Keeping It Simple
The fastest, simplest ways to grow your business - no jargon, no fluff. Practical strategies that actually work for SME owners in the USA, New Zealand, and worldwide.
Ask most SME owners if they're planning to sell and the answer is no — not for years, maybe never. Ask them if the business could survive a buyer's due diligence tomorrow, and you'll get a long silence. That gap is the best strategic diagnostic most owners never run.
Why "exit-ready" is a strategy test, not an exit plan
You don't need to be selling for this to matter. The exit-ready test asks one question: if a serious buyer looked at this business next month, what would they find? Revenue that depends entirely on the owner's personal relationships. Margins nobody can explain by product line or channel. Systems that live in one person's head instead of a process document. None of that shows up on a P and L, but it's exactly what determines whether a business is worth what the owner thinks it is — and whether it can keep growing without the owner physically in the room. I've seen FMCG founders with strong topline numbers and a retail listing they're proud of, who couldn't tell me their margin by SKU without going back to the spreadsheet. That's not a numbers problem. It's a strategy problem wearing a numbers disguise.
The five things a buyer checks that most owners never do
A buyer looks at customer concentration, margin by product or channel, whether the business runs for thirty days without the founder, documented systems versus tribal knowledge, and a clean, explainable set of numbers. Run that same checklist on your own business this quarter. Most owners have never seen the answers laid out in one place, because nobody has ever made them ask. Score each area honestly out of ten. A six or below anywhere on that list is a live risk, not a someday problem — it's usually the same fragility that would sink you if a key account walked or you were out sick for a month.
Running the test without ever going to market
This isn't about listing the business. It's an annual audit you run on yourself, the same way a buyer eventually will. The value of the exercise is that it forces precision where owners default to instinct. "We're doing fine" isn't an answer to "what's our margin on the top three retail accounts." Once you've got the five scores in front of you, the next 90-day roadmap writes itself — you fix the lowest score first, because that's where the business is most exposed.
What changes once you build to this standard
Businesses run to exit-ready standard aren't just more sellable — they're more resilient, more bankable, and considerably less stressful to own. The disciplines that make a business attractive to a buyer are the same disciplines that let it absorb a bad quarter, a lost distributor, or a founder's unplanned absence without the whole thing wobbling. That's the real payoff, whether or not you ever sign a sale agreement.
Want to know how your business would score? Running the exit-ready test properly — and building the 90-day plan to close the gaps it finds — is one of the first working sessions inside the Simple-Growth System™. Get in touch with Kevin D'Ambros-Smith to find out where yours stands.
Kevin D’Ambros-Smith
Kevin is the founder of Simple-Growth and a business growth coach with experience at DDB, Ogilvy, and Saatchi & Saatchi. He has co-founded 9 companies, coached 200+ business owners one-on-one, and holds a 9.5/10 NPS. Every article on this blog reflects real-world experience - no theory, no fluff.
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