When is the right time to sell?
The honest answer is that the business and the owner are rarely ready at the same moment. How to tell which one is holding, and whether waiting pays.
Owners ask this expecting an answer about the market. The market matters less than the two things sitting in front of you: whether the business is ready, and whether you are.
They are rarely ready together
A business is ready when the earnings are clean and documented, the revenue does not depend on one customer or one person, and somebody other than the owner can run a week. An owner is ready when he knows what he is going to do afterwards and the number works for what comes next.
Most owners arrive with one of those and not the other. Which one is missing decides what to do, and they are different problems with different timelines.
When waiting is worth it, and when it is not
Waiting pays when there is a specific, fixable thing between you and a better outcome — a concentration you can dilute, a contract base you can put on paper, a manager you can develop. Those have a timeline and you can watch them improve.
Waiting costs you when the reason is vague. "One more good year" is not a plan, and it has a way of becoming three. Meanwhile the owner gets tired, the equipment ages, and the energy it takes to run a sale is harder to find than it was.
And sometimes the answer is to go now with a business that is not perfect, because you are done. That is a legitimate reason and it should be said out loud rather than discovered halfway through.
A Straight Answer
Write down the specific thing that would be better in a year, and what you will do to make it so. If you cannot write it, waiting is not a strategy and the right time is probably now.
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.