Business Readiness
The question every buyer asks, in some form, is: what happens to this business when the owner leaves?
For most lower-middle-market businesses, the honest answer is complicated. The owner is often the primary relationship for key clients. The owner makes the calls that no one else feels authorized to make. The owner holds institutional knowledge that was never written down because there was never a reason to.
None of this reflects poorly on what you've built. It's the natural result of building something through force of will, over years, in a context where the only thing that mattered was survival and growth. Documentation and succession planning are luxuries you earn the right to think about.
But a buyer doesn't see it that way. They see risk. And risk gets priced - usually in ways that surprise business owners who didn't see it coming.
The work of building business readiness is not complicated. It's just deliberate. It means identifying where you are irreplaceable and systematically making yourself replaceable in those areas. It means documenting what you know. It means giving your team more authority and watching what happens.
This work takes time. It's typically measured in years, not months. Which is why starting it earlier than you think you need to is almost always the right call.