The book that shows you what a buyer sees.
A buyer reads your business through a different lens than you or your CPA. This book hands you that lens.
Buyer-Ready is the field guide to the seven things a buyer checks, why they cut the price when they do, and how to fix it in the quiet years before anyone calls. Written for owners of real businesses, not for bankers.
$24.59Buyer-Ready, paperback.
It shows you where a buyer looks. It does not value your business.
Buyer-Ready is the field guide to the seven things a buyer checks, why they cut the price when they do, and how to fix it in the quiet years before anyone calls. Written for owners of real businesses, not for bankers.
It shows you where a buyer looks. It does not value your business.
From Ron’s articles in Forbes Business Council and Fast Company Executive Board.
★★★★★Home run for business owners!
“MUST READ!!! The author did an incredible job of understanding and communicating the small details that are so often overlooked by business owners. Ron Smith explains how the watch works instead of simply telling you what time it is and that distinction is crucial for any business owner looking to grow. One line that really stood out to me was, “Not for sale should never mean not prepared.” He is absolutely right. That mindset is what separates good from great. Ron leaves no stone unturned and gives readers a deeper understanding of how to think about their business, not just how to operate it. Truly a well thought out and insightful read. I would highly recommend it to any business owner, as well as anyone looking to further their knowledge and sharpen their business mindset.”
A composite, built from real deals
The handshake was $14 million. The wire was $9.8 million.
I watched the same thing happen again and again: a life’s work meets a professional buyer, and the owner is doing it for the first time while the buyer has done it eleven times this year.
Gene (a composite) shook on $14 million and the wire came in at $9.8 million, and every cut had a document behind it, most of the signatures his own.
$24.59, printed to order. A 30-day refund if it does not earn its place on your shelf.
★★★★★An important read for business owners
“As a small business owner, I know how easy it is to get caught up in the day-to-day of building a business and lose sight of the bigger picture. The idea behind Buyer-Ready is an important reminder to think strategically about the long-term value and future of what you’re building. A timely topic for entrepreneurs and business owners alike!”
What’s inside
Act I shows you the problem you cannot un-see afterward. Act II is the Method itself, one working document and one gap at a time. Act III is the decision.
Act I. The Call Is Coming
- 1The Call You Don’t Choose
Do the buyer’s homework before the buyer does.
- 2The Misalignment Tax
The transaction is signed at the letter of intent. Sixty days later, at close, the number is different.
- 3Five Buyers, One Business
Multiples are an output, not a target. The target is the buyer.
- 4The Headline Is Not the Deal
Silence is leverage, enthusiasm is expensive.
- 5The 7x Lie
The multiple is the number everyone watches. The number it multiplies is where the money actually moves.
- 6Readiness Beats Timing
Readiness is not a switch you flip.
Act II. The Method
- 7Map: The Gap Table
The map identifies who. The Gap Table forecasts what they will do.
- 8Whose EBITDA Wins
The add-back you can defend with a document is worth real money. The one you assert in a meeting gets discounted to zero.
- 9The Second Price: The Peg
The headline is the price everyone talks about. The peg is the price nobody explains.
- 10The Third Price: The Earnout Half-Promise
The earnout you choose is a partnership. The earnout you accept is a leash.
- 11The Customer Who Can Break the Deal
The most valuable revenue is the revenue that does not know the founder’s name.
- 12How Much of the Price Is You
The most valuable version of you, to a buyer, is the one the business no longer needs.
- 13Protect the Asset
Make sure that when the call comes, on the buyer’s clock and not yours, it finds a business with nothing exposed.
- 14The Preparation Frontier: Fix, Skip, Stop
If the buyer is going to redo the kitchen, don’t paint the cabinets.
- 15Rehearse: The Dry Run
Retrade isn’t a verdict. It’s an attempt.
Act III. Own the Decision
- 16The Deal Certainty Discount
The headline is a claim about the future, not a fact about the present.
- 17Structure, Rollover, and the Money You Keep
The wire is not what you keep.
- 18The Table: Who Sits on Your Side
The buyer brought a team assembled to protect a number. You brought one person hired to reach a number, not to defend it.
- 19Saying No Like You Mean It
The number in that letter is not the owner’s number. It is the family’s number.
- 20The Monday After
The Misalignment Tax isn’t paid at close. It’s paid every Monday morning.
Printed to order.
★★★★★Great book!
“Fantastic book. The author offered knowledgeable insights into businesses and being “buyer-ready”. A book that you’d reach for over and over in different phases of your business. Would also make a great gift!”
★★★★★A smart gift for any business owner
“I gave Buyer-Ready to a friend who was in the middle of selling his business, and he told me it was genuinely helpful throughout the process. If someone you know is thinking about an exit, or just wants to protect what they’ve built, this is an easy book to recommend.”
★★★★★Great Book
“Great book and very informative as a business owner.”
From Ron Smith, CM&AA®, author of Buyer-Ready
I grew up in my family’s HVAC business.
I grew up inside a business that breathed.
My parents built an HVAC company, and some years it grew and some years it pulled back, and for a long time I thought that was the market.
It was my father’s calendar: family first, the number second.
Then I spent a decade on Wall Street learning how buyers actually build a price, and 15 years since on the owner’s side of the table, at a few hundred of them.
I wrote this book so you never walk in the way Gene did.
From Ron’s articles in Forbes Business Council and Fast Company Executive Board.
Then this is a physical, not a funeral. A buyer-ready business borrows better, runs without you, and is safer for your family, none of which needs a sale.
★★★★★Great Book!
“Gifted this book to a friend who owns a business and is interested in the selling process. They absolutely loved it!”
What you walk away with
- See your business the way a buyer does
Preparing for the average buyer is preparing for a fictional buyer.
- Your own Gap Table
No buyer can shake the foundation when the foundation is signed by the seller.
- The add-backs that hold
The add-back you can defend with a document is worth real money. The one you assert in a meeting gets discounted to zero.
- The peg
There is a second price in every deal, and almost no owner sees it coming.
- The earnout
A retrade pays you less now; an earnout pays you only if later.
- The walk-away number
It is one page, and it holds three lines, and you write it before the offer is real, not after.
No. Nobody honest values a business from a form. This shows you where a buyer looks and how to build your own defensible number.
Who it is for
owners of established, profitable businesses, roughly a few million to the mid-tens of millions in revenue, who would rather understand their number than be handed one by a buyer. Whether a sale is next year or never.
Who it is not for
anyone looking for a valuation from a form, or a broker to list them next week with no preparation. Nobody honest gives a number that way, and this book will tell you the same.
Your CPA keeps your books correct. This is a different job: making them provable to a stranger, which is what a buyer pays for.
The offer
- Buyer-Ready, paperback. $24.59. Printed to order.
- Make it Know Your Number, $75.41 more. Know Your Number is where you run it on your own figures: the Gap Table course and the tools for your add-backs, your working-capital peg, and your CPA, plus the Official Workbook in the mail.
The guarantee
Read it, and if it does not change how you look at your own business, email me within 30 days and I will refund you in full. Keep the book.
P.S. If you read one chapter, read Chapter 1. It is the whole idea: a buyer reads your business through a different lens than you do, and once you can see through it, everything else in the book is just the checklist. The book is $24.59, shipped, with a 30-day refund if it does not earn its place on your shelf.
Read it, and if it does not change how you look at your own business, email me within 30 days and I will refund you in full. Keep the book.
Fair questions
Your email stays with me and is never sold or shared.
- Is this a sales pitch for your services?
- No. It is a book. It stands on its own, and plenty of owners read it and do the work themselves. If you later want help, the ways to get it are in the back, never in the way.
- I am not planning to sell. Is it still worth it?
- Yes, and maybe more. A buyer-ready business borrows better, runs without you, and is safer for your family, none of which needs a sale. It is a physical, not a funeral.
- Is there a digital version?
- This page ships the paperback. If you want digital or Kindle, there is an Amazon link at the bottom.
- Will you give me a number for my business?
- No. Nobody honest values a business from a form. The book shows you where a buyer looks and how to build your own defensible number.
- What if it is not for me?
- Email me within 30 days for a full refund, and keep the book.
Why direct, not Amazon
Buying direct means two things. The book ships straight from us, and you become someone I can actually help next, with the free Map and the tools, instead of a name a platform keeps. It also means more of what you pay goes to the work and less to the middle. If you would rather use Amazon, that is completely fine, and there is a link at the bottom.