Why the Time to Plan Your Exit Is Before You Are Ready to Leave

You sit at your desk late on a Friday afternoon. The shop floor sits empty, but your inbox remains completely full. You feel a deep, physical exhaustion settling into your shoulders. You look around the office you built from nothing and imagine a distant future where you simply hand the keys to a stranger and walk away with a massive check. You tell yourself that you will start thinking about selling the company when you finally feel ready to retire. You assume that preparing for an exit takes a few months of cleaning up the balance sheet and calling a business broker. This assumption represents the most expensive mistake of your entire entrepreneurial career. You operate under a massive delusion that quietly destroys your net worth.