A self-assessment for owners who want the business to run without them
A month without you.
The honest question is whether the place could run for a month without you, and what stops first if it can't.
Skip ahead to startYou can usually tell how much of a business still runs through its owner by what follows them on holiday: the calls, the approvals, the numbers nobody else can produce.
Stepping back is the easy part. Stepping out is when none of that follows you.
The assessment reads your business as somebody standing in for you would, and shows you the parts that would still pull you back in.
The seven things that would have to hold without you
Every owner answers the same 31 questions. Coming in this way, the report reads your answers as somebody standing in for you would, and each of these seven comes back with a reading. These are the readings you want, word for word as the report puts them.
How much of it is you
The business runs without you, and it's evident.
How solid next year's income is
Most of next year's income is already secure, whoever is here to service it.
What survives you leaving
What makes the business work would survive you stepping out of it.
Whether anyone but you can read your numbers
Somebody who is not you could check your figures in a week.
What exists outside people's heads
Most of how the business works is written down, not carried in your head.
Whether the earnings hold
You can show what the business earns, and that it will last.
Whether it grows without you
Growth doesn't depend on you, and the trend backs it.
What it actually asks
31 questions about how the business really runs, plus five about the business itself, in eight parts. Allow 45 minutes to an hour, most of it looking things up. None of it is difficult. A few of them will annoy you, and those are the ones I would pay most attention to.
What comes back is a number out of 100, the seven readings behind it, the things somebody from outside would notice first, and the three answers they would press on hardest. You can read it on screen the moment you finish, and have it emailed if you'd rather read it later.
If you would like to know
There's nothing to buy to see your result, and nobody is going to ring you about it. Your answers save as you go, and the sheet will email you a link back if you'd prefer to finish another time.
It scores what you tell it, so answer it carelessly and you'll get a careless number. It's not a valuation, it won't tell you what anyone would pay, and it's not financial, accounting, or legal advice. There is a longer written report afterwards for anyone who wants to go further, and nothing is held back from your result to sell it.
Before you take the month, you'll already know the three answers to deal with first.
Start the assessmentIf you'd rather go through it with someone, that's the work I do with the firm: Manolutions.
Your answers are yours. We do not sell them. We do use anonymised data, aggregated, to establish industry, regional and other statistics.