Closing is the exit you choose by waiting

More than one in three small business owners, 36 per cent, say they have a mental health condition, and 87 per cent of them name work as a contributing factor. A quarter have been diagnosed with anxiety, and 15 per cent with depression. Those are the latest figures from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Annual Work Health and Safety Survey, as The Saturday Telegraph reported them on 24 October 2026. In September, the Chamber said a third of small businesses had considered closing in the past 12 months.

The paper’s story is about what’s behind those numbers. Mine is about what happens next, because the last of them hides a question most owners don’t ask until it’s urgent: which exits are actually open once you’ve had enough.

Fewer than you’d think. When an owner has had enough, the only exits open are the ones they prepared.

Closing and selling aren’t the same exit

In April 2026, BizCover asked 1,500 of its small business customers about closing or selling, as a single question, and just over half, 50.8 per cent, said they’d thought about it at some point or would consider it in future. The survey can’t separate the two. From the inside, closing and selling can feel like two versions of the same decision.

Selling needs a buyer, and a buyer pays for what the business will go on doing after you’ve left. Closing needs nothing. You stop trading, you pay what’s owed, and you sell what’s left.

If the business can’t run without you, a buyer has very little to pay for beyond the equipment, the stock, and any lease worth taking over. At that point a sale and a closure come out at much the same number, and closing is quicker.

That’s how a worn-out owner ends up walking away with little to show for years of work. Very few set out to close a business they could have sold. They find, when they finally stop, that a sale needed a business that could run without them, and they never had the time or the energy to build one. Closing was the exit they chose by waiting.

Tired shows in the numbers first

Exhaustion usually reaches the accounts before the owner admits it, even to themselves.

Sales flatten, because nobody has the energy to chase the next customer. The maintenance budget isn’t cut. It just doesn’t get spent: the fit-out that was due for a refresh stays as it is, the van does another year, and the system upgrade waits. Good staff drift off one at a time, to businesses that feel like they’re going somewhere. The owner covers the gaps with longer hours, and from the outside the business looks steady, because the owner is the one holding it up.

BizCover’s survey shows what that looks like from the owner’s side. Nearly one in three of its owners, 31.7 per cent, have never taken a single full week off while running their business. More than six in 10 worked through illness in the past year rather than take time off completely. Among those working 60 hours a week or more, 61 per cent had recently considered selling or closing.

A buyer reads all of it as the trend. The last two years are the freshest evidence of what the business does, and a buyer prices what’s in front of them. Flat sales become the forecast. Deferred maintenance becomes a bill they’ll pay in the first year, and it comes off the price. Staff who’ve left become a question about who’ll still be there after completion. As I wrote in Due diligence has no pass mark, everything a buyer finds turns into price, structure, or a clause you live with for years.

Buyers are taught to read the owner, too. In the book I’m writing for buyers, I tell them to write down, straight after the first conversation, why the owner is selling, whether it’s retirement, health, or burnout, and how soon they’d like it done. It shapes the offer. An owner who needs to be out soon has less time to wait for a better one, and the buyer across the table knows it.

An owner living with a mental health condition can run a good business, and sell one. Plenty do both. What wears a business down is running it on empty for long enough. That costs the owner first and the business second, and the business is the part a buyer can see.

If you are the buyer here: ask why now, and listen to the whole answer. A business sold by a worn-out owner can be a sound buy, because the flat sales and the deferred maintenance are often things a rested owner would have fixed. Price the catch-up as well as the trend, and check which of the two you’re actually looking at.

A sale is a second job

An owner who’s had enough tends to picture the sale as the way out. For several months, it’s the opposite.

Selling a business eats management time: adviser meetings, document requests, forecasts, buyer questions, management presentations, negotiations, and one more version of a spreadsheet you thought you’d already sent. Somebody still has to run the company while all of that happens, and in most small businesses it’s the same person.

The most damaging thing that can happen is the business slipping while you’re busy selling it. Sales slow, debtors stretch, a hire gets put off because the buyer can deal with it, and then the latest monthly numbers arrive. The buyer isn’t acquiring the business you presented three months ago. They’re acquiring this one, and they’ll price it accordingly.

That’s the case for deciding early. Decide to sell while you’ve still got the energy to run the business well through the sale. Due diligence is a second job on top of the first, and the buyer’s team comes to it fresh. You want to start it with something in reserve.

If you’re already running on empty

If you’re reading this already worn out, the order changes. The decision about the business can wait a few weeks. The decision about you can’t. Talk to someone first: a mate, your coach, a mentor, your guru, your religious or spiritual adviser, and, if necessary, your GP. Someone you trust, or, if necessary, one of the services listed below. There’s no shame in approaching these people. They’re there for a reason. Feeling like this isn’t a weakness, and it isn’t something you need to push through on your own. You don’t need to be an island, in business or in a situation like this, where you feel depleted and weakened. You don’t have to be. You have options.

Exhaustion can make closing look like relief, and sometimes closing is the right call. It’s a better call made rested, with every option in front of you, than in the worst week of the year.

What to do this week

Find out which exits you’ve actually got. The cheapest way is to leave: two weeks, genuine emergencies only, with no approvals, no late-night fixes, and no dialling into meetings. I set out how to run it, and how to read what’s waiting when you get back, in Leave for two weeks, and don’t fix anything at night.

If the business holds for a fortnight without you, a sale is an exit you’ve got. If it doesn’t, you’ve found the work to do while there’s still time to do it. Either way, for nearly a third of owners it’d be the first full week off they’ve had since taking the business on.

Then write down the date you’d like to be out, and work back from it. A business that’s run without you for a year has a history a buyer can believe. One that’s been arranged for the sale doesn’t, and buyers can usually tell.

A third of small businesses considered closing in the past year, and some of the owners reading this will feel it’s that bad right now. If that’s you, and you’ve talked to someone and sought help, but there’s no time left for a fortnight away or a year of building, you’ve still got more choices than closing this week. Don’t make the call alone, and don’t make it in a hurry:

• Get both exits priced. Ask your accountant to set a sale and a closure side by side: what each would actually leave you with once the debts, the staff entitlements, and the lease are dealt with.
• Look for the buyer who’s already close. A manager, a competitor, a supplier, or a customer already knows the business, and needs the least convincing and the least preparation.
• Hand over the running, even for a while. A manager or an interim general manager can keep the business trading while you recover, and a business that’s still trading is worth far more than one that’s stopped.
• If it can’t pay its debts, get advice before you do anything else. Talk to a registered insolvency practitioner or a small business financial counsellor before you sign anything or choose which bills to pay. In Australia, the Small Business Debt Helpline gives free, confidential advice on weekdays, on 1800 413 828.

If closing turns out to be the answer, close it on purpose, with advice, and with your name intact. That’s a different thing from closing because you ran out.

Closing will still be there if you need it. It always is. Selling is the exit that has to be built, and it can only be built by an owner who still has the energy to build it.

The two-week test is set out in full in Maximising Operational and Technological Efficiency, and why you keep running the business through the sale is in Financial and Legal Essentials for Selling Your Business. Both are in the Download Vault.

If any of this is close to home, you don’t have to work it out on your own.

• Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636, or chat online at beyondblue.org.au, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• Lifeline: 13 11 14, text 0477 13 11 14, or chat online at lifeline.org.au, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• NewAccess for Small Business: free mental health coaching from Beyond Blue for sole traders and owners of businesses with 20 or fewer employees. Six sessions by phone or video, with no GP referral needed: beyondblue.org.au, or 03 9250 8305.
• If life is in danger, call Triple Zero (000).

Outside Australia, search online for “crisis support line” or “mental health helpline” with the name of your country, “small business mental health support” for coaching like NewAccess, and “small business financial counselling” for help with debts. If life is in danger, call your local emergency number.