Exit Planning
Exit Preparation
Also known as: Exit readiness, sale preparation, pre-sale planning
The 12-to-36-month process of resolving risks, cleaning financials, removing founder dependency, and strengthening the business so it survives due diligence with fewer deductions.
WHY IT MATTERS
Exit preparation is the work that happens 12–36 months before a founder goes to market. It’s the process of identifying and resolving the risks that would otherwise show up as deductions during due diligence: cleaning the financials so they survive a quality of earnings review, cataloging and resolving change-of-control clauses in every contract, removing founder dependency from critical functions, and strengthening the management team so the business runs without the seller in the building. Most founders skip this step. They assume the business they’ve been running for 20 years will sell itself. Then diligence starts, and every unresolved risk becomes a dollar off the price. Exit preparation isn’t about making the business look good for a buyer. It’s about making the business actually be good — so the numbers, the contracts, the team, and the systems all tell the same story when a buyer starts pulling threads.