Know the Numbers
What is your business actually worth? What do you need it to be worth? And how much of that value is trapped inside you personally? Three questions. Most owners can’t answer any of them.
Why owners avoid the number.
Only 27% of owners planning to exit within five years have completed a valuation. That’s not a resource problem — it’s a psychological one. As long as there’s no number, the number can’t disappoint you.
This is the ostrich effect — the tendency to avoid information that might be unpleasant. Combined with loss aversion (losses hurt twice as much as equivalent gains feel good), the math becomes clear: the potential pain of a low valuation outweighs the potential relief of a high one.
So owners protect themselves from the number. They tell themselves “I’ll get to it next quarter.” And every quarter that passes without a valuation is another quarter of optimizing blind.
of owners planning to exit within 5 years have completed a valuation
of owners who sold regretted it within one year — most because they didn’t know their number
Three workshops that put real numbers on the table.
Owner Reliance
Assesses how dependent the business is on you across critical operational areas. This is the multiplier that most owners don’t realize is suppressing their valuation.
- Operational dependency mapping
- Key-person risk assessment
- Value maximization opportunities
Planning Valuation
Provides an indication of business value based on your actual financial information. Not a back-of-napkin estimate — a detailed report that gives you a defensible starting point.
- Financial-based valuation indication
- Detailed value driver analysis
- Market-comparable context
Wealth Gap Analysis
Determines whether a gap exists between what you need from the exit and what the business can deliver today. This single calculation often reshapes the entire timeline.
- Post-transition living expense analysis
- Existing asset summation
- Gap-to-goal timeline mapping
Decisions replace speculation.
After this phase, you’ll know three things: what your business is worth today, what you need it to be worth, and how much of the gap is caused by your own involvement. That’s not just information — it’s a decision framework.
Every dollar of value you’re leaving on the table because the business can’t run without you is now visible. Every year of timeline you need to close the wealth gap is now quantified. The ostrich effect loses its power when the number is already on the page