The piece introduces a Hold Hurdle: the return the business has to earn for holding to beat selling today. If the business cannot clear that hurdle, waiting is not patience. It is a cost the owner is paying without seeing it on any statement.
Price in a sale is a multiple of profit, so a higher price is not a matter of waiting for a better mood in the market. It takes sustained profit growth, usually across two to three years. Add a sale process that runs close to a year on its own, and a meaningfully higher number can sit four to five years out.
The worked example is plain. A $12 million offer, six times $2 million of profit, nets the owner close to $9 million after taxes and fees. To justify the hold against a 7% market return plus a risk premium near 9% for a single, undiversified asset, the business would have to sell near $27 million later. At the same multiple that means roughly $4.5 million of profit. More than double, just to come out even.
Waiting carries risk the math does not flatter. A lost customer, a key employee who leaves, the owner's own health, a softer multiple, and the plain chance that no buyer shows up at all. Roughly a third of sale processes end with no deal.
Growth has a trade-off the spreadsheet rarely shows. A dollar of profit can be taken home as income or reinvested to grow the number later. It cannot be both. The right answer bends to the owner's age, goals, and the stage of the business.
Some reasons to hold are not financial at all. Legacy, control, the people who depend on the place. Those are real, and the arithmetic does not capture them. The point is not to sell. The point is to decide with the cost of waiting in full view, instead of hidden.
This piece is a summary of the argument, not investment, tax, or financial advice.