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On paper, MotiveBase looked like a sellable business. It served blue-chip customers like McDonald’s, Target, and General Mills. It generated millions in revenue. Margins were strong. Yet when founder Ujwal Arkalgud first tested the market, acquirers hesitated.

Not because the business wasn’t attractive. But because it was too dependent on the people who built it.

Acquirers don’t just buy performance. They buy continuity.

Instead of pushing forward with a compromised deal, Ujwal and his co-fou…

When an acquirer evaluates your business, they’re looking beyond what you’ve built. As successful as your company may be, buyers need to see how much larger it can grow to generate a return on their investment. That’s where Total Addressable Market (TAM) comes in.

TAM is the total revenue opportunity available if you captured 100% of demand for your product or service. If your TAM is small—meaning the market for what you sell is limited—your growth prospects look capped. And if your market look…

In slow times, it might seem inappropriate to consider increasing expenditures by hiring a coach.

When business is down and revenue is shrinking, many business owners instinctively look to cut expenses. (This is often a wise decision – I’ve often advised my clients to do exactly that!)

But is coaching truly an expense, or is it an investment?

There’s a fundamental difference between expenses and investments.

Expenses are things like office supplies, software subscriptions, or catered lunches…

Value Builder Analytics, drawing on proprietary data from over 80,000 business owners, found that companies that can run without the owner for at least three months are twice as likely to receive an acquisition offer above 6x EBITDA.

The concept is simple. The execution? Not so much.

Take Kristie Shifflette for example. She was an early master franchisee with Orangetheory Fitness, a one-hour, coach-led workout that uses heart rate zones to boost calorie burn during and after exercise. When she…

For business owners considering their endgame, learning what makes a company valuable can feel overwhelming. Buyers prioritize factors like recurring revenue, a differentiated product or service, and a leadership team that operates independently from the owner. If a business doesn’t check every box, it can seem as though selling is perpetually just out of reach.

But perfection is not a prerequisite for a sale. While improving the key drivers of value is important, an imperfect business can stil…

Finally, 2024 is in the books.  

Good riddance. 

If your goal is to build a more valuable company in 2025, here are some New Year’s resolutions to consider:

1. Stop chasing revenue. A bigger company is not necessarily a more valuable one if the extra sales come from products and services that are too reliant on you to deliver them.
   
   
2. Start surveying your customers using the Net Promoter Score methodology. It’s a fast and easy way for your customers to give you feedback, and it’s predictive of y…

The Swiss are known to value their independence. They don’t use the Euro currency despite being sandwiched between France and Germany, and they never officially picked sides in the World Wars for fear of tying their wagon too closely to one geopolitical regime over the other. 

That’s why we give the name the Switzerland Structure to a business model that is set up to be free of a reliance on a key customer, employee, or supplier. 

You probably already know that a customer or employee dependenc…

If your goal is to build a more valuable company, stop selling your time. 

Billing by the hour or day means customers are renting your time rather than buying a result, which means that your business model lacks leverage. To grow, you need to either work harder or hire more people. Since it can take months to ramp up new employees, fast growth is just about impossible.

One of the eight factors that acquirers look for in the businesses they invest in is your company's Growth Potential. Simply p…

A football defensive coordinator needs to protect against an “end run,” a tactical play where your opponent sends the running back wide around the offensive line to try to evade the oncoming tackle.

Just like in football, you have to defend against an end run coming from a supplier that chooses to go around you to get to your customers. The more of your supply you get from a single provider, the more vulnerable you are to that supplier deciding they don’t need you and instead deciding to go str…

As a business owner, you’re likely proud of the results you’ve achieved in the past, but when it comes to the value of your business, your future is critical. That’s why your growth potential is one of eight factors that drive the value of your business.

One metric that acquirers may use to evaluate your growth potential is your revenue per employee.

Alphabet (Google’s parent company) generates around $1.3 million in revenue per employee. Compare that to the advertising agency WPP Group, whose…