Are You Ready to Exit?
Value Acceleration Methodology™ — Three Gates
This page covers Gate 1. The Value Builder Score and the Freedom Point are the diagnostics that drive it.
Exit readiness has two sides: you, and the business. Gate 1 measures both.
Most owners think exit readiness is about the company. Clean financials, documented systems, the right multiple. It is about that and it is about you. The owners who actually exit on their own terms are the ones who did the personal work, the business work, and the financial-plan work at the same time. Gate 1 of the Exit Planning Institute's Value Acceleration Methodology is where that work happens.
What Gate 1 actually produces
Two deliverables, run in parallel. Together they tell you what the business is worth today and what you need from the sale to fund what comes next.
Business valuation
Performed under NACVA Professional Standards methodology. Depending on use case and audience, the right product is either a Calculation of Value (faster, planning-oriented) or a Conclusion of Value (fully defensible, required for litigation, IRS, ESOP, major transactions).
You leave Gate 1 with a credible number, the assumptions behind it, and a clear view of which value drivers will move it.
Calc: 2–3 days · Conclusion: 1–2 weeks. Rush available on both.
Take the Value Builder Score
A 13-minute owner questionnaire produces a single number from 0 to 100 across the 8 Drivers of Value, the same drivers buyers use when they price your business.
Take the Value Builder ScoreFree · Confidential · ~13 minutes
Personal financial plan
Done by a vetted financial planner from our partner network. We do not do personal financial planning in-house, on purpose. A planner you will work with for the next decade should be your planner, not a side service from your M&A advisor.
Your planner builds the personal-financial picture that ties business value to your post-exit life: income needs, lifestyle assumptions, tax considerations, legacy goals.
Introductions made during the Gate 1 conversation. Your planner stays your planner.
Calculate Your Freedom Point
There comes a time when the sale of your business will generate enough income to fund the rest of your life. We call it the Freedom Point. Find out where yours sits today, confidentially, in about 5 minutes.
Calculate Your Freedom PointFree · Confidential · ~5 minutes
First, the business side
A buyer underwrites the same eight drivers on every deal — the same eight the Value Builder Score uses. We look at all eight during Gate 1 so you know where you stand before anything formal happens.
Your history of revenue and profit, paired with the cleanliness and credibility of your books. Three years of clean financials is the foundation under every other driver.
How fast you can credibly grow next, and the economics of that growth. Buyers pay for the future, not the past, and the case for the next five years has to be defensible.
Independence from any single customer, employee, or supplier. The fewer single points of failure, the higher the multiple. Above 20% revenue from one customer starts capping offers.
Whether the business generates cash or consumes it. Buyers pay more for businesses that fund their own growth than for businesses that need a capital injection to keep moving.
The share of revenue that arrives automatically. Subscriptions, contracts, and renewals are worth materially more than one-off transactions because the buyer can underwrite them.
How well-differentiated you are from competitors. Pricing power, switching costs, and defensible positioning all live here. Commodities sell at commodity multiples.
How likely customers are to come back and to refer you. Measured concretely (NPS, retention, repeat-purchase rates), not anecdotally. Buyers verify the number.
What happens to the business if you disappear for three months. Reduce daily decision-making that runs through you and the price goes up. Owner-dependence is the most controllable driver.
Take the Value Builder Score — Free
Then, the owner side
Gate 1 of EPI's Value Acceleration Methodology starts with the personal side on purpose. The owners who exit on their own terms are the ones who knew, going in, what they needed from the sale to fund the rest of their life. The Freedom Point gives you the financial answer in about 5 minutes. From there, the deeper personal planning work happens with a vetted financial planner from our partner network.
A quick personal-readiness self-check
Five questions. No score. Just honest answers.
- Do you know what you need from the sale to live the life you want next?
- Have you mapped your role outside the business? What you will do, who you will be, where your time goes?
- Have you talked it through with your spouse, your partner, or your family?
- Do you know whether your personal financial picture supports the timing you want?
- If a 5 D event hit tomorrow, do you know what would happen to the business?
Honest answer: if more than one of those is a "no" or a "not yet," Gate 1 is exactly where you should be.
Calculate Your Freedom Point — Free
Unplanned exits typically sell for 20–50% less than planned ones.
Roughly half of all owner exits get triggered by one of the 5 D's. By the time they hit, you do not get to plan. You only get to react. Gate 1 is the difference between the two.
- Death
- Disability
- Divorce
- Disagreement
- Distress
Process & timeline
Gate 1 typically wraps in 4–6 weeks. The valuation work and the planner work run in parallel. Toward the end we sit together and put both sides on the same page: what the business is worth, what you need from the sale, and the gap (or surplus) between them. That gap is what Gate 2 goes to work on.
Start Gate 1
Tell us where you are. We will scope the valuation, introduce a planner, and start putting both sides of readiness on the same page.
Start the conversation