Business Exit Planning & Valuation
For most owners, the business is the single largest asset on the balance sheet — and the least understood. Exit planning begins with knowing the number.
You will value your business exactly once. Choose when.
A sale, a dispute, a partner's departure, a health event — one of these eventually forces the question. Answering it early turns a crisis into a plan.
Our valuation process is streamlined and thorough. Using a proprietary valuation engine with data from 25 trusted sources, we produce a credible picture of what your company is worth today — and what drives that figure up or down.
From there, the work is planning: closing the gap between today’s value and tomorrow’s requirement, and deciding how ownership eventually changes hands.
More than a sale price.
One credible number quietly improves every decision that depends on it.
Six phases, typically three to five years.
The owners who net the most rarely move fastest. They start earliest.
Establish the number
A streamlined valuation using our proprietary engine, drawing data from 25 trusted sources. You get a defensible current value in days rather than months.
Measure the value gap
Compare what the business is worth today against what your next chapter actually requires. The difference is the real planning problem — and it is solvable with time.
Build transferable value
Buyers pay for durability: recurring revenue, a management team that runs without you, clean financials, and customer concentration below the danger line.
Sequence the exit
Third party, insider, or family — each path has a different structure, timeline, and tax consequence. We map them side by side before you commit to one.
Plan the tax on the transaction
Asset versus stock sale, installment structure, QSBS, charitable trusts, state of residency. Structure decided early is worth far more than structure negotiated late.
Design life after the sale
One illiquid asset becomes a diversified portfolio and an income plan. We rebuild the plan around your anthem so the proceeds fund the life you worked for.
Find your value gap.
Most owners discover the problem during diligence. This is the same arithmetic, five years earlier, when you can still do something about it.
The gap between what the business is worth today and what your next chapter requires is the entire planning agenda. Everything else — deal structure, tax treatment, timing — is downstream of that one figure.
What is the exit actually worth?
Set today’s estimated enterprise value, the after-tax proceeds your next chapter requires, and your runway. The gap is the planning problem.
Illustration only, before taxes and transaction costs. Not a certified appraisal, offer, or projection of results.
Five steps, in this order.
Skipping a step usually costs more than starting late.
- Phase 01Step one
Establish the number
A planning valuation of the business today, grounded in comparable data and your actual financials — not a rule of thumb from an industry conference.
- Phase 02Step two
Define the requirement
What after-tax proceeds does your next chapter actually need? Until that figure exists, no offer can be evaluated.
- Phase 03Step three
Close the gap
Improve transferable value: reduce owner dependence, clean up financials, diversify customer concentration, and document the systems a buyer is really paying for.
- Phase 04Step four
Structure the exit
Deal shape, timing, and tax treatment worked out with your attorney and CPA before a letter of intent, not during diligence.
- Phase 05Step five
Plan the day after
Proceeds get invested, income replaced, and identity re-anchored. The most difficult part of an exit usually starts after the wire clears.
Questions people actually ask.
No. This is a planning valuation used to guide decisions and measure progress. A formal appraisal or fairness opinion for a transaction is performed by a credentialed appraiser.
Three to five years before you intend to exit. That is the window where reducing owner dependence and cleaning up financials still has time to show up in the multiple.
Transferability. Recurring revenue, documented systems, a management team that runs without you, diversified customers, and clean financials consistently matter more than one strong year.
Internal transitions to family or management still require a defensible number, a funding mechanism, and a tax plan. In many ways they need more lead time, not less.
Your attorney and CPA, always. Anthem Financial coordinates the financial planning side — what the proceeds need to accomplish — and does not provide legal or tax advice.
Valuation output is an estimate for planning purposes based on the information provided and third-party data sources; it is not a certified appraisal, fairness opinion, or an offer to buy or sell a business. Anthem Financial does not offer legal or tax advice. Consult your attorney and tax professional regarding any transaction.