02 / Transition

An exit isn't a transaction. It's a multi-year project — and you don't have to run it alone.

By the time a buyer's offer is on the table, most of what determines how well it goes has already happened — years earlier. We do that early work, and we stay in the room until the money hits your account.

Who this is for

Three to five years out — or already in motion.

Selling to a competitor, to a financial buyer, to your own employees, or to the next generation of the family. Some owners come to us at this stage; many move into it after years of working together at Build. Either way, the question is the same: what does it take for this to go well, and what work has to start now to make it possible?

How we create value

We do the work that becomes the price.

What a buyer pays reflects the last few years of how the business ran. What you keep after taxes reflects how the company was structured years before the deal. We use a structured method — the discipline behind the CEPA credential — to find the handful of things holding your value down, and address them while there's still time to act.

Then we stay in the room with the M&A lawyer, the banker, and the diligence team — all the way to close. You don't have to assemble a brand-new team of strangers for the most important transaction of your career.

What we do

From what's capping your value to the wire transfer.

Find what your business is really worth — and what's capping it.

A clear, structured read on what the company is worth today, and the specific things holding that number down. The work a buyer will do when they look at you — done first, by your side, while you can still change the answer.

Address the things that move the price.

Thin margins, cash tied up in the wrong places, too much riding on a few customers, a business that can't run without you, revenue that isn't predictable. The unglamorous work that, two or three years out, moves the sale price more than any negotiator ever can.

Identify the right buyers.

Competitors, financial buyers, your own employees, a family transition. We help you understand the full range of paths before you commit to one of them.

Run the deal team.

M&A counsel, investment bankers, diligence providers. We've worked with most of them. We bring the team together, keep everyone aligned, and stay in the room until the close.

Keep more of what you sell for.

How the deal is structured decides how much you actually keep. There are tax rules that can let you keep dramatically more of the proceeds — but most of them only work if the groundwork was laid years before the sale. We start early enough that they're still available to you.

Plan for the money before it lands.

A sale changes the whole financial picture overnight. We model life after the wire — the income, the investments, the giving — well before it's real, so the first month after the money lands isn't the first time you've seen what it looks like.

In practice

An exit is a years-long project, not a transaction.

By the time a deal is on the table, most of what determines its outcome has already been decided. What a buyer finds reflects the last few years of operations. What you keep reflects how the company was structured years before that. And how ready you feel for what comes next reflects whether anyone has been helping you think about it at all.

Our job at Transition is to start that work early enough to matter. To find what's capping your value before you need the answer. To open the tax conversations before they're urgent. To assemble the deal team you'd actually want, not the one that calls you first. And to be the person in the room who has the full picture of you — not just the transaction.

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