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The HŪMNZ Element: Issue 33 - Why Every CEO Should Prepare to Sell a Company They Aren't Selling

Owners who started preparing to exit reported 20% greater revenue growth over the past year. Almost everything the preparation asks for is just operating discipline with a deadline attached.

Author

Tim Dennis
September 29, 2026

💡 Editor's Note

Exit planning gets filed under endings.

Something you start when you are tired, or when a broker calls, or when it becomes clear the kids do not want the business.

New data suggests that filing is expensive. The owners who have started preparing are not only better positioned to sell one day. They are running measurably better companies right now, while they still own them.

What if readiness is an operating discipline that happens to also be useful at the end?

Find out where your operation would struggle to run without you.

Five questions, about 90 seconds, and a personalized read on your own business immediately. No call booked at the end, no gate, nothing to sit through.

Executive Brief

Bottom line: Preparing to exit lines up with better performance today, which means the work pays whether or not a sale ever happens.

Capstone Partners published its 2026 Middle Market Business Owners Research Survey on September 29, 2026, drawn from 400 owners of privately held middle-market companies and fielded between May 20 and July 7.

72.7% said they had started preparing to exit their business. Those owners reported 20% greater revenue growth over the previous twelve months than the owners who had not started.

That is a correlation, not a proven cause, and it is worth saying so before building anything on it. Owners of stronger companies may simply be likelier to start preparing.

But the mechanism is not mysterious. Almost everything exit preparation asks for — documented process, a management team that can operate without you, reporting someone else could follow, named owners for the customer relationships and the knowledge nobody wrote down — is ordinary operating discipline with a deadline attached to it.

In 30 seconds

  • Middle-market owners who had started preparing to exit reported 20% greater revenue growth over the previous twelve months than those who had not, according to Capstone Partners' September 2026 survey of 400 privately held company owners.

  • The same owners also drew more investor interest and completed more transactions — results available to someone who never sells at all.

  • Start the readiness work in an ordinary quarter rather than a deal quarter. A business that runs without its owner is an operating asset first and a diligence answer second.

⚠️ Four signals leaders should be watching this week

1. What else does preparation line up with?

Signal: Exit readiness gets judged by one outcome — whether a sale closed — so everything else it produces goes uncounted.

Evidence: In the same Capstone survey, owners who had begun preparing completed 46.5% more capital markets transactions over the previous twelve months and attracted 34.5% greater interest from private equity than owners who had not begun.

Implication: Neither of those is an exit. They are financing and partnership outcomes, fully available to an owner who intends to hold the business for another decade. A company that can explain itself clearly is easier to lend to, invest in and partner with.

Action: Ask what your company would need in order to raise money next quarter. You will find that list overlaps almost entirely with the exit list.

2. Is anyone actually calling yet?

Signal: Owners assume they control when the conversation starts.

Evidence: 57.7% of the owners surveyed had completed a capital markets transaction during the previous twelve months.

Implication: For well over half, the conversation had already begun. Readiness is not really a decision about whether to sell. It is a decision about what condition you are in on the day somebody asks.

Action: Decide now what your answer is if a credible buyer calls next month. If the honest answer is that you would need six months first, you have just written your project plan.

3. Does "started preparing" mean prepared?

Signal: Readiness is self-reported, and self-reports are generous.

Evidence: The two available readings disagree sharply. Capstone asked owners directly and found a large majority had started. The IBBA and M&A Source Market Pulse survey asked 300 advisors what actually turns up at market and found 62% of businesses in the $5M to $50M range arriving with no formal exit planning at all.

Implication: Both can be true. Starting is not finishing, and owners and advisors are grading against different standards. The distance between those two numbers is roughly the distance between intending to be ready and being ready.

Action: Give the word "prepared" a definition somebody else could check. A written list with named owners and dates beats a feeling.

4. Is this a calm-weather exercise?

Signal: Readiness work gets postponed until conditions settle down.

Evidence: These owners were not operating in calm conditions. 92.3% reported facing inflationary pressure, 79.5% had changed their tariff strategy during 2026, and 84.5% had implemented or were planning to implement AI tools.

Implication: The preparation happened alongside the disruption rather than after it. Waiting for a quiet year means waiting for a year that is not on the calendar.

Action: Take one item off the readiness list this quarter. Writing down how your highest-revenue activity actually works is a reasonable place to start, and it is the item most often left in somebody's head.

Stat of the Week

54.6%

The share of middle-market owners who were contacted by private equity in the previous twelve months, in Capstone Partners' September 2026 survey of 400 privately held company owners.

More than half already took the call. The only variable left is what they had ready when it came.

Source: Capstone Partners, 2026 Middle Market Business Owners Research Survey, published September 29, 2026, based on 400 owners of privately held middle-market companies surveyed May 20 to July 7, 2026. Comparison figure from IBBA and M&A Source, Market Pulse Survey, Q1 2026.

The Core Question

There is a reason this work gets deferred, and it is not laziness. Nothing on the readiness list is urgent. Every item can wait a quarter without anything visibly breaking, which is exactly how it waits five years.

A transaction is simply the first deadline that makes it impossible to postpone. Which raises the obvious question of why that deadline should be the one doing the work.

If a credible buyer called next month, what condition would they find us in?

The VALŪE lens: Exit preparation and operating discipline are largely the same work under two different names. One of those names comes with a deadline, which is the only reason it ever gets done.

The preparation is not really for the sale. The sale is just what finally forces it.

Know a CEO who keeps meaning to start this? Send it on.

Until next time,

The HŪMNZ Element — Weekly Pulse

If this was useful, forward it to one person: a CEO who plans to hold the business for another ten years, or whoever would have to run it if they could not.