Bud Brokers // Exit Planning
Leave on your
own timeline.
Step 01
Assess
A readiness review against a cannabis buyer's diligence list: license conditions and transfer path, TPI map, regulator file, lease, financial reconciliation, tax, people, banking. Every finding ranked by its effect on value and its cost to fix.
36 months out
Step 02
Reconcile
Track-and-trace, POS, sales and excise tax and federal returns brought into one story. 280E cost-of-goods method documented. Add-backs evidenced. A monthly close a QoE team will accept.
30 months out
Step 03
Secure the license and the lease
Close out open notices. Extend the lease or lock options. Pre-clear landlord consent to assignment. Confirm with counsel exactly how your license transfers in your state and what a buyer must satisfy.
24 months out
Step 04
Delegate
Move relationships, decisions and compliance knowledge off the owner. Build or hire the GM and compliance lead a buyer will pay to keep. Write the operating manual.
18 months out
Step 05
Grow what buyers measure
Bud Authority builds the local search position, indexed menu, review velocity and customer file that a buyer's growth team will verify. Growth that is explainable and continuing.
12 months out
Step 06
Re-value
A second valuation against the first. The delta is the return on the program. Decide when to go to market and which buyer type to go to first.
6 months out
Step 07
Go
Hand off to the sell-side process with a business built to withstand cannabis diligence and pass ownership review.
Market
The program
What cannabis exit planning is
Bud Brokers exit planning is a structured twelve-to-thirty-six-month readiness program for licensed cannabis businesses: a readiness assessment against cannabis buyer diligence, reconciliation of track-and-trace, POS, tax and federal reporting, 280E documentation, lease extension and landlord consent groundwork, compliance file cleanup, true-party-of-interest mapping, management development, supplier diversification, local search and customer-file growth through Bud Authority, and a valuation checkpoint before the business goes to market.
When should a cannabis operator start exit planning?
The levers
Seven levers that change the outcome
- Reconciled records
- Four data sources, one story, month by month.
- Transferable license
- Transfer path confirmed with counsel, TPI map clean, conditions understood.
- Lease position
- Term, options and landlord consent locked before a buyer asks.
- Clean regulator file
- No open notices, corrective actions closed, inspection history documented.
- Owner independence
- The store runs a month without you and the regulator would not notice.
- Measured demand
- Local search share, map-pack rank, traffic and customer-file growth a buyer can verify.
- The story
- A growth thesis the last three years support and the next three make plausible.
Readiness is operating work, not advisory theater. Bud Authority already builds the reporting, the indexed menus, the local search dominance and the customer economics buyers pay for. When a cannabis business needs its numbers to tie out, its market position to be provable and its growth to be repeatable, we build that inside the business rather than recommend it from outside.
Why the agency that runs your revenue should run your readiness
What we build inside the business before it goes to market
Reporting that ties out
Menu, POS, track-and-trace and tax data reconciled monthly, with the 280E cost-of-goods method documented.
Bud Authority reporting
Local search dominance
Map-pack rank, indexed menu, review velocity and organic traffic a buyer's growth team can verify in a week.
Bud Authority SEO and AEO
A growing customer file
First-party data, loyalty enrollment and repeat rate that make the growth story true, not hopeful.
Bud Authority lifecycle
Exit planning questions
Timing, diligence, and whether it is worth it
3 answered
- 01When should a cannabis operator start exit planning?
- Two to three years before you want to sell. License transfer groundwork, lease extension, compliance cleanup and a provable growth trend all need at least twelve months of results to be credible. Starting later still helps; starting the month you decide to sell mostly does not.
- 02What do cannabis buyers look at in diligence?
- License status, conditions and transfer rules; every owner and true party of interest; regulator and municipal compliance history; track-and-trace and tax filings reconciled to the books; 280E treatment and exposure; the lease and zoning; banking and payments; employees and vendors; and how dependent the business is on the owner. Exit planning works through that same list in advance.
- 03Is exit planning worth it if I might not sell?
- Yes. Every item on the list makes the business more profitable, more compliant and easier to run whether or not it sells. Operators who complete the program and keep the store keep a better store.
Start two years early. Or start now.
The readiness conversation is confidential and costs nothing.
// notice
Bud Brokers provides business transaction and M&A advisory services. Bud Brokers does not provide legal, tax, accounting, investment, securities or regulatory advice. Services and transaction structures may vary by jurisdiction. Each party should retain its own qualified legal, tax, accounting and regulatory professionals. Nothing on this website constitutes an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to purchase any security or licensed cannabis interest.