Two owners with the same business can walk away with 5x or 2x

Early Exit Preparation: why the final years of ownership decide the multiple

Two similar businesses can produce radically different outcomes when one owner prepares early and the other reaches the market exhausted and desperate to leave. Simon regularly sees owners postpone planning until they are burnt out, only to learn that a sale may take a year and could require them to remain with the buyer for another two. At that point, urgency weakens their negotiating position and leaves little time to correct the issues reducing value. Simon unpacks the preparation that separates a strong multiple from a disappointing one, showing why the final years of ownership can determine the financial reward for everything that came before.

About Simon Bedard

Simon Bedard, podcast guest

Business Sales Specialist & Author

25+ years Finance, investment, energy and technology experience100+ episodes Host of the Buy Grow Sell podcast20K+ Business-owner and adviser audience2024 winner BX Best Consulting Company of the Year

Simon Bedard helps business owners build businesses they can sell.

He is the Founder and CEO of Exit Advisory Group, National Chair of the Australian Institute of Business Brokers, a Registered Business Valuer, and the author of Exit Like an Expert, endorsed by a Bain & Company advisory partner and one of Australia’s best-known economists.

If your audience includes founders, investors, business owners, or the advisers around them, you and Simon have something in common.

Simon works on the part of the business owner’s journey that decides whether all that building and growing pays off. Turning a business you own into one someone will actually buy.

On his own podcast, Buy Grow Sell, he has interviewed more than 100 founders who have sold their companies, including the one who led Swisse to a $1.7 billion exit, and people like Finder.com co-founder Fred Schebesta, and a games maker whose studios were bought by Disney, Sony and Atari. He does lots of deals himself, so he brings stories and specifics, and he is an easy, engaged guest.

Unfortunately, most owners leave their ultimate ‘pay day’ to the end.

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