At some point, every business owner leaves his or her business. Each business owner faces a unique set of challenges and opportunities when determining how to leave.  The exit planning process is designed to help business owners identify and achieve goals for both the business and themselves, and to ensure a smooth transition to a new owner.  Business owners maintain control of one of their biggest assets by choosing when, how and to whom they want to leave their business.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to achieving the maximum value for your business while ensuring its financial future.  We incorporate everyday business, economic, and family realities into your planning.  Using our seven-step process, we work with you and your advisory team to develop a customized business exit strategy.

Our Exit Planning 7-Step Process

 
     1.  Identify Owner Objectives

We start by helping you clarify your priorities, identify your desired outcomes, and address your most urgent concerns for your exit from the business.  We’ll also help you build a reliable advisor team to stay with you through the process.

     2.  Quantify Business and Personal Financial Resources

We measure your business and personal resources to determine the current value of your business and to develop a basis for future projections.

    3.  Maximizing and Protecting Business Value

We develop strategies for you to grow your business value, protect your assets, and reduce your income taxes upon the sale of your business.

     4.  Ownership Transfers to Third Parties

We advise you on the best strategies for selling your business to a third party while incurring the least financial risk.

     5.  Ownership Transfer to Insiders

We advise you on the best strategies for transferring your business to co-owners, a Key Employee Group, or family members while receiving the most value from your business and incurring the least financial risk.

     6.  Business Continuity

We develop a plan that ensures the survival of your business in the event that you become disabled, you don’t survive your exit plan, or a co-owner leaves the business.

     7.  Personal Wealth and Estate Planning

We seamlessly integrate your exit objectives with your estate planning objectives to preserve your wealth and minimize your taxes.

32 Questions for Every Business Owner

Getting Started: Business Exit Planning 


Strategic Partnership

Davis Schilken, PC and our strategic partners – exit planning specialist Ken Stiefler, CLU, ChFC and President of eXITS, LLC and valuation specialists, Greg Zick, CPA, CVA, CFFA and Eric Ransick, CPA, CVA of Zick Business Advisors, Inc. – work with business owners in implementing an exit strategy which makes sense, and which is focused on helping the owners realize their financial and personal goals.

Ultimately, for the value of your business to truly be a realizable asset for you, you need to constantly be working on it with a view of selling it sometime in the future.  Whether you sell it or not is irrelevant – keeping that frame of mind means that at least you will always be in a position to sell it and realize its true value.  That focus gives you a greater awareness of the need to systemize your business and make it less dependent on you.  People want to buy businesses that work, not businesses that are run by people who work and work and work.  Exit planning then, is an ongoing, ever improving process and is just as much about working ON your business as planning for the future.

Please visit our partner’s websites:

Zick Business Advisors, Inc.
eXITS, LLC

Key Benefits

• Avoid or Minimize Ownership Transfer Costs
• Maintain control until transfer occurs
• Minimize taxes

Understanding Exit Planning

• Exit Planning Process
• Buy sell issues for sole owners
• Determining owner retirement goals and income needs
• Buy sell considerations for co-owned businesses
• Why valuation is a key to setting realistic exit objectives
• When and why to use Stay Bonuses 
• Traditional sale vs. a modified sale
• Minimizing tax consequences to buyer and seller 
• Review of Deferred compensation techniques
• Pre-sale planning GRATs, CRTs and FLPs
• Issues to consider if selling to insiders
• Understanding Buy Sell Agreements
   

 Getting Started:  Business Planning and Exit Planning Process