Every important decision, key customer relationship and piece of institutional knowledge still runs through the owner. The business is genuinely valuable — but a buyer sees key-person risk everywhere they look, and it shows up as a lower offer or a stalled process.
The owner wants out, eventually, but the business isn't yet a business that can run — and be trusted — without them.
Does that sound familiar? You are our client.
- Institutionalise the decisions currently made by instinct: pricing, mix, capacity, customer negotiation.
- Build and test a management layer capable of running the business day-to-day.
- Transfer key relationships deliberately, on a timeline, before a buyer ever sees the data room.
Owner-run decisions accumulate as tacit knowledge, not documented rules — pricing exceptions, which customers get personal attention, which suppliers can be trusted on delivery without a formal contract. None of that shows up in a data room.
A buyer's diligence team can only price what they can see: fewer documented decisions, more concentration risk. The business can be genuinely well run and still look, on paper, exactly like one that would stop functioning the day the owner leaves.
1 yr to reduce key-person discount
A business a buyer can underwrite — reducing the key-person discount and materially increasing achievable exit value.
Paid mostly for the result, not for time on site.
A fixed component covers the diagnostic and implementation plan for this offering. The larger part of our fee is tied to the EBITDA or cash result we actually help deliver — measured on your ERP, not ours.
Value Leakage Diagnostic
Implementation plan.
Of the measured EBITDA effect, minus the fixed fee.