Exit planning at K&K coordinates valuation, value-creation, capital-gains mitigation, deal structure, and the post-close personal plan as one integrated workstream. The levers that move after-tax proceeds close years before a buyer calls.
Exit planning decides what your business is worth at sale, how much of that number actually reaches you, and what the next chapter looks like after the wire hits. The work runs across several disciplines at once: valuation coordination, value-creation, capital-gains mitigation, deal-structure planning, estate and trust coordination, and a post-close personal plan. K&K fills the coordinator seat inside our Virtual Family Office model.
Most of the dollar impact in an exit lives in the 24 to 36 months before a letter of intent. By the time a banker is running a process, the levers that move enterprise value and after-tax proceeds are largely set. Owners who realize the highest net outcomes started three to five years out.
The levers that need runway:
Buyers pay a multiple of normalized EBITDA. Cleanup, undocumented add-backs, and recurring revenue that isn't framed as recurring all show up as basis points off the multiple.
A business that runs through the founder's relationships or sign-offs carries discount in any buyer model. Reducing dependence is a multi-year leadership project.
When one customer is more than 15 to 20 percent of revenue, buyers discount the multiple or structure a large earnout.
Whether the deal becomes a stock sale, asset sale, F-reorganization, or partial recap is a tax conversation that gets harder inside the 12 months before close.
Moving appreciation out of the taxable estate is only credible when it happens well before a deal is on the table. That sequencing, covered in the tax section below, is why the estate side of the plan has to open early rather than at the closing table.
The baby-boomer wave is also reshaping the buyer side. Industry consolidation and private-equity rollups are changing multiples and timelines across many sectors at once. That's industry context, not K&K positioning, and the practical effect is the same: starting earlier matters more in this cycle than in any cycle in recent memory.
The tax bill on an exit is usually the largest single tax event of an owner's life. The work happens in the years leading up to it, inside the advanced tax planning calendar and in coordination with business tax strategies.
The levers that need runway:
so the deal can be structured for the best long-term capital-gains treatment available.
so a portion of the appreciation transfers out of the taxable estate before value crystallizes.
(donor-advised funds, charitable remainder trusts) timed for the highest-bracket year.
where the entity history qualifies.
where state tax exposure justifies the runway.
evaluated for tax-deferral leverage against deal-risk tradeoffs.
K&K designs the strategy. Your CPA stays your CPA, files the returns, and prepares documentation. We hand them a clean integrated plan before each calendar year-end.
An exit pulls more outside specialists into the room than any other moment in a business's life: a valuation firm, an investment banker, a deal attorney, an exit-specialty CPA, all on top of the advisors you already use. K&K is the seat that keeps them moving in sequence rather than tripping over each other in the final 90 days.
We run the value-creation roadmap so the levers above are sequenced against a calendar, not handled reactively. We brief your attorney on entity, trust, and deal-structure decisions before any drafting begins. We bring credentialed valuation firms, investment bankers, deal attorneys, and exit-specialty CPAs from our Virtual Family Office network at the right phase. And we keep the wealth management, estate and legacy planning, and succession planning work aligned to the same timeline.
K&K does not perform business valuations and does not act as a business broker or M&A advisor. Credentialed specialists handle valuations and transaction execution. We design and coordinate the integrated plan around their work.
Most strategies need roughly five years of runway to deliver their full value. Capital-gains mitigation, pre-sale gifting, Qualified Small Business Stock holding periods, value-creation work, and most state-residency moves all assume meaningful separation from the transaction. Owners who start inside 12 months still have options, but the menu shrinks quickly.
The four most common owner exits: sale to a third-party strategic or financial buyer, sale or transition to internal management or a partner group, transition inside the family (which overlaps with succession planning), and an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). Each path has a different tax profile, deal structure, and timeline.
The more useful question is what after-tax number from the exit, combined with assets already outside the business, produces the household income you want for the next 30 years. That answer is built backward from the post-exit lifestyle plan, not picked as a round number.
No. K&K does not act as a business broker, M&A advisor, or valuation firm. Credentialed specialists from our Virtual Family Office network handle those engagements in their licensed capacity. K&K coordinates the integrated plan around their work and keeps the tax, estate, and wealth strategies aligned.
The same time you would start it if you were sure. Cleaner books, lower owner dependence, tighter cost structure, and a coordinated tax position make the business worth more if you do sell, and make it more profitable and transferable if you don't. Either way you keep your options open.
The conversation walks through where the business stands today and where the highest-leverage moves sit against your timeline.
See the for business owners household view and the broader Business Advisory practice.
Or call (804) 372-8307
Important disclosure: Kotini & Kotini does not perform business valuations and does not act as a business broker, M&A advisor, or investment banker. Transaction execution, formal valuations, and securities-related work are provided by credentialed specialists in our Virtual Family Office network, operating in their licensed capacity. K&K coordinates the integrated plan across tax, wealth, estate, risk, and business workstreams. See our disclosures page for the full description of the coordination model and partner relationships.
