If you are a business owner, no doubt you have fantasized about your exit strategy and how selling a business will make it happen.  Admit it.  No one is looking over your shoulder right now.  If you could walk away today, what is it you dream about doing?  What is your fantasy life post-sale?  Paint a picture in your mind.

Are there palm trees and golf in your fantasy?  Travel with your family?  Jumping into a new business?  Focusing on important charities, or community and spiritual areas?  Or perhaps staying involved with the company somehow, but in a less demanding role.  What is the point of all your hard work, stress and sacrifice?  What did you envision as your reward?  What was it you were striving for at the end of the day?

Please think more broadly than just the money.  Coming up with a dollar amount is easier than coming up with a new life for many business owners.  As you determine the ideal outcomes for you, include those outcomes you want for your family, the employees, the business and other stakeholders.  How you answer these questions will influence how to sell the business more than perhaps you think.

Consider:

• Do you want to sell a piece of your business or all of it?

• Is it important to cash out at closing, or would you consider keeping a small investment in the newly sold company?

• Do you want to leave, and if so, within what timeframe?

• Are you looking to stay, and if so, in what role?

• Would you want to retain control and finance growth through recapitalization?

All of these things, and many more, will affect the timing, amount of money you’ll get for the transaction and what buyers will be interested in it.

To sell a company is to sell a life’s work.  And for a business owner, exit planning means facing a big change and a lot of uncertainty.  Your days now as the owner of the business are marked with structure and relationships that give meaning to your days, and a sense of pride, identity and purpose.  What will fill that need once you sell a business?

Many business owner’s, while nursing the fantasy life in the dark hours, still dread making the change because they don’t know where their ultimate destination.  They know where they are now, but don’t know where they will go to.  And it can be frightening to face the void.  Don’t kid yourself:  golf is not enough.  A Type A personality does not easily go to a Type Z.

What is your fantasy?  You know you have one.  What next life phase do you want to carve out for yourself and your family?  This will influence how to sell a business and the buyers to target.  For many business owners, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to launch a new life and lifestyle.  Proactively and strategically determine how you define success, and how selling your business can get you there.

I invite you to use these ideas to create your best-life business exit strategy and fulfill your fantasy.

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