Your Local Business Network - With Mark Ullah

Are you looking to sell your business? Read on.....

That gap between "I want to exit" and "I'm exit ready" is where most of the money gets left on the table. I see it constantly - owners who've built something genuinely good, but the business still runs through them, the financials are messy, and there's no second tier of management a buyer can trust.

A buyer doesn't pay for what the business did last year. They pay for what it will do without you in it. Every month you spend not fixing that is a month you're giving away enterprise value. The good news is that 12 months is actually enough time to move the needle significantly, if you know which levers to pull first.

Question for you: Where does your business actually sit on the exit-readiness scale - not where you hope it sits, where it actually sits?

Drop a comment or send me a DM and I'll give you an honest read.

Or take the free Exit Readiness Assessment below - it takes about 5 minutes and tells you exactly where the gaps are before a buyer finds them for you.



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[email protected]
https://exit-ready-program.markullah.com/
Free Exit Readiness Assessment: https://exit-readiness.markullah.com/

I'm running a Local Business Owner Workshop in August focused on Mastering Profitability.

I'm going to unpack why the Net Profit First approach works incredibly well for owners who want to get to the end of the year and actually have profit left over.

Why? No Profit - you may as well just go and get a job and save the years of heartache, stress, missed birthdays and long nights.

Please note: This isn't for everyone so check the description in the link below before you register and be aware - this isn't a camera off sit back and listen kind of workshop.

This is a working session where we will run through a workbook and run your numbers to see how you stack up!

Looking forward to seeing you there.

P.S - feel free to pay it forward if you know owners who are struggling to make profit right now.

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/mastering-profitability-a-net-profit-first-approach-tickets-1993812708483?aff=oddtdtcreator

The first hire you make after buying a business will tell you everything about how the next 18 months go.

New owners walk in, spot a few obvious problems and start fixing things themselves. That's the trap - because you just traded one job for another and you haven't even unpacked yet. The people already in that business are either your biggest asset or your biggest risk, and you need to know which is which inside the first 90 days.

That means sitting down with each person, understanding what they actually do versus what their job title says and working out fast who's a keeper, who needs developing, and who's quietly running their own agenda. A business that ran without the previous owner in the room is worth a multiple.

A business where the staff only perform when someone's watching is worth a lot less and it'll grind you into the ground proving it. Get the people piece right first and everything else gets easier.

Who did you inherit when you bought your business - and did they turn out to be what you expected?



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[email protected]
https://exit-ready-program.markullah.com/
Free Exit Readiness Assessment: https://exit-readiness.markullah.com/

Most new business owners wing the first 12 months. That's why most of them regret it.

When you buy a business, the clock starts immediately and the first 18 months either set you up or set you back, there's no middle ground. The previous owner had processes in their head, relationships in their phone and workarounds that made zero sense to anyone else.

If you don't document the critical stuff fast, you become the new bottleneck before you've even settled in. That's not a staffing problem or a revenue problem, it's a systems problem, and it quietly kills value before you've had a chance to build any. I've seen buyers turn a solid acquisition into a mess simply because they were too busy "running it" to ever stop and structure it.

The businesses worth the most - whether you're keeping them or eventually selling them - are the ones that run on documented processes, not on whoever happens to be in the room.

If you just bought a business, what's the one thing that's still living entirely in someone's head - yours or the previous owner's?

Grab a free Exit Readiness Assessment below - it works just as well as a "Day One Readiness" check for new owners who want to start right.



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[email protected]

https://exit-ready-program.markullah.com/

Free Exit Readiness Assessment: https://exit-readiness.markullah.com/

New business owners - read this →

Most people who buy a business spend more time planning the purchase than the first 90 days after it.

I've seen it play out the same way too many times. New owner comes in fired up, full of ideas, and within six months they're exhausted, second-guessing everything, and quietly realising the previous owner took a lot of knowledge with them when they left. The first 12 to 18 months aren't just a honeymoon period - they're when the foundations get set, and what you build on those foundations either multiplies your enterprise value or quietly destroys it.

The businesses that come out of that window in great shape are the ones where the new owner got honest about margins early, started building a second tier of management instead of doing everything themselves and documented how things actually work before tribal knowledge walked out the door.

If you bought a business to create options for yourself, the time to build those options is right now, not three years from now when you're burned out and the business looks exactly like it did when you bought it.

If you've just bought a business or you're 12 months in and it's not quite landing the way you hoped - what's the one thing you wish someone had told you on day one?

Interested in scaling your business the right way, before it costs you more than money - take my scaler assessment and see if you qualify:

https://scaler-assessment.markullah.com/

Your broker can't sell what your business isn't ready to show.

Most owners who come to me wanting to exit have already spoken to a broker. The broker's told them a number, and that number is lower than expected - sometimes way lower. That's not the broker's fault.

They can only sell what's in front of them and a business that runs on the owner's shoulders, has patchy margins, and no documented systems is a risky asset to a buyer. What I do is close that gap before it costs you. In the 12 to 18 months before you go to market, we tighten the margins, build a second tier of management, and get the systems documented - so when a buyer's accountant does their due diligence, the business looks like what you always knew it was worth.

If you've had a valuation that left you underwhelmed, I'd genuinely like to know what number came back - drop it in the comments or send me a DM.

Take the free Exit Readiness Assessment and find out exactly where your business sits right now - link below.



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[email protected]
https://exit-ready-program.markullah.com/
Free Exit Readiness Assessment: https://exit-readiness.markullah.com/

I've sold businesses for great prices and terrible ones. Here's what actually made the difference →

Across 7 businesses I've owned and exited, the gap between a good sale price and a disappointing one almost never came down to timing or market conditions. It came down to how the business looked to a buyer and most owners (Including me in a couple of cases) don't find that out until it's too late to fix it.

Buyers don't pay for what the business earns. They pay for what the business will earn without you in it. That's the part most owners miss when they're "thinking about selling in the next year or so." Twelve months sounds like plenty of time, but the real value work - removing owner dependency, tightening margins, documenting how the business actually runs - takes longer than people expect, and it compounds.

The owners I've seen walk away with the best outcomes started the process earlier than felt necessary and finished earlier than they planned to.

If you're thinking about selling in the next couple of years, where do you reckon your business sits right now - running fine with you in it, or better running without you?

If you want a chat about this, feel free to reach out.



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[email protected]
https://exit-ready-program.markullah.com/
Free Exit Readiness Assessment: https://exit-readiness.markullah.com/

Your business might be worth half what you think it is - and you'd never know until it's too late.

Most owners who want to sell in the next 12 months haven't actually looked at what drives their valuation - they've just assumed it's a multiple of revenue or what a mate got for their business a few years back. The problem is, buyers don't pay for potential. They pay for proof - clean systems, a leadership team that doesn't need you in the room, recurring revenue, and margins that hold up under a microscope.

If the business only runs because you show up every day, a smart buyer will price that risk right out of your asking figure. I've seen owners leave 30, 40, even 60 per cent of their sale price on the table because they started the exit conversation six months too late to fix anything.

The gap between what you hope to get and what a buyer will actually offer is almost always fixable - but not in the last 90 days before you list.

If you're thinking about selling in the next year or two, what's the one thing about your business right now that you know a buyer would push back on?

Take the free Exit Readiness Assessment and find out exactly where you stand before you walk into a sale negotiation unprepared:

Free Exit Readiness Assessment: https://exit-readiness.markullah.com/

Most business owners who want to sell in 12 months aren't actually ready to sell.

Not because the business is bad - because it was never built to be sold. When a buyer looks at your business, they're not paying for what it made last year, they're paying for what it will make without you in it. If you're still the one holding the key relationships, closing the deals, and keeping the wheels on, that's a risk discount, not a value premium. I've seen owners walk away from the table with 30 to 40 percent less than they expected, not because the business underperformed, but because it wasn't exit-ready. Twelve months is actually enough time to fix that - if you start now and you know which levers to pull.

Ask yourself this: If you sold today, do you honestly know what your business is worth on paper, and why a buyer would pay full price for it? That's the conversation worth having before you talk to a broker.

Take the free Exit Readiness Assessment and find out exactly where you stand - link below.



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[email protected]
https://exit-ready-program.markullah.com/
Free Exit Readiness Assessment: https://exit-readiness.markullah.com/