If you are 60 and still own the business: your readiness checklist
Almost six in ten boomer owners say they want to be out of their business within five years. Only one in seven of them treats exit planning as a top priority right now. That gap is the single largest financial risk facing the cohort.
There are about 12 million businesses in the United States owned by people aged 60 or older. Together they represent the largest concentrated transfer of private wealth in the country's history. The Exit Planning Institute estimates roughly 14 trillion dollars of business value will change hands over the next decade. Most of that value sits with boomer-aged owners.
And yet, when researchers ask boomer owners about their readiness, the picture flips. The generation closest to exit is the one with the least preparation in place.
Why the boomer position is uniquely difficult
The standard narrative says boomers had decades of runway and should be the most prepared. The data says the opposite. There are three reasons that show up over and over.
The first is that running the business was the plan. For most boomer founders, the company started as a job, became an identity, and never quite became something separate from them. Planning the exit feels like planning to amputate a limb, so it keeps getting pushed.
The second is that the company often is the retirement plan. Roughly 80 percent of a typical owner's net worth is locked inside the business. Whatever has been set aside in 401(k)s and brokerage accounts is usually only a fraction of what the lifestyle would require. The exit is not optional. The price the business fetches will dictate the rest of life.
The third is generational privacy. Joe Strazzeri, a long-time exit planning advisor, summed it up bluntly in EPI's research: "Baby Boomers store their eggs, and don't let anyone know they've got them." The instinct to keep the financial picture private (from spouse, kids, employees, advisors) makes the prep work harder and slower.
The numbers: where the gap actually is
Across multiple EPI surveys, the same pattern shows up: boomers are the closest to needing a plan and the furthest from having one. A few of the specifics.
Read those numbers together. A majority of boomer owners want to be out within five years. Almost none have built the team that would help them get there, almost none have done the work that would lift the price, and roughly half cannot describe what the life after looks like beyond a one-word answer.
The "I do not have time" answer
When boomer owners are asked why they have not gotten a formal valuation, the top two answers are revealing. Twenty-two percent say they "do not feel it is necessary." Twenty-one percent say they "do not have time."
Both answers are usually wrong in the same direction. The owners who think a valuation is not necessary are almost always overestimating the value of their company by a wide margin. The owners who think they do not have time are confusing "running the business" with "preparing the business." Those are not the same activity, and only one of them moves the eventual sale price.
The cost of getting this wrong is concentrated. A boomer owner who runs the business for three more years without any value-enhancement work and then gets pushed to sell by one of the 5Ds (death, disability, divorce, distress, disagreement) typically leaves 30 to 50 percent of the eventual transaction value on the table. That is the math.
The four gaps to close right now
There are four pieces of work that every owner over 60 should have either complete or actively underway. None of them require a decision to sell. They simply make the decision available when you want it.
1. A current formal valuation
Not a back-of-envelope multiple, not what the neighbor's business sold for, not what your CPA told you in 2019. A current third-party valuation, updated annually. Without this number, every other decision (estate, insurance, retirement income, gifting) is being made against a guess.
2. A small advisory team that meets on a cadence
The 95 percent of boomer owners without a formal exit advisory team are usually trying to coordinate a CPA, an attorney, a financial advisor, and an insurance advisor in series, never together. The team should meet on a regular schedule, even if it is only twice a year, and should include someone whose specific job is exit planning.
3. One value-enhancement project under way
The owners who lift their multiple do so because they fixed a specific drag on the business: a customer concentration problem, an owner-dependence problem, a margin problem, a documentation problem. You do not need to fix all of them. You need to be working on the one with the highest payoff this year.
4. A written one-page personal plan
Not a financial plan. A personal plan. What you will do on a Tuesday in the year after the sale. Who you will spend time with. What you want your money to do for your spouse, your kids, and the causes you care about. The number of owners who skip this step and the number of owners who report regret are nearly identical, and that is not a coincidence.
What to do this week
If reading the numbers above made you uncomfortable, that is the correct reaction. The good news is that the four gaps above all close on a 12-to-24-month timeline, not a 5-year timeline.
- Order a current valuation if your last one is older than two years or if you have never had one.
- Pick the single biggest drag on the business (customer concentration, owner dependence, margin, or documentation) and assign it to someone with a 90-day target.
- Schedule a 60-minute meeting with your CPA, attorney, and financial advisor in the same room, on the topic of "what would need to be true for me to exit in 36 months."
- Write down five things you would do in the first 90 days after the sale that have nothing to do with the business. If you cannot fill five lines, that is the work to start on.
- Talk to your spouse about all of the above. The "store the eggs" instinct delays this conversation more than any other.
None of this requires you to sell. It only requires you to be ready when you want to.
Sources: Exit Planning Institute, "2023 National State of Owner Readiness Report." Exit Planning Institute, "2025 SOOR Generational Analysis." Exit Planning Institute and Christopher Snider, "Defining Your Next Chapter" personal planning whitepaper (2026). PwC research on post-sale owner regret, as cited in EPI research. Synthesis and commentary are the work of the Next Chapter Wealth editorial team.