Welcome back to another edition of The Wise Exit newsletter.

This week, we're covering:

• The only checklist that actually matters before you sell

• 5 tough questions to test your sell-side readiness today

• 3 action items to start organizing your sale process like a pro

Let’s dive in.

💡 One Big Idea

The Only 5-Step Checklist That Actually Matters Before You Sell

Most founders don’t lose leverage during negotiations. They lose it before the transaction process even starts. Because by the time a buyer shows up, it’s already too late to fix what should’ve been handled months (or years) earlier.

That’s why having a real checklist before going to market is how you stay in control of the outcome.

Here's a 5-step checklist to help you prepare for your exit:

Step 1: Get Clear on Value and Why You’re Selling

Clarity is the first step in the entire process. Not just on what your business is worth, but why you’re selling and what success looks like for you personally.

That means:

• A professional valuation (not a guess or an online multiple)

• A clear reason for selling (retirement, burnout, next chapter, liquidity)

• Alignment between your financial goals and your exit timeline

If you’re unclear here, it shows up everywhere else.

Step 2: Pressure-Test Your Readiness

Founders often feel ready long before they actually are. The fastest way to reality-check that is to score yourself across the areas buyers care about most:

• Financial health

• Operations

• Legal/compliance

• Exit planning

• Emotional readiness to let go

Then back up each score with evidence. If you can’t point to documents, systems, or data to support your answers, buyers won’t believe your story either.

Step 3: Organize the Documents Buyers Will Ask for First

Deals usually slow down because sellers aren’t prepared. At a minimum, buyers will want to see a few things:

• 3–5 years of clean financials and tax returns

• Customer, vendor, and employee contracts

• Legal formation docs, licenses, and compliance records

• Inventory, SOPs, and operational documentation

This doesn’t need to be fancy. But it does need to be centralized, up-to-date, and defensible.

Step 4: Fix the Issues Before Buyers Find Them

Every business has a few skeletons in the closet. The difference between a smooth exit and a painful one is whether you address them first or let buyers use them as leverage.

That includes:

• Outstanding legal or financial issues

• Sloppy contracts or missing agreements

• Operational gaps or owner dependency

Step 5: Prepare for Offers, Not Just Interest

Getting interest isn’t the goal. Choosing the right offer is. Meaning, you'll need to know how you'll evaluate:

• Price vs. payment structure

• Certainty of close vs. upside

• Buyer capability and post-sale plans

• Timeline, contingencies, and risk

Founders who prepare for this early on don’t just get higher offers. They make better decisions under pressure.

At the end of the day, this checklist won’t sell your business for you. But it will protect your leverage, reduce surprises, increase buyer confidence, and give you control in a process that usually feels overwhelming.

Hit reply to this email if you have any questions or need help with this.

5 Key Questions to Ask Yourself Today

1️⃣ If a buyer asked for your last 5 years of financials and tax returns today, could you send them over without hesitation? If not, you're not ready. No buyer is going to wait while you pull receipts out of a Dropbox folder.

2️⃣ Where are your customer, vendor, and employee contracts stored, and are they current, signed, and assignable? Missing contracts or outdated terms create uncertainty. And uncertainty kills deals.

3️⃣ What gaps or risks would a buyer flag first in your operations, and are you proactively addressing them or hoping they won’t notice? If you know it’s a weakness, so will they. Get ahead of it now.

4️⃣ Have you ever run a full “dry run” of due diligence with your internal team or outside advisor? This is one of the best ways to expose problems before buyers do. It’s not just for large companies, either.

5️⃣ Are your most important business documents stored in one centralized, secure location that can be shared under NDA? A clean and organized data room is a trust builder. A messy inbox full of random PDFs? Not so much.

3 Action Items For This Week

•  Start building your data room today: Use Google Drive, Dropbox, or DealRoom. It doesn't need to be fancy. Just get everything in one place and organized by financials, legal, HR, tax, contracts, and ops.

• Score yourself on the 5 key areas of readiness: Rate yourself 1–5 in financials, legal, operations, exit plan, and emotional readiness. Be honest. Then identify your weakest area and focus there first.

• Schedule a 30-min consult with a CPA or M&A advisor: Ask them to review your financials, contracts, or data room setup. A second set of eyes now can save you money later on.

That’s all for this week.

If you’re not sure where to start or how “ready” you actually are to sell, just hit reply to this email or contact us here to chat with our team.

Until next time,

Brian Dukes Managing Partner at Exitwise