You make your money
when you exit.
Running it well pays you a salary. The exit is where the value you spent years building actually gets realised, and it is decided long before a buyer sees anything: by whether the business runs without you, whether the margin and the books survive a lender's review, and whether the company reaches a pool of buyers wide enough to set a real price rather than accept one.
That preparation is the work. Nolan has sat where you are sitting twice, having built, run and exited two companies of his own.
No listing agreement. No obligation. Nothing leaves the room.
One buyer is not a market.
Most owners sell to the first person who asks. We build a confidential process, blind teaser, vetted buyer pool, controlled information release, so competing offers set your price instead of a single motivated stranger, friend, or second cousin twice removed.
Pre-sale value building: operational efficiency modeling and margin cleanup that move your multiple, ideally a year out rather than a month.
Confidentiality that holds: employees, customers, and competitors learn at closing, not before.
Structure that closes: SBA-friendly terms, seller notes, earnouts, and the real estate handled together.
A buyer pool that already exists: searchers, operators, funds, and strategics we are matching against live criteria.
What that process
actually involves.
A defensible SDE figure with every add-back documented well enough to survive a lender's review, not just your accountant's.
The three documents: confidentiality agreement, business analysis, and positioning plan, written before a single buyer hears your name.
Diligence managed on your behalf: lender review, quality of earnings, lease assignment and the contract work, rather than dropped on your desk.
Multiple letters of intent compared on structure, financing certainty, and what actually reaches your account after tax.
Come to us early and we
do more than sell it.
Most owners call a broker once they have already decided to be finished. By then the only lever left is how the business gets described. Engage earlier and there is a second, much larger lever available: changing what the business is actually worth before anybody prices it.
That work is a consulting engagement, not a listing. Nolan's practice is operational efficiency modeling: finding where a business leaks margin, what it would cost to stop it, and what stopping it is worth once a buyer applies your multiple to the difference. A hundred thousand dollars of recovered earnings is not a hundred thousand dollars at closing. At three and a half times, it is three hundred and fifty.
Two companies built, run and exited. PMP and PMI-ACP certified, which is the difference between naming the problems and actually running the programme that fixes them.
Baseline. Three years recast into a real SDE figure and priced against what companies like yours are actually trading for. You cannot improve a number you have not established.
Gap analysis. Your business measured against the drivers a buyer prices, listed below. Not a general audit, a scored read on the specific things that will move or hold your multiple.
A prioritised plan. Sequenced by value returned per unit of effort, with dates. Some of these take a fortnight and some take eighteen months, and doing them in the wrong order wastes the runway you have.
Implementation. The systems, documentation and delegation actually built, with someone accountable for the schedule. Recommendations without a programme behind them are just a list.
Re-valuation. The same analysis run again before listing, so what the work returned is a measured number rather than a feeling.
Six phases.
Nine to twelve months.
Most of that time is spent before your business ever reaches a buyer. The preparation is what decides which offers you get to compare, and it is the part a rushed listing skips.
Valuation
Three years of financials recast into a defensible SDE figure. Every add-back gets a document behind it, because the ones that cannot be evidenced come back out during diligence at the worst possible moment.
Preparation
Cleanup, documentation, and the offering memorandum. This is where operational efficiency work moves the multiple rather than just the story: concentration, owner dependence, and margin leaks a buyer would otherwise price in.
Confidential Market
A blind teaser to a vetted buyer pool. No company name, no address, no identifying detail. Your staff and your customers stay out of it until you decide otherwise.
Offers
Letters of intent compared side by side on structure, financing certainty, transition terms, and what actually reaches your account after tax. The highest number on the page is regularly not the best deal on the table.
Diligence
Lender review, quality of earnings, lease assignment, and contract work, managed on your behalf rather than dropped on your desk while you are still trying to run the business.
Close & Transition
Funding, the training period you agreed to, and a plan for how the announcement reaches your team and your customers in the right order.
What a buyer sees,
and in what order.
Confidentiality is not a promise, it is a sequence. Information is released in stages, and each stage costs the buyer something to reach: first attention, then a signature, then real engagement. Nobody learns who you are until they have paid for it in one of those currencies.
The blind teaser
Industry, region, revenue band, earnings, and the reason it is worth a look. No company name, no address, nothing a competitor could triangulate. This is what reaches the buyer pool, the newsletter database and the wider market, and it is the only thing that does.
The offering memorandum
The full picture, released only to buyers who have signed and been qualified: recast financials with every add-back evidenced, customers, operations, staff, equipment, lease, and an honest account of what a new owner would need to do in year one. This is the document a lender reads.
A private deal page
A page built for your transaction specifically, showing the arithmetic rather than describing it: price, structure options, what an SBA buyer's debt service and coverage look like at that price, and what actually reaches you at closing under each one. Shareable with a specific buyer, their lender, or their CPA, so the conversation happens on real numbers instead of assumptions.
The deal page is the part most brokerages do not do. It exists because the questions that stall a deal in week six, what does this cost to finance and what is left for me, are answerable in week one if somebody has done the modeling.
The multiple moves
a year out, not a month.
Two companies with identical earnings routinely trade two turns apart. The difference is almost never the industry. It is customer concentration, whether revenue recurs, how much of the business lives in the owner's head, the state of the books, and how long the key people have been there.
Each of those is fixable. None of them is fixable in the sixty days before a buyer asks.
Customer concentration. One account above a quarter of revenue is the single most common reason an offer comes in low or comes with an earnout attached.
Owner dependence. If the relationships, the pricing, and the estimating all run through you, a buyer is not purchasing a company. They are purchasing a job with debt on it.
Clean books. Add-backs you cannot evidence do not survive diligence. Every one that falls out reduces the price at the multiple, not at the dollar.
Recurring revenue. Maintenance agreements and contracted work are valued differently from project work, because they are worth more to the person buying them.
Key people. A crew that stays is part of what is being bought. Agreements, tenure, and a bench matter more than most owners expect.
What owners actually ask
on the first call.
What is my business actually worth?
For companies this size, value is a multiple of seller's discretionary earnings, not of revenue. SDE is your net profit with owner compensation, owner perks, one-time costs, and non-cash charges added back. The multiple then moves on things a buyer can verify: customer concentration, recurring revenue, whether the business runs without you, the condition of your books, and how long your key people have been there. Two companies with identical earnings routinely trade two turns apart on those factors alone.
Will my employees or customers find out?
Not from us, and not before you decide. Buyers see a blind teaser with no company name, no address, and no identifying detail. Anything beyond that requires a signed confidentiality agreement, and the full financial package is released in stages rather than all at once. Employees, customers, and competitors learn at closing unless you choose to tell them sooner.
How long does it take to sell?
Nine to twelve months from engagement to funding is the realistic range, and most of that is spent before a buyer ever sees the business. Preparation is what decides which offers you get to compare. A rushed listing is the most reliable way to end up negotiating with one buyer who knows they are the only one at the table.
Do I need to fix everything before I list?
No, but you should know what a buyer will find before they find it. Concentration, undocumented add-backs, a lease with two years left, a key employee with no agreement: each of those becomes a price reduction if it surfaces during diligence and a manageable disclosure if it surfaces before. The work that genuinely moves the multiple usually needs a year, not a month.
What does representation cost?
A success fee at closing, plus nothing up front for the valuation and the first conversation. The fee structure is set out in the engagement agreement before you sign anything, and it is worth comparing against what a single unrepresented negotiation typically costs a seller in structure.
Can I sell the building with the business?
Usually yes, and often you should decide deliberately rather than by default. Selling the real estate with the operating company, holding it and leasing it back, or separating the two entirely produce very different after-tax outcomes. Because the commercial side is under the same roof here, that gets modeled as one transaction instead of two brokers negotiating past each other.
The first conversation is
just a conversation.
Forty minutes, your financials, and an honest read on what your business would bring today and what it would bring in two years. No listing agreement comes out of it.