Exit Before You Exit: What Buyers Really Look For (And Sellers Often Miss)
- Homy
- Dec 30, 2025
- 3 min read
Exit readiness isn't a project you start when you decide to sell.
It's a way of running your business—so it's always ready.
And the mindset has to sit with the owner. You can't outsource it. You can't delegate it. You can't hire someone to "make you exit-ready."
Advisers help. But exit readiness is an ownership responsibility.
Exit Unconsciousness First
Most business owners are told to "reduce founder dependency."
But dependency is a symptom, not the cause.
The cause is unconsciousness—building a business that becomes an extension of your identity rather than a separate entity.
When you incorporate, the law already recognizes what many founders resist: your business is an entity on its own. It exists independently of you. It has its own value.
The question is: are you building entity value or self value?
If you're unconscious, you embed yourself into every decision, every client relationship, every process. The business becomes you.
If you're conscious—if you exit that unconsciousness early—you build the entity to be valuable whether you're there or not.
Exit readiness isn't about preparing for a transaction someday.
It's about building with entity awareness from the beginning.
Once you build with entity awareness, buyers tend to examine the same things, in the same order.
Here's my perspective on what buyers are actually looking for—even when they don't know how to ask for it.
1. The Numbers Decide Whether the Conversation Continues
The first thing a buyer asks for is your financials. If the numbers are unclear, inconsistent, or poorly explained, the deal usually stops there.
Clean financials don't increase value by themselves. They earn you the right to be taken seriously.
2. Growth Is Interpreted, Not Taken at Face Value
If your business is growing, buyers don't ask how hard you worked. They ask whether growth can continue after the purchase.
They look at the market. They look at competitors. They look at what they could do with your business.
Future growth is not your plan. It's their plan. And they won't share it with you.
That's not bad faith. That's how buyers think.
3. Buyers Reverse-Engineer Your Results
Once growth is established, buyers ask how the numbers were achieved.
They focus heavily on sales and customers:
Do customers genuinely need what you sell?
Are they satisfied—and do they come back?
Can you reach them consistently?
Do you control pricing, or does the market?
Is revenue spread across many customers, or concentrated in a few?
Strong results built on fragile mechanics are discounted quickly.
4. Leadership and Team Signal Sustainability
Next, buyers look beyond performance to capability. They ask:
Can this business run without the founder?
Is there leadership depth?
Are decisions made systematically?
Is success repeatable—or dependent on heroics?
Growth achieved solely through you or an individual is risk.
Risk reduces value.
5. Finally, Buyers Look at the Owner
At some point, attention turns to you.
Buyers want to understand:
Why are you selling?
What will you do next?
Are you walking towards something—or running from something?
They also want confidence that:
you won't compete with them
there are no hidden liabilities
contracts, tax, and compliance are clean
And ideally, they want you to stay for a while.
The Earn-Out Reality
Most deals include an earn-out.
From the buyer's perspective: earn-outs reduce risk. Your continued involvement reassures customers and staff.
From the seller's perspective: earn-outs increase uncertainty and expose you to outcomes you no longer fully control.
The more systemic and independent your business is before the sale, the shorter and cleaner this phase becomes.
What Exit Readiness Really Means
Exit readiness isn't about selling soon.
It's about running your business so that:
the past makes sense
the present is sustainable
and the future is believable without you
It requires a clear narrative:
how success was achieved
where future growth can come from
and why the business works as a system—not a personality
That narrative is what buyers pay for.
But more importantly: that's what makes the entity valuable, whether you sell or not.
The Owner's Responsibility
You can hire people to fix problems. You can bring in advisers to guide the process.
But you cannot delegate the mindset.
Exit readiness starts with how the owner thinks about decisions, risk, and identity—long before a sale is even discussed.
Build entity value from the beginning, and you stay in control.
Build self value, and the buyer does.
Ready to build entity value that lasts?
Explore my book Exit Before You Exit or book a free strategy call to discuss your path. See link below.
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