Nearly half of Baby Boomer owners plan to leave within five years. What one day costs without a plan

Nearly half of Australia's Baby Boomer business owners told MYOB they plan to leave their business within one to five years, while only a quarter of all the owners surveyed had a succession plan in place. The two figures describe different groups. The gap between them is still the point of this piece.

Read the two numbers carefully

MYOB's Bi-Annual Business Monitor, in a release dated 13 August 2025, found 48 per cent of Baby Boomer owners and operators, aged 60 to 78, plan to exit in the next one to five years. It also found 24 per cent of small and medium business owner and operator respondents had a succession plan in place for their exit.

The 48 per cent is the Boomers. The 24 per cent is everyone MYOB surveyed, across every age group. The release does not say how many of the Boomers who plan to leave have a plan, so I am not going to guess at it. What can be said is that a large share of older owners expect to go soon, and a small share of owners overall have planned how.

It is not the only research to find a gap. NAB Private Wealth's Beyond the Business research, reported by NAB on 8 May 2025, sorted owners into three groups on wealth transfer planning: one third with a documented plan, one third who had discussed general plans without writing anything down, and the rest with no plan at all. The same research found 46 per cent of small and medium business owners expect their retirement will trigger the closure or liquidation of the business, or force a sale to someone outside the family.

So the gap is real. The useful question for one owner is what it costs.

What "one day" costs

"One day" is an exit plan of sorts. It is just one where something other than you picks the date. That has three costs.

The timing is chosen for you. An unplanned exit starts with an event. For some owners it is health. For others it is a partner who wants out, a key employee who leaves, a lease that runs out or plain exhaustion. Business Queensland's own guidance lists needing to sell quickly for financial or personal reasons as one of the situations where you are less likely to get the price you would like. A buyer who knows the seller has to go has the deadline on their side of the table.

The buyer pool narrows. A business that can be handed over cleanly can be offered to private buyers, trade buyers, investors, a manager or a family member. A business that leans on its owner, with records that need explaining, is limited to the buyers willing to take that on. Fewer buyers means less competition, and under time pressure you also lose the option of waiting for the right one.

There is no time left to fix owner dependence. This is the expensive one. If you price the work, hold the key relationships and carry the knowledge in your head, a buyer is pricing the risk that the earnings leave with you. I set out how buyers test that in owner dependence and your price. The fixes are not complicated: write down the pricing logic, put a second person on your biggest accounts, get supplier terms into the business name. But they take months to show in the accounts a buyer reads, and an unplanned exit does not give you months.

What a plan actually contains

Not a binder. A working exit plan for a small business fits on a few pages and answers six questions.

1. When, roughly. A window, not a date. "Between mid 2028 and mid 2029" is a plan. "When I am ready" is not.
2. Who might buy. Family, staff, a competitor or a private buyer. Each route changes what you need to prepare. Business Queensland notes, for example, that a management team buying from you may be less likely to secure full finance for the price and working capital.
3. What it is worth today, and what a buyer would mark down. A market view, not a tax valuation. The number matters less than the list of reasons it is not higher, because that list is your work program.
4. What you will fix, and by when. Owner dependence, customer concentration, records, the lease, ageing plant. Each item gets a person and a date.
5. What you need from the sale. The figure that funds your next stage after debt and tax. That is a conversation with your accountant and, where it fits, a licensed financial adviser.
6. Who steps in if you cannot. Business Queensland makes the point that a succession plan is useful if someone has to step in because you are unexpectedly unable to fill your role. Who can sign, who has the passwords, who the customers call. I covered the hardest version of this in what happens to your business if you die.

One timing point belongs in every plan this year. The capital gains tax changes in the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Act 2026, which received assent on 26 June 2026, turn on 30 June 2027. I wrote about what that date means for an owner. How it applies to your structure is a question for a registered tax agent, not for a broker, and this article is not tax advice.

Both sides of it

The case for leaving it. Some owners say writing an exit plan feels like a commitment they are not ready to make, or that it will change how they run the business. Others say the business is going well and planning can wait until it is not. Those are honest positions. A plan does not oblige you to sell, it does not have to be shared with staff or customers, and you can change it as often as you like.

The case for starting now. The work in an exit plan is the same work that makes a business easier to run: records that reconcile, a second person who can quote, contracts in writing, a lease that suits a buyer. If you never sell, you own a better business. If something forces your hand earlier than expected, you are not starting from nothing. The surveys above say a lot of owners expect to go in the next few years. They do not say those owners will all get to pick the moment.

Where a broker fits

I can tell you how a buyer will read your business and which items on that list are worth fixing first. A market appraisal gives you the number and the reasons behind it, in writing, and it commits you to nothing. I am not a tax agent, an accountant or a financial adviser. The tax, structure and retirement funding parts of a plan belong with them, and the best plans have all three conversations running at once.

A start you can make this week

• Run the free readiness check. Twelve things a buyer's accountant and lender test, scored out of 24. It runs in your browser, stores nothing and asks for no email.
• Take your two lowest scores and write one line on what fixing each would involve and who would do it.
• Write one sentence naming the window in which you would like to be out of the business.
• Ask your registered tax agent one question: what does my structure mean for a sale, and does 30 June 2027 change my timing?
• Book a week away before the end of the year and keep a note of everything that needed you. That note is the start of your owner dependence list.

None of that commits you to selling. It moves you from one day to a plan, and that is the part the surveys say is missing.