The best reason to transfer ownership of your business: it’s time. The time that you chose, not the time that chose you.

Many business owners eventually reach a stage in life where they want to retire and enjoy the fruits of their labor. After years or even decades of hard work, stepping away allows them to spend more time with family, travel, or pursue personal interests. Retirement planning involves ensuring the business can continue to thrive without their daily involvement. This might include selling the business to a new owner or passing it on to a family member or trusted employee.

Just don’t confuse “retiring” with making an excuse for health issues, burnout, or other adverse conditions. As soon as buyer sniffs one of those situations behind the scenes, all leverage passes to them, because you don’t want to get out, you have to. The longer you wait, the more urgent the situation becomes.

But if this is a time of your choosing, then you can wait around if a buyer isn’t going to be realistic. Of course, you have to be realistic too. If the price is way out of line for the quality of your business, you won’t attract any buyers that know what they are doing, and that’s who will pay the best price for a sound business.

Of course, this doesn’t work if the business isn’t ready for the market when you are ready to take your leave. Running it every day as if an opportunity to sell at a good price might arise tomorrow will ensure that it is ready if that occurs — and it will be ready in case some less fortunate circumstance arises. In the meantime it will be more profitable and less demanding on you personally.

The business isn’t the only one that has to be ready. There’s you. 75 percent of owners report being very disappointed within 12 months of selling, mostly because they learned that something that may be fun once in a while doesn’t work as a near-full-time activity. Can you really go fishing 8 hours a day, 4 days a week? Can your spouse put up with having you around 24x7x365? No, and no.

We have a detailed retirement time planner at BusinessValueBooster.com, and you can also try our quick business readiness assessment on the Resources page.

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