If someone offered you $6 million for your business tomorrow, would you take it?
Most founders can’t answer that in under a minute. Not because they don’t know their business. Because they’ve never actually written down the numbers that would make the decision for them.
There are three worth having before you’re ever sitting across from a buyer.
1. Your Floor
The number below which you wouldn’t sell, no matter how good the story sounds in the room. Maybe that’s $8 million. Maybe it’s $20 million. It’s different for everyone, and it has nothing to do with what a banker thinks your business is worth. It’s the number that reflects what you’d actually need to walk away and feel good about it.
Founders who walk into a negotiation without this number already decided are the ones most likely to get talked into a deal they’ll regret.
2. Your Guaranteed Cash Minimum
This one trips people up, because it’s not the same as cash at close. A big number on signing day means nothing if most of it isn’t actually guaranteed, if it depends on earnouts, on performance targets, on the buyer staying solvent for the next five years.
What matters is the amount you’re legally guaranteed to receive, whether it lands on day one or gets paid out monthly for a decade. A smaller number that’s fully guaranteed is worth more than a bigger number that might not show up.
3. Your Actual Deadline
Not the year you’d like to sell. The date you’d need your materials, your numbers, and your story ready in order to close by then.
Most founders find out too late that this isn’t a few weeks of prep. It’s closer to nine to twelve months before the date they’re hoping to close. If you want to sell next year, the real deadline for getting ready isn’t next year. It’s basically now.
Why This Matters More Than It Sounds Like It Should
None of these numbers require a banker, a lawyer, or a single outside conversation. They just require you to sit down and actually decide, in writing, instead of carrying a vague feeling around in your head.
Founders who’ve done this walk into real conversations with buyers completely differently. They’re not discovering what matters to them in real time, under pressure, while someone across the table is trying to move the number. They already know.
Try This
Take twenty minutes this week and write down your own three numbers.
- Your floor.
- Your guaranteed cash minimum, not the headline number, the guaranteed one.
- Your real deadline, counted backward from when you’d actually want to close.
You don’t need to act on any of it right now. You just need to stop being the only person in the room who hasn’t already decided what matters.
Want help pressure-testing your three numbers before a buyer does? See how ExitDNA gets you there →
— Mac
