Business Exit Readiness Index

Two questions decide every business transition. Most owners have only answered one.

Most of us have a rough answer to how much longer we want to do this. Far fewer have run the number on what we would need to pull out of the business to stop. It is where those two cross that decides what is actually available to you.

Find Where You Land

20 questions · 6 to 8 minutes · Personalized report

BERI Report · Sample Stay & Grow

Financial ReadinessModerately Low

Mental ReadinessModerately Low

Well Off But
Choose to Work

Rich & Ready
to Go

Stay & Grow

Get Me Out at
Highest Price

Mental Readiness · Low to High

No score out of 100. Two readiness bands place you on one chart.

Before you take it

If it tells you to sell, that is not the answer. That is the question.

I want to prepare you for something, because a lot of family owners get to the end of this and dismiss it.

This assessment scores you on how much of your wealth sits outside the business. And if most of yours is still inside it, which is true for nearly every family business owner I meet, the report is going to tell you that a sale to an outside buyer is your most realistic path. It will say that managers and family members usually do not have the money to buy you out.

If you have no intention of ever selling, that lands wrong. So here is how I would read it instead.

It is not telling you to sell. It is telling you that right now, handing the business down would cost you your retirement.

Those are completely different sentences. And that is worth knowing early, because it is fixable. Just not quickly.

Some people take this because they are weighing a sale. Some take it because they have always assumed the kids would take over. It is the same two questions either way. You just get different answers about who ends up writing the check.

The pattern underneath this

Everything you put back in was the right call. It also made this harder.

You reinvested, because that is what good operators do

Every year the choice was the same. Take it out, or put it back in and grow. Putting it back in was almost always the right business decision.

So your net worth is the business

Not diversified alongside the business. The business. Which means the business is also your retirement, whether or not anyone has ever said that out loud.

Which means somebody has to pay you

If your future depends on getting value out of this company, then the next owner has to fund that. And your kids, in all likelihood, cannot write that check.

That is the part nobody says at Thanksgiving

Everyone assumes the handoff is a legal exercise. It is a funding exercise. The documents are the easy part.

And it takes years to change, not months

Which is exactly why this is worth measuring now rather than at sixty-eight, when the options get narrow and expensive.

“Every owner I meet knows roughly when they want out. Almost none of them know what it costs. And that second number is the one that decides which doors are actually open.”

Michael Palumbos · Founder, Family Business Flywheel

What this measures

Here are the two.

There is no score out of a hundred here. Twenty questions resolve into two answers, and where those two cross is where you sit.

Axis 01 · Financial Readiness

How much of your future is outside the business?

Whether you know what you actually draw from the company each year, whether you have income that does not depend on it, whether the business is more or less than half your net worth, what your debt looks like and whether you have planned for the day something unexpected happens.

If the business stopped paying you tomorrow, how long could you go?

Axis 02 · Mental Readiness

How much longer do you want to be doing this?

Whether you still enjoy it, whether you have a picture of what comes next, whether you take real time away, whether you have prepared anyone to take over and whether the thought of five more years sounds good or exhausting.

Is the timeline in your head anywhere near the one in your spouse's?

The Exit Quadrant Chart

Four places you can land.

These names are not mine. They come from the model the assessment is built on, and a couple of them sound like they were written for someone selling to private equity. Read past the labels.

Financial Readiness · Low to High

Well Off But
Choose to Work

Rich & Ready
to Go

Stay & Grow

Get Me Out at
Highest Price

Mental Readiness · Low to High

Stay & Grow

Low financial readiness, low mental readiness. You still like the work and most of your money is in the company. This is where many family business owners land, and it is the one this whole page is about.

Well Off But Choose to Work

You could stop. You do not want to. The strongest position to hand a business down from, because nobody has to buy you out for you to be alright.

Get Me Out at Highest Price

You are ready to be done and you need the proceeds. The most time-pressured place to be, and the one where a family transfer gets hardest.

Rich & Ready to Go

You have the means and the appetite. Every option is genuinely open, including gifting.

How it works

Three steps. About seven minutes.

Answer 20 questions

Ten or so about money, ten or so about how you feel about the work. Answer them the way things actually are, not the way you would like them to be.

6 to 8 minutes · 20 questions

See where you land on the chart

Your two answers place you in one of the four quadrants, with a written description of what that position usually means and what tends to be open to owners sitting there.

Instant · Two axes, four quadrants

Read the recommendations, then read them again

The report gives you five suggested next actions based on where you land. Some of them assume you want to sell. Take those as one path rather than the path, and see the note above about how to read it if you do not.

Personalized · Immediate

Before you start

Two things worth knowing.

There is no score to chase.

A few of these questions are written as though wanting out is the healthy answer, and a few as though staying is. Neither is true. There is no score to chase here, just a position to find.

You decide who sees your answers.

The assessment runs on a licensed platform, so the next screen looks different from this page. It asks for your name, company and contact information first. There is also a checkbox asking whether to send your answers to me. It starts unchecked. Check it if you would want a second read, leave it if you would rather sit with it yourself. You get your report either way.

Find Where You Land

BERI™ Owner's Report Sample · Stay & Grow

What the report actually gives you

The delivered report places you on the Exit Quadrant Chart, explains your Financial and Mental Readiness, outlines exit paths associated with your position and gives five initial recommendations.

Your Financial Readiness band

Your Mental Readiness band

Your position on the Exit Quadrant Chart

Five initial recommendations

Exit options associated with your position

Your report

What arrives, and what is behind it.

Your position on the chart

Where your two answers put you, and what that position usually means for the options in front of you.

The exit paths that fit that position

ESOP, management buyout, recapitalization, outside sale, gifting stock to family. Which ones tend to be realistic from where you are standing, and which ones need something to change first.

Five suggested next actions

Based on your position. Practical, and worth reading alongside the note at the top of this page.

A longer version, if you want it

There is a fuller twelve-page report with more specific strategic and tactical recommendations. It does not come automatically. The platform asks you to contact the consultant who introduced the assessment.

You decide who sees it

That checkbox at the start decides whether your answers come to me. Leave it unchecked and they do not.

Want the deeper read?

If you take the assessment and want the fuller twelve-page report, just tell me. The extended version includes more specific strategic and tactical recommendations based on your BERI result.

“The owners who transition well are not the ones who wanted it more. They are the ones who answered both questions early enough that they still had choices.”