DecisionWhat still needs your say-so
For business owners
How much of your business
depends on you?
Most owners have never been asked. It is a harder question than it sounds.
A structured review of the decisions that route through you, the knowledge held only by you, the relationships that are yours rather than the company’s, and the records that would be needed if someone else had to step in. About fifteen minutes.
You do not need to be planning a sale. Most owners who do this are not. There is no overall score and no grade.
What this measures
The same things hold you back
whichever way you want to go
Growing, automating, hiring a manager, taking on capital, stepping back, handing over, selling — all of them run into the same constraints. A business that cannot run for a fortnight without you cannot be scaled, automated, delegated or handed over either. The review measures those constraints, then shows what each one means for the direction you actually want.
KnowledgeWhat only you know
RelationshipWhose relationships these really are
InformationWhat you cannot see or show
StructuralOwnership, legal and contractual constraints
CapacityYour own time, money and appetite
Six constraints are reported. Three are scored. The mapping between them is published in the method notes rather than implied, and no claim is made that the six are independently measured.
What you get
A written review, not a number
What it is
A written review setting out what the business already sustains without you, where it does not, and what each of those means for the options in front of you. Questions ask what has happened within a stated period, rather than asking you to rate yourself. Questions that do not apply to your circumstances are not asked. “I’m not sure” is available on every question and is left out of the calculation rather than counted against you.
What it is not
Not a valuation, a benchmark, a certification, or a recommendation about selling. There is no overall score, because a single number lets one serious constraint be averaged away by strengths elsewhere — which is exactly what the earlier version of this instrument did. The instrument is in draft and has not been validated against a founder sample.
Where it applies
Build a business that gives you choices
Tell us the directions you are interested in and the review reports the same findings either way — only the emphasis changes. “Keep it running much as it is” is a first-class answer.
- Grow revenue
- Invest in technology
- Build a management layer
- Bring in capital
- Reduce your hours
- Hand it to family
- Hand it to the team
- Sell to a buyer
- Keep it as it is
This review is educational and prepared for discussion with your own advisers. It is not legal, tax, valuation, accounting, lending, investment, estate, brokerage or transaction advice, and it makes no recommendation about selling.