Plan Your Business Exit in Your 40s | Full Send Management
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When we pulled up to the house after moving my son into his own apartment, his car wasn’t parked where it usually is. That spot had been empty plenty of times when he was out with friends, and there was always a sense of “oh, he’s not home.” This time it was “oh, he’s not coming home.” That spot is going to be empty for a while. Both kids left within a few weeks of each other, and I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I was.
A few weeks before my daughter moved out, there was a moment that really hit me. She came down the stairs one morning with her dog, making a lot of noise, and my first reaction from my desk was to shush her because my son was still sleeping. It hit me almost as quickly as the thought came that he wasn't here, so it didn't matter how much noise she made.
We knew this day was coming from the day they were born. Of course we would muse about it, but we were too busy raising them to really think about what the house would feel like after.
Founders have their own version of that morning. When an owner starts planning an exit, almost all the attention goes to taking care of their people and making sure the deal goes through and they get their money. Yet, they only have a rough idea of what they'll do after. Ask what happens six months after that and they have no idea.
Owners will do what they think they want, which a lot of the time is what others want for them. The spouse wants to travel, and they figure they'll finally play more golf. Three months in, golf gets old. Being around the house is driving the spouse nuts, and how many trips can you actually take in a month? So they reach for the iPhone and the email and look for any connection to the business. They're used to that cadence, and the need to be needed never really wears off for a true driver.
That's me at my desk, shushing my daughter for a kid who moved out.
I first heard this story from a retired board chairman. He got a big fat check, bought the Porsche and the Rolex, and joined the country club. Six months later he was bored out of his mind because all of his friends were still working. He ended up going back a few days a week on some boards and doing some consulting. That kept him engaged and gave him freedom over his time, which is what he really wanted more than anything when he left.
Ask a founder in their forties what they're building all this for and they'll tell you family, or providing, or that they love it. All true, and all the top layer. They'll muse about the exit once in a while, the same way we did about the kids leaving, and they're too busy building to really think about it. Push three or four levels down and it almost always lands in the same place. The money, so that one day they'll have the time. They can see the bank account and the new SUV. They can't see the version of themselves who finally has nothing they have to do, so they borrow the picture from the people around them and assume it has to be theirs too.
The money and the time aren't the same thing, and they can work against each other. You can hit the number and still have a reflex that owns your calendar.
So the question in your forties is how honest you can get about who you'll be and what you'll actually want in twenty or thirty years. That takes a long runway to figure out. Start it now and the exit gets built on purpose, years in the making. Wait, and it all arrives at once, the money and the grief and the scramble, and you're walking it looking at your feet.
You're twenty years out. What are you building toward, and is it actually yours?
