Selling a business
New Year’s Resolutions & Selling Your Business
How to turn a New Year's resolution into a month-by-month plan that makes your company easier to sell.
By Michael D. Rubin, CEO & Founder · Updated September 2026 · 736 words
The New Year's resolution that does the most for a future sale is a written, month-by-month plan to make the company easier to buy, reviewed with your leadership team every month until it is done. Most resolutions fail because they stay vague and nobody checks on them. A sale-readiness plan works when it is specific, owned by named people and treated as part of running the business.
The start of a year is a natural checkpoint, but the same plan can begin in any month. What matters is that it continues after the first few weeks, when enthusiasm for most resolutions fades.
Eight areas buyers look at
A useful plan covers every part of the company a buyer will examine. For each area, pick one or two changes you can finish this year rather than a long list you will abandon.
Choose the areas where a buyer would find the biggest gaps first. A company with clean books but no second-in-command should start with leadership, not marketing.
| Area | What a buyer checks | A resolution for this year |
|---|---|---|
| Planning | Whether the company has a strategy beyond the owner's head | Write a one-page annual plan and review it monthly |
| Legal | Contracts, leases, permits, disputes and entity records | Gather key contracts in one place and fix gaps with your attorney |
| Leadership | Who runs the company day to day | Name and train a second-in-command for each key role |
| Sales | Pipeline, customer mix and concentration | Reduce reliance on the largest customer and track the pipeline monthly |
| Marketing | How new customers find the company | Measure where leads come from and what each one costs |
| People | Turnover, pay and key-person risk | Put job descriptions and retention plans in writing |
| Operations | Systems, equipment and repeatable processes | Document the processes the business depends on most |
| Financial | Clean statements that reconcile to tax returns | Close the books monthly and clean up personal expenses |
Why most resolutions fail, and how to make these stick
Personal resolutions collapse because they compete with daily habits and nobody holds anyone to them. Business resolutions fail the same way: a busy season arrives, the plan slides, and by summer it is forgotten. Owners who follow through do four things:
- Break each goal into monthly steps, each with a date
- Give every step one owner, a named person rather than the team
- Review progress at a fixed monthly meeting with the leadership team
- Carry unfinished items forward openly rather than quietly dropping them
Make it part of how the company is run
The plan should become an ordinary part of management, not a side project the owner pursues alone. Involve your managers in setting the steps, because they know where the practical obstacles are and they will be the ones carrying much of the work. Share progress with them, and recognize the people who finish their pieces.
Keep the plan visible. A single page on the conference room wall, or a shared document everyone can see, does more than a detailed binder nobody opens.
A company that is always improving is also a company that is always ready. If the right buyer appears unexpectedly, or a life event forces the timing, most of the preparation is already done. And if you never sell, you still own a better business.
Start with the records
If you can only do one thing this year, get the financial and legal records in order. Buyers value a company on earnings they can verify, and missing documents slow every later step, from valuation to due diligence to the final agreement. Our list of documents to organize before selling is a practical starting point, and the twelve-month plan to prepare your business for sale sets out the order of the work.
Once the records are clean, keep them that way. A monthly close, reconciled accounts and a single place for contracts cost little to maintain and save a great deal when a buyer starts asking questions.
If an outside service does your bookkeeping part time, ask whether it can support a monthly close, or whether it is time to hire a controller.
How MDR & Associates helps you keep the resolution
Our pre-exit consulting turns this kind of plan into a structured program over the 12 to 24 months before a sale, with a business valuation at the start to show which improvements matter most to buyers. To see where you stand today, request a free valuation snapshot.
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Questions owners ask next
How long before a sale should I start preparing?
Ideally 12 to 24 months, the period MDR's pre-exit consulting covers. That is long enough to show a buyer at least one full year of improved records and results. Owners who start later can still sell well, but fewer problems can be fixed before a buyer sees them.
Should my managers know the plan is about a sale?
Not necessarily. The same improvements make the company stronger whether or not it is sold, and you can present them that way. Many owners tell their leadership team about a sale only when a buyer is close, often alongside a retention bonus for the people they most need to keep.