About Patrick Ungashick: Patrick Ungashick is a nationally recognized author, speaker, and CEO with more than 30 years of experience advising business owners and leadership teams on growth, leadership, and exit strategy. As founder of NAVIX Consultants, he has helped guide hundreds of companies through successful exits, representing over $2.5 billion in enterprise value. His most recent book, A Day for Leadership, draws timeless lessons from the D-Day invasion and applies them as practical insights for today’s executives facing high-stakes decisions. A sought-after keynote speaker and workshop leader, Patrick equips leaders to strengthen their decision-making and build aligned, high-performing teams.
In this episode, Ryan and Patrick Ungashick discuss:
- The importance of early and proactive exit planning for business owners
- How leadership team strength and owner dependence impact business transitions
- The role of financial preparation, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), and valuation in exit outcomes
- External market factors and research that shape business sale timing and value
Key Takeaways:
- Business owners should begin preparing at least four to five years ahead of an exit because building a strong leadership team, creating scalable systems, and developing a transferable brand takes far longer than the last 12–24 months before a sale.
- Owners who remain central to operations — such as being the top salesperson, main problem solver, or team glue — often face multi-year transition requirements post-sale, while those who develop independent, high-performing teams can negotiate faster and cleaner exits.
- Because buyers base value on multi-year earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) trends that are adjusted or normalized to remove one-off expenses and owner perks, owners must proactively clean, restate, and present financials in a buyer-friendly format well before entering serious negotiations.
- Patrick’s book A Day for Leadership highlights lesser-known stories from the D-Day invasion, using them as case studies to draw
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