What's the best way to sell a business for a big payout?

The transcripts point to a few practical steps. First, don't wait until the end to think about selling. One London guest advised that when you start a business, you should work out at the very beginning who is likely to buy it, identify those buyers early, and then shape everything you do toward making that sale. The same guest framed the basic path as building the business for a couple of years and then selling it. Second, make sure the company can be sold without you. A New York guest said that when you sell, you want the company to be separate from you, and admitted that he would remove himself from the company if he could do it again. He noted that buyers call this the key man risk. A Blackstone-acquired founder from the Long Island video added that a buyer often damages a company by forgetting the people who built it, and that keeping a startup mentality, regardless of size, matters.