Getting an independent assessment before you engage with a buyer or a broker is not about producing a competing number. It is about understanding your own position with enough clarity that you cannot be moved by a confident presentation of someone else's number. The founder who knows what their business is actually worth, and why, negotiates from a different position entirely.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes with running a business for a long time. Not the tiredness of working hard, most founders are comfortable with that. It is the tiredness of being the person who has to hold everything in their head at once. The operational problems. The staff. The clients. The cashflow. The deal that is half done. The conversation that needs to happen but keeps getting pushed to next week.