Hey, it’s Will
You've got a number.
Somewhere behind the P&L you check every month and the conversations you've had with your CPA, there's a number. What you think the business is worth. You've carried it for years — nudged it up when revenue grew, anchored it to that friend who sold his landscaping company for 4x, let it settle in like a fact.
It isn't a fact. It's a feeling.
And feelings don't survive due diligence.
There's a name for that ghost number. The one you've been carrying around for years that's never been tested against a real buyer's spreadsheet. I call it The Phantom Valuation — the gap between the number in your head and the number on the buyer's sheet. Every founder carries one. Most never discover how wide the gap is until the offer lands and the room goes quiet.
Here's how to find yours before a buyer does.
Show me your transferable earnings.
Not your revenue. Not your gross. The number a new owner takes home after your salary walks out the door, after your car, your club membership, and your one-time expenses come out. The profit that survives without you in the building.
Can you produce that number in an hour with clean documentation behind it? If you'd need your accountant to build it from scratch — and you're not sure what it would show — that's your first crack in the foundation.
Now show me your client relationships.
Look at your top 10 clients. Count how many have a primary relationship with someone in your company other than you. Not a secondary contact. The person the client calls first when something matters. I see this constantly in agencies — the founder IS the relationship for every account that pays real money, and nobody's ever thought about that as a problem until a buyer's due diligence team starts making phone calls.
If that number is under seven, every missing relationship is a discount a buyer already knows how to calculate.
One more. Count last week's decisions.
Not all of them. Just the ones nobody else in your company could have made. The calls that would have stalled without you. The approvals. The judgment calls. The problems that landed on your desk because there was nowhere else for them to go. I watch contractors burn through three project managers in two years and blame the people, but nobody counted how many decisions were still bottlenecking through the founder's phone.
Count them. That number is your founder dependence score. And every point on it is pulling the buyer's number down.
Score it:
Pass all three: Your Phantom Valuation gap is narrow. A buyer would see a transferable asset with clean earnings, distributed relationships, and a business that makes decisions without the founder in the room. You know this because the numbers say so — not because it feels that way.
Fail one: There's a discount hiding in your business — somewhere between $100K and $500K, depending on your size. One factor is pulling the number down. Fixable. But it won't fix itself, and every quarter you don't see it, the buyer's spreadsheet gets worse.
Fail two: The gap is wide. Two discount factors don't just add — they multiply. The buyer sees a business that can't prove its earnings, can't transfer its relationships, or can't run without the founder. Pick two. The offer that lands will be 30-50% below the number you've been carrying in your head. Not because the buyer is unfair. Because that's what the risk calculation says.
Fail all three: You don't have a valuation. You have a Phantom Valuation. The buyer would see a business that can't document its earnings, can't transfer its relationships, and falls apart without the founder. That's not a negotiation. That's a fire sale. And the number on the check will make thirty years feel like they were worth someone else's discount.
How this plays out when you miss it.
The room changes when the first discount hits the table. I've been in that room on four continents. The founder stops talking. The buyer's attorney keeps writing. And every line item that appears on that sheet — owner dependence, client concentration, undocumented processes — each one is a number the founder could have fixed two years earlier. But they didn't know it was there.
By the time the discount sheet is done, the founder's watching the number shrink in real time. Their leverage is gone. They either accept the lower offer or pull the listing and start over. I see this every year in agency owners who thought their client roster was an asset, in contractors who never calculated what the business earns without their labor priced in. Seventy-five percent of owners who sell regret it within a year. This is why.
How this plays out when you catch it.
The founder who runs the Phantom Valuation diagnostic and sees the gap for the first time — that's the starting point. Not the exit plan. Not the sale. The moment you see the real number clearly, next to the ghost number you've been carrying. Run it here
Everything after that is fixable. Two or three years before going to market, you have time. Time to clean the earnings so they're documented and defensible. Time to transition client relationships so the buyer sees a roster, not a dependency. Time to build a management layer that proves the business makes decisions without you.
Every discount factor you fix before the buyer arrives is money you keep. Not money you negotiate for. Money that was always yours — you just couldn't see it from inside the building.
Your next move.
If I were sitting across from you with your books open, here's the first thing I'd do. I'd have you run this.
Paste this into ChatGPT or Claude. Fill in the blanks. Takes five minutes.
"I own a [type of business] doing approximately $[annual revenue] in annual revenue.
My total compensation — salary, benefits, personal expenses run through the business, and perks — is approximately $[amount] per year.
I had approximately $[amount] in one-time or non-recurring expenses last year.
I believe my business is worth $[your number].
Calculate my transferable earnings by removing my compensation and one-time costs.
Then apply a standard valuation multiple range for my industry to those transferable earnings and show me: what is the gap between my believed value and the buyer's likely starting number — before any discounts for owner dependence, client concentration, or undocumented processes?"
The number that comes back is the buyer's STARTING point. Before the discounts even begin.
The distance between that number and the one you've been carrying in your head is your Phantom Valuation.
Sit with that for a second. Don't rush past it. That gap — whatever it is — has been silently shaping what your business is worth to anyone who isn't you.
And that's ONE prompt. One blind spot.
What about the pricing you haven't touched in three years? Have the vendor contracts been renegotiated? The processes that live in your head and nowhere else? The clients who went quiet six months ago, and nobody noticed? Each one has a number behind it. Each one is a line item on a discount sheet you haven't seen yet.
I built a tool that maps the full Phantom Valuation gap — every discount factor, what it's costing you, and where to start fixing it. Run it here
— Will
Turn AI into Your Income Engine
Ready to transform artificial intelligence from a buzzword into your personal revenue generator
HubSpot’s groundbreaking guide "200+ AI-Powered Income Ideas" is your gateway to financial innovation in the digital age.
Inside you'll discover:
A curated collection of 200+ profitable opportunities spanning content creation, e-commerce, gaming, and emerging digital markets—each vetted for real-world potential
Step-by-step implementation guides designed for beginners, making AI accessible regardless of your technical background
Cutting-edge strategies aligned with current market trends, ensuring your ventures stay ahead of the curve
Download your guide today and unlock a future where artificial intelligence powers your success. Your next income stream is waiting.
This newsletter may include paid promotions or affiliate links. We may earn compensation if you sign up through them. See our Privacy Policy here.
