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

Exiting a Small Business #2 - Selling to a Third Party “In our last episode,” (I’ve always wanted to say that) we discussed the exit paths that are not usually available when exiting a small business. Those are ESOP, Private Equity, and Strategic Acquisition. Now let’s talk about what you can do. The Realities of Selling to a Third Party Multiple surveys over the last decade all show the same result. About 85% of small business (5 to 20 employees) owners say that their exit plan is to sell to a third party. Let’s do the math. There are currently over 3,000,000 small business owners over 55 years old in the USA. We can assume that ... Read more Exiting a Small Business Part 1 Owners who are exiting a small business are often stymied by the range of choices in exit planning. Most literature on the topic discusses seven or eight avenues to exit. A sale to a third party can be to an entrepreneur, private equity (including family offices,)  or a strategic acquirer. Internal sales can be to family, or employees via  a Leveraged Buy-Out (LBO- often called a Management Buy-Out or MBO.) There is also a sale to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) or the oldest method in the book, closing down the company. While the jargon is appealing to those advisors who want to sound ... Read more Manage Activities; Lead for Results A few weeks ago I posted a comment in the Business Journals Leadership Trust Forum about a life lesson I learned. The difference between effort and outcomes – Manage Activities; Lead for Results. They reached out and asked if I could expand my comments a bit. Those of you who know me won’t find it surprising that it grew into an article. You can find it here. I hope you enjoy it. Remember, lead for results.   Invest 15 Minutes and take our FREE Exit Readiness Assessment. We do not request any confidential information. John F. Dini develops transition and succession strategies that allow business ... Read more Using Waterfalls in Exit Planning One of the most useful concepts in business planning is that of “waterfalls.” The analogy is apt, if perhaps less than perfect. Think of any outcome anticipated in a contract that is based on an “if…then” situation. It can likely be served by structuring waterfalls. I originally started using the term in buy/sell agreements. When a shareholder chooses to leave (or is forced out,) the options for purchasing his available stock are waterfalls. The first option may be for all the the shareholders to buy the stock in proportion to their existing ownership. If not all the shareholders wish to purchase, the “waterfall” or back-up ... Read more Is Google Making Us Stoopid? As an Exit Planner, most of my engagements involve assessing a management team. They may be the intended buyers of the company, or else they are key factors in the saleability of the business. The biggest and most frequent complaint I hear about managers is that they don’t know how to THINK. Business owners lament the inability of employees to discern critical paths, assess alternatives, or analyze complex problems. Examples of Thinking Shortfalls A CPA is doing a final review of a client’s tax returns, as prepared by an associate. As with many business owners, the client has two related entities, one acting as the ... Read more Video on Preparing for Your Exit Plan I contributed this video interview about preparing for your exit plan to SuccessionMatching.com for their recent Summit. It is about preparing what you need before starting your exit planning process. Succession Matching has made it available for free for another week. (requires creating a user name and password)   I hope that you enjoy it. Invest 15 Minutes and take our FREE Exit Readiness Assessment. We do not request any confidential information. John F. Dini develops transition and succession strategies that allow business owners to exit their companies on their own schedule, with the proceeds they seek and complete control over the process. He takes ... Read more Exit Planning Choices Podcast I had a nice conversation, on exit planning choices, in 2019 with Pat Ennis of Ennis Legacy Partners and Walter H. Deyhle of Gelman, Rosenberg and Freeman,CPAs, both in Maryland. Learn about your choices when preparing to create and implement your exit plan. Exit planning is about choices, get to know the choices that you have. Thanks for the invitation, Pat! You can listen (25 minutes) here. I hope that you enjoy. Invest 15 Minutes and take our FREE Exit Readiness Assessment. We do not request any confidential information. John F. Dini develops transition and succession strategies that allow business owners to exit their companies ... Read more San Antonio Business Journal Leadership Trust I just had my first article published for the San Antonio Business Journal Leadership Trust. Please take a look: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/news/2019/03/26/planning-your-business-transition-heres-what-you-should-consider.html?iana=cco_landing_news The Unplanned Exit One of the least-heralded benefits of exit planning is preparation for an unplanned exit. In the brokerage business, the reasons driving the listing of a company are known collectively as the Dismal D’s. Some of “Da D’s” are just typical reasons behind putting a business up for sale. They include Dissension among partners, Declining sales, Divorce, Disinterest by, or Distraction of the owner and Debt. Others are the driving force for an emergency sale, usually far below the fair market value. Those are Disaster, Disease, Disability and Death. As we’ve said many times before in this space, sooner or later every owner leaves his or ... Read more Time Frames for Exit Planning Time frames are one of the most critical, challenging and frightening factors in planning your exit. At the same time, they are one of the most flexible factors in your plan. How can something be this important and still be fungible? When we interview an owner, one of our first questions is about time frames. Note that they are plural. The first is when you want to step away from daily management of the business. The second is when you want to leave entirely. Those questions  also lead off our exit preparedness Assessment, the ExitMap®, and impact the scoring on many of the other responses. When ... Read more « Newer EntriesOlder Entries »