In practice selling a business usually involves preparing for a sale at least 2 years in advance. It’s about identifying potential buyers, creating competition between them, making the business the best it can be in terms of EBITDA, and being ready for the sale so that nothing holds you up when a buyer for the business is available.

• Vague idea that they will grow their business and sell it one day
• Exit is generally an end that isn’t well understood
• Realise that for every success there will be many businesses that don’t make it to the other side.
• EBITDA is the traditional method of valuing a business used by accountants, namely earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation.
• Value certain parts of the business – such as stock, fixed assets 
• In practice, exiting a business comes down to focusing on increasing revenues so that you have recurring income (preferably on contract). Other value drivers include IP, technology or media doing the work (to produce predictable and high margin revenues). 
• Synergies within businesses can result in a valuation that is far higher than the company turnover or traditional methods of valuation might suggest
• We are living at a time when any company, even your small business, could learn from these examples, and be savvy about how to increase its value
• As the web and technology become more important in our lives, it means intellectual property is inevitably critical to businesses aiming to succeed in some way using technology.
• Daniel Priestley believes that one problem business owners have is that they don’t believe their business would operate without them.
• If you decide that you want to work till you drop then perhaps your exit planning should involve identifying a few competitors your executors could approach when the time comes

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