So the business runs without you.
Corefield works with owners of established businesses who want to step back, sell or hand over, and suspect the business can’t run without them. It moves what lives in your head into your people, systems and documents, then proves the move held while you were away.
The Check takes about fifteen minutes. You see your score straight away, with nothing to sign up for.
- Operational78%
- Commercial64%
- Financial71%
- Decisional69%
- Relational75%
- Credentialed20%
The average says “sellable.” The lowest number says one licence, one person. That is what a buyer prices.
What owners say before they call
If one of these sounds like you, you’re in good company.
- “I can’t get away.”
- “What happens to the guys if something happens to me?”
- “Nobody else can do what I do.”
- “The broker said it’s worth less than I thought.”
- “I don’t know where to start.”
- “My family keeps asking when.”
None of these is a character flaw. They are what a good business sounds like when it still lives in one person’s head, usually the person who built it.
It is a common reason an owner can’t take a real holiday, and a common reason a buyer offers less, asks for an earn-out, or walks away. It is also one of the most fixable things in a business, given enough runway.
Your succession is done on paper. It hasn’t been done in the operations.
Your accountant has sorted out who owns it and what it’s worth. Nobody has sorted out whether it runs when you’re not there.
Paper succession
What owners usually already have
- Estate freeze or share reorganisation — tax accountant, tax lawyer
- Valuation — chartered business valuator
- Shareholder and buy-sell agreements — corporate lawyer
- Wills, trusts and estate plan — estate lawyer, planner
- Insurance funding — insurance advisor
- Listing and deal process — broker, M&A advisor
Answers: who owns it, and what is it worth?
Operational succession
What is usually missing
- The core work gets done to standard without the owner
- Customers have a named relationship holder other than the owner
- Someone else can read and steer the numbers
- Decisions have written authority, with limits
- Bank, supplier and regulator relationships sit with a role, not a person
- Every licence has a second qualified holder
Answers: does it run when you’re not there — and can you prove it?
Both sides matter. The paper side is necessary, and the accountants, lawyers, valuators and brokers who do it are the right people for it. But an owner can have every piece of it in place and still be unable to leave.
The second side has a name: operational succession. It is the transfer of the capability to run the business out of one person’s head and into its systems, its people and its documents, and the documented proof that the transfer held in that person’s absence.
A buyer finds it in ninety days. Fixing it takes two years.
Starting early changes the answers.
Diligence on a small business typically runs about ninety days, and that is when owner dependency surfaces: as a lower price, a larger earn-out, a longer seller note, or a deal that quietly dies.
Most of what a buyer finds takes nine to twenty-four months to change, because it runs on other people’s timetables. A second licence holder has to sit exams. Customers need time to get used to a new name. Financial records need a year or two of history behind them.
An owner who starts eighteen months before going to market can change what a buyer finds. An owner who starts after signing a letter of intent mostly can’t. How long does preparing a business for sale take?
Six places a business can depend on its owner
Dependency isn’t one thing. It shows up in six places, and the weakest one, not the average, is what a buyer prices.
Operational
Can the core work get done to standard without the owner?
Commercial
Who holds the customer relationships, and who decides what to charge?
Financial
Who besides the owner can read and steer the numbers?
Decisional
What escalates to the owner, and what stops when he is away?
Relational
Who holds the bank, supplier, landlord and regulator relationships?
Credentialed
Whose name are the licences, certifications and bonding in?
The last one catches owners most often. If the licence that lets the business do its work is in your name alone, a buyer is purchasing a company that can’t lawfully operate the day after closing. It doesn’t show up on a financial statement, and it can take years to fix. More on licences in the owner’s name
Everyone else scores. Corefield proves.
A score is a prediction. An absence is proof.
Online quizzes stop at a number. A number tells you how likely the business is to cope without you; it doesn’t show that it does.
The only thing that shows it is the owner leaving: three weeks, unreachable, phone off, while everything that happens is logged. That is the Three-Week Test. The signed log at the end is exactly what a buyer’s diligence team and a lender’s credit committee want to see, and almost never get.
- Day 2Supplier price increase on consumables. Approved by the operations lead within written limit.Held
- Day 6Customer asks for an out-of-pattern job. Quoted by the estimator using the written pricing method.Held
- Day 9Second customer asks for a rush price. Nobody felt able to decide. Job held until the owner returned.Stalled
- Day 13Compressor fault on the main line. Diagnosed and fixed by the shift technician from the maintenance record.Held
- Day 17Bank asks for the quarterly covenant figures. Prepared by the bookkeeper; the controller signed.Held
Four questions, in order
Every engagement follows the same sequence. You can stop after any step.
Where does the business genuinely stand?
An evidence-based picture, with assumptions set aside. If it can’t be shown, it doesn’t count.
The Check, the Review, the Blueprint
Where do you actually want to get to?
Sell, hand over to family, put a manager in, or keep going by choice. Your timeline, and what must be protected.
The Blueprint
How do you close the distance?
The work, sequenced by what takes longest, done by your own people and held to dates. Usually nine to eighteen months.
The Crossing
What’s left when you’re done?
Proof a third party can check, and a business that carries on: your people employed, your customers served, your name still on the trucks.
The Record
Where to start
Each engagement has a plain name, a defined scope and a fixed fee agreed in writing before any work begins.
The Check
How dependent is the business on you, and where is it thinnest?
A short, private screen. You see a score, a band and your weakest area straight away.
The Review
What would a buyer find in the operating side of your business?
An evidence-based assessment of the operating side, written to stand up in front of a buyer.
The Blueprint
When could you credibly go to market, and what has to happen first?
A full assessment that ends in a date and a sequence your accountant, lawyer and broker can act on.
The Crossing
Can the business be made to run without you — and proven?
The program that does the work, with your people, and ends with the Three-Week Test.
The Record
Can a buyer or lender verify what changed?
The evidence file: before-and-after scores, the signed absence log and what is still open.
Buying a business, or lending against one? See the Buyer Review and the First Year.
What you can count on
Written into every engagement letter, and stated before anyone asks.
Fixed fees, never tied to a sale
No success fees, commissions or hourly billing on owner-side work. The fee is agreed in writing before work starts.
Scores are not for sale
Fees pay for the assessment, never the result. What did not improve is reported as not improved.
Evidence, not assertion
If a document, record or demonstrated behaviour can’t be produced, it scores zero — for every client, at every fee.
Stays in its lane
No valuations, tax, legal, accounting or investment advice, and no brokering. Those are referred to the right professional.
Your people speak in confidence
Staff interviews are never attributed. What is learned in an engagement is shared only with the people you agree to, then or later.
Your business is never acquired
No business that has been a paid Corefield client is ever bought by any company connected to its owner. It is written into every agreement.
Your advisor’s client stays theirs
Referred clients are never solicited for competing work, and Corefield never introduces another broker.
Honesty over a sale
If the business is too small, already under a letter of intent, or not a fit, you will hear that plainly.
Who Corefield works with
Businesses that run on scheduled, skilled work.
Maintenance and field service, equipment service and repair, licensed trades, refrigeration and mechanical service, machine shops and fabrication, marine service, food processing and cold chain, industrial distribution, and equipment dealers and rental. These are the businesses where the work is skilled, the knowledge is hard-won, and the licence often sits with one person.
Paid work is usually the right fit when:
- the business brings in roughly $1 million a year or more;
- at least three people work in it besides you;
- you want options within the next one to five years;
- you haven’t yet signed a letter of intent with a buyer.
If that isn’t you yet, the Check is still free, and you’ll get an honest view of what to fix first. If it’s a poor fit, you’ll hear that plainly.
The crew changes. The ship keeps sailing.
Corefield was founded by Jay Karnni, a marine engineer who has spent about twenty years making complex operations run without the people who built them, from engine rooms at sea to the maintenance systems of whole fleets.
A ship is the clearest owner-independent business there is. The crew changes every few months and the ship keeps sailing, because the maintenance system, the procedures and the handovers hold the knowledge, not any one person.
Most businesses can’t survive their owner taking a fortnight off. The difference isn’t the people. It’s where the knowledge lives.
- 19ships moved into a new owner’s systems in nine months, without losing a maintenance record
- 93vessels and three shore offices brought onto one maintenance platform after a merger
- 160+vessels kept maintained, compliant and supplied through the systems he works on
- 0findings in a tanker SIRE inspection, as part of the engine-room crew
Questions owners ask
Straight answers, written for owners rather than for other advisors.
- Why won’t my business sell?Usually not for lack of buyers. Usually because the business can’t show it will survive the owner leaving.
- My business depends on me too much. What can I do?What owner dependency is, the six places it hides, and the order to fix it in.
- How do you make a business run without you?Not a binder, not one new manager, not new software. All three, then proof.
- What happens to your employees when you sell?The question most owners rank above price, and what actually protects your people.