This post is inspired by a recent LinkedIn post by B. Lane Carrick.
That post starts—
We told him his business would sell for about $4 million. He said he would not take less than $12 million.
His post was talking about the ethics of advisors.
Mine is something different.
The founder always has a price in mind, and that price has nothing to do with market value.
That price is the answer to “Was it worth it?”
Three decades of work. A hundred employees.
And the offer price feels like a gut punch.
The vacations not taken. The birthdays and anniversaries missed. The canceled date nights.
The undying belief that all those sacrifices would, in the end, pay off.
You thought you were creating freedom when actually, year after year, you were just building a bigger cage.
A cage that was intended to make you feel better, but somehow never did. Because as you are now finding out, your asking price has nothing to do with market value. And market value may be way less than what you “need” it to be.
What Else Does it Mean?
My Substack this week goes into at least four things that an offer price can mean to a founder.
None of them have anything to do with market value.
When you see that, you can actually work on the things that do increase market value. And, ironically, those very things build the freedom you were always looking for.
Take a look here—
https://jeffmunn.substack.com/p/what-your-asking-price-really-means