VOL 13 - EXIT STRATEGY by Lawrence M. Schneider

You built a profitable company. Customers and employees trust you. Yet the moment you imagine selling, appointing a successor, reducing your hours, or simply becoming less 
essential, an uncomfortable truth appears:
 
The business may still depend on you for too much of its value.
 
Important decisions return to your desk. Major customers want your reassurance. Financial results make sense only after you explain the history. A successor may carry 
responsibility but not real authority. The team can operate while you are away, yet quietly saves consequential decisions for your return.
 
That is not exit readiness. It is founder dependence wearing the appearance of a mature company.
 
Exit Strategy examines the Exit Readiness Gap—the distance between a founder’s desire to step away and the company’s ability to continue, transfer, and retain value without 
relying on that founder’s daily presence.
 
Lawrence M. Schneider shows why an exit does not begin when a buyer calls, a successor is named, or a transaction adviser is hired. It begins when the value you created can 
move from you into the institution.
 
Inside, you will examine five forms of transferable value:
 
Economic transferability — can another party understand revenue, margin, cash, and risk without your personal explanation?
Operating transferability — can the company deliver, decide, recover, and improve without founder rescue?