Journey 19 · Running a businessstewardingleadinggiving back
Sell It or Step Back
“I've done this for eighteen years and I don't know what it's worth, or how I'd ever get out.”
You become: Someone whose work became an asset, not just an income
Most trade businesses can't be sold because everything valuable lives in the owner's head and phone. This is how you turn a career into something transferable — whether you sell it, hand it to family, or just want it to survive you.
Understand
What a buyer is actually buying, which is not your tools.
Practice
Cleaning up books, contracts and dependencies.
Create
A business that works without your name on it.
Evidence
A defensible valuation and a written succession plan.
Find out what you've got
Before deciding anything, find out whether there's an asset here or only a wage.
- Understand1h
Work out what a buyer would actually be buying
List it honestly: recurring contracts, the customer list and how repeatedly they buy, your reviews and rankings, trained staff, written processes, the vehicles and equipment, the licence — noting whether it transfers or dies with you, which is trade-specific and decisive — and the name. Then mark which of these exist without you. That second list is the business. The first is your career.
You’ll have:A two-column list: assets, and which survive your departure.
- Practice3h
Get three years of books into defensible shape
Buyers pay for provable profit. Cash jobs that never touched the bank, personal expenses run through the business, and a truck that's really the family car all reduce what you can prove — and what you can prove is what you get paid for. Work with a bookkeeper to produce clean statements. Nothing raises a valuation more reliably than being able to substantiate the number.
You’ll have:Three years of clean, reconciled financial statements.
- Understand1h 30m
Calculate seller's discretionary earnings
SDE is what small businesses are actually priced on: net profit, plus your own salary, plus one-off costs, plus personal expenses run through the business. Small service businesses commonly trade at roughly two to four times SDE, with the multiple driven by how little the business depends on you. Calculate yours, then ask a broker in your trade what multiple is realistic locally.
You’ll have:An SDE figure and a realistic multiple range for your trade.
9 more actions · 13h 30m of work
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- Understand45m
Name your own dependency honestly
Make it transferable
Every dependency you remove raises the price and widens the pool of people who could buy it.
- Practice2h
Get your name off the things it shouldn't be on
- Create2h
Turn your best customers into written agreements
- Understand1h
Solve the licence question
- Create3h
Build the operations manual
Choose the ending
Sale, succession, or a slow step back. All three need to be decided rather than defaulted into.
- Understand45m
Write down which ending you actually want
- Practice1h 30m
Talk to someone who has done it
- Create1h 30m
Write the succession plan, whatever you chose
- Evidence1h
Value it again in twelve months
Tools this journey uses
Several actions above run straight through these. All free, no signup.