You Can Finally See the 80 Percent

A few weeks ago I wrote that eighty to ninety percent of a business owner’s wealth is trapped inside the business itself, and that most owners never track that value the way an investor tracks a portfolio.

That piece landed because it named something owners feel but rarely say out loud. You have most of your net worth tied up in a single asset, and on any given day you have almost no idea what it is actually worth.

At the time, I could name the problem. I could not hand you a way to start fixing it. This week I can.

The Number Most Owners Are Guessing At

Ask an owner what the business is worth and you get one of two answers. A number they heard from someone who sold something vaguely similar. Or a shrug.

Neither is wrong, exactly. They are guesses. And a guess is a dangerous thing to build a retirement, a succession plan, or a decision to hold or sell on.

Here is what makes it worse. There is not one number. There are two.

What your business is worth today, sold as it sits. And what the same business could be worth, prepared and positioned for the right buyer. The distance between those two is the value gap, and for most owners it is measured in millions, not in percentage points.

I worked with an owner last year who was certain he was close to fully valued. Good business, clean growth, the kind of operator who does most things right. He was not close to fully valued. Almost all of his revenue restarted from zero every January, and a buyer prices that as risk, not strength. The gap between what he assumed and what a prepared version of his business would command was larger than his house, his savings, and his cars combined. He had simply never been shown it.

A First, Honest Look

So I built a way to see it. It is called the Value Gap Estimate.

You answer a short set of questions about your business. Your industry. Your revenue range. A handful of questions about how the business runs when you step away, how your revenue repeats, and where it concentrates. No financial statements. Nothing to dig out of QuickBooks. A few honest answers, about fifteen minutes if you read carefully.

In return it shows you the shape of your situation. A directional range for what your business would likely fetch today, a range for what it could be worth prepared, and the gap between them. A read on how buyer-ready you are today, and the single lever that moves that number most. What buyers in your specific industry actually reward and pay up for. And the one place your own answers suggest value is quietly leaking.

What It Will Not Do

It will not hand you a precise valuation. It cannot, and it should not pretend to. It has not seen your financials. But the ranges are not guesses either. They are built from what businesses like yours, in your industry and at your size, have actually sold for. That is the line it walks: grounded in real transactions, honest about being directional. Any tool that spits out an exact figure from a survey is selling you a false precision that falls apart the moment a real buyer runs diligence.

What it will do is show you the shape of your situation. Whether your gap is narrow or wide. Where it is hiding. And whether the number you have been carrying in your head is anywhere close to reality.

The precise figure, and how much of that gap is genuinely yours to capture, is a conversation that starts from your actual numbers. But you should not need a conversation to see that the gap exists. You should be able to see that on your own, without a sales pitch. That is what this is for.

Why I Built It

I have spent this newsletter arguing one idea above all others. The owners who exit on their own terms are the ones who understood their number and their timeline long before they were ready to sell. It felt wrong to keep saying that without giving you somewhere to begin.

So here is the beginning. It lives at baruexitpartners.com, under Baru Exit Partners, the exit-focused side of my practice. It is free, it asks you for nothing you would not tell a trusted colleague, and there is no obligation.

See what your business could be worth. If the gap surprises you, that is the moment worth a conversation.