A business you could hand over tomorrow
In 90 days you hold your complete readiness picture, a benchmark valuation, your value gap quantified, your Endgame designed on the three scales and the sprint plan that gets you from one to the other.
You are not in a rush
Founders and majority owners of established businesses. Five or more years in, profitable and thinking about what comes next without having named a date.
Nobody around you is paid to deliver the ending itself. Every adviser is paid on the year before or the year after.
What owners actually say
Four states. Pick yours honestly.
Where your business sits on the curve is what you get if the ending arrives tomorrow. Readiness is not a project you start at least two years out. It is a state you hold.
Four states along the curve, three pillars that decide which one you are in and the will that decides whether you ever move. You are placed where the business actually is, not where you intend to be.
Hover or tap a state to hold it. Wherever the dashed line falls is what you get.
The business is you. If you stopped for ninety days, it would stop with you.
If the ending arrives here: nothing to sellOperations hold up but growth, the key relationships and every judgement call still route back through you.
If the ending arrives here: heavy discount, you stayIt could change hands, or you could step back to a chair role and the value would not walk out with you.
If the ending arrives here: full value, on your termsYou do not have to hand it over. Staying is a decision rather than a default.
If the ending arrives here: you chooseTrapped
The business is you. Every significant relationship is with you personally, nothing is written down and if you stopped for 90 days it would stop with you.
Tethered
Some systems exist. Operations hold up but growth, the key relationships and every judgement call still route back through you.
Transferable
It could change hands, or you could step back to a chair role and the value would not walk out with you.
Optional
You do not have to hand it over. You have a date, the people around you know it and staying is a decision rather than a default.
Readiness is not a project you start two years out. It is a state you hold.
Always be ready. Make yourself optional.
How one state becomes the next
In order. Each one produces something you can hold.
What you hold at the end
Three scales, one to ten each
Where your ending actually sits, not where the market says it should.
Enterprise Value
The business itself. What it is worth and to whom.
Liberated Wealth
What comes out and what it has to do for the rest of your life.
You 2.0
Who you are on the Monday after. Most transitions that fail, fail here.
You’re never locked in. We work in 90-day sprints and at the end of every quarter you decide whether we keep going. And for the first 90 days, if you do the work and I haven’t delivered your complete readiness picture, your benchmark valuation, your gap and your plan, I keep working with you for free until you have it.
Kerry Boulton, The Exit Strategy Group
Never locked in
Ninety-day sprints. At the end of every quarter you decide whether it keeps going.
The first ninety days
Do the work and if the readiness picture, the benchmark valuation, the gap and the plan are not in your hands, she keeps working for free until they are.
Three exits, two of them hers
Written up while she was doing it
"Buyout thrives on total service." Business Review Weekly ran the management buyout in October 1992, five years after she bought the business she had been running and four years before she sold it.
"Boulton is an exceptional executive on every count."Tony Thomas, Business Review Weekly, 16 October 1992
- 81staff in five Australian capital cities
- $35Ma year paid through to airlines and shipping lines
- $250ka year on staff training, more than 10% of the wages bill
- 1stprize for total quality management, Telecom and Victorian Government small business awards
Open the one you are thinking
"I don't want to sell."
Good, this isn't about selling. It's about being ready to choose. Most of my clients never sell, they just stop being trapped.
"My accountant looks after this."
Keep them, I work alongside accountants. They hold the financial pillar. Nobody's paid to get you an ending. I'm paid the same whether you sell or stay.
"Not yet. Maybe next year."
That might be right. But readiness takes two to three years to build, so 'not yet' on starting is really 'later' on finishing.
"I'm not the only one who decides."
Then bring them. The application asks who else is in the decision and whether they can be on the call and the session is built around the answers we get back. Nothing is designed for one owner if the business has two.
Do you want to do this?
Readiness takes two to three years to build. That is the only urgency here.