Know what your business is worth — with numbers you can defend

Why most owners get the number wrong

Ask ten New York business owners what their company is worth and eight will give you a number anchored to something irrelevant: what a friend's business sold for, what they need for retirement, or a rule of thumb they read online a decade ago. The result is predictable — businesses priced too high sit on the market until they grow stale, and businesses priced too low transfer years of the owner's work to a lucky buyer at a discount.

A credible valuation starts from a different place: what have buyers actually paid, recently, for businesses like yours, in this market? That is the question our valuation practice answers.

Our methodology

Every engagement follows the same disciplined sequence:

1. Financial recasting. Tax returns are built to minimize taxable income, which means they systematically understate what a business truly earns its owner. We rebuild your last three years of financials to surface seller's discretionary earnings (SDE) — adding back owner salary and benefits, one-time expenses, discretionary spending and non-cash items. For larger companies we work from adjusted EBITDA instead.
2. Earnings quality review. Not all earnings are equal. Revenue concentrated in two customers is worth less per dollar than revenue spread across two hundred. Recurring contract revenue commands a premium over walk-in trade. We grade the durability of your earnings because buyers — and their lenders — certainly will.
3. Market comparables. We benchmark against closed transactions in your sector and region, drawn from our own deal history and the databases brokers actually use. A Manhattan restaurant, a Queens contractor and a Brooklyn e-commerce brand trade at very different multiples, and we apply the right one.
4. Deal structure reality check. A headline price means little without terms. We model how your number holds up under SBA financing constraints, seller-note expectations and working capital requirements, so the valuation reflects a deal that can actually close.

What you receive

You get a written opinion of value: a clear range, the recast financials behind it, the comparable data we relied on, and — often the most valuable part — a candid list of the specific factors holding your multiple down and what it would take to fix them. Owners regularly use that list as a two-year roadmap and come back to sell at a meaningfully higher number.

When you need a valuation

• Exit planning — the foundation of any sale decision, ideally done one to two years before going to market.
• Partner buyouts — a neutral, documented number keeps a negotiation between partners from becoming a war.
• Divorce and estate matters — defensible documentation for attorneys and courts.
• Buying a business — an independent check before you commit to someone else's asking price.
• Strategic decisions — knowing your value changes how you weigh a big lease renewal, an expansion or an unsolicited offer.

Straight answers, even when they are unwelcome

We tell owners the truth. Sometimes that truth is that the business is worth more than they hoped; often it is less. Either way, you deserve to plan around reality. Because we are brokers rather than pure appraisers, our numbers are grounded in what we can actually deliver at the closing table — and if you decide to sell, the valuation fee for a standard opinion is credited against our success fee. There is no better way to test whether a valuation is honest than asking the firm that wrote it to stand behind it in the market.