When you start your business it is necessary to think about how to end your involvement with it eventually. Thinking ahead to the day when you'll no longer run your business, think about exit strategies.

The one thing is the business often forgets that the decisions taken at one day could have enormous implications down the road. You see, it is not enough to build a wealth of commercial value; you have to make sure you have an exit strategy, a means to get the money back out

In fact, in each agreement, until you consider entering into this agreement, you must think about how you go out of the deal.
An exit strategy refers to Exit strategy refers to how you see the project after some period of time and whether you can exit successfully with a significant profit.
Great quality exit strategy can help you to maximize the value of get from your business, successfully market your business to potential buyers and investors and to ensure that you end your involvement little as possible disruption to the business
The length of time required to complete the process is directly related to the complexity of the business, and the circumstances underlying this decision to get out of business. It can range from one week for a home-based sole proprietorship to several years for a corporation forced into involuntary bankruptcy. Disputes and litigation add another dimension to the time frame.

Remember, money in the wallet is no longer money in the business. If you're in a business that must invest to grow, taking out too much money can hurt you down the road.
If you think you're in business for the lifestyle, minimize your dependence on other investors and structure the business to allow you to draw out cash as needed.



Here are five exit strategies so you'll be prepared for your future.
1-Selling the business
If you are selling the business there are several stages you will go through:
• grooming your business for sale
• valuing your business
• identifying and marketing your business to potential buyers
• negotiating with potential buyers
• completing legal due diligence
• finalising the sale and transferring ownership
here a great tip for you :if you've become emotionally attached to what you've built make the Selling to a Friendly Buyer, pass ownership to another true believer who will preserve your legacy.
2-lifestyle companies:
Rather than reinvesting money in growing your business, in lifestyle companies, you keep things small, take out a comfortable chunk, and simply live on the income. Pay yourself a huge salary, reward yourself with a gigantic bonus regardless of actual company performance, and issue a special class of shares that only you own that gives you ten times the dividends the other shareholders receive. Although we frown upon these practices in public companies.
3-The Liquidation.
Even lifestyle entrepreneurs can decide that enough is enough. One often-overlooked exit strategy is simply to call it quits, close the business doors, and call it a day. I don't know anyone who's founded a business planning to liquidate it someday, but it happens all the time. If you liquidate, however, any proceeds from the assets must be used to repay creditors. The remainder gets divided among the shareholders--if there are other shareholders, you want to make sure they get their due.
4- The Acquisition.
The acquisition was invented so you can sell your business and leave the kids money, still spoiling them rotten, but at least sparing the business from second-generation ruin. Acquisition is one of the most common exit strategies: You find another business that wants to buy yours and sell, sell, sell.
In an acquisition, you negotiate price. This is good. Public markets value you relative to your industry. Who wants that? In an acquisition, the sky's the limit on your perceived value. You see, the person making the acquisition decision is rarely the owner of the acquiring company, so they don't feel the pain of acquisition cost. Convince them you're worth a billion dollars, and they'll gladly break out their employer's checkbook.
But acquisition has its dark side. If there's a bad fit between the acquirer and acquiree, the combined companies can self-destruct. The acquired management team can end up locked into working for the combined company, and if things head south, they get to watch their baby implode from within. Time Warner recently announced that they're thinking of spinning off AOL, almost exactly five years after the two companies merged. What, exactly, did the merger accomplish? It made two CEOs very wealthy--and destroyed years' worth of work and billions of dollars. I'm sure the AOL employees who stuck it out enjoyed that particular ride!
If you're thinking of acquisition as your exist strategy, make yourself attractive to acquisition candidates, but don't go so far as to you cut off your other options.
5-The IPO
When a company is privately owned, the founders, certain members of the management team (or all the employees, depending on the company) and private investors who helped fund the company all hold shares in the company .
There are millions of companies in the U.S., and only about 7,000 of those are public. And many public companies weren't even founded by entrepreneurs but rather were spun out from existing companies. Heck, AT&T and its spin-offs are almost a significant fraction of the listed exchanges!