Your ExitMap Blog gathers contributions from top exit planning professionals across the country that are indexed into four categories. They include select strategies for planning your exit, ideas for building your company’s value, transfer options you can choose from, or preparing to enjoy your post-exit lifestyle. This page shows the most recent posts from Your ExitMap Blog. If you are seeking a qualified exit planning professional, you can view a map of specialists here.

All articles are copyrighted by the authors, and reprinted here with permission. Each author’s contact information is available via a link at the end of the article.

Most Recent Your ExitMap Blog Articles

Most Recent Blog Articles

Exit Planning: Controlling Your Choices Many owners are reluctant to plan for their departure from the business. In some cases it’s because they are too comfortable with ambiguity (see my previous post.) For others it is because they fear losing control. They believe that setting a final date for their departure, even tentatively, starts a process that will take on a life of its own. The tag line of this column is “Control the most important financial event of your life.” Control is the key. Refusing to deal with the realities of an eventual transition from the business is surrendering control. Sooner or later, something will happen that requires a transfer of the ... Read more Ambiguity Kills Value Ambiguity kills value. That was a key point in a white paper from Orange Kiwi that I read over the holidays. Taken from the PhD thesis of Dr. Allie Taylor, the paper describes the psychological profile of  entrepreneurs, and their historical reluctance to begin an exit planning process. According to Dr. Taylor, entrepreneurs have five major behavioral traits; Risk Taking, Innovativeness, Need for Achievement, tolerance for Ambiguity and a locus for Control. This follows closely my description of the mind of an entrepreneur in Hunting in a Farmer’s World. In that book I discuss the traits of tenacious problem solving and the ability to navigate in the ... Read more Four Basics of Exit Planning 4: Professional Team Your professional team is the fourth component of exit planning preparation. We’ve already discussed valuation, distance to goal and classes of buyers. Taken together, these basics aren’t enough by themselves to execute an exit plan, but understanding the first three and assembling the fourth will go a long way to ensuring that any plan you develop is practical and achievable. Many clients say “No problem. I already have a lawyer and an accountant.” But your professional team should be able to offer more than just technical advice. Any competent CPA can tell you what the difference is between ordinary income tax and capital gains. Far ... Read more Four Basics of Exit Planning 3: Know Your Buyer Know your buyer? Your initial reaction to this title may be “How can I know my buyer? I haven’t even decided to sell yet!” Nonetheless, understanding the type of buyer that your company will attract is vital. More importantly, gaining that understanding long before you go to market will impact many decisions about how to run your business between now and when you start to actively market the company for sale. The classes of buyers are not interchangeable. I once worked with the owner of a subcontracting company. He told me “I want to find a strategic buyer. I know they pay higher multiples than anyone else.” That’s nice ... Read more Four Basics of Exit Planning 2: Distance to Goal Once you understand your company’s value, the next step in planning is to calculate your Distance to Goal. As the Cheshire Cat said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” “Any road” is not the way you want to approach the biggest financial event of a career. Distance to Goal calculations require an understanding of where you are now, where you want to wind up, and how long you need to get there. In both industry surveys and my own experience, the majority of business owners have (at best,) only a rough idea of the road they will ... Read more Four Basics of Exit Planning 1: Valuation There are four basics an owner should address before beginning any exit, succession, or transition plan. They are Valuation, Distance to Goal, Prospective Buyers, and Professional Team. First, my apologies for missing a tri-weekly post. Between trips to Denver for BEI’s National Exit Planning Conference, Dallas for a client, San Antonio for our own XPX Exit Planning Summit, Nashville for the national EPI Exit Planning Summit, and St. Louis for Archford’s Metro Business Owner Summit, I kind of lost track of my posting schedule. Here is the first of the four basic requirements. I promise not to dally in posting the rest of the full ... Read more Exit Planning: Ripples and Ripples. Every stone thrown into a pond creates ripples. Every advance in technology does the same. The late Stephen Hawking said that we were progressing too quickly. Along with other technology and science notables, he argued for a slowing down of development in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Most current “AI” is actually machine learning. As computing speed increases exponentially, the ability of a computer to calculate, test hypotheses and weigh varying outcomes increases as well. Computers can now beat the best humans at every game ever invented. From Chess to Go, and from Texas Hold ‘Em to Ms. Pac Man, binary geniuses are sorting through billions of possibilities, and ... Read more Succession Planning - Ownership Lessons When selling your business to employees or family, ownership lessons rise to a special level of importance. Regardless of the financial, inheritance, estate or valuation aspects of the plan, the real question is how to prepare your successors to run the company. I’ve written before about the Luxury of No Resources. When you started out, making mistakes was part of your business education. The company was small, so the mistakes were small. Now you’ve built a substantial enterprise, and your successors can’t afford to learn by trial and error. (Especially if you are depending on them to be successful enough to pay you for the ... Read more Transition Tribulations This article in Financier Worldwide of the United Kingdom quotes me extensively. I thought you might like to see it. (My spellings were changed to British standard.) Transition tribulations: exiting a family-owned business by Fraser Tennant When the owner of a family business decides to call it a day in order to enjoy the fruits of his or her labour, the transfer of ownership can be a challenging process. What is more, in the US in particular, transitions of this nature are becoming ever more common. Indeed, as highlighted in JC Jones and Associates LLC’s white paper, ‘Exit Planning for the Family Owned Business Owner’, more than ... Read more Your Transition Advisor Team Nothing impacts the success of your business transition more than the advisor team. Let’s say you receive a free pass to play in the Super Bowl. You will be playing against the New England Patriots, but you can choose any NFL player not on their roster for your team. Who would you pick? There are a multitude of opinions about who is the best quarterback, wide receiver or free safety. One thing is pretty certain. You wouldn’t choose the guys you grew up playing touch football with. At least, not if you wanted to win. Owners feel loyalty to the trusted advisors they already have relationships with. ... Read more « Newer EntriesOlder Entries »