A business doesn't become sellable at the moment you decide to exit—it becomes sellable years before that through intentional preparation.
In this episode, Adi Klevit interviews Channing Hamlet about what truly determines whether a business can be sold at a premium. Channing outlines four critical areas owners must address early: personal clarity on exit goals, tax planning, personal financial planning, and business readiness. He emphasizes that exit preparation is not a last-minute decision, but a long-term strategy.
Adi and Channing dive deeply into business readiness, focusing on transferability—the ability for a business to operate without undue risk once the owner exits. Channing explains how concentration risk, undocumented processes, and founder dependency all reduce buyer confidence and often force deal structures that delay or reduce payout.
The conversation brings everything back to systems. Channing shares real-world examples of businesses that failed to sell because knowledge lived in one person's head, as well as companies that achieved premium outcomes by documenting processes, building teams, and engineering risk out of the business. The episode reinforces a key systems principle: the easier it is to transfer how the business runs, the more valuable it becomes.
