by scottsylvan | Mar 9, 2026 | Uncategorized
Multiples are not arbitrary numbers. They are risk shorthand. When a buyer quotes you a multiple, what they are really communicating is their confidence score — how certain they are that the earnings and continuity of the business will hold after the handoff. Price...
by scottsylvan | Mar 9, 2026 | Uncategorized
Exit is a transition, not a transformation. If you wait until you are ready to sell to fix the business, buyers will see an unfinished product and price it like a turnaround. The DRIVER test and SCALE framework inside the Exit Ratio 360™ evaluate the specific growth...
by scottsylvan | Mar 9, 2026 | Uncategorized
When a buyer says “too much risk” — they are not being vague. They are telling you exactly what they found. Every ding and dent in a mid-market deal has a name, a category, and a formula that converts it into a dollar amount subtracted from your multiple....
by scottsylvan | Mar 9, 2026 | Uncategorized
Two businesses with identical revenue, identical EBITDA, and identical growth trajectories can attract completely different levels of buyer interest based solely on how they are positioned in their market. Market positioning is not a marketing concept — in M&A it...
by scottsylvan | Mar 9, 2026 | Uncategorized
Most exit plans fail before the owner ever goes to market. Not because the business was not valuable — but because the plan was built on assumptions instead of evidence, started too late, or was handed to advisors who were evaluating pieces of the business instead of...
by scottsylvan | Mar 9, 2026 | Uncategorized
If the business stops when you stop, you do not own a business. You own a job with overhead. That one line is the entire difference between a lifestyle business and an asset — and it determines everything about what happens when you try to sell. A lifestyle business...
by scottsylvan | Feb 16, 2026 | podcast
You could be growing fast and becoming less valuable at the same time. Growth is going from $10 million to $12 million with added costs, headcount, and complexity to get there. Scale is going from $10 million to $12 million with minimum inputs in revenue and minimum...
by scottsylvan | Feb 16, 2026 | podcast
Messy books don’t just reduce valuation. They kill deals. Buyers don’t pay for revenue they can’t trust. Financial clarity is deal fuel — it’s what moves a transaction forward. High revenue with poor reporting creates uncertainty. Uncertainty...
by scottsylvan | Feb 16, 2026 | podcast
If it’s true that one customer can make you rich, it’s also true that one customer can make your company virtually unsellable. Customer concentration isn’t a sales problem — it’s a valuation problem. When one client, one channel, or one...
by scottsylvan | Feb 16, 2026 | podcast
If you’re waiting to get to the edge of exit before you start to repair, you’re giving away money. The businesses that command premium exits started preparing three, four, and five years in advance — running their company like a buyer was coming to...
