Exit Planning
The Exit Starts Three Years Early
By Carlos Cardenas · June 30, 2026 · 7 min read
Exhaustion is a terrible negotiating position. By the time an owner is ready to be done, the leverage has usually already leaked out of the business — deferred capex, a thinning bench, a customer concentration nobody addressed.
A workable sequence
- Year one: clean the financials and separate personal from corporate.
- Year two: hire or promote the person who runs the business without you.
- Year three: de-risk concentration and document everything a buyer will diligence.
Plan the exit while the business still bores you a little. That is when it is worth the most.
Owners who run this sequence do not merely get better prices. They get better buyers, better terms, and a transition their employees survive.
