Two Decades: Is it Enough?

This is one of the most common things I hear from business owners, and it carries a weight that a lot of financial conversations don’t acknowledge.

“I’ve put everything into this business for twenty years. I don’t have a 401k. The business is the plan. And I honestly don’t know if it’s going to be enough.”

That’s not a small thing to carry. It’s a fundamental question about whether the sacrifice was worth it. Whether the long hours and deferred vacations and reinvested profits are going to produce the outcome you need to actually retire.

Here’s the thing about that uncertainty: it’s not random. It’s the result of not having a plan with specific numbers attached to it.

The owners who retire comfortably from their businesses didn’t get lucky. They built toward a specific target. They knew what they needed to walk away with to fund the life they wanted. They worked backward from that number to understand what the business needed to look like to generate it; what valuation, what EBITDA, what multiple, what type of buyer. And then they built their decisions around that picture.

According to the Exit Planning Institute’s 2025 Generational State of Owner Readiness Report, 65% of business owners say they need to harvest the value of their business to support their post-exit lifestyle. Yet among Baby Boomer owners; the generation closest to exit; only 35% have had a formal business valuation done in the last two years. The owners who say they need their business to fund retirement are, in the majority of cases, doing so without knowing what their business is actually worth.

The dog boarding business that worked with Exit Factor came in with a valuation of $40,000 and a business drowning in overhead and operational inefficiency. The owner had built something with real demand; multiple locations, strong client loyalty, genuine market presence; but the numbers weren’t telling that story. Over 17 months, we rebuilt the operational discipline, addressed the staffing bloat, and created the structure that let the business’s real value show up on paper. Valuation went from $40,000 to $450,000; a 1,006% increase. A real asset that had been built correctly; one that could be sold and generate genuine financial value for the owner.

That’s a business that went from not being a retirement asset to being one.

Whatever your number is, knowing it is where this starts. Not knowing it is expensive; not just financially, but in terms of the anxiety you carry every day operating without a clear target.

You deserve to know whether you’re on track. Get the real picture.

Rodrigo Passalacqua is Managing Partner at Exit Factor of Raleigh-Durham. If retirement is in the picture and you’re not sure the business is going to get you there, that’s exactly the conversation we need to have. Reach out directly.