These guides cover the three questions every exit comes down to. When should you start, and in what order? What does the business actually earn for a new owner? And can you prove it, quickly, when a buyer asks? Each guide is written for an owner, not an adviser. You get plain language, worked numbers, checklists you can use this week, and clear flags where a lawyer, accountant or valuator needs to take over.
Nothing here is legal, tax or valuation advice, and nothing here promises a price or a buyer. The goal is that you walk into every professional conversation better prepared.
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Building a data room before a buyer asks
A data room is the organized set of documents a buyer's team reviews. Building it before anyone asks is the cheapest way to shorten diligence and avoid surprises. Here is a Canadian checklist, folder by folder.
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Normalized earnings and add-backs: how buyers recalculate your profit
Buyers don't price the profit on your tax return. They rebuild it to show what a new owner would earn. This guide shows how that works, with numbers, so you can prepare before they do it for you.
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The three-year exit runway: what to fix, in what order
Three years is enough time to make most owner-led businesses genuinely ready to sell. This guide splits that time into stages and tells you what belongs in each one.
The three-year exit runway
What it teaches: how to split the years before a sale into four stages (see, fix, prove, package) and what belongs in each.
The core insight is that buyers weigh full fiscal years, so the improvements that matter most need at least a year to show up. The guide explains that arithmetic, lists the jobs for each stage, and includes a one-page table you can pin to the wall. It also covers what not to do during the runway, such as starving the business of marketing to inflate final-year profit.
Read it first if you are two or more years from an exit: The three-year exit runway.
Normalized earnings and add-backs
What it teaches: how buyers rebuild your profit to show what a new owner would earn, and how to prepare that schedule yourself, with evidence.
A fictional service company with $2.4 million in revenue and $180,000 of reported profit turns into roughly $379,000 of normalized earnings once owner pay, family payroll, personal vehicle use, a one-time settlement and below-market rent are adjusted. The guide walks through each step, explains SDE versus EBITDA, and shows why the working-capital target can quietly move the price at closing.
Read it if your numbers are the weak spot: Normalized earnings and add-backs.
The data room checklist
What it teaches: what buyers of Canadian private businesses typically request, organized into nine folders, with a simple 18-point readiness score.
It covers corporate records, financial and tax files, provincial clearances (with Ontario WSIB and BC PST examples), contracts, people, customers, operations and legal matters, plus a privacy note on sharing customer information during a transaction.
Read it if a buyer is already interested, or if you want a concrete to-do list: Building a data room.
How the guides connect to our services
Each guide pairs with a service, for owners who want help doing the work:
| Guide | Related service |
|---|---|
| Three-year exit runway | Exit readiness assessment |
| Normalized earnings | Valuation readiness |
| Data room checklist | Deal preparation |
You don't need to hire us to use them. Many owners work through the checklists with their own accountant and lawyer, and that is a good outcome too.
Provincial differences
The method doesn't change across Canada, but some of the paperwork does. Sales tax clearance, workers' compensation purchaser certificates and corporate registries vary by province. The areas overview links to a page for each province and one for the three territories.
Who writes the guides
The guides are written by Ali Sedighi, MBA, who leads BusinessExit.ca, and they draw on the same assessments and checklists we use with clients. Each one carries a "last updated" date. Where a guide mentions a government rule, it links to the official page we checked, so you can confirm it is still current before you rely on it.
Suggested reading order
- Start with the runway guide to understand timing.
- Move to normalized earnings to understand the numbers.
- Finish with the data room checklist to see how it all comes together.
Questions after reading? Call, text or email, and you'll speak with a senior strategist.
Frequently asked questions
Are these guides legal or tax advice?
No. They are general business guidance written to help you prepare and to ask better questions of your lawyer and accountant. Every business and every deal is different.
Do the guides apply outside Ontario and BC?
Yes. The method applies across Canada. Where a provincial rule matters, such as sales tax or workers' compensation clearances on a sale, the guides point to the regional pages, which cover each province and the territories.
Can I share these guides with my business partner or successor?
Please do. They are written to be read by everyone who has a stake in the exit, including partners, family successors and managers who may buy in.