What is my business worth?

Only a real valuation from someone who has seen the books can answer that, and multiples quoted in your trade are averages that may have nothing to do with you.

Should I tell my staff?

Eventually and carefully, and the timing has real consequences for retention. Take advice on it rather than deciding alone in the first week.

Is it wrong to sell something I built with people who trusted me?

No, but how you do it is where the trust is kept or lost — what they are told, when, and what happens to them in the deal.

← Answers

How do I know whether to sell the business?

Separate two questions that usually get asked as one: whether the business could run without you, and whether you want it to. The first is a fact you can test. The second is yours, and no valuation answers it. Many owners discover they wanted the freedom rather than the sale.

Test the fact before the feeling

Could someone else run this? Who decides when you are away, who holds the customer relationships, what only exists in your head. That is answerable, and the answer often explains the restlessness better than any thinking about price does.

Selling and stepping back are different exits

An owner who wants his weekends back does not necessarily want to hand over the thing he built. Building a business that runs without you gets you most of what you were after and keeps the choice open. Selling closes it.

What a buyer is actually buying

Predictable revenue, clean books, systems that survive you, and customers attached to the business rather than to you personally. Which means the work that makes it sellable is the same work that makes it liveable — and you get the benefit either way.

The question underneath

Owners usually raise selling in a hard season, and a decision made from exhaustion is a decision made by the exhaustion. If the answer would be different after two proper weeks off, that is worth knowing before anyone is approached.

Also asked

What is my business worth?: Only a real valuation from someone who has seen the books can answer that, and multiples quoted in your trade are averages that may have nothing to do with you.
Should I tell my staff?: Eventually and carefully, and the timing has real consequences for retention. Take advice on it rather than deciding alone in the first week.
Is it wrong to sell something I built with people who trusted me?: No, but how you do it is where the trust is kept or lost — what they are told, when, and what happens to them in the deal.

Written for your trade

This is the kind of thing Solomon works through with owners using their own numbers. See how it works →