His name was Robert. Engineering consultancy. Fifteen years in business. Solid revenue. Good clients. Respected in his industry.
On paper, worth north of $2 million.
Then his wife filed for divorce.
Robert wasn’t a bad guy. Just busy. Always busy. He’d been meaning to sort the business out for years. Get a proper management team. Document the key processes. Build something that didn’t need him in the room every day.
“Once things calm down,” he’d say. Every year. For fifteen years.
Now a judge was telling him the business had to be sold. Assets divided. No negotiation.
Word got out fast. In his industry, everyone knows everyone. And when people heard Robert’s firm was a forced sale, the sharks started circling.
Here’s what happens when buyers know you have to sell:
They lowball. Hard. They know you can’t walk away. They know time isn’t on your side. Every week that passes is another week of legal fees, another week of pressure, another week of your life bleeding out.
And here’s what made it worse:
Robert was the business. Every major client relationship ran through him. Every project decision needed his sign-off. There were no systems anyone else could follow. No documented processes. No second-in-command who could keep things running.
The buyers saw it immediately. Without Robert, there was no business. Just a client list and some office furniture.
One buyer told him straight: “I’m not buying a company. I’m buying a customer list and hoping half of them stick around.”
The final sale price? $400,000.
For a business that had generated $2 million in revenue the year before.
Robert didn’t lose his business because of the divorce. He lost it because for fifteen years he told himself he’d step back when things calmed down.
They never did.
And when life forced his hand, he had nothing to sell except a shell that only worked with him inside it.
The calm doesn’t arrive. You have to create it.
And you have to create it before something else decides for you.
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