The Standard
What it costs to be indispensable
Most owners wear it as a badge. It's also the largest single discount on everything they've built, and the reason a business can be worth a great deal on paper and still not be worth having.
The Hedonist Entrepreneur Initiative™ works across three things: education, execution and exit. The third is where most of the disappointment lives, and it's assembled quietly, over years, out of decisions that were perfectly sensible at the time.
Almost none of it arrives suddenly
You took the call yourself
because you were faster at it, and the client preferred it, and it was one call.
You kept the pricing in your head
because every deal had a reason, and writing the reasons down felt like bureaucracy.
You approved the exceptions
because you could see the whole picture and nobody else was in a position to.
Every one of those was the right answer that week. Together they build a business that runs beautifully and can't be handed to anybody.
A business you cannot leave is not an asset. It is a job with better furniture.
What it looks at
31 questions about how the business actually runs, plus five about the business itself, in eight parts. None of them are difficult. Several are uncomfortable, and that's most of the value.
- How a normal week actually goes, and how much of it needs you in the room.
- Who your customers are, and how much of next year is already agreed.
- What happens in a fortnight you're unreachable.
- What exists in writing, and what exists only in somebody's head.
- How current your numbers are, and who else could produce them.
It holds whether or not you ever sell. An investor prices it, a bank discounts it, a successor inherits it, and you live it every week for as long as you own the thing, which is the part that rarely gets counted. You get a number out of 100, the seven readings behind it, what somebody outside would notice first, and the three answers they would press on hardest.
Plainly, what it is not
It's not a valuation and it won't tell you what anyone would pay. It's not financial, accounting or legal advice. It scores what you tell it, so a careless half hour returns a careless number, and that's nobody's doing but yours.
There's no cost and no catch. Nobody is going to call you. A longer written report exists for anyone who wants to go further afterwards, and nothing is held back from the free one in order to sell it.
Take it, if you'd like to know
Allow 45 minutes to an hour, most of it looking things up, and have last year's revenue and your most recent accounts within reach. Your answers save as you go, and the sheet will email you a link back if you'd prefer to finish another time.
Selling, or being asked
An offer makes it urgent. It doesn't change what a buyer would find.
Start the assessmentRaising or borrowing
Someone else's money comes with someone else's questions about how much of this is you.
Start the assessmentNeither, and curious
No deadline and no transaction. Just whether you could go away for a month.
Start the assessment
Your answers are yours. We do not sell them. We do use anonymised data, aggregated, to establish industry, regional and other statistics.