Help founders plan an exit before a buyer sets the pace.

Australian founders planning to sell: imagine your first serious buyer meeting starts with one question.

“Can this business run without you?”

You could say yes. But the buyer will look for what makes that answer believable:
• Who owns the customer relationships?
• Who makes decisions when something goes wrong?
• Where are the processes, responsibilities and numbers recorded?

A confident answer is more than a pitch. It is a business someone else can understand and eventually operate. If you only begin preparing when a buyer is already asking, you have less room to improve the answer.

Exit Plan's free Exit Readiness Assessment gives you a structured first look before that conversation. Its 25 questions cover your readiness as the owner, the financial picture, independence from you, sale preparation and what you want after the exit. The result includes a scorecard and practical priorities to work through over the next 90 days.

This is not a valuation and it does not decide whether you should sell. It helps you see which questions deserve attention while the decision is still yours.

If a buyer asked tomorrow, would your answer hold up beyond the meeting?

Tap to take the free assessment and start with the gaps you can actually work on.

Australian business owners considering a sale in the next one to five years: the useful part of that timeline is everything before the sale.

It can feel early to think about exit preparation when there are customers to serve and a business to run. Then a year passes. Another year passes. The questions a buyer would ask have not become easier to answer.

Look at what preparation can involve:
• Financial records that show how the business earns, not just what it earned last month.
• A team that can make decisions without every issue reaching your desk.
• Processes and customer relationships that can survive a handover.

You do not have to solve all of this today. But you do need to know which parts of your business deserve attention first. Otherwise “we have time” becomes a reason to keep guessing.

The free Exit Readiness Assessment gives you that starting point. In 25 practical questions, it examines five areas: owner readiness, financial readiness, business independence, sale readiness and life after exit. You receive a scorecard and a 90-day action plan to help turn a distant intention into nearer-term priorities.

Your future sale is not decided by one online score. The value is seeing the work while there is still room to do it.

Tap to check your exit readiness and make better use of the years before a buyer conversation.

Australian business owners with a sale in mind: “the business makes money” is only the start of the financial conversation.

You know the story behind the numbers. A buyer does not. They need to understand what the business earns, how consistently it earns it and which parts of the picture depend on the owner.

When you look at your records through that lens, ask:
• Could someone follow the numbers without you explaining every line?
• Are the earnings and major costs easy to substantiate?
• Would a change in one customer, project or person alter the story?

You do not need to answer these questions perfectly before you start preparing. You need to know where the uncertainty sits. Leaving that discovery until a buyer's due diligence gives you fewer choices about how to address it.

Exit Plan's free Exit Readiness Assessment looks at financial readiness as one of five parts of a potential sale. It also covers your own plans, the company's independence, sale preparation and life after exit. The 25-question assessment produces a scorecard and practical next steps, including a 90-day starting plan.

It is a readiness check, not an accounting opinion or a business valuation. Use it to see which issues warrant a closer look with the right advisers.

Tap to take the free assessment and get a clearer starting point before the numbers become a buyer's questions.

Australian business owners planning a sale: a buyer may ask a very simple question.

“Can you show me?”

The answer can be harder than it sounds when years of decisions have been made in calls, inboxes and your own head. Even a strong business can look difficult to take over if the evidence is hard to find.

Think about the documents behind the story:
• Agreements that show how key customer and supplier relationships work.
• Processes that explain how delivery continues when you are away.
• Clear responsibilities, so the next owner can see who does what.

The point is not to build a perfect folder overnight. It is to spot where the business relies on explanation rather than evidence, then decide what to organise while there is still time.

The free Exit Readiness Assessment gives you a broader check across sale readiness, financials, owner dependence and your own plans. Answer 25 practical questions and receive a scorecard with priorities and a 90-day starting plan. It helps you identify the areas to investigate further; it is not a substitute for legal or financial due diligence.

If a buyer asked for the proof tomorrow, what would take you longest to find?

Tap to take the free assessment and find your preparation gaps before someone else does.

Australian business owners planning an exit: you can prepare the company and still be unprepared for what happens to you.

For years, the business has shaped your calendar, your decisions and a large part of your identity. If you sold it, what would you want more of? What would you miss? And what would make you comfortable handing it over?

Those questions sit beside the operational ones:
• Is your timing driven by a plan or by exhaustion?
• Do you know what financial outcome you need to consider?
• Is there a life after the business that you actually want?

You do not need every answer today. But an exit plan focused only on documents and a sale process can miss the person who built the company in the first place.

The free Exit Readiness Assessment includes owner readiness and life after exit as well as financial readiness, business independence and sale preparation. It takes 25 practical questions and gives you a scorecard and a 90-day starting plan. That can help you see whether the next work belongs inside the business, in your personal plan, or both.

The assessment will not tell you to sell. It gives you a clearer conversation to have with yourself and your advisers.

Tap to take the free assessment and look at both sides of your future exit.

Australian business owners considering a sale: one large client can feel like proof that you have built something valuable.

It may also be the first relationship a buyer wants to understand. If that account changed hands, reduced spend or left, what would happen to the business you are trying to sell?

Ask yourself three practical questions:
• How much of the work relies on one client or one relationship?
• Who owns that relationship besides you?
• What would the business look like without that revenue?

These questions are not a verdict on your company. Concentration can be manageable. But it is easier to assess the exposure and build options before a buyer raises it across the table.

Exit Plan's free Exit Readiness Assessment helps owners look beyond a headline revenue number. The 25-question check covers financial readiness, business independence, sale readiness, owner readiness and life after exit. Your result includes a scorecard and a 90-day starting plan so you can decide which issues deserve closer attention.

It does not calculate your sale price or promise that a particular change will increase it. It helps you identify uncertainty while you still control the preparation.

Tap to take the free assessment and see which dependencies could matter before a future sale.

Australian business owners who may sell in the next few years: “Are we ready?” is too big a question to answer with a gut feeling.

You can have good revenue and still worry about a handover. You can have a capable team and still be unsure about the numbers. Readiness is not one thing, so it helps to look at the parts separately.

Exit Plan starts with five areas:
• You: timing, intentions and personal preparation.
• Financials: reliable records and earnings you can explain.
• Independence: a company that can work beyond the owner.
• Sale readiness: documentation, risks and buyer questions.
• After exit: a clear idea of what comes next.

The free Exit Readiness Assessment takes you through 25 practical questions and turns your responses into a scorecard and a 90-day starting plan. Instead of one vague “we should prepare”, you can see where the business appears stronger and which areas may need a closer look.

You do not need to be ready to put the business on the market. The assessment is useful precisely because you can use the result to decide what to examine while there is still time.

It is a starting point, not a valuation or a guarantee of sale readiness.

Tap to take the free assessment and get your scorecard.

Australian business owners planning to sell one day: what would the next owner have to learn directly from you?

You may know which customer needs a call before they renew, why a process has an odd exception and which supplier can rescue a difficult week. That knowledge keeps the business moving. But if it exists only in your head, a handover becomes harder to picture.

Start with what only you know:
• The decisions that never reach a written process.
• The relationships nobody else has been trusted to own.
• The fixes your team asks you to make every time.

This is not a criticism of how you built the company. Most founders become the system before they have time to build systems. The useful question now is which parts should be documented, delegated or tested before a future buyer arrives.

Exit Plan's free Exit Readiness Assessment helps you examine that dependence within a bigger picture. Its 25 questions cover owner readiness, financials, business independence, sale preparation and life after exit. Your report includes a scorecard and a 90-day starting plan to help prioritise where to begin.

You do not have to make yourself unnecessary. You need to make the business understandable and transferable.

Tap to take the free assessment and see where the handover still lives in your head.

Australian business owners who are not selling today: that may be the best time to ask whether your company is becoming easier to sell.

When a sale is only an idea, the urgent work always wins. A customer needs something. A staff member leaves. The quarter closes. Exit preparation becomes “later” even though the issues that matter often need time to change.

A useful early check might reveal:
• Records you would want to tidy before someone else reviews them.
• Decisions that still cannot happen without you.
• Customer or team dependencies you would rather address gradually.

You do not need a broker or a firm sale date to identify those gaps. You need a starting point that helps you decide which work is worth doing now and which can wait.

The free Exit Readiness Assessment asks 25 practical questions across financials, independence, sale preparation, owner readiness and life after exit. It gives you a scorecard and a 90-day starting plan. Use that as a prompt for better decisions, not as a prediction of your eventual sale.

If you are years away, you have something valuable: time to act without a buyer's deadline.

Tap to take the free assessment and find the work that is easier to start early.

Australian business owners wondering whether they might sell one day: you do not have to be ready to list the company before you start planning.

Maybe the exit is three years away. Maybe it is five. Maybe you want to understand your options before you commit to any timeline. Waiting for certainty sounds sensible until the preparation itself needs more time than you expected.

Here are useful questions to ask early:
• Could someone understand the business from its records and processes?
• How much of its performance depends directly on you?
• What would you want your life to look like after a sale?

The free Exit Readiness Assessment does not push you toward a transaction. It helps you examine the business and your own readiness through 25 practical questions. The five areas cover finances, independence, sale preparation, owner readiness and life after exit. You get a scorecard and a 90-day starting plan based on your answers.

You can take that result at your own pace. Use it to work on the business, speak with advisers or decide that a sale is still too early to consider.

The important thing is to replace “I think we're probably fine” with a clearer starting point.

Tap to take the free assessment. See what needs work while the choice is still yours.

Australian business owners planning a future sale: an exit strategy can feel enormous. The next 90 days do not have to.

You do not need to prepare every document, redesign the team and choose a broker this month. You do need to know which change would make the business easier to understand and hand over.

The next useful step might be:
• Bringing the key numbers into a form someone else can follow.
• Documenting one process that still depends on you.
• Giving a trusted team member ownership of a recurring decision.

Which one matters most depends on your business. A generic exit checklist cannot answer that for you, and trying to do everything at once usually means nothing gets finished.

Exit Plan's free Exit Readiness Assessment gives you a more focused starting point. Its 25 questions look at owner readiness, financials, business independence, sale preparation and life after exit. Your report includes a scorecard and a 90-day action plan to help turn the big future question into nearer-term priorities.

It is not a guarantee of a sale or a substitute for specialist advice. It is a practical way to see where to start.

Tap to take the free assessment and find the first work worth doing before a buyer enters the picture.

Australian business owners thinking about calling a broker: first ask what kind of company you would be putting in front of a buyer.

A broker can help you navigate a sale process. But before that process starts, you still need to understand the business from the other side of the table. The questions are less glamorous than the sale announcement, and much more useful.

Could you answer these clearly?
• Are the numbers easy to explain and support?
• Can the team keep the work moving without you?
• Which customer, supplier or founder dependencies need attention?

You may not have perfect answers yet. That is exactly why an early readiness check can help. It gives you room to organise evidence, strengthen the handover and decide what advice to seek before the pressure of a live transaction.

The free Exit Readiness Assessment asks 25 practical questions across financial readiness, business independence, sale preparation, owner readiness and life after exit. It gives you a scorecard and a 90-day starting plan based on your responses.

It is not a valuation and it cannot replace legal, accounting or broker advice. It can make your first conversation with any of them more informed.

Tap to take the free assessment and know your starting point before you start the sale process.

Australian business owner planning to sell one day? You may want an honest view of your business before you put anything in front of a buyer or broker.

That is a sensible place to start. An exit raises questions you may not yet want to discuss outside the business. Is the company too dependent on you? Are the records ready for scrutiny? What would actually need attention first?

The Exit Readiness Assessment gives you a private starting point for those questions. On the Exit Plan site, completing it does not authorise your answers to be shared with buyers or brokers. It is a preparation tool, not an instruction to start a sale process.

In 25 questions, you can look across five areas:

• Your readiness as the owner, including what you want after an exit.
• The financial and operational picture a buyer may eventually examine.
• How independently the business can run, and how prepared it is for a sale.

Your report gives you a scorecard and a 90-day starting plan. That can help you decide what to work on before you choose whether, when or how to speak with anyone about a sale.

You do not need to claim you are ready. You need a useful view of the gaps.

Take the free Exit Readiness Assessment and start with the work that is actually in front of you.

Australian founder thinking about a future sale? A readiness score can be useful, but it cannot tell you what a buyer will pay.

That distinction matters. If you are still running the company every day, an online number can feel reassuring. Yet the harder questions are about the business behind it: how repeatable the revenue is, what the financial records show, whether the team can operate without you, and what a buyer would need to verify.

The free Exit Readiness Assessment is designed to show preparation gaps, not produce a valuation or promise a sale. It asks 25 questions across five areas of exit readiness, then gives you a scorecard and a 90-day starting plan.

Use it to ask more practical questions:

• Which parts of the business can already be explained and evidenced?
• Where are you still the person holding the process together?
• What could you improve now, while you have time to make changes?

A score is only helpful when it leads to better decisions. You might learn that your records need work. You might see that your own plans after the sale need more thought. Either way, you have a clearer first move than guessing at a headline number.

If selling is somewhere on your horizon, start by understanding readiness. Take the free assessment and see what your next 90 days could focus on.

Australian business owner considering an exit? Start with a free way to see where the business stands.

You do not have to commit to selling, hire a broker or buy a programme just to ask whether the company is ready. But without a structured check, the question can sit in the background for years. The business stays busy, and the preparation work is easy to postpone.

The Exit Readiness Assessment gives you a concrete first step. Answer 25 questions across five areas, from your own plans and finances to the business's independence and sale readiness. The report includes a scorecard and a 90-day starting plan.

That gives you something more useful than another vague intention:

• A view of the areas that deserve attention before a buyer conversation.
• A starting order for the work you can do while still running the business.
• A way to discuss next steps without pretending a sale is imminent.

The assessment and initial review are free on the Exit Plan site, with no obligation to buy. It is a preparation tool; the score is not a valuation or a guarantee that the business will sell.

If you are ready to replace 'I should probably look at this' with a clearer starting point, take the free Exit Readiness Assessment today.

Australian founder thinking you may sell in a few years? The best time to find the gaps is often before you are forced to act on them.

Running a business takes attention. So the exit plan can become 'later' until fatigue, an unexpected approach or a change in circumstances makes the decision feel urgent. At that point, you still have choices, but less room to work through the things a buyer may question.

Preparation starts earlier and more simply than a formal sale process. The free Exit Readiness Assessment helps you take stock while you are still deciding what you want.

It asks 25 questions across five areas and gives you a scorecard with a 90-day starting plan. You can use that to spot practical work such as:

• Reducing how much depends on you personally.
• Making financial and operating records easier to explain.
• Thinking through what you want your role and life to look like after an exit.

None of this means you must sell next year. It means you can make the business easier to understand and give yourself more informed options. The assessment is a starting point, not a valuation or a promise of a particular outcome.

If a sale is possible one day, do the first piece of preparation while the timing is still yours. Take the free Exit Readiness Assessment and see which gaps deserve attention.

Australian founder planning an eventual sale? You may want a starting point shaped by someone who has actually been through an exit.

Shayne built a software consultancy for ten years and sold it to an employee in 2025. That experience does not mean your exit will look the same. It does put the questions about owner dependence, preparation and life after a sale in a real operating context.

If you are still in the thick of running your company, you may recognise the problem. You know how the business works, but much of that knowledge lives with you. There may be records, relationships or decisions that would be hard for someone else to take over. And it can be difficult to make time for a sale plan when no sale date is set.

The free Exit Readiness Assessment helps you begin with facts about your own business:

• Answer 25 questions across five areas of readiness.
• See a scorecard showing where preparation may be needed.
• Use the 90-day starting plan to choose what to address first.

It does not estimate your sale price or promise a buyer. It helps you see the work that might make a future exit easier to plan and discuss.

If an exit is on your horizon, start with a structured look at your own readiness. Take the free assessment and make your next step more concrete.