Founders tend to think a business that performs is a business a buyer can own. It is not. A buyer pays for what survives the founder walking out the door, not for what the company has done. The revenue, the relationships, the decisions and the knowledge either transfer to a new owner or stay attached to one person, and that is what separates a business that sells from one that merely runs. That quality has a name. It is acquirability, and it is built years before a buyer asks to see it.