Buyout Barometer®

Our Business Succession Planning Tool

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Will the sale of your business lead to a successful retirement?

Brown and Company is highly qualified to help entrepreneurs and business leaders with their unique financial situations, and we have been a valued resource in the Denver community for years. Professional expertise and decades of experience went into the development of our proven tool and our process for approaching the sale of a business.

The Buyout Barometer® is our proprietary tool that helps business owners assess whether they can sell their business and confidently pursue a successful retirement. We begin the process by assessing your opportunities to reduce taxes, minimize risk and create sustainable income.

This tool helps us determine these factors:

  • Asset Base (maximizing value)
  • Lifestyle and Legacy (exit preparedness)
  • Portfolio Allocation (investment and tax considerations)

Helping You Achieve
Two Important Objectives

Our business succession planning process helps you to:

Prepare Your Business for Transition

The energy you spend growing a business is largely futile if the business is not properly transitioned and its value fully realized. In a study of 300 former business owners who recently sold their companies, only 25% felt the sale accomplished their personal and financial objectives.1

Undoubtedly, much of those disappointing results can be attributed to a lack of planning. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of business owners over the age of 50 have no succession plan for their businesses.2

These are the questions you should ask yourself as you prepare your business for sale.

  • Have you had a recent valuation that indicates what the business is worth?
  • Do you know what the business needs to be worth to meet your goals?
  • Are you familiar with the common mistakes business owners make when selling their companies?
  • Who runs the business if you are no longer around?

Prepare Your Family for Life After the Sale

An entrepreneur’s emotional attachment to the business cannot be overstated. Many business owners are not emotionally prepared for life after the sale and fear the loss of stable income. According to our conversations with numerous investment bankers over the years, this is a big reason why many deals fall apart.

Below are the questions you should ask yourself as you and your family prepare for life after the sale of your business.

  • How will you spend your time once you are no longer involved in the business?
  • How do you “get paid” for the next several decades after you sell the business?

Take the Buyout Barometer® Assessment

Are you ready to assess your company’s current attractiveness to potential buyers and/or internal successors, as well as your personal readiness for either a planned or unplanned exit of the business?

Click here to answer a few relevant questions and receive your own customized report.


1 Jackim, Richard E., The $10 Trillion Opportunity: Designing Successful Exit Strategies for Middle Market Business Owners, Second Edition, 6/1/2006.
2 Frank, Robert, “If you do this, you’re smarter than most millionaires,” CNBC, 3/15/2016.
3 2014 Business Enterprise Institute, Inc.

With Brown, You’ll Know!