a fixed fee, quoted up front, so you know the number before you commit. Ongoing advisory work is a monthly retainer, and sell-side engagements add a success fee at close. No hourly billing and no surprises.

I want to pass it to my kids.

Then preparation matters more, not less. About 40% of US family businesses make it into the second generation and 13% into the third — and the failures are rarely about affection. They're about a business that only worked because the founder was in it, a next generation nobody genuinely prepared, and money conversations no one had while they were still easy to have. An internal transfer also has to clear a bar an outside sale doesn't: the buyer can't wire cash, so the business itself has to fund the handoff. That takes years of planning.

Will you tell me not to sell?

If that's the answer, yes. Sometimes the business isn't ready, sometimes the market isn't, and sometimes the owner isn't — which is the most common one and the least discussed. Three quarters of owners report profound regret within a year of selling, and it usually traces back to having no plan for what came next. You'll get a straight read either way.

Is this confidential?

Entirely. Nothing is shared with anyone without your written approval, an NDA is in place before we get into your numbers, and buyer outreach happens on a no-name basis until you approve each party. Your employees, customers and competitors don't find out from us.

Do you replace my CPA or attorney?

No. You need both, and a transaction attorney specifically when it's time to paper a deal. Most owners have the pieces of an advisory team but not the team — nearly eight in ten have never formally assembled one. Our role is to run the process and coordinate the advisors so they're working from the same facts. You shouldn't be the one relaying messages between them.

I already have an offer. Is it too late?

No, and this is a good moment to get help. A single unsolicited offer is the weakest negotiating position there is, because the buyer knows there's no competition. There's usually still time to test the number against the market and to fix the terms that matter more than price — earnouts, escrow, working capital, and what you're on the hook for after closing.

For owners.