Bill BrownFounder of ServiceTitan Hacks community (9k+ pros) | INC 5000 Contractor | Helping contractors win with AI & Automation

How to Prepare Your Trades Business for Private Equity Sale

17 Jan 2026 · 1 min

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In this interview excerpt, Speaker A asks about the financial documentation required for a private equity (PE) acquisition. Speaker B explains that the first step with any client is to define an exit strategy, which then guides the shaping of the business’s financial books to meet PE expectations. He emphasizes starting the preparation early, aligning decisions with the intended PE sale, and shares that clients who were initially unfamiliar with financial details can, after disciplined preparation, sell to PE firms for significantly higher valuations. The conversation highlights the importance of a buttoned‑up, tight financial book as a critical component of the PE acquisition process and frames successful exits as a “feather in the cap” for the advisor.

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I'm assuming that you have now witnessed this. You've probably had to help folks really present their books. I know that's a giant part of the private equity acquisition process. They want to see a buttoned up and tight financial book of business. So what does that look like from your end?
The first thing I do when I start with a client is say, what is your exit strategy? That kind of helps us shape what we want, not only the finances, but it starts to determine what certain decisions in the business need to look like based on what the exit strategy is. So if the exit strategy is we want to sell to private equity, then we start as early as we possibly can to try to make those books look like what we think private equity is going to want to see. There's been several clients that I've worked with who have sold to private equity. I lose a client when that happens, but I'm okay with it. It's a little bit of a feather in the cap to be able to take a client who didn't know anything about numbers, and then a couple years later they turn around and sell to private equity for way more than they could have done it prior to that. So that's fun.