After a presentation I gave recently on the four key questions every investor asks before putting money into a business, an older gentleman approached me.
Distinguished. Thoughtful. The kind of owner who’s been running his company for decades and is now, quietly, starting to think about what comes next.
He had one question.
“George, is there a formula for what my business is worth? One number I can work toward?”
I liked him immediately. Because that question tells me he’s thinking about it seriously. Most owners don’t even get that far.
But the answer isn’t what he was hoping for.
“There’s a flippant sentence that holds more truth than any spreadsheet,” I told him. “Your business is worth what someone will pay you for it.”
He paused. You could see him turning it over.
Because when you hear that for the first time it sounds like a non-answer. But it’s actually the entire game.
There is no single number. There is no universal formula. A strategic buyer who wants your client base will pay one price. A private equity firm rolling up your sector will pay another. A competitor trying to eliminate you from the market will pay something else entirely. And a financial buyer running a spreadsheet model might lowball all three of them.
Same business. Same revenue. Same team. Wildly different valuations depending on who’s sitting across the table and what they want from the deal.
Your job as the owner isn’t to just calculate a number.
It’s to understand who would pay the most and why and if you want that buyer, then build the business to be exactly what that he is looking for before you ever start the conversation.
That’s not guessing. That’s positioning.
And it’s the difference between accepting whatever lands on the table and dictating the terms yourself.
That shift in thinking is what Fall in Love with Your Business Again is built around.
Understanding how investors and buyers see your business so you can build it to be worth what you believe it should be
…not what someone tells you it is.
Pioneer pricing: $97 for lifetime access. Closes 30 April.
After that it’s $997 for the course and $197 monthly for monthly cohort meeting access.
Click here to claim your Pioneer Lifetime Spot.
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P.S. Feeling trapped in your business? Turn it into an Asset you love to run – and that investors want to own.
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