Two years before I sold my agency in 2020, a buyer asked me a question I could not answer cleanly: what happens to this business if you step away for 90 days? The honest answer was that it would wobble. Too much ran through me. That gap is exactly what exit readiness measures.
Exit readiness is how sellable your business is right now: whether a buyer would pay a strong multiple for it today, and whether it would keep running the week after you left. A business that scores high is one a buyer sees as an asset. A business that scores low is one a buyer sees as a job with your name on it.
I care about this enough to name a podcast after it. Exit Ready exists because the founders who leave well are not the ones who got lucky in a hot market. They are the ones who built a business that did not need them.
The levers that drive exit readiness
Exit readiness is the sum of a handful of levers, and a buyer prices every one of them:
- Owner independence. Can the business run without you for a month? If every decision waits for you, a buyer is purchasing a job.
- Predictable profit. Steady, healthy margins beat a spiky record on a bigger top line. Buyers pay for profit they can count on.
- Recurring revenue. Retainers and contracts are worth more than project income that starts at zero every month.
- Client concentration. No single client should be more than 20% to 25% of revenue. One dominant account is a discount waiting to happen.
- Systems. Documented processes mean the business is repeatable, not held together by memory.
- Leadership. A second tier who can run their part without you removes key-person risk.
- Sales engine. A pipeline that produces work without you in every pitch.
- Financial reporting. Clean monthly management accounts and a clear adjusted EBITDA. If a buyer’s accountant has to dig, your price drops.
Fix these and you get two things at once: a more sellable business, and a better one to run in the meantime.
How to score it
Scoring exit readiness means being honest about each lever and giving it a mark. That is what the Agency Health Scorecard does: six pillars, 18 questions, a score out of 36, and a read on your single weakest pillar with worked case files showing how other agencies fixed the same gap.
The reason to score it is simple. You cannot fix a gap you have not named. Owners tell me they feel something is off in the business long before they can point at it. A score points at it for you.
What a low score costs you
Here is where it gets expensive. Multiples are not fixed. Two agencies at the same revenue can sell for very different numbers, and the difference is exit readiness. In UK agency deals, the strongest businesses reach 6x adjusted EBITDA and above, while founder-dependent, client-concentrated, project-only businesses sit at the bottom of the range or below it.
Run the maths. A full point of multiple on £300K of EBITDA is £300K of enterprise value. That is the price of a low score. Twelve to 24 months of focused work on your weakest levers can move you a full point, sometimes more. Leave the work until you have decided to sell and there is no time left to earn it back.
When I finally sold, the part I was proudest of was not the headline number. It was that the business kept running through the earnout without me holding it up. That is what a high exit-readiness score buys you: a cleaner deal, and a life after it.
Start with your score
If you want to know where you stand, take the free agency assessment. It takes a few minutes and gives you a clear read on your weakest pillar and what to fix first.
And if you are already at the top end and want hands-on help turning a strong score into a completed sale, that is what my exit advisory work is for.