Most deals that fall apart do not fall apart over price. They fall apart over the books. Preparing a business for sale means getting your financial records clean enough to survive a buyer's accountant, a lender's underwriter, and formal due diligence, which comes down to reconciling three years of tax returns, internal statements, and bank records so they tell one consistent story. That is the whole game. Get it right and offers come faster. Get it wrong and you watch a serio

A business broker is a licensed professional who manages the entire process of selling a business, from initial valuation through closing. The broker values the business, prepares the marketing materials, identifies and screens buyers, manages confidentiality, handles negotiations, coordinates due diligence, and keeps the transaction moving toward a successful close. They are part advisor, part project manager, and part deal closer. That is the short answer.

Most business brokers will tell you that selling without one is a bad idea. They have an obvious incentive to say so. And most of the time, they are right. But not always. I run a brokerage, and I am going to tell you something most of the people in my industry will not. There are real situations where selling your business without a broker is the right call. I lose deals because of this advice. I keep giving it because the alternative is letting an owner who clearly does not

Here is something that catches most owners off guard. Roughly 70 to 80 percent of small businesses that get listed for sale never actually sell. They sit on the market, the price gets cut, the owner gets tired, and eventually the listing just disappears. The single biggest reason has almost nothing to do with the economy or interest rates. It comes down to whether the business was ready and whether the owner was ready. So when people ask me the best time to sell a business, h

Most owners think selling a business is one big event. It is not. It is a chain of roughly 50 to 75 smaller decisions, spread across eight phases, and any one of them can blow up the whole deal if you handle it wrong. Here is the part nobody tells you up front: only about 20 to 30 percent of businesses that go to market actually sell, according to figures from the Exit Planning Institute that get repeated across the industry. The other 70 to 80 percent never close. Not becau

Selling a service business is usually harder, and brings a lower multiple, than selling a product or manufacturing business, because a service company's value lives in people, relationships, and the owner, while a product business comes with equipment, inventory, and other assets a buyer can actually take home.

Here is a pattern I see across New York City sellers more than I would like. The owner runs a profitable restaurant, retail shop, dental practice, or service business. They hire a broker, list it, and only then learn that the most valuable thing they own is not the business at all. It is the lease. A long lease at below-market rent in a desirable Manhattan or Brooklyn block can be worth more than the cash flow it produces. A short lease without renewal options, in the wrong n

North Carolina was ranked the number one state for business in the United States in 2025, and the state's economy grew 3.8% from Q3 2023 to Q3 2024, making it the eighth-fastest growing economy in the country.

The documents needed to sell a business fall into four buckets: financial, legal, operational, and marketing/growth. A typical lower-middle-market data room contains 50 to 200 individual files.

Valuing a business based on revenue means estimating its enterprise value by multiplying annual revenue by an industry-derived multiple, written as Revenue × Multiple = Enterprise Value.

Most business owners who ask me this question already have a number in their head. Almost always, that number is wrong by 30 to 50 percent. That is not a knock on the people asking. It is human nature. You built the thing. You know what it cost you in time, money, and lost weekends. You assume that effort translates into market value. It does not. Here is the honest answer. If you run an owner-operated business with under $2 million in earnings, your sale price is going to la

Most sellers are genuinely caught off guard by this one. Industry data from business brokerage surveys consistently shows the average time-to-close for a small to mid-sized business runs between 6 and 12 months. Some owners hear that and think they are ahead of schedule. Most find out they were behind before they ever started. Selling a business is not like selling a house. There is no open house weekend, no sign in the yard, no offer in two weeks. It is a layered process of

In many states, there are no licensing requirements to call yourself a business broker. None. That means the person sitting across from you could have closed dozens of deals or could have started last Tuesday. There is no board to check, no bar to pass, no minimum standard to meet. The burden of figuring out whether someone is qualified falls entirely on you. The questions you ask a business broker before signing a listing agreement are the only real vetting tool you have. A

The most expensive mistake I see business owners make before a sale has nothing to do with timing, pricing, or picking the wrong buyer. It is using the wrong earnings metric.

A few months ago I sat across from a business owner who had built a $3 million revenue building company from scratch. Twenty-two years of early mornings and late invoices. He wanted to sell. Great. But he had already made three mistakes before he even called me, and two of them nearly cost him six figures at the closing table. I see this story repeat itself constantly. Selling a business is the process of preparing, pricing, marketing, negotiating, and closing the transfer of