Three years out, you still control the timing. Prove the numbers, hand off authority, strengthen your team, get ready for diligence, and tie it all to what life after ownership has to pay for.
What the checklist covers
Free owner field guide
Inside the field guide
Use the checklist to record the facts you have and the questions you still need answered.
Score eight business and owner readiness areas, document the evidence, and choose the constraint that deserves the first 90 days.
Build monthly reporting, normalized earnings support, customer and product economics, working-capital analysis, and forecast discipline.
Map decisions, relationships, knowledge, authority, leadership depth, and owner-absence tests.
Organize corporate, financial, commercial, people, legal, risk, operational, and technology evidence before urgency.
Define the personal target, acceptable structures, family priorities, quarterly gates, and next 90-day commitments.
How to use it
Baseline the business, normalize financials, map owner dependence, define the owner target, and test the first transfer of authority.
Deepen leadership, resolve operational and legal gaps, organize diligence evidence, and re-score readiness with facts.
Refresh value and tax scenarios, define deal red lines, test personal capital, and decide whether to proceed, defer, or redesign.
Important boundary
This plan does not value the business, guarantee a transaction outcome, or replace operating, legal, tax, accounting, insurance, transaction, or investment analysis. Use qualified legal, tax, valuation, transaction, banking, insurance, and financial professionals for conclusions that depend on your facts.
Primary references