**Episode 13 of the Business Growth and Exit Strategies Podcast**
If you are waiting to get to the edge of exit before you prepare, you are giving away money. You are leaving money on the table.
What you want is preparation 5, 4, 3, 2 years in advance so you get the maximum multiple. It is not a last-minute event. You are planning through strategic innovation, strategic growth, strategic framework.
The key word today is strategy.
## Building to Sell vs. Building to Run
Are you building a company you can run, or a company somebody else can buy?
Think of it as a blueprint with certainty. When you go to sell, you want to hand over the keys to the private equity firm, buyer, or investor and say: it is all yours, with minimal effort.
That is the dream. That is an A-plus exit. That is maximum multiple.
## Buyer-Design Focus
Buyer-design focus means preparing the company for you to hand over the keys, walk away, and have it transfer with reduced risk.
Here is the beautiful part: sometimes you go down this path planning to sell in five years, get three years in, and realize the thing runs on its own. You can step away for months at a time. You have other people to handle everything.
That is optionality. You can decide whether to sell or not.
## Use Inversion Thinking
Ask: what would stop somebody from purchasing your company?
– No standard operating procedures
– Not tracking KPIs properly
– No standardized sales process
– No marketing flywheel
– Messy books
What would slow your ability to close this deal, and what do you need to fix?
I will tell you from experience: it is usually the books. Having a clean set of books is probably the best place to start, along with SOPs and KPIs.
## Buyers Underwrite Risk First
They ask: what is wrong with this company?
So you might as well start with: what is wrong with this company? What could we fix?
Then they look at upside.
Inside most firms—private equity, family office, private investor—there is someone who went to a good business school. I call them Excel Eddie. Excel Eddie drops in any amount of information and spits out data: ratios, quick acid tests, how much they are willing to pay.
The more risk you can remove and the more blueprint and certainty you have, the higher you can negotiate.
## Two Questions for Every Decision
From here on out, ask:
1. Does it reduce risk or add risk?
2. Is it repeatable, transferable, and measurable?
If someone comes to you with an idea, run it through these filters. Have the conversation with your team or trusted counsel.
## The Repeatable-Transferable-Measurable Test
Three items that could be on the test:
– Is it repeatable?
– Is it transferable?
– Is it measurable?
If it fails any of those, it should be a red flag.
You could build a scoring matrix: 1-10 on each dimension. Out of 30, where does it land?
– Below 15: No, not going to happen
– 15-20: Needs more work
– Below 25: Go back to the drawing board
This takes 20 minutes to create. Tell your team: before any move or initiative, it has to be repeatable, transferable, and measurable.
## Common Traps That Destroy Value
### Owner Dependency
Everything goes through you. No manager, no ops person can handle it. You cannot walk away.
When you sell, they say: we need you to stick around for six months.
Week one: I am kind of free.
Week two: They are making changes.
Week three: I could be on the beach.
Week four: I want to be on the beach.
Then resentment sets in. Better to fix dependency now.
### Client Concentration
If you have one client, your concentration is 100%. One person leaves, 100% loss.
Two clients and one leaves, 50% loss.
The number to shoot for is less than 20% from any single client. Some say 30%, but for maximum multiple, aim for 20%.
This is a common report. Excel Eddie is going to have fun with it.
### Custom Work Sprawl
Anything custom has loose framework. It is tough to figure out investment and profitability.
Custom means only certain people can work on it. Others do not want to pick up someone else’s custom work.
If everything you do is custom, start thinking: how do we build a blueprint?
### Undisciplined Hiring
No description, no position.
If a job does not have a description, you should not be hiring for it. You cannot define expectations, success metrics, or accountability.
You end up with someone working 15-20 hours a week while being paid for 40. I have seen employees on the books for two years that nobody knew about because they just disappeared—getting paycheck after paycheck.
—
📊 **Free Framework Assessments:**
– [SELL Framework (Revenue Quality)](https://scottsylvanbell.com/sell-framework)
– [SCALE Framework (Operational Readiness)](https://scottsylvanbell.com/scale-framework)
– [DRIVER Test (Execution Capability)](https://scottsylvanbell.com/driver-test)
🎙️ **Listen to this episode:**
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-13-exit-strategy-is-a-growth-strategy-ep-13/id1876771297?i=1000749623250
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Bqbq0AygfqN4QatodBtMv?si=MV4aXv8vRYObpSy_s_K8uA
YouTube: https://youtu.be/-XR892qZ4Ms
Podcast Transcript:
Welcome to episode number 13: Exit Strategy Is a Growth Strategy.
If you wait until the edge of an exit to start repairing and preparing, you’re leaving money on the table. Exit preparation should begin five, four, three, even two years in advance. That’s how you earn the maximum multiple. This isn’t a last-minute event. It’s strategic innovation, strategic growth, and strategic execution. The key word is strategy.
Ask yourself: Are you building a company you can run, or a company someone else can buy?
At the end of the day, you want to hand over the keys to a buyer—private equity, a family office, or an individual investor—with minimal friction. That’s an A-plus exit. That’s when you get paid the maximum multiple.
The focus is transferability with risk reduction. Every acquisition has risk, but the more proof you provide that your company is structured, predictable, and documented, the more optionality you gain. Sometimes owners begin preparing for a five-year exit and realize three years in that the business runs without them. That optionality changes everything. You can choose to sell—or not.
Start with inversion thinking. What would stop someone from buying your company? Lack of clean books? No standard operating procedures? Weak KPIs? No defined sales process? No marketing flywheel? These are the five buckets that typically determine whether a deal closes cleanly or gets discounted.
Buyers underwrite risk first and upside second. Inside most investment firms is someone exceptionally skilled at financial modeling—plugging numbers into spreadsheets, analyzing ratios, stress-testing assumptions. The more risk you eliminate, the stronger your negotiation position.
From this point forward, ask two questions before making any major decision: Does this reduce risk, or does it add risk?
Then apply a three-part filter to every initiative: Is it repeatable? Is it transferable? Is it measurable? If it fails any one of those tests, it’s a red flag. You can even build a simple scoring matrix from one to ten in each category and require a minimum threshold before moving forward.
There are common traps that hurt valuation.
Owner dependency means everything flows through you. That creates transition risk and longer earn-out periods. Client concentration is another risk. If one client represents more than 20% of revenue, that’s a vulnerability. The lower the concentration, the stronger your position.
Custom work sprawl creates complexity. Highly customized offerings are harder to forecast, harder to train, and harder to transfer. Standardized frameworks improve scalability and predictability.
Undisciplined hiring is another issue. No description, no position. Without clear job descriptions and defined outcomes, inefficiency creeps in. Accountability disappears. Profitability erodes.
An exit-minded operator works on a multi-year runway, not a 90-day sprint. If you’re three years out, you have 12 quarters—12 strategic initiatives you can implement. Five years gives you 20. Each quarter becomes a focused improvement cycle: strengthen leadership, tighten SOPs, improve reporting cadence, refine KPIs.
Predictability multiplies value. Buyers want scalable growth, not expensive growth. They want repeatable acquisition channels, not one-off wins. They want a leadership machine, not a founder machine.
The ideal exit looks like this: you know the deal closes on a Monday. Over the weekend, you wrap up, introduce the team to the new owners, and walk away clean. Maybe there’s a short transition period, but you’re not trapped for a year because everything depended on you.
Expansion is good only when it increases durability without increasing chaos. If growth adds complexity and fragility, it weakens value. Clean data, consistent performance, transparent controls—these build exit evidence.
You can create an internal readiness scorecard. Evaluate accounting accuracy, KPI tracking, sales process consistency, marketing reliability, leadership depth. Identify which weakness would most likely scare off a buyer and prioritize it.
Sometimes you’ll need fractional support—a CFO, a sales trainer, a marketing team, a consultant. Strategic outside help can accelerate progress and reduce risk quickly.
Exit strategy isn’t about selling. It’s about building a business worthy of a premium buyer and a maximum multiple.
This week, identify the one area that most increases your risk profile. Start there. Reduce risk. Increase transferability. Strengthen predictability. That’s how you build freedom—and value.