Hutchinson and Bloodgood LLP is committed to helping business owners define what a successful exit looks like to them, and then working with the business owner and their other advisors to ensure that the defined exit is achieved. Now is the time to put plans in place to prepare you and your family for one of the biggest financial events of your life! We can help you achieve your successful exit!

Why Exit Planning?
With over half of today’s 9.5 million owners of established businesses reaching the retirement age of 50 years old or older, it is more than likely that many of you will be ready to leave your business within the next decade or so. In fact, recent reports suggest that 71 percent of small and mid-sized business owners plan to exit their companies within the next 10 years. However, only 22 percent of you have reported doing a great deal of succession planning. So what are you waiting for? Now is the time to put plans in place to prepare you and your family for one of the biggest financial events of your life!

The Process
Leaving your company is a process. If you’re already taking action to leave your business, ask yourself if you are approaching your exit in a methodical, logical, rational manner. Most owners do not undertake the necessary thought and planning that underpins good ownership transitions because they don’t know how to begin or exactly what to consider and analyze.

The good news is that there is a planning and implementation process that can provide that underpinning. This Exit Planning process begins with understanding your exit objectives and financial goals. Only then can a proper exit path be designed for you, whether as a sale to a third party, a transfer to children, a sale to an ESOP, a sale to a co-owner, or an orderly liquidation. The process also compels you to consider what would happen to the business and to your family in the event of your death or if disability precedes your planned exit.

Simply knowing the process, however, is insufficient. To succeed, you need a written plan that sets out your exit objectives and documents how you are going to achieve those objectives. In addition, a checklist that assigns responsibility for each task to be completed, sets a date for the task to be completed, and designates the person responsible for completing that task is extremely useful.

What does it take to create an Exit Plan?
Your Exit Plan will begin to be created as you answer each of the following questions affirmatively:

• Do you know your primary planning objectives for leaving the business, such as departure date? Income needed to achieve financial goals? To whom you want to leave the business?
• Do you know how much your business is worth today?
• Do you know the best way to increase the value of your ownership interest?
• Do you know how to sell or transfer your business so that you maximize your cash, minimize your taxes, and reduce your risk?
• Do you have a continuity plan for your business if the unexpected happens to you?
• Do you have a plan to help secure finances for your family if the unexpected happens to you?

How do you begin?
As skilled and as successful as most business owners are, they generally cannot – working alone – create and execute an Exit Plan as effective as when they work with an advisory team. The same is true if an attorney, CPA, financial or insurance professional works independently with the business owner. Successful Exit Planning is a multi-disciplinary effort that requires you and your advisors to work together. No one profession possesses the breadth of knowledge necessary to advise a business owner on the wide variety of Exit Planning issues.

You can substantially increase the likelihood of making a successful exit if you:

• Understand that there is a proven Exit Planning process.
• Commit to see the process through.
• Document your decisions and create a written plan (and checklist).
• Hire an experienced team of professionals to help see you through this process. Your Exit Planning professional, attorney, CPA, financial and insurance professionals should more than pay for themselves by putting money in your pocket. If they can't, you have the wrong team.

Read the Exit Planning Review Newsletter. The Exit Planning Review™ is an opt-in,
bi-monthly newsletter provided to you by Tanya Lee Scott. Email us to subscribe to
this newsletter.

Tanya Lee Scott, CPA is a Partner at Hutchinson and Bloodgood LLP in San Diego and is a member of Business Enterprise Institute’s Network of Exit Planning Professionals ™.
Email Tanya at at tscott@hbllp.com.