It’s Never Too Early to Build Your Team of Exit Advisors

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

To streamline and optimize your business for maximum value, you need to think strategically and keep an eye on every facet of the business, the team and your personal goals and objectives. No one can do all that alone. It’s never too early to build your team of exit advisors.

The best advisors are proactive, open-minded and client focused. Before you commit to any advisor being on your exit team, specifically focused on your exit objectives and timeline, it’s up to you to qualify them to be part of this specific initiative. You need a full complement of advisors, not just your accountant and attorney when you prepare to get out of your business and move on to your own reinvention.

You need the full team of experts on board now to:

1. Build a strong deep foundation to strategically grow the business.
2. Accelerate growth to achieve your specified goals and objectives for the business.
3. Protect all intellectual property – to have all patents, trademarks and copyrights secure and complete well before you want to get out, making them easy to identify and monetize.
4. Get all governance up to date and compliant – That includes minutes, resolutions, and annual meetings being recorded, complete and up to date.
5. Get the financial books meticulously clean – This goes far beyond balancing the books and paying taxes.  It can take 2-3 years to achieve clean books ready for review or audit.
6. Maximize valuation – your advisors will help keep this goal in mind at every milestone and strategic decision to ensure goals and investments are always tied to increasing the value of the business.
7. Expand exit options – the earlier you start and with a full complement of advisors, you have more exit options to choose from because you have the lead-time to explore them before you decide how and when to get out.
8. Ensure the business is buyer ready – your advisors will help you become a strategic CEO with the team in place to run operations independent of your daily presence. This is the easiest way to be buyer ready and buyer attractive, and demonstrate that the value of the business is in the business, not in your head.
9. Get your accountants, tax advisor, estate attorney and wealth advisor on the same page. Do this early to expand your wealth preservation options to serve your reinvention goals, objectives and legacy. They can do a better job of achieving your goals when they are on board early and can implement tactics pro-actively for your future plans.
10. Document and codify every system, strategy, process and procedure in the business. This one simple discipline adds value every day. It’s also one of the biggest ways that owners lose value in negotiations with buyers because they ‘never get around to it’.
11. Give you greater leverage in negotiations with potential buyers. When your team of exit advisors has been working together building your business into a wealth-producing machine over time, you are in a stronger negotiating position with potential buyers.

When you surround yourself with a range of experts to support the exit process over the next 2-5 years, your business will be stronger, demonstrate appealing growth projections, will have a higher valuation than otherwise possible, and become buyer attractive. As a result, you can and will be able to exit your business by intention on your terms instead of closing the doors with no monetary gain by default.