Personal Vision
What you're selling isn't just a company. It's the thing that has organized your life for the past decade or more.
Business owners who have been through a business exit often describe a version of the same experience: the transaction goes well. The financial outcome is what they hoped for. And then, a few months later, they find themselves wondering what they're supposed to be doing with their days.
This isn't universal, but it's common enough to take seriously. The identity that comes with being a business owner - the relationships, the status, the structure, the sense of purpose and forward motion - doesn't automatically transfer when the business does.
The business owners who navigate this transition well are the ones who started thinking about it early. Not obsessively, and not with a rigid plan, but with genuine curiosity about what they were building toward, not just what they were leaving behind.
What does a meaningful day look like, without the business? Who are the relationships that exist independently of your role as a business owner? What problems or interests have you set aside for years that deserve attention?
These questions don't have tidy answers. But business owners who have spent time sitting with them - really sitting with them, not just gesturing at them - arrive at the transition with a kind of settled readiness that those who haven't don't.