Tuesday, November 10, 2026
78% of US seasonal businesses face a 3-month cash gap every year. A bike park's 11 revenue streams show SME owners how to smooth theirs.
Last updated 12 November 2026. Published by Simple-Growth (Motherbase Limited). Market: United States.
Revenue's up again this year. You still don't feel any richer, and if someone asked what the business is actually worth, you'd be guessing. You want to be building something with real value, not just a job with more complexity and worse hours than the one you left. What you might actually be building is a business that only works because you personally hold it together every day — which, to anyone looking to buy it, isn't really worth very much at all.
In Cornerstone's 2025 National Study on Selling Your Business, surveying 750 US owners of privately held companies with revenue between $5 million and $100 million, 61% said they had never had their business formally valued. Most owners build for years without ever finding out what, if anything, they've actually built — until the day they need to know, which is usually the worst possible time to find out the answer is “not much without you.”
Entrepreneur and author John Warrillow studied what separates businesses that sell for a strong multiple from ones that don't, and built it into eight value drivers — among them, critically, how much the business depends on the owner personally.
Kevin has founded or co-founded nine businesses — some genuinely successful, some real failures. The lesson he takes from both kinds isn't about hustle. It's that the businesses worth something to someone else were the ones that kept running properly when he stepped back, and the failures were, more often than he'd like to admit, the ones that only ever worked because he personally held every piece of it together. Knowing the difference, he says, is exactly why his job as a coach is to help owners grow — and help them avoid the mistakes that quietly cap what they're building.
Try this test this week: pick one of the three value drivers above and score your business honestly out of ten. If “owner independence” scores low, that's not just a future exit problem — it's the reason you can't take a real holiday now, and the reason growth keeps feeling like more weight on the same person. Fixing it is the same work either way.
“Kevin is an absolute powerhouse! He doubled our business's profits in the first month alone with lots more of his recommendations still to be rolled out.”
Curtis Hacon
Give A Sh!T
Getting a real answer feels like it only matters if you're selling soon, so it's easy to put off indefinitely. This isn't for you if you've already scored well on owner-independence and recurring revenue, and you genuinely know what the business is worth — most owners haven't, and don't. For everyone else, the gap between “growing” and “valuable” is usually hiding in plain sight, in the same three or four places.
Because the same things that make it valuable to a buyer — independence from you, recurring revenue, loyal customers — are what make it less stressful and more profitable to run today.
A framework from John Warrillow scoring a business on eight value drivers, including how dependent it is on the owner, to show what actually makes it worth more.
A formal valuation or a structured value-driver assessment are the two reliable starting points; guessing from revenue alone usually isn't close.
Yes — a business that stops running properly without the owner in the room is typically worth far less to a buyer, whatever its revenue.
Source: Cornerstone, 2025 National Study on Selling Your Business, United States, 750 owners of privately held companies with $5 million to $100 million in revenue. Published by Simple-Growth (Motherbase Limited). Last updated 12 November 2026.
If you've never actually found out what your business is worth, that's a half-hour conversation, not a five-year plan.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Roughly four in ten B2B purchase attempts end in no decision at all. It's rarely about price. Here's Alex Hormozi's Value Equation, in plain English, and why it explains almost every stalled deal in your pipeline.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
41 percent of consumers now always read reviews before choosing a business, and 31 percent won't use one rated under 4.5 stars. Here's the Review Velocity System that turns happy customers into a steady stream of five-star proof.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
64 percent of executives say they're juggling too many conflicting priorities, and most SME strategies die from addition, not ambition. Here's the three-step Strategic Short List that turns six priorities into the one that actually moves the needle.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
A third of small business owners are absorbing this year's cost increases out of their own pocket instead of raising prices. Here's the three-step Margin Audit that turns that guess into a safe, thirty-day pricing test.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Before you approve the next hire, run the revenue-per-employee test. Some of the growth you are trying to buy with headcount is sitting in tasks AI can already take off the list.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Owner-dependent businesses sell for roughly half the multiple of businesses that run without them. Dan Sullivan's Who Not How question is the simplest fix most owners never try.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
The tasks only one person in your business can do are a hidden cost waiting to land. Here is how to clear the backlog in an afternoon using a recorder instead of a blank page.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Chasing every lead in the run to year end is how you end up delivering the deals that cost you the most. Here is the Right-Fit Filter that catches a bad deal before you quote it.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Big brands never approve a campaign on gut feel alone. Here is the cheap, 48-hour pretest SME owners can run on any piece of marketing before a single dollar goes to media.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
There is no single best business coach in New Zealand, only the best fit for your stage and your problem. Here are six criteria, an honest map of the NZ options, and where Kevin D'Ambros-Smith fits.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Most SME strategies are really just revenue wishlists with no diagnosis behind them. Here is the three-part test that separates a real strategy from a wish, and what to fix first if yours fails it.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
94% of small businesses using AI across multiple functions have cut spending on marketing, data and bookkeeping, and they are more confident than ever. Here is the three-question audit to run before you cut judgment along with the invoice.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Chasing a poor-fit customer to hit a year-end number rarely pays off. Here is the Right-Fit Growth Filter SME owners use before saying yes.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
High satisfaction with your business coach does not guarantee progress. Here is the yearly Re-Contracting Conversation that keeps coaching sharp.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
We'll sort it in the new year is quietly stalling more small businesses than any competitor. Here is the Now-or-January Test that fixes it.