Cashing Out of Your Business | Business Transition Academy

Our roadmap consists of six modules. Here are just a few of the key concepts that we discuss in our book and illustrate using real-life client case studies:

Getting Yourself Prepared

Preparing yourself for transition is the first and most important step in this process.
Your identity may now be one with your business, and it will take time to separate the two.
Consider both financial and non-financial goals when you think about ownership transition.

Counting Beans

You should take stock of the assets you have saved outside of the business, calculate how much income you will need post-transition, and then determine your wealth gap—or how much money you will need to net from the ownership transition.
Counting your beans will allow you to assess how financially dependent you are on the business.

Building a Better Box

Most owners have not saved enough money outside their businesses and will therefore need the wealth trapped inside their company to fund their next phases of life.
Privately held companies have a range of values. Each prospective buyer will determine how much they are willing to pay, based on their perceived risk, as well as the cash flow and overall quality of your business.
Many qualitative factors drive business value. We outline the top eight factors that will help you to maximize the value of your company.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Two general types of ownership transition options exist—internal and external. “Internal” refers to selling or gifting the business to insiders such as key employees, managers, or family members involved in the business. “External” refers to selling to an outsider such as a competitor, customer, or investor.
Each transition option has its own transfer value, associated taxes and fees, as well as pros and cons. Our planning process allows you to assess each option and determine how well it meets both your financial and non-financial goals.

The Art of the Deal

Selling externally is desired by many owners, but of those who make an attempt, less than one in five actually consummate a transaction.
The "art" is in positioning the business, finding the right buyer, and negotiating the best possible deal.
Baby-boomer business owners will be flooding the market in the next 10-15 years as they attempt to transition their businesses to others. This is likely to drive business values down.
Planning well in advance will dramatically improve your chances of selling to an outsider at a desirable price.

Paint by Numbers

This module describes how to pull together all of the key concepts above into your own, custom Business Ownership Transition Plan that will outline how and when the ownership of your business will be transferred to others.

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Great book on what is required to prepare your business for sale! It is insightful and has great examples.

Jeffrey J. Diercks

This book tells you what to do in order to sell your business. Many business owners seem to always say they might sell in five years or so but when you check back with them in a couple of years it is still the same five years away until one day they are in a rush due to changing health or family situations. This book helps you get moving on what you need to do to be ready to sell or transition ownership to the next generation so you will be able to get the most value for your business when the time comes.

Scott R. Loring

I grabbed this book out of a pile late last August for an easy summer afternoon read. I really liked the author's style - she cuts right to it, in plain talk. What's interesting is that it turned me around in terms of my exit strategy. I had been focused on assuming an external sale, but after reading what the author had to say, I reconsidered advantages on an internal transition of ownership, and that's what I'm now pursuing...and yes, I got in touch with author Jane Johnson and engaged her to be a guide on this journey. Good for me. Good for my leadership team. And hooray for the future of independent, privately held business.

This book is a must read for any business owner who plans on selling all or part of the interest in his/her company. If you've been careful and thoughtful in growing a profitable business, you simply owe it to yourself to follow Johnson's & Richardson-Mauro's well-designed model from planning through closing. You'll be amazed as to how much wisdom is packed into this slim, crucial guide. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy!

Christopher M. Bond

Want to exit your business on your own terms and achieve your goals?

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