📅 The 18-Month Exit Preparation Timeline

Primary Goals:

• Understand your baseline
• Identify value blockers
• Assemble your advisory team

Key Actions:

• Engage a sell-side advisor or M&A consultant to perform a “pre-sale audit”
• Review 3–5 years of financials with a CPA
• Assess legal exposure and entity structure with your attorney
• Evaluate IP ownership, employee agreements, contracts
• Conduct SWOT analysis from a buyer’s lens

📌 Tip: Think of this phase as due diligence in reverse—pretend you’re the buyer.

Primary Goals:

• Normalize EBITDA
• Improve transparency and reliability
• Reduce dependencies and inefficiencies

Key Actions:

• Eliminate or document one-time/non-operating expenses
• Recast owner compensation, benefits, and perks
• Automate key reports (P&L, cash flow, AR/AP aging)
• Resolve any outstanding legal or HR issues
• Optimize inventory, reduce dead stock (for product-based businesses)
• Begin standardizing operating procedures

📌 Tip: A cleaner financial story not only raises valuation—it shortens due diligence time.

Primary Goals:

• Strengthen recurring revenue
• De-risk customer and vendor concentration
• Professionalize internal systems

Key Actions:

• Diversify revenue (no single client > 20–30% of total)
• Secure multi-year client contracts where possible
• Build a “second-in-command” leadership structure
• Document all SOPs in a central knowledge base
• Audit tech stack—reduce reliance on founder’s email/credentials
• Consider a quality of earnings (QoE) review for added credibility

📌 Tip: Buyers want durable cash flow. The more replaceable you are, the more valuable the business becomes.

Primary Goals:

• Frame the opportunity
• Build your exit narrative
• Launch final growth initiatives

Key Actions:

• Build a data-backed pitch deck: market, growth levers, margins, team, roadmap
• Create customer testimonials, case studies, and retention metrics
• Finalize brand/IP ownership details
• Set up KPIs dashboards (show, don’t tell)
• Explore short-term growth wins (e.g. pricing optimization, new channel test)
• Prepare tax strategy with your CPA for post-exit proceeds

📌 Tip: You’re not selling your past—you’re selling the buyer’s future with your business.

Primary Goals:

• Finalize all sale documentation
• Test the market quietly
• Start serious buyer conversations

Key Actions:

• Assemble a virtual data room (legal, financial, HR, contracts, KPIs)
• Write executive summary and CIM (Confidential Information Memorandum)
• Engage with a business broker, investment bank, or quietly shop to strategic buyers
• Begin preliminary buyer interviews
• Prepare for Q&A (build FAQ bank about your business)

📌 Tip: Even if you’re working with a broker, stay directly involved in qualifying buyers.

Primary Goals:

• Choose the right buyer
• Maximize deal terms
• Ensure post-sale success

Key Actions:

• Review offers and compare LOIs (consider more than just price: terms, timing, structure)
• Negotiate transition period expectations (e.g. consulting, training, earn-out)
• Set up an internal and external communication plan
• Finalize legal, tax, and financial documentation
• Prepare for closing and wire transfer logistics