Exit Preparation

The best exits aren’t decided at the closing table — they’re decided two to four years before, when an owner starts running the business like it’s already for sale. By the time a broker or banker is in the picture, the multiple is largely baked in. What moves the needle is the work you do before the LOI ever shows up.

This category is for home services owners thinking seriously about a sale, recap, or internal transition. We cover the things private equity and strategic buyers actually diligence: quality of earnings, owner dependency, customer concentration, working capital pegs, adjusted EBITDA that will survive a buy-side QofE, and the operational clean-up that turns a 5x business into a 7-8x business. We also talk candidly about the parts nobody warns you about — earn-outs, rollover equity, management carve-outs, and what life looks like on the other side of a deal.

If you’re 6 months or 6 years out, the decisions you make now determine what shows up on the wire when you finally sign.