What happens to the business when you are not in it
Owner dependence is priced into every offer, usually quietly. How a buyer tests for it, and what reduces it in the year before a sale.
Every buyer is working out the same thing: what happens here on the first Monday after you stop coming in. Nobody asks it that way, but that is the question under most of diligence.
How a buyer tests for it
He looks at who prices work. He looks at who the customers call. He asks whether anyone else can pull a permit, sign a bid, or hold the license. He notices if your mobile number is on the trucks.
He will also ask about your last real vacation, and it is not small talk. An owner who has not been away in four years is describing a business that cannot run without him, and he is usually describing it without meaning to.
What reduces it inside a year
Put somebody else in front of the customers on the accounts that matter, and do it long enough that the relationship is real. Write down how you price work, even roughly, so estimating is a process rather than a talent. Get a second person credentialed on whatever the business legally runs on.
None of that is quick and all of it is visible. A buyer can tell the difference between a general manager who has been running the day to day for a year and one who was promoted the month the business went to market.
A Straight Answer
Take two weeks off and leave the phone alone. Whatever breaks is the list a buyer is going to find anyway, and you would rather find it a year early than during diligence.
BuiltEquity is a sell-side brokerage for trades and field-service companies. Nothing here is legal, tax or accounting advice. Your CPA and your attorney are the authority on your situation.