How to Get Started

Are You Ready to Start Developing Your Exit Strategy?

Have you thought about an exit strategy but not really gotten the process off the ground?

Do you know you really should have an exit plan in place but don’t really know where to start?

Are you having trouble defining what the objectives of your exit strategy should be?

If you answered yes to any of these three questions, then Principium’s  Exit Planning Kickstarter program may be for you.

Our approach to the exit planning process   involves four basic steps:

  1. Understanding your objectives
  2. Understanding the value of your business
  3. Developing a plan to preserve and enhance the value of your business
  4. Developing a plan for the ultimate sale or transfer of the business

We have developed an economical product to get clients started in the exit planning process.  We call it the Exit Planning Kickstarter.  We work through the four steps of exit planning with you.

  1. We will meet with you and discuss your specific objectives.   We will help you articulate and clarify those objectives.   In some cases, helping a client to really understand what their own objectives are is one of the most valuable parts of the process.
  2. We will review your business’s financial information and operations, in the context of the local market and overall market objectives and give you an assessment of the value you could expect to realize for the sale of your business.  This is not a full-scope business valuation. This market value assessment is not intended to be relied upon by third-parties or cannot be used as a business valuation in connection with legal or tax matters.
  3. We will give you our recommendations on ways to preserve the value of your business between the present and the time that you intend to exit the business.  We will also give you our recommendations on approaches to improving the value and marketability of your business, again between the present and the time that you intend to exit the business.
  4. We will advise you advise you of the important steps to complete now to develop a plan for the ultimate sale or transfer of your business.  This process is usually not complete at the conclusion of the Exit Planning Assessment, but you will have a roadmap toward having the plan completed.  In the event that the conclusion of the Exit Planning Assessment is that it is your goal to proceed with the sale or transfer of your business in the near future, the development of the detailed exit plan will be the next step following the Exit Planning Assessment.

In conducting the Exit Planning Assessment, we will perform the following services:

  • We will provide you with a list of documents and information to gather for our review and analysis.
  • We will schedule a full-day site visit with you.  The purposes of the site visit are to become more familiar with the business, to spend time face-to-face with the business owners to discuss their objectives and our initial findings and to identify the additional information we may need to complete the assessment.
  • Following the site visit, we will review the information we have gathered and synthesize our conclusions and recommendations.
  • Within two weeks following the site visit, we will submit our final conclusions and recommendations for review and discussion.

Our fees for the Exit Planning Kickstarter are tailored to the individual client situation, but in most cases, for clients with annual revenues of $5 million or less, the fee will be $3,000, plus reimbursement of reasonable out-of-pocket expenses (usually roundtrip airfare and one night’s lodging)  in connection with the one-day site visit.  Half is due when we are engaged and the other half is due when we deliver our final report.