According to Value Builder research, companies where the owner is the hub of the operations are 20% less likely to receive an acquisition offer at all. Not a lower offer. No offer.
Why? Because a buyer looking at a business that cannot operate without its owner is not looking at a business. They are looking at a job. And nobody pays a multiple for a job.
In most businesses, the owner is the star. They are the best salesperson, the person customers ask for by name, and the bottleneck through which every major decision must pass. For a long time, that feels like an asset. In reality, it is the single biggest thing holding the value of the business back.
Having navigated the journey of building and selling multiple businesses from startup to £20m+ turnover, I know firsthand that stepping out of the spotlight is the hardest, yet most profitable, transition a founder can make. It is a conversation that comes up constantly in the strategy sessions Julie and I have. The businesses that command the highest premiums are the ones where the system, not the individual, is the star.
Take Cameron Passmore’s story as a perfect case study. He built PWL Capital into a wealth management powerhouse with £6 billion under management and over a hundred employees. Wealth management is notoriously advisor-dependent, traditionally, the advisor owns the relationship, and if they leave, the clients follow.
Cameron envisioned the exact opposite: one team, one client base. Here is how he engineered a highly acquirable system:
- Institutionalised Client Relationships: Clients belonged to the firm, not individual advisors. New hires joined a pre-existing system rather than building their own isolated book of business.
- Standardised Philosophy and Process: The investment strategies and financial planning processes were unified across the entire team, guaranteeing a consistent client experience regardless of who delivered it.
- Professionalised Operations: He hired a president specifically to run the business, allowing advisors to focus purely on client service.
- Distributed Ownership: Equity was sold broadly across the team (including compliance, operations, finance, and marketing) so that everyone behaved like an owner.
- Invested in Infrastructure: He funded compliance systems, governance frameworks, and data infrastructure that most independent firms wouldn’t bother with.
When Cameron sold to One Digital, the acquirer wasn’t buying him. They were buying a self-sustaining platform.
Most owners vastly underestimate how much their day-to-day involvement costs them in terms of pure enterprise value. Building the systems and finding the right people to run them takes time. As I have always believed, everyone finds their ‘tribe’ through networking. The right operational leaders, finance directors, and strategic partners are out there in your community, ready to help you build a machine that runs without you.
Think about what happens in your company when you are not there. Do decisions still get made? Do customers still get served? Does the team know exactly what to do?
If the honest answer is no, your business is built around you, not a system. And every day that remains true, you are leaving value on the table.
Get your own score here then let’s get a virtual coffee in the diary this month. I’d love to connect, hear about your current setup, and chat about the endgame planning tools that can help make your system the star.