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36-month owner readiness plan

Three years can create options. Use the runway deliberately.

Build better evidence, transfer authority, strengthen leadership, organize diligence, and connect company readiness to what life after ownership must support.

DetailedDecision prompts and worksheetsPracticalA sequence you can use immediatelyPrivateNo meeting required to download

Use the work, not a generic summary

Built to produce a better next conversation.

A practical 36-month operating plan for improving transferability, strengthening evidence, reducing owner dependence, and connecting the company to the owner's personal outcome.

  • ✓Establish an evidence-based readiness baseline
  • ✓Strengthen financial and commercial evidence
  • ✓Reduce owner dependence and transfer authority
  • ✓Define required personal capital and acceptable structures

Free owner field guide

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Inside the field guide

Enough detail to organize the work.

Each section converts a broad planning concern into facts to gather, questions to ask, and an owner-specific decision record.

Readiness baseline

Score eight business and owner readiness areas, document the evidence, and choose the constraint that deserves the first 90 days.

Financial evidence

Build monthly reporting, normalized earnings support, customer and product economics, working-capital analysis, and forecast discipline.

Owner independence

Map decisions, relationships, knowledge, authority, leadership depth, and owner-absence tests.

Diligence readiness

Organize corporate, financial, commercial, people, legal, risk, operational, and technology evidence before urgency.

Owner outcome and 36-month sequence

Define the personal target, acceptable structures, family priorities, quarterly gates, and next 90-day commitments.

How to use it

Move from reaction to a controlled agenda.

  1. Year 1

    Establish the evidence

    Baseline the business, normalize financials, map owner dependence, define the owner target, and test the first transfer of authority.

  2. Year 2

    Prove the improvements

    Deepen leadership, resolve operational and legal gaps, organize diligence evidence, and re-score readiness with facts.

  3. Year 3

    Compare credible paths

    Refresh value and tax scenarios, define deal red lines, test personal capital, and decide whether to proceed, defer, or redesign.

Important boundary

A field guide can organize the decision. It cannot make it for you.

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

Built from authoritative source material.

Continue the decision

Use the next resource closest to the question.

Read the three-year preparation guide→Take the business exit readiness assessment→Estimate the sale value required for the owner→