The Exit You Are Executing in 2026 Was Decided Years Ago
I had coffee recently with a founder who was visibly frustrated. Revenues were up. The pipeline looked healthy. His banker kept saying, “You’re in great shape.”
And yet, every buyer conversation stalled.
After thirty minutes, he leaned back and said quietly, “I thought I’d be ready by now.”
That sentence comes up more often than you might think.
Most exits don’t fail at the finish line. They fail long before anyone uses the word “exit.”
What owners feel as urgency in 2026 is usually the echo of decisions made, or avoided, in 2021… 2019… even earlier. The market doesn’t suddenly judge your business when you list it. Buyers simply reveal what’s been true all along.
I see this on both sides of the table. Sellers assume value is something you unlock when you hire an advisor. Buyers know value is something you inherit from history.
That gap is where deals die.
Here’s the uncomfortable part. Many owners believe strong financials will carry the day. They won’t. Buyers buy confidence that the numbers will survive without you.
I’ve spoken with owners who watched valuations soften, not because the business was weak, but because the story didn’t hold up under diligence.
The questions always circle back to the same themes. Who really runs this place? What breaks if you leave? Why does growth depend on personal relationships no one else owns?
Those answers aren’t built in a year.
According to the research into lower-middle-market businesses by the Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Project, most successful exits require 18–24 months of deliberate preparation.
Not listing activity, but structural work.
That prep window often extends longer for founder-led businesses where institutional habits never had to exist.
I’ve also spoken with buyers who passed on otherwise attractive companies for one reason: optionality. They couldn’t see how the business scaled without rewriting its DNA.
This is where the narrative shifts.
Because the owners who will win in 2026 didn’t wait for clarity. They created it earlier.
One seller I spoke to began preparing for a hypothetical exit while actively planning to never sell. He professionalized leadership, diversified customers, and forced himself out of day-to-day decisions. When a strategic buyer appeared unexpectedly, diligence was confirmation, not interrogation. The deal closed faster than average for his size range, and at a valuation that surprised even him.
Another founder told me something that stuck. “I didn’t prepare to sell. I prepared to be unnecessary.”
That is the mindset that changes everything.
Your exit multiple is already embedded in how your business behaves today.
The skepticism usually shows up here:
“But markets change.” True.
“Buyers are unpredictable.” Also true.
But transferable value is remarkably consistent. Clean governance, recurring revenue, leadership depth, and customer concentration discipline never go out of style.
BizBuySell’s transaction data consistently shows that businesses with documented processes, diversified customers, and management continuity close faster and experience fewer retrades during diligence.
Faster closes are rarely about luck. They are about credibility.
So what does this mean for you, right now?
It means treating exit readiness as a strategic operating system, not a future event. It means asking questions that feel premature but are actually overdue. If a buyer showed up next quarter, what would concern them first? Where does your business still rely on heroics instead of systems? What decisions only you can make, and why?
The positive future here is very real. Owners who do this work early don’t just exit better. They run better businesses in the meantime. More freedom. More leverage. More strategic choices.
Ironically, the best exits often happen to people who stopped chasing exits altogether and focused on building something that could survive them.
That’s the lens I bring to every conversation:
We’re not preparing documents. We’re preparing realities.
The exit you’re executing in 2026 isn’t waiting for you in the future.
It’s already underway.
David Hermann, CEO of hermanngroup and M&A Advisor/Broker at Sunbelt Business Brokers of Colorado
David Hermann is a transformative advisor and strategist who turns complex business challenges into extraordinary successes. Known for driving over $500 million in documented financial improvements for clients, David partners with C-suite leaders to unlock their full potential. With 60+ speaking engagements, numerous publications, and a spot in the top 1% of Consulting Voices and top 1% of the Social Selling Index on LinkedIn, he’s passionate about making strategy, change leadership, and operations insightful and accessible.