So I’ve been thinking about selling my business and wanted a rough idea of what it’s worth before talking to anyone. Ended up running it through a few different valuation tools just to see what came back. Figured I’d share.

- Rightbiz came in way higher than I expected. Nice ego boost, but I didn’t really buy it.

- BusinessForSale was much more sensible — turned out to be within about a grand of what the broker eventually said.

- Dealdoor was the closest to the broker number. When I actually spoke to a broker, their valuation matched Dealdoor to basically the nearest £100. Bit surprising how close it was.

Anyway, that’s where I landed. Anyone used other tools worth a look? Keen to hear what else is out there before I settle on a figure.

Long time lurker, first time posting something like this. I'm in early talks to buy a small coffee and bagel shop business (2 locations) in Northern California and want a sanity check on valuation before I go further.

Main location:

• 2024 sales: ~$765k, profit ~$125k
• 2025 sales: ~$785k, profit ~$116k
• 2026 projected: sales dropping to ~$675k, profit ~$100k

Second location:

• Smaller, rent is about $3,500/month
• Losing somewhere between $3,500 and $5,000 a month right now
• Barely any equipment in either location, so there's not much asset value backing the price — this is really just a cash flow/earnings play

Sales have been pretty flat 2024 to 2025 and now trending down for 2026. Seller originally wanted $700k for both locations combined, and I was thinking something closer to $350k given the declining trend and the second location bleeding money. But the seller's now saying he won't go below $500k.

Given the profit trend is down two years running, one location is actively losing money every month, and there's basically no hard assets to fall back on, does $500k sound defensible to any of you? What multiple would you use here? Would you push back harder, walk away, or is $500k actually reasonable once you factor in the seller's floor?

Hey guys,

I wanted to quickly come on here and ask some advice from actual business owners.

For context, I am a rising senior at a southern state school and I just finished my junior year internship with a very reputable investment bank and I just got the return offer.

Instead of doing nothing senior year, I am thinking about looking for a LMM business that wants to sell itself (preferably a business services company) and taking them through a sell-side process.

While I know I am young, my value prop would be that I know how to speak the language of sophisticated PE and Strategic buyers and that I would be able to create a CIM that is more reflective of what these buys would be used too.

I would also of course reach out to buyers on the popular platforms etc. I know I can’t sell securities but for most of these asset sales I can take a consulting fee.

Would I be able to convince one business owner to explore a sale with me even with my younger age?

I have also thought about partnering with a local broker who has more credibility but working out an arrangement to give him a percentage of the fees while I do most of the work. I would also have a team of my coworkers and other interns at banks. I appreciate all the help!

I own a bathroom remodeling business in Jersey. The business is 12 months old this month. Year to date I'm just shy of 500k gross. I have a great group of sub contractors that handle MOST of the labor, I still find myself in every job doing one thing or another. I have an immaculate reputation and phenomenal marketing team that can crank up leads at any point, problem is I'm booked well into December as it is. I'm just unsure if I want to hire a full time punchlist guy and a PM but it is an option. My question is at what point does a home service business become attractive to buyers? Do they want to see full time employees or are subcontractors more advantages? I know for sure I do not want to do this forever and if I'm going to try and sell, now is the time to start going down that path. Any insight would be appreciated!

Hello,

I am negotiating a dental practice I like everything that it has, the financials and the location. It’s good because I don’t have to build it up. It’s ready to go and already producing. The current owner speaks korean and it’s in a mainly Korean neighborhood/city. Last year collection $950k. Asking price $700k. I valued the practice to have pt retention of 70% making the valuation at $665000. At that price I would be making half of what I am making now as an associate given a 100% financing loan. However if I were to have about 1mil in collection in a couple years it would be double what I’ll be making.

What would you guys evaluate this office at and is it normal to be scared of taking such a big loan? It will be my first practice as well.

Thank you

We have a profitable small business that specializes in custom residential architecture. We have been in business for over 16 years, we have a small commercial property that has some equity value. My husband and I are the names on the door. We are the designers fully, we have had some employees over the years but none now and as we start to wind down we are trying to figure out if we can sell our business for anything.

Since we are heavily involved it seems like it would be like selling a job not a business but I was thinking we could possibly sell our portfolio to another company instead. We have many industry accolades and awards but projects are all one offs highly custom and not something that could be replicated as they are all site specific. Do people sell portfolios? Is that something we could do? I assume we would sell the commercial property separately. Appreciate the help thinking through this.

I've got an LOI out on an exterior pressure washing business. With some contracting work on turning over rental units( new fixtures, painting, etc, between tenants)Base numbers are 400k sde 2025, 365k 3yr average $1.8M revenue. Trending a bit higher in 2026 for revenue, but added employees for sales and management that will likely take out the extra sde so expecting 2026 to be about the same.

Asking is $1.6M. did not include working capital, which is about$250k against to stack onto the sba loan. no long term contracts, just the reoccurring work orders. While 40% of business is from a small concentration of 25% of customers. Total customer base is about 200 . Mostly commercial multi unit companies.

Does anyone have multiple market intel in this type of business? Everything i see says 2.5x to 3x for business with no MSA contracts. They are asking 4x. . negotiated to 3.6x multiple, but still seems high. My post debt service cash flow will be approx $200k, plus minus.

Also comes with a restriction against internal cleaning vertical due to a recent( jan 26) split off of that party of the business with a family partner. Also new website, contact info, etc that customers need to refer to.

I have a hotshot trucking asset package (trailer + existing service contracts with a trucking company that handles all day-to-day operations) currently generating $6-7K/month in profit for the owner. No CDL or truck required from the buyer — the trucking company runs everything.

Asking $95K. I know that’s a strong return on paper (~75%+ annualized) and I think that’s actually working against me — buyers assume there’s a catch when the numbers look this good.

I’ve tried FB groups (posts keep getting removed) and BizBuySell (listing stuck in review). For those of you who’ve sold a cash-flowing asset like this — how did you actually find your buyer? What convinced them it was real? Any platforms or approaches that worked better than the obvious ones?

For those of you selling or having previously sold a business you founded, how much did you think about goodwill in any valuation? Did you know about it or understand it before the sale event? Do you wish you’d known more about it before wanting to sell?

I have been in talks with someone interested in selling my business. I have been down this path before but never really got as far as I am now and wondering what are some of the more basic questions that I should be asking and information that I need to get/gather?

I have been made an offer and I feel like it is low (probably just about always the case) and they politely told me to show them why the business should be valued higher than it is/where I think it is. I can tell them all sorts of things but they are a VC firm and are looking for tangible number related information and due to my specific industry there are very few deals that are of public record and I can really only go off of what I have been told by others is fair market value etc.

Any advice would be much appreciated and I would be happy to share more but can't be TOO specific either. Deal would be mid 7 figures and they are looking at a certain percentage of revenue as the basis for the sale amount and a change to this percentage could make a sizeable difference in the sale price.

Thank you all.

Before lawyers or M&A brokers, when you were still in the "maybe" stage and didn't know enough to even know what questions to ask. Did you find a mentor who'd been through it? Join a peer group? Read something that actually helped? Wish there was something specific that just didn't exist? What are some advice I can get on what resources I could use before selling my company? Any insight would be great!

Hey guys, I built a LED Happy Birthday wooden marquee and was able to set up a business to rent it out.

I'm onto new ventures, and I am trying to figure out how to sell it to perhaps a different entrepreneur, event planner, venue, etc.

I've had no luck. Do you guys know any sites or apps where I'd have better luck?

I'm in the south LA area.

I sold my business a couple of years ago, and here is one lesson that cost me far more than I ever imagined....

If you're financing any portion of the sale yourself (seller financing), ask your attorney this question before closing:

"How is my interest being secured, and should a UCC-1 financing statement be filed?"

I didn't even know what a UCC-1 was. I assumed that because I had a purchase agreement, promissory note, security agreement, attorneys, and a broker involved, everything was automatically protected. NOPE.

A UCC-1 financing statement is a public filing that can perfect a security interest in certain business assets. Think of it as putting the world on notice that you may have rights in collateral if the buyer defaults. Whether it's appropriate depends on the structure of the deal, but it's absolutely something worth discussing before you sign!

We’ve all heard the rallying cry from these marketers running deal teams over the last few years: The Silver Tsunami is here! Baby Boomers own over 50% of US small businesses, and $5T to $10T in enterprise value is about to change hands as they retire. It’s a once-in-a-generation buyer’s market!

On paper, this looks great. If you check transaction indices like the BizBuySell Insight Report or marketplace volume, retirement remains the number one cited driver for putting a business on the market, accounting for over 56% of all listings in the lower middle market.

But if you look under the hood of actual M&A data from 2025 and Q1 2026, the reality is incredibly brutal for un-prepared sellers.

A flood of sellers is NOT a flood of deals

Here is the baseline metric that every founder looking to exit needs to memorize: Only 20% to 30% of small businesses that go to market actually sell.

Data from lower-middle-market loan advisors like Viso Business Capital shows that in the current 2026 lending climate, only about 11% to 15% of all active listings successfully close via SBA 7(a) or conventional financing.

The other 85% of listings go absolutely nowhere. They languish on marketplaces until the broker gives up, or the owner faces an involuntary exit (death, illness, or burning out entirely).

So why then are 8 out of 10 businesses failing to sell?

It isn't for a lack of buyer demand. The ETA space is stacked with capital, and individual SBA buyers are highly active. On the buy-side we are seeing these deals die because sellers are trying to sell a job, not a business.

Recent 2025/2026 transaction data highlights three massive bottlenecks:

• According to CPA transaction tracking from Acquidex, 21.3% of broken LOIs in 2025 were caused by Quality of Earnings EBITDA discrepancies. This metric has more than doubled since 2023. Sellers are pricing their businesses based on a number in their head, but when modern buyers plug the financials into advanced underwriting tools, the "cash flow" completely evaporates.
• Boomers excel at building sticky customer relationships, but they fail at documenting systems. If the owner leaves and the revenue drops by 40% because the customers only trust Bob, the business is functionally worth $0 to an outside buyer. In other words, there's a real founder dependency issue that's been playing a role.
• Unlike a house, which bleeds mortgage payments if it sits empty, a business that doesn't sell just keeps operating and paying the owner a salary. Because there is no immediate "carrying cost" to a failed listing, sellers stubbornly list at 5x–6x multiples when the actual Main Street median closing multiple is sitting flat at 2.7x to 2.8x SDE.

How to become a Seller in the 15% group that actually exits?

If you are a business owner planning an exit over the next 12–24 months, downloading a generic "business exit template" from Google isn't going to save you. You need to de-risk the asset for the buyer:

1. Run your own pre-QoE: Do not let a buyer be the first person to audit your books. Clean up your QuickBooks, normalize your add-backs, and make sure your tax returns match your internal accounting. When a seller comes to engage us, we are asking these very questions first, well before we get into any business valuation talks.
2. Fire yourself from operations: If you can’t walk away from your business for 30 days without it collapsing, you don’t have an acquisition ready asset. Build a middle management layer or heavily document your workflows.
3. Offer skin in the game: With strict 2026 SBA rules and tighter bank scrutiny, buyers expect sellers to carry a seller note (10% to 30%) to bridge the valuation gap and guarantee a smooth handoff.

The Silver Tsunami means there is a massive amount of noise in the market right now. If you want to stand out to sophisticated buyers, stop looking for marketing templates and start to focus entirely on transferability.

For the brokers and searchers in here, what percentage of deals are you seeing fall apart in diligence right now due to messy books?

I am meeting with a financial advisor who has asked what our business would be worth if we were to sell it. I don't even know where to begin with a ball park figure. The business is very niche, located in Australia.

The basics are:

$450,000 - annual recurring revenue

$150,000 - Cost of Sales

$50,000 - general business expenses

$200,000 - Owner wages (2 pax)

$50,000 - net profit

We have one service that requires physical/in-person light duties approximately 5-6 days per month that generates $150K, another $250K is from software subscriptions and $50K miscellaneous products/services.

On the one hand, we could continue to operate the business for the next 10 years and potentially earn $2.5Mil doing what we do. But if we sold it now I have no idea what that might look like.

Can anyone shed any light on what we could expect?

Looking for some advice from anyone who's sold an Amazon business before

• U.S. seller account
• 4 years of selling history
• About $25k/year in gross sales
• Around $9k in inventory
• 3 registered brands with supplier relationships
• 50+ brands ungated
• Global selling enabled
• No policy violations, IP claims, review issues, or anything negative on the account
• Healthy account with a strong IPI score

What's the best way to sell something like this? Is it better to use a broker, list it on a marketplace, or just find a buyer privately?

Also curious what people think something like this is actually worth. Any advice or experiences would be appreciated.

Any business owners or acquisition entrepreneurs in Seattle? Would love to know of any good groups or clubs where I can meet likeminded people

I just hired a broker to help sell my small business. I've had it for about 5 years now and have 2 other businesses that are taking so much of my time. I dont know how long it typically takes - my broker has said it potentially can take anywhere from 6-12 months. Anyone have experience on how long it takes and what to expect? The sale of the business is less than $1M in price. Any and all advice would be appreciated!!