Honey bees are truly fascinating. They offer various organizational theory lessons. The queen bee can be considered the head of the colony, and yet curiously, she may have little or no “voice” in the way she is replaced. If she dies or disappears, the hive creates a new queen. They actually create a number of potential queen larvae and the first to mature kills all the others. However, the hive may also decide that the queen is too old or failing and needs to be replaced, so they create a new queen. Or conditions may be so favorable that they decide to split the hive and create a new queen and the old queen has to find a new home. In each case, it is the hive that “decided” the fate of the queen, not the queen.

It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, what would business look like if the workers decided when it was time to replace the leader? Of course, creating a new business leader isn’t as simple as feeding royal jelly to a larva…

However, just like the queen bee, there are four ways a business owner can get out of a business. We will call these four exit routes the four Ds (rhymes with Bees).

First of all, just like the queen bee, you could die in service. It may not be the preferred option, but if the time comes, you won’t care much what happens next (probably). And therein lies the rub: what happens to the business afterwards?

You can let your family figure it out and if they don’t have the desire or ability to run your business it will be hard on them and your loyal employees. You may have anticipated this situation with an insurance policy, shareholder agreement, and interim management arrangement, but it’s not ideal for your employee morale. Of course, even with the best plans, it could happen anyway, so it’s always best to be prepared with insurance, documentation, and contingency plans. However, by choice, I assume that this is not the output that most people seek to achieve.

The second option is Dissolution. That is, at some point you decide to retire and you decide to close the business. All the hard work you have put into building it will have been for nothing as your legacy fades away. What’s more, if you have employees, they would lose their livelihood. While this may be preferable to death on duty, I’d suggest, since it involves a conscious choice, it still seems like a pretty sad way out.

The third is Disbursement, that is, pressuring someone to buy it from you. It could be your management team, a supplier, a customer or a competitor or just someone who likes to run their business. This could be the biggest payday you’ve ever had. It could also be the most disappointing payday you’ll ever have if you don’t put in the necessary preparation to make your business attractive to a buyer.

There are a number of factors that go into making the sale of your business as lucrative as possible. First of all, and perhaps obviously, the stronger your business is financially, the more it will be worth. That means good margins (for your industry), strong cash flow, and evidence of growth and growth potential. It also means having good financial management systems: a budget (that is used), a cash flow forecast, a capital plan, an inventory plan, a marketing plan, a salary plan, etc.

Second, it means that the company is not dependent on the owner for leadership. In other words, there is a management team in place. Businesses that trust their owner to be there to manage day-to-day operations typically get 3 to 40 times lower sales price than those with a management team.

Speaking of overconfidence, if the business is dependent on one or a limited number of key employees, customers or suppliers, it will also affect the valuation of the sale.

These are all things you have control over. As well as strong recurring revenue and high customer satisfaction ratings. But it takes time to develop, largely because you can’t do everything at once. Also, once you’ve developed strengths in these areas, you’ll score higher if you have historical data over several years to prove it. So a lucrative exit can take 5 years to achieve.

However, having negotiated a sale, profitable or not, that’s not the end of the story. You might be asked to stick with the termination clauses, especially if you are still heavily involved in the business. That period can be depressing. It can be even more depressing when you miss buyout goals and never receive final payments.

And the negative aspects may not end there. Once you finally go out of business, it can be quite disheartening to watch your business falter and fail in the hands of a new owner or management team that simply didn’t know how to make the business work. It happens more often than you imagine.

Which brings us to the fourth option, which I call Distribution. This could involve Disbursement, although it does not necessarily have to be.

By this I mean that you distribute the equity of the business among all your employees. This way everyone benefits from the years of hard work they have put in to help you grow your business.

If you decide to make this a purchase, you’ll get your payday, but you might as well decide to give away most of your share to them. Why would you do this? Well, under certain circumstances, you could end up with a more valuable stake even though you own less of the business.

Imagine having tens or hundreds of people driving the business because everyone benefits from your success instead of you having to drive and try to drag everyone down with you too.

You may think I’m painting a bleak picture of what business is like, but unfortunately dragging your employees down with you is more accurate than you might imagine. According to a 2016 Gallup poll, around 70-83% (depending on the country you operate in) of the workforce is not fully engaged in their work. That means they are like an anchor that holds you back as you try to propel your ship forward.

Now imagine what would happen if the anchor were suddenly released. You can pass. You only have to look at the financial performance of employee-owned companies like John Lewis Partnership, Springfield Remanufacturing, Gripple to name a few. They have outperformed their competitors and the market in general for long periods of time; they are not a flash in the pan. So distributing the majority of your shares to your employees could net you a lot more in the long run.

Unlike the queen bee, you can choose when and how to leave your business and the best time to start planning your exit is now.