Three instruments, and what each one is actually for

PREScore · personal readiness

Takes about eight minutes and needs no financial information. It covers four things: whether you have a clear picture of life after the business, your capacity to structure a deal, how detached you are from day-to-day operations, and how you plan to involve your team.

It is the instrument owners most often assume they do not need. Deals collapse in the final thirty days more often than people expect, and the reason is frequently on this side rather than the business side.

Sellability Score · the eight value drivers

An algorithmic assessment against the eight drivers acquirers weigh when buying a company. It produces a comprehensive read on how buyer-ready a business is, whether you intend to sell next year or simply want to know you are building something valuable.

The useful part is not the headline number. It is seeing which of the eight drivers is holding the score down, because they take very different amounts of time to change.

Freedom Score · whether the numbers work

Assesses financial readiness to exit and to sustain the life you want afterwards, looking at cash flow, revenue stability and profitability against what you need.

This is the instrument that occasionally ends a conversation early, in a good way. If the business will not fund what you need and cannot be made to within your timeline, that is worth knowing before you spend two years preparing for a sale that would not have worked.

What the instruments do not cover

We go through these separately, because they come up in diligence and none of the three scores captures them:

• Whether your lease, supplier and customer agreements are actually transferable. An assignment clause has killed more deals than a low multiple.
• How much of next year's revenue is already contracted, as opposed to re-won annually.
• Whether personal expenses running through the business are documented to the transaction level. Undocumented owner spending does not get added back.
• Whether anyone other than you decides things, and whether there is a record of it.

What you receive

A written assessment naming the specific gaps in priority order, with a realistic timeline against each one. Scores are in there, but the scores are not the deliverable.