Start at least three to five years out. Buyers pay for clean financials, sustainable organic growth, a team that runs the business without you, and signed agreements, and each of those takes years to build. In this session, Succession Resource Group’s David Grau Jr., MBA, shows how to raise your value and choose the exit path that fits your goals.

David walks advisory firm owners through what actually drives value and how little time three to five years really is. You will see why the window is short (clean financials alone take three-plus years, and the transaction itself can eat a year), and how to read the two valuation lenses without blending them: books under roughly $200M AUM price on recurring revenue at about 3.27x, while larger businesses price on EBITDA in a 6 to 14x range that averages near 10x, and at a 30% margin both lenses land on the same number.

He maps the four variables that set your real options (practice size, timeline, buyer universe, and long-term priorities), the buyer types from peers to internal successors to PE-backed aggregators to direct private equity, and why the highest headline number (a PE deal paid 40% cash, 30% earnout tied to 10-20% growth, and 30% acquirer equity) is rarely the best deal. He closes on the value drivers and red flags buyers won’t name out loud, the internal and external exit paths, and the five things today’s sellers wish they had started earlier. Advisors planning to exit in the next three to ten years, weighing an unsolicited offer, or wanting to raise their firm’s value before they sell will find this a practical, data-backed roadmap.