When Founders Try to Sell Their Business but Take the Electrics With Them

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how similar selling a business is to selling a house.
Both are deeply personal. Both are highly valuable assets. Both have memories attached. And both require an honest moment where you realise: if someone else is going to live here, it can’t still depend on me.

And yet… founders do something absolutely wild without even realising it.

They try to sell their business while taking the electrics with them!

Imagine this.

You walk into a beautiful house that’s just hit the market. The photos look great. Fresh paint, perfectly staged rooms, scented candles, flowers on the kitchen island. It’s all very Rightmove-ready.

But then the seller casually mentions:

“Oh, by the way — the electrical circuitry actually belongs to the previous owner, so that won’t be part of the sale.”

You’d look at them like they’d lost their mind.

Because how on earth could anyone move in? Who would buy a house that only works if the old owner stays plugged in?

And yet this is exactly what happens in founder-led businesses every day.

The founder is the wiring.
The brand is the wiring.
The client relationships, decision-making, shortcuts, approvals, intuition, problem-solving, team confidence — all running through one person.

Pull them out, and the lights flicker.
Or worse, everything goes dark.

Key-person dependency is the business equivalent of missing electrics.

When a business can only function if the founder is still in the building, that business simply isn’t ready for sale - no matter how good the numbers look.

Buyers aren’t just buying revenue;
they’re buying continuity.
They’re buying confidence that the house will still work long after the seller has handed over the keys.

So what does “home staging” look like in a business?

It looks a lot like this:

• Decluttering: removing single-point dependencies

• Deep clean: tightening leadership, culture and communication

• Fixing snags: addressing people-risk, capability gaps, and bottlenecks

• Documenting the boiler service history: contracts, compliance, HR essentials, people data

• Staging the rooms: showing buyers a business that runs without the founder

• Energy efficiency (EPC) rating: the health of the culture, team, and decision-making system

• Survey results: your readiness audit, risk map, and evidence pack

In other words: making sure every switch works, every socket is safe, and no one needs to call the seller three months later asking which fuse controls the downstairs loo.

This is the real work of exit readiness.

It’s not about timing.
It’s not about the market.
It’s not about “we’ll cross that bridge when someone makes an offer.”

It’s about ensuring that when a buyer steps into the business, they can flick the light switch and everything just works.

No missing electrics.
No hidden wiring.
No founder-shaped hole in the system.

Just a clean, confident, move-in-ready business.