Issue #87 • August 23rd, 2026

Hi Reader,

On Wednesday, a business owner told me, pretty proudly, that she gets emails all the time from people wanting to buy her business. She took it as a signal. People notice.

I used to get thousands of those emails running woom. At some point you stop reading them as flattery and start reading them as what they are: a list. Professional buyers and brokers send hundreds of these a month. Getting one isn't traction. It's a list.

The people sending them have done this before, dozens or hundreds of times. You, if you respond, are doing it for the first time, with everything to lose and no practice. That's the real risk in feeling flattered by inbound interest, it makes you passive. You wait for someone to knock, and when they do, you're negotiating against a professional from a standing start.

Buyers check many different things, a few key ones are roughly in this order:

Can it run without you. If revenue or key relationships depend on you personally, that's discounted as risk before anything else gets reviewed.

Do the financials hold up under scrutiny. Not just accurate, defensible. Three plus years clean enough that a stranger could audit them without you in the room.

How concentrated is the risk. One customer, one supplier, one key employee carrying too much weight. Buyers price concentration as fragility.

Do systems exist, or does it live in your head. Documented processes, real management layers, decisions that don't route through you by default.

Is there a growth story a new owner could execute, not just one that happened because you personally pushed it.

Unprepared businesses routinely sell at a steep discount to prepared ones, when they sell at all. That gap doesn't close in the weeks after an email like Wednesday's shows up. It takes two years, minimum, built on purpose, whether or not anyone's emailing you yet. (Read this article I co-authored with Lewis Schiff - Chairman of Birthing of Giants - 700 Days: The Business Owner’s Difference Between Controlling Your Future And Being Controlled By It).

This is exactly the gap I spend my time on, in two places.

I'm honored to serve on the Advisory Board for the Business Transitions Summit in Austin, and I'm leading a breakout session on October 6th, Bootstrapped to the Exit: What It Really Takes to Build, Grow, and Sell a Business, alongside fellow Birthing of Giants alumni Chelle Neff (Founder of Urban Betty) and Marc Bacher (Fonder of Stuga Studio). It's a full day built for owners thinking about growth, exit, or just building something stronger and more sellable either way.

Charles Schwab Campus, Austin, TX. October 6, 2026. Register here: Code GIANTS for a discount, valid through August 31st.

If you want to do this work in an ongoing room, not just for a day, that's what we build inside the Birthing of Giants cohort I lead, owners working through their own exit readiness, growth plans, and vision, side by side, holding each other to it. Next cohort launches October 15, reply if you want details.

If this landed, hit reply, I read them all.

Mathias Ihlenfeld | Entrepreneur | Coach | Advisor

P.S. Business Transitions Summit, October 6th, code GIANTS before August 31st to get $100 off. Birthing of Giants cohort launches October 15.

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