Our Process
Our process, like our overall philosophy, is to keep things simple. We start with an initial no-cost, no-obligation 60-minute consult.
01. Identify Value
Services Provides
Business Valuation, Business Benchmark, and Personal Financial Plan—three essential pillars in financial strategy, each serving as a critical bullet point.
02. Understand Drivers of Value
Utilize our suite of assessments to develop a value enhancing action plan
Utilize our suite of assessments to develop a value enhancing action plan—Value Builder Assessment, Exit Map Assessment, PREScore Assessment & Freedom Score Assessment.
03. Maximize Value
Services Provided
Execute Action Plan for Value Drivers, Weekly, Monthly & Quarterly Accountability Reviews, and Quarterly Value and Benchmark Progress Updates—a structured approach to tracking progress and driving long-term value.
04. Review Exit Options
Services Provided
Key Strategic Steps—Stay or Sell Decision, Review Exit Options, Due Diligence Readiness, Go To Market & Negotiate Transaction.
Assuming we jointly agree to move forward, we will establish a scope-of-work agreement and decide on the tools we’ll use for collaboration and communication.
Stop Waiting for “Tomorrow” to Plan the Future Well-being of Your Business
In life we often feel that we never have enough time or money, especially when it comes to planning our future. As a business owner, these sentiments are even more amplified. Everyone deserves a better future and a solid, reliable plan to get there. I understand planning for future contingencies may seem excessive – the future is far away and we never know what will happen, right? That’s true. However with the guidance of a well-crafted exit plan, you can take control of both your financial and personal future. You will maximize the value of your business and be prepared for unplanned sales, unsolicited offers and unpredicted scenarios [5 Ds]. Through proper planning you can mitigate risk for yourself and your family, clients, employees and vendors.
As a five-time entrepreneur myself I understand the feelings of concern, confusion and reluctance that come with the idea of selling your business. My cumulative experiences combined with being a Certified Exit Planning Advisor allows me to guide business owners like you through the process I once struggled through and eventually mastered – and come out of it confident and prepared.
Phase One: We Start with a Valuation of your business
The valuation becomes the cornerstone of our work together. It is the basis for developing your personal financial plan.
During the valuation, we identify what the opportunity for value creation will look like by benchmarking your business to the best in class in your industry.
Once we have an indication of value, we will partner with your financial planner to develop a comprehensive exit strategy. If you don’t already have a financial planner no worries! We will work with you directly to:
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Give you visibility into what you net from the sale of the business.
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Show you how the sale fits into the context of your financial life.
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Discuss the impact selling the business will have on your overall goals. At the conclusion of this stage, you can elect to stop with the information you have or elect to move on to Phase Two.
Phase Two: We Conduct a Thorough Assessment
In phase Two, we conduct a thorough assessment that focuses on three things:
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Business Readiness.
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Business Attractiveness.
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Owner Readiness.
At the end of this process, you will be provided an overview of the assessment. After our one-hour complimentary phone call to review the results of your assessment, you will be provided with a detailed analysis.
This report will provide greater detail on what was discovered in the initial assessment.
Lastly, we will provide you with a detailed action plan to address the areas identified during the assessment and our discussion. This will be the roadmap that will increase the value of your business.
After you receive your assessment, we work with you to provide guidance through a series of checklists. This is to review the business and your readiness in critical areas that have an impact on a successful exit.
We will review the following areas:
(Internal)
Due Diligence Readiness ✔
Financial Statement Review ✔
(With third party strategic partners)
Legal Review – Corporate ✔
Insurance ✔
Legal Review – Estate Planning ✔
Cyber Security ✔
Tax Planning ✔
Human Resources ✔
These areas will also be looked at during due diligence and should be addressed before taking the business to market. At the conclusion of this stage, you can elect to stop with the information you have or elect to move onto Phase 3.
Phase Four: Review Exit Options
At this crucial juncture, we work with the business owner to assess all possible exit strategies, allowing the owner to make an informed decision of how they want to take their business to market.
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Blue Sky will represent you in a potential transaction, whether it is an internal buyout, shareholder dispute, family succession planning, outside investment or outright sale of the business.
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We have an extensive database of Private Equity firms as well as family offices and private investors that we will market your business to.
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We will also work with you to create a list of potential strategic buyers that you may wish for us to reach out to anonymously on the company’s behalf.
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Blue Sky will prepare the confidential investor memorandum, one page reach-out, as well as our proposed reach out list of prospective buyers / investors.
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We manage the NDA process and sharing of information and will negotiate LOI’s on your behalf.
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We manage the due diligence process and are your day to day interface with the potential buyer and their professional team.
Phase Three: We Implement the Value Creation Process
In the value creation phase, we work with you to implement the tasks and strategies outlined in the action plan developed at the end of Phase Two. Together, we select the priorities you want to focus on over the next 12 months for yourself, the organization, and your leadership team.
Together, we then build action plans of what we expect to accomplish in the next 90 days. We then assign responsibility for each priority and agree upon how to measure progress towards achieving your goals. During this phase, we conduct a weekly check in call to review progress on tasks and identify issues.
Additionally, we will meet quarterly to review results for the prior quarter to identify any issues we want to add and to select our priorities for the next quarter.
Every six months we will conduct a one on one with the owner to review progress, the change in value, and discuss if the owner at this point would like to explore exit options or continue along the value creation process. Everything we work on during this process is designed to create value and prepare the business for due diligence by a potential buyer.