Sunday, October 04, 2026
Most owners call a coach only once something's broken. The data on mentored businesses says the real value compounds earliest - here's the Two Doors test for deciding when.
A survey by M and T Bank found that 98 percent of the small businesses it polled did not know the value of their own company. Most owners hear that statistic and shrug, because they are not selling. That is exactly the mistake. The work that makes a business worth more is almost identical to the work that makes it grow faster right now. You do not need to be heading for an exit to benefit from it.
John Warrillow, who built the Value Builder System after studying what actually makes businesses sell for a premium, found that acquirers pay more for businesses that do not depend on the owner, have recurring revenue, and are not reliant on one customer or one supplier. Here is the part most owners miss: a business with those three traits does not just sell for more. It also runs with less owner stress, survives a bad month better, and grows faster, because none of its growth is capped by how many hours the owner personally has left in a week.
You do not need to work through all eight of Warrillow's value drivers at once. Start with the three that move fastest for most SME owners.
"You make success tangible. Help me go from a wish to reality. Now have clarity of purpose and belief. You made tripling the size of my business go from seeming impossible to really possible."
— Lina, Good Gravy
Owners put this off because it feels like exit planning, and exit planning feels like something for later. But the 98 percent figure is not really about exits. It is about owners who have never had anyone sit down with them and ask what their business would need to be worth more, whether or not they ever sell it.
That diagnosis, which drivers are weak and which one to fix first, is exactly where an outside strategist adds the most value, because it is almost impossible to see your own business's dependence on you from inside it.
If you do not know what your business is worth, you do not know what is actually holding its growth back either. That is where you and Kevin start, and it is how you become the owner who knows exactly what to fix first.