Selling a Business — Stage 2: Getting Ready
The year before you go to market
What's actually happening
Preparation is where owners organize financial statements, normalize owner-related items, document key relationships, and make the business easier for a buyer to understand.
Where your broker is right now
An advisor is shaping the story and the buyer strategy, but the evidence still has to come from your books, contracts, people, and operating records.
What this costs you if it goes wrong
Unresolved records or owner dependence can surface later as delays, price adjustments, or terms that shift risk back to you.
What I'd be doing here
I help sequence the preparation work so the highest-impact gaps are addressed before a buyer finds them.
Related Insights for this Stage
Customer concentration: the number that decides your multiple
If your top customer accounts for 30% of revenue, you don't have a business to sell. You have a job with that customer.
The head start nobody explained to me
An attorney once told me to start a year or two before I actually started selling. I nodded, filed it away, and had no idea what he meant. He was right — and he undersold it.
What does an offer actually look like?
A purchase price is usually not one thing. It's several kinds of money, and they don't carry the same weight — two offers with the identical headline number can be wildly different deals.
The business sale glossary
The financial, legal, and transaction vocabulary you'll hear during a sale — from adjusted EBITDA and add-backs to working capital pegs and tax elections.
Selling Your Texas HVAC Business
Two HVAC companies with nearly identical revenue and profit can draw completely different valuations. What produces the difference is the kind of work you do.
Selling Your Texas Plumbing Business
Buyers sort you into a category first — residential service, commercial construction, or specialty — and everything in the sale follows from where you land.
Selling Your Texas Electrical Business
In Texas, a master electrician's license can serve one contractor — unless the master owns a majority. Majority ownership is exactly what you're selling.
Are you in this stage right now?
If you are navigating getting ready and need a second set of eyes on the details, let's talk.
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