Business exit planning services in Utah

You built the business. You should be paid properly for it when you leave.

Most owners aren't. They wait until they feel ready to sell, then sell whatever the business happens to be on that day, at whatever price the market offers, to whichever buyer turns up first, and only find out afterwards how much more it could have fetched. Our exit planning services are there to change that price years before anyone makes an offer. We work on two numbers at once. As your fractional CFO, we grow the profit. Through exit planning, we grow the multiple a buyer puts on it.

Both take time. The best moment to start is three to five years before you want out. The second best is now.

The two numbers that set your price

Most privately held businesses sell on the same formula: real profit (adjusted EBITDA) times a multiple.

Say your business makes $1 million in real profit, and the market gives it a multiple of 2. That's a $2 million business. Now say we spend three years with you turning it into a company that doesn't need you there every day, and the multiple moves to 3. Same profit. It's now worth $3 million.

Owners, CPAs and CFOs put nearly all their attention on the profit, which is fair enough because it matters, but the multiple is where a lot of the value hides, and it is the number most owners never touch until a buyer names it for them. If you want to see how the profit figure itself is worked out, our guides to what your business is worth and SDE vs EBITDA walk through it.

What moves the multiple (and why most of it isn't in your books)

A buyer isn't paying for what you built. They're paying for what they'll receive after you leave. So they look hard at anything that might walk out the door with you: the relationships only you hold, the decisions only you make, the know-how nobody else has written down, and the customers who only ever call your cell phone.

Look at that list again. Your financial statements show the last three rows. The other six live outside them, in how the business actually runs day to day, which is exactly the ground exit planning covers and the reason a clean set of books on its own won't get you a better price. We go deeper on each driver in our guide to increasing the value of your business before an exit.

What our exit planning services include

The work runs in phases. The first one matters most, even though it feels the least urgent.

Consulting is billed at $250 per hour. Ongoing exit planning runs on a monthly advisory plan priced to the needs of your business and the stage you're at, and you can see how that compares in our breakdown of what a fractional CFO costs.

The five questions we answer with you first

We use the Exit Planning Institute's five-W framework. Owners nearly always want to start with the price. The price is question two, and it's only useful once you know who you're selling to.

1. Who are you exiting the business to?

A third-party buyer, a family member, key employees or a partner. Each one changes the value, the timing, the taxes and the risk. It also changes where the money comes from. An outside buyer brings capital and scrutiny. An inside buyer brings continuity, but usually pays you out of the company's own future profits over several years, which means the forecast underneath the deal quietly becomes the deal, and a weak forecast becomes your risk rather than theirs.

Selling your stake to a partner, handing the firm to one of your kids, taking a third-party offer, or answering an unsolicited offer from a private equity firm all play out differently. They share one starting point. In every one of them, you need to know what your company is worth. Our guide to business succession planning lays out the trade-offs.

2. What is it worth today, and what do you need it to be worth?

Two numbers. The first comes from a valuation based on real transaction data for your industry and size. The second comes from your own life: what the sale needs to produce, after tax and after debt, to pay for whatever comes next, whether that's retirement, a new venture or simply never having to worry about money again. The gap between them is the plan. Everything else is a task list.

3. When do you want to go?

A date turns an intention into a schedule. It sets when the valuation gets refreshed, when your advisors come together, when the business needs to stand up to a stranger's inspection, and how much value-building realistically fits in the time you have left.

4. Why do you want to go?

Retirement, burnout, a new venture, health, family. The reason decides the plan. An owner who's worn out needs relief now, not on closing day. An owner funding a new venture wants cash at closing more than an earn-out. An owner who cares about the team may take a lower number from a buyer who keeps them.

5. How do you leave on your terms?

By arriving at the sale with options: more than one credible buyer, a number you can defend, and nothing forcing your hand. An owner in that position can turn down an unsolicited offer without a second thought, or take one that shows up two years early, because the business is already in a condition to be handed over and nobody else is setting the timetable. Our checklist of what an exit plan should include turns these five answers into a working document.

Exit planning for business owners who aren't selling yet

This is most of the owners we talk to. You aren't planning to sell any time soon, so why would value matter now?

Because the work makes the business better to own long before anyone buys it. Cleaner records, steadier margins, more predictable revenue and a company that runs without you are worth having whether you sell next year, in ten years or never, because they make every month of owning it easier and more profitable along the way. None of it is wasted if the sale never happens.

And there's the exit nobody plans. Exit planners call them the 5 Ds: death, disability, divorce, disagreement and distress. They don't arrive on schedule. Any one of them can force a transition years early. If you've done the work, the business keeps running like a well-oiled machine and you get through it. If you haven't, you may end up selling the company you spent years building to whoever can move fastest, at a steep discount, just to get through a hard season you never saw coming. Our piece on why waiting to sell can cost millions puts numbers on that, and the 3 to 5 year rule explains the timeline.

How to choose an exit planning advisor

Exit planning advisors, business exit strategy consultants, brokers, CPAs. Plenty of people will offer to help. Before you pick one, ask five questions:

• Can they tell you what the business is worth today? And what it needs to be worth for your own plans to work?
• Can they walk you through every route out? Family, partner, employees, a third-party sale, private equity. With the pros and cons of each, not just the one they happen to sell.
• Do they work on your numbers, or only on the plan? An advisor who can't read your financials has to hand that part to someone else.
• Will they pull your team together? Your CPA, attorney, wealth advisor and broker should be working from the same numbers, at the right stage.
• Do they ask about you, not only the company? A lot of regret after a sale comes from owners who prepared the business well and never thought about the day after closing.

Also watch for three things that get sold as exit planning and aren't. A valuation is one input, not a plan. A broker's job starts when the business goes to market, which is after the years that actually set the price, so even a good broker can only sell what you've already built. And a tax plan belongs at the end, once the destination is settled. Start there and you're optimizing the tax on a number that could have been much bigger.

Why owners bring exit planning to a CFO firm

Because the profit and the multiple are built in the same place, inside the business, month after month, by the same decisions about pricing, people, customers and cash that a good CFO is already helping you make. We bring three pieces together that most firms keep apart.

Financial clarity, through CFO leadership. Knowing what your numbers mean and using them to make decisions. This is the ordinary monthly work of a fractional CFO, and every exit plan rests on it.

Business value, through exit planning. Strengthening systems, people and structure so the business stops depending on you. This is where the five questions turn into a schedule of specific changes to the multiple.

Personal readiness, through coaching. Optional, and more useful than most owners expect. Our balance and accountability coaching looks after the person behind the business, so you're ready for life after the sale and not only the sale itself, which is the part owners most often wish they hadn't skipped.

Exit planning for Utah business owners

We work from our office in South Jordan, at the south end of the Salt Lake Valley. For owners along the Wasatch Front, from Salt Lake City and Sandy to Draper, Lehi and Provo, that means the planning can happen across a table and not only on a screen. Owners outside Utah get the same plan by video, and we come on site anywhere in the country when the work calls for it.

Being local helps in a practical way. An exit plan only works when your CPA, attorney, wealth advisor and broker all work from the same numbers, and most Utah owners already have those advisors nearby. We bring them together around one plan and one timeline, so nobody is guessing what the others are doing. When you are ready to go deeper, start with our checklist of what an exit plan should include and our guide to what your business is worth.

Book an exit planning strategy call

The first conversation is free and takes 30 minutes, at our South Jordan office or by video. Tell us roughly when you'd like to be out, what you think the business is worth, and how much of it runs without you. We'll tell you honestly where we'd start, including if the answer is "not yet."

Book a time on our calendar, or call 801-833-0991.

Key takeaways

• Your price is real profit times a multiple. A CFO raises the profit. Exit planning raises the multiple, and most of what moves it isn't in your financial statements.
• Start three to five years before a sale. Clean records, better margins and less owner dependency can't be squeezed into the last few months.
• Every route out, from your kids to private equity, starts with knowing what the company is worth today.
• Owner dependency is the biggest single discount on a privately held business, and the slowest to fix.
• The same work protects you from a forced exit and makes the business better to own, even if you never sell.