It was a simple question, yet it caught its owner completely off guard. Last Thanksgiving, Greg's daughter asked him what his plan was. Not for the holidays but for the business. She wasn't pushing him to sell. She was genuinely curious whether he'd ever thought past the next service call. He hadn't, not really. Twenty-two years in, he'd been so focused on running the business well that he'd never stepped back to ask what running it well was actually building toward. A bigger

Three unsolicited calls in two months. Not from competitors sniffing around for a contract, but from an acquisitions team asking pointed questions about revenue mix and how much of the business came from repeat service work. That's what happened to Greg. He almost wrote it off as a fluke until he mentioned it to another garage door owner two states away, who'd gotten the same kind of call twice in a single quarter. That's when Greg started paying closer attention to what was

Before Greg thought about the number, he thought about his crew. Marcus had been with him for fourteen years. He was there back when Greg had two trucks and was still doing installs himself on Saturdays. Three other technicians had been around for six years or more, people who knew the routes, the customers, and the way Greg ran things. And his office manager handled scheduling and billing well enough that she knew the operation almost as well as he did. When selling started

When Greg first started thinking seriously about selling, he figured a buyer was a buyer; whoever showed up with the highest offer would be the one to take. He'd compare the numbers, pick the best one, and move on. It didn't take long to learn that's not how it works. The type of buyer matters almost as much as the number on the offer because it determines how the deal gets structured, what happens to the business after close, what happens to his team, and ultimately how muc

Most garage door business owners spend more time thinking about whether to sell than they spend understanding how selling actually works. That's understandable. The decision itself is heavy. But one of the things that holds owners back, often without them realizing it, is that the process feels opaque. They don't know what to expect, so they don't start. And not starting has a real cost. Here's what the process of selling a garage door business actually looks like, from the f

It's a number most HVAC owners carry around for years before they ever test it against reality. A rough figure based on revenue, something overheard at a trade show, maybe a story from another owner who sold. It feels solid enough until you're actually sitting across from a buyer and they start asking questions you weren't prepared for. The honest answer isn't a single number. It's a calculation, and understanding how it works changes how you look at your own business. How B