Starfish Coaching · Partners
For business brokers and M&A advisors working with design and construction owners
A twelve-month program that makes owner-dependent businesses sellable.
The owner has built something real, the financials look reasonable, and then you get into it: no documented process, a team that can't function without them, quality that lives in the founder's head.
You can tell them it isn't ready. What you can't easily do is tell them what to do about it, and an owner who hears “come back in three years” usually just goes to another broker.
This page is for that moment. It covers what I do, how we would work together, and which listings I am not the right answer for.
I run a structured program that removes owner dependence from design and construction businesses. Eight components, built over sixteen weeks with hands-on implementation, then quarterly reinforcement. I've founded eight companies and led a fifty-five-person design and construction firm. I know what a contractor's job costing actually looks like and why their project manager won't delegate.
The eight components are mindset, vision, marketing, people, finances and metrics, issues, process and goals. Marketing, people, metrics, issues and process are where owner dependence hides, and they are what a buyer scrutinises in due diligence. The full program is on the Self-Sustaining Business Program page.
How much the multiple moves depends on the size of the business, its trade and region, and above all on how much of it runs without the owner. I will not promise a number for a business I have not looked at.
If you are not sure which side a listing falls on, ask, and I will tell you straight.
Tell me the kind of listings you see and how you would like to work together. I read these myself and reply personally.
A confirmation is on its way to your inbox. Eric reads these himself and replies personally, including to arrange a call if you asked for one.
It is a written evaluation of what is suppressing the owner's multiple, and a sequenced plan to fix it. The business is scored across eight fundamentals and read for transferability, every function that runs through the owner is mapped, and Eric takes the owner through all of it in a walkthrough session. You deliver a path forward instead of a rejection. The detail is on the assessment page.
The assessment is a one-time fee of $2,500 for the owner. The fee and the credit if the owner goes on to work with Eric are set out on the assessment page.
No. It is an assessment of how transferable the business is and what a buyer will price against the owner. A formal valuation for a sale, a tax filing or a legal matter should come from a chartered business valuator. For the arithmetic behind a multiple, see how to value a construction company.
The program runs twelve months: sixteen weeks of hands-on build across eight components, then quarterly reinforcement. How long the work takes to show in the numbers a buyer sees is a separate question. Ideally the owner starts three to five years before a sale, and about three years is roughly the minimum runway for this work to show up in the financials.
If the sale is within six months, most of the value-building window has already closed. Eric will tell the owner that directly rather than sell a program.
Referral terms are straightforward and we'll agree them upfront. Ask when you get in touch.
Yes. The work is done in person in Vancouver or online by video, so the broker and the owner can be anywhere. Eric works with the owners of design and construction businesses, including builders and trades.
The free Exit Readiness Scorecard takes a few minutes and shows an owner where the business stands before anyone speaks to them. The assessment page explains what happens next.
Eric Lee · Starfish Coaching · 1937 Triumph St, Vancouver BC V5L 1K6
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