How Do I Know I’m Ready To Sell My Business?

In This Episode

If you’re a business owner and you haven’t thought about when you want to sell your business, or you haven’t thought about it in a while, here’s a sign that you should be thinking about it. As we know, most people don’t start or buy a business with an “exit plan” in mind, but it’s something that you as an owner should be thinking about on a regular basis. Because if you haven’t thought about it, how do you know if you’re ready to sell?

While this is an easy question to ask, it’s certainly a hard one to answer. Perhaps a good place to start is giving you a few reasons for why you’d want to sell your business. These could include:

Being Backed Into A Corner: maybe you have a partner and you can’t stand working with this person any more or you’re just simply worn out from the day-to-day (or decade-to-decade) grind of owning and running your business;
Unsolicited Offer: maybe the idea of selling wasn’t even anywhere near your radar, but you’ve been approached by someone who is interested in purchasing your business; or
Planning and Ready: maybe you’re in the minority of business owners and you’ve actually been not only thinking about this but actually laying some plans down to sell and executing on these plans. Things like getting a core team in place to run the business when you’re not around.

So if you’re in any of these above situations, how do you know if you’re actually ready to sell? A big factor in being ready to sell is that you know what you’re going to do next. And it doesn’t have to be “retiring” but instead could involve another business venture, but could also include family stuff and hobbies. You might just be ready for a change. Or that unsolicited offer might just be the right price for you to walk away from it all.

Whatever your particular situation, we share several stories of clients or ours in tonight’s show and we know some of them will relate to you. Enjoy!