It comes down to your finances, your timeline, and what you want for your team and your legacy. The free Day Zero Guide walks through about a dozen questions and gives you a personalized read on how a sale, succession, and employee ownership each stack up for your business.

Your business needs cash to run smoothly even after a change in ownership. We give you four ways to model that — pick the one that best matches how you expect your exit (sale or transition to employee ownership) to be structured.

Aha Planner calculates your working capital from your receivables, inventory, and payables days — applied to your revenue and COGS. The sector benchmark uses Damodaran NYU Stern's industry working-capital ratios, sized to your business's revenue so it's calibrated to your sector and scale. Comparing the two tells you whether you tie up more or less cash in day-to-day operations than typical for your sector — and where there may be room to free up cash before going to market.