Straight answers
The questions owners actually ask.
Plain answers.
What it is worth
What is my business worth?
It is a range, not a single number. The market sets a floor and a ceiling for a business your size and industry, and three factors drive where you land: what it really earns, how steady the money is, and whether it runs without you. The Read shows you in about 15 minutes.
Does The Read give a single number?
No. Nobody can be that precise before a deal. You get a range: what buyers pay for businesses your size and industry, and where yours sits inside it.
How do I know if it can run without me?
Look at what only you can do. The Read scores whether your people, the contracts, and the customers stay put when you step back.
Building value
What are the pods?
Seven pieces of work we do for you to raise what the business is worth, like making it run without you or proving your real earnings. Each has a flat fee, and you pick the ones that add the most.
Do I have to buy pods?
No. Only if The Read says build and you want us to do the work.
Selling
Can I sell through you?
Yes. If The Read says sell, we run the sale for the standard success fee, and half of what you have paid us comes off that fee.
Will I get the highest price?
The highest bid is not always the best outcome. What you can live with the day after counts more than the biggest number on paper. Look at cash at close, how much of the price is held back in an earn-out and what it depends on, whether you keep a stake in the new company, and what kind, the working capital they expect you to leave behind, what you are on the hook for after closing, whether you are expected to stay and for how long, and whether the buyer can actually close. We compare offers on all of it, in writing, before you decide.
What is an earn-out, and should I be worried about one?
It means part of your price is paid later, if the business hits agreed numbers after you sell. It is common and it is not automatically bad. It is also where sellers most often lose money, because the terms decide everything: who runs the business during the earn-out period, how the numbers are calculated, what happens if the buyer changes how the company operates, and what you can do if they miss. We read those terms before you sign, not after.
Cost
What does it cost?
The Seat is $8,000, $14,000, or $20,000 a year, depending on the size of the business, billed quarterly. Pods are flat fees on top, only if you want them. Every price is on the site.
Is this for me
Is this for me?
We do our best work with businesses earning $1 million a year or more. If you want someone to approve a number you already have, want the highest bid no matter what comes after, or are buying rather than selling, we are probably not the right firm. We will tell you so.