Two to five years of deliberate work turns a business you own into a business someone else will pay a good price for. The structural preparation is separate from the transaction itself, and it is the work that decides what the transaction is worth.
Book an exit planning sessionExit planning is what happens in the two to five years before a business is sold or transitioned. It is not the sale process. It is not the broker’s role, the lawyer’s role or the corporate adviser’s role. Those pieces come later, and they only work if the underlying business is ready for them.
The purpose is simple. On the day you decide to exit, the business should be one a buyer or a successor can take on without you standing next to it. The financials should tie. The management team should run without you in the room. The tax structure should let you keep the proceeds. The customer base should not evaporate the week you announce your departure. The systems, the reporting, the contracts, the IP: all sitting in a form that survives a change of ownership.
Get this right and the same underlying business sells for materially more, transitions more cleanly, and lands the founder in a materially better after-tax position. Get it wrong and the sale process becomes a series of discounts: each weakness surfaced in diligence becomes a reason to pay less, ask for more warranties, or hold back proceeds in escrow.
Two to five years out from a planned exit. Long enough to change the numbers a buyer sees. Short enough that the horizon is real, not aspirational.
You built it. You own most or all of it. There is no board making the call for you. The exit will be your decision. The preparation should reflect that.
Sale, family transfer, management buy-out, ESOP-led transition. You have not committed to a path yet, and you want to know which one gives you the best after-tax outcome before you commit.
The business still runs on you. You want to be able to step back, or step out, without watching the value walk out with you. This is the point most owners hit first.
The entity structure was set up when the business was smaller. Small Business CGT concessions, 15-year exemption, retirement exemption. None of these apply automatically. Whether you qualify is decided by decisions made now, not on the day you sell.
You know the number the business needs to sell for to fund what comes next. Today's valuation says you are not there yet. Two to five years is enough time to close the gap by lifting earnings, tightening the multiple drivers, and structuring the sale properly.
Baseline valuation and a structural review. Where is the business worth today, what would a buyer pay, and what are the weaknesses that would surface in diligence. Delivered as a written report you can act on, not a conversation you have to remember.
Sale, succession or management buy-out. The Diagnose step surfaces which of the three fits your business, your family and your timeline; the Choose step is where you commit. Different paths need materially different preparation, so this decision anchors everything downstream.
Get the entity, trust and ownership structure sale-ready. Small Business CGT concession eligibility. 15-year exemption eligibility. Retirement exemption capacity. Rollover options. Restructure now, before the sale. Restructuring during a sale is either impossible or expensive.
Address the value suppressors: owner-dependency, thin management, weak recurring revenue, customer concentration, financial reporting quality. This is where the multiple actually moves. Sequenced across the horizon so each piece has time to show up in the numbers.
Sale-readiness pack. Three years of clean, tied-out financial statements. Management reporting. Data room organisation. Contract review. Standard vendor due-diligence questions answered before a buyer asks. Ready for the day a serious approach comes in.
Introductions to the right advisers (brokers, corporate finance, lawyers) for the transaction itself. We stay involved through diligence and negotiation on the financial and tax side. The sale is your lawyer’s and your broker’s job; making sure they have what they need to do it properly is ours.
The business runs on your decisions, your relationships, your judgement. A buyer sees a business that stops working when you stop working. The fix is a two-to-three year build of a management layer that can run without you, including the discomfort of stepping back before you have to.
A single owner and a bookkeeper is not a management team. Buyers want a general manager, a finance lead, a sales or operations head: people who can be introduced to the acquirer on day one. Hiring in year minus-three works. Hiring in month minus-six does not.
One-off project revenue trades at a lower multiple than contracted, recurring revenue. Where the business model allows it, the shift toward retainers, subscriptions, service contracts or multi-year agreements is the single biggest driver of the multiple. Not every business can. The ones that can, should start early.
Held in the wrong entity. No trust in place. Founder shares that will not attract the CGT discount. Small Business CGT concessions unavailable because the active asset test or the $6M net asset test will not be met. These are fixable, but only with a lead time. Twelve months minimum, twenty-four is safer.
Numbers a buyer’s accountant cannot audit are numbers a buyer will not pay full price for. Three years of clean, consistent, monthly management accounts tied to the annual statutory accounts. A budget. Variance analysis. A capital expenditure schedule. Sale-quality reporting takes eighteen months to build. Start now.
Any single customer above 20% of revenue is a discount at sale. Any single supplier or franchisor with unilateral termination rights is a discount at sale. The build of the second, third and fourth revenue leg or supply leg takes years, which is exactly why exit planning needs to start years out.
Trade sale, PE, strategic acquirer.
Horizon: 12–24 months of preparation.
Best for: Highest cash-out. Full exit for the founder.
Buyer: External: competitor, PE firm, strategic acquirer, family office.
Preparation focus: Financial reporting, management independence, data room, tax structure, growth story.
Tax outcome: Small Business CGT concessions if eligible. 15-year exemption if the retirement conditions are met. Retirement exemption up to $500,000 lifetime cap per eligible individual.
Timeline to close: 4–9 months from engagement of the broker or adviser.
The founder after: Usually stepping out completely, sometimes a transition period of 6–24 months.
Family transfer.
Horizon: 24–60 months of preparation.
Best for: Family continuity. Values preserved. Founder wealth extracted gradually.
Buyer: The next generation of the family: one or more children, or a family trust.
Preparation focus: Successor readiness, family alignment, gradual ownership transfer, related-party tax mechanics, non-successor sibling considerations.
Tax outcome: Complex. Related-party rules. Division 7A on any loans. Market-value substitution on transfers between family members. Well-planned, very tax-efficient. Poorly planned, the most expensive of the three paths.
Timeline to transition: 24–60 months, often in stages.
The founder after: Usually stepping back gradually. Often retaining a directorship, sometimes retained equity, sometimes a formal advisory role.
MBO or ESOP-led transition.
Horizon: 24–48 months of preparation.
Best for: Continuity with an internal team. Founder rewarded for the business they built; key employees rewarded for the value they helped build.
Buyer: The senior management team, key employees via an ESOP, or a combination.
Preparation focus: Team readiness and ownership capacity, buyer financing, ESOP or share-issuance mechanics, staged transfer, ongoing role for the founder if any.
Tax outcome: Small Business CGT concessions where the founder qualifies. ESOP start-up concessions where the company qualifies. The two need to be designed together. The wrong sequence forfeits one or both.
Timeline to transition: 24–48 months, typically staged.
The founder after: Often retains a minority stake through the transition, sometimes remains chair or non-executive director for a defined period.
None of the three paths is better in the abstract. The right one depends on the founder, the family, the management team, and the business. The Diagnose and Choose stages of the process pick the path before the preparation work is scoped.
Illustrative composite. Numbers are indicative of the kind of outcome this method produces; not a specific client.
A single-founder manufacturer, $8M revenue, mid-teens EBITDA margin. Owner planned to sell in five years. First conversation was the diagnostic: a written baseline valuation and a structural review, ranging the business at $6.5M–$8M on the multiple it could command as it then stood.
The work over the two years that followed:
Sold at $9.2M, $2.7M above the top of the original valuation range. Small Business CGT concessions applied. 15-year exemption applied to the founder’s share. The after-tax outcome to the family was materially higher than the pre-work headline number would have been at any price.
For an eligible small business owner selling active business assets, the Australian tax system provides four concessions that can reduce capital gains tax to nil. Whether you qualify (and by how much) is decided by decisions made years before the sale.
The most powerful. If the taxpayer is 55 or older, retiring or permanently incapacitated, and has held the asset for 15+ years, the entire capital gain is exempt from CGT. Zero tax on the gain. Structure and holding conditions decide eligibility.
Reduces the capital gain on an active business asset by 50%. Stacks with the general 50% CGT discount for individuals and trusts. The effective reduction on the gain can be 75%. No age or retirement condition. Available to most eligible small business owners.
Exempts up to $500,000 of capital gain per eligible individual across their lifetime. Under 55, the exempt amount goes into superannuation; 55 and over, it can be taken personally. Deployable across multiple owners in a family group.
Defers the capital gain by two years, extendable if replacement active assets are acquired. Useful for the owner selling one business and buying another, or restructuring within the group.
Eligibility is gated by the $6M net asset test or the $2M aggregated turnover test, the active asset test, and the significant individual and CGT concession stakeholder tests. Missing any one of these gates removes the concession. Passing them requires structure set up correctly, held for the required period, and not disturbed by recent changes. This is the reason exit planning starts years out.
Six months is usually too late. Structural work needs time to show up in the numbers a buyer looks at. Bring the last three years of financial statements, the current entity diagram, and the horizon you have in mind. Twenty-five minutes. We will tell you where the business sits today, the two or three highest-value pieces of preparation, and whether the horizon you have named is realistic.
Book an exit planning session