Getting Ready to Sell: Cleaning Up the Books, the Entity, and the Deal Team

Prepare your business for sale two years out so it commands a higher price and a cleaner tax result, and run the process from valuation to letter of intent without giving away leverage.

Who it is for: Owners who expect to sell to an outside buyer within five years.
Runtime: 55 minutes

Pre-order: this course is in development and appears in your portal the day it is released. Buy 5 or more and every course is 30% off.

See the full track See the full curriculum

Instant download after payment. Nothing is withheld for a later purchase.

What you receive

Sale Readiness checklist on a twenty-four-month timeline
Add-Back and Normalized Earnings worksheet (Excel)
Confidentiality Agreement and Letter of Intent term checklists
Deal Team roles and fee guide
Pre-Letter-of-Intent personal tax planning checklist
The narrated lesson. 55 minutes, cued to the deck, with chapter markers by lesson. Emailed to you the day it publishes, at no extra cost.

What the course covers

01What buyers pay for and what they discount5 min
02The twenty-four-month clean-up: financials, add-backs, related-party transactions, contracts, and people10 min
03Entity clean-up for tax: S versus C at the sale, the reorganization that allows a rollover, and state elections7 min
04Valuation: multiples, appraisals, and broker opinions5 min
05The deal team and what each one costs4 min
06The process from teaser to letter of intent, and what the letter must say9 min
07Personal planning before the letter of intent: trusts, charity, and the estate plan5 min
08Worked example: eighteen months of preparation adds 600,000 dollars to a 4 million dollar sale7 min
09Tricks of the trade and traps: the sell-side quality of earnings, gifting before the price is set, and exclusivity that runs too long3 min

How it fits: Requires 8.1 and 5.6. Pairs with 6.2, 7.5, and 8.5.

The standard every course holds

A narrated lesson of 45 to 60 minutes, produced as audio
A designed slide deck you download and keep
A computational workbook that runs the actual legal tests
A toolkit of checklists and protocols
A legal authority appendix carrying the two-pass vetting protocol

Written for a diligent reader with no legal education. Professionally narrated using a studio voice model of Brian T. Boyd. The course is recorded instruction, not a live consultation.

Where this course sits

Track 8: Succession Planning and Mergers and Acquisitions

This course is one step in a track built around a single outcome. See the full build order and the other courses that get you there.

Back to this track

Educational material from the private client curriculum of Brian T. Boyd. This is legal education for a general audience, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created by purchasing, viewing, or using it. Tax outcomes depend on your facts and your state.