Find out whether your business could run without you
An invitation-only diagnostic for family business owners in Queensland and Northern New South Wales.
Apply for your Exitability IndexSteve reviews every application personally. Places are limited.
Sooner or later, a personal problem has to come before the business.
It could be a health diagnosis. Yours, or someone who needs you more than the business does. Turning up with a brave face works to solve a business problem. It is not a solution for a personal one.
Sometimes it is not any one thing. One morning, the thought of battling another five years as the load-bearing wall feels like too big a burden to carry.
In both cases the same reality comes to the fore: the business relies on you. This has worked for you up to now because you have not needed an alternative.
Realising that you need personal time, and a different way of running the business, is what points to the plan you actually need. Autonomy before an exit.
Most advisors start at the wrong end
The advisory industry has a sequence. First you decide to exit. Then you plan the exit. Everything is built around that assumption.
It leaves out the owner who is not ready to decide, and who feels quietly trapped by the decision not yet being made.
Exit planners plan transactions. Succession planners plan transfers. Neither of them can help you until the business is exitable, meaning it can run, grow and generate wealth without requiring your daily presence. That is the starting point, not the finish line.
That question has a measurable answer. Answering it well is what the Exitability Index is for.
What the Exitability Index measures
Most owners have a feeling about how dependent the business is on them. Usually that it needs them more than they would like. What they do not have is a clear picture of where that dependency actually sits, or what it is costing them.
The Index maps your business across eight dimensions that decide whether it can stand on its own. Each one is scored. Together they show you where the business is genuinely strong, and where your presence is the only thing holding it up.
It takes less time than you would expect. It tells you more than you probably want to know. And it is the most useful starting point for any honest conversation about what comes next.
What your report looks like
You leave the session with a scored report you can actually use. A clear number, a breakdown across the eight dimensions, and a plain-spoken read on what it means and where to start.
“The numbers are the strong part of this business. The fragile part is everything that depends on you being in the room. The gap is structural, which is the good news, because structural gaps are the fixable kind.”
First 90 days- Name a genuine second-in-command and hand over one real decision.
- Move the three things only you know into a written system.
- Take a planned week out and let the business feel the gap.
Illustrative examples of the report format, not a real business. Your own report is built from your session with Steve.
This is not a form you fill in alone
You can find plenty of scorecards online that hand you a number and a PDF that sits in a drawer. This is not one of them. The Exitability Index is completed with Steve, in person or online, because the questions that matter are the ones a form cannot ask you well.
Steve works with only two or three owners at a time, so he reviews every application himself and takes on the ones he can genuinely help. That is what makes it invitation-only. It is a real decision on both sides, not a funnel.
You apply
A short application, about five minutes. Enough for Steve to understand your business and whether the timing is right.
Steve reviews it personally
No automated funnel. He reads it himself and replies either way. If it is not the right fit, he will tell you plainly.
You complete your Index together
If it is a fit, you are invited to work through the Index with Steve, in person or online. This is the real work, and it is worth doing properly.
You get your report and a straight conversation
A scored picture of where your business stands, and an honest talk about what it means. No obligation to go any further.
Steve works with two to three owners at a time. There is capacity for a small number of these conversations each month.
Worth being honest about the fit
✓ This is for you if
You own a family business with roughly 10 to 50 people and revenue between $2M and $6M. You have built something genuinely successful. It provides well, but it provides because you are there, and you are starting to feel the personal cost of that.
You are not necessarily ready to sell. You might never sell. But you are ready to stop being the thing the business cannot function without.
× This is not for you if
You want a quick fix, or a generic framework someone else filled in. If you want a report that sits in a drawer, there are plenty of advisors who will hand you one.
It is also not for you if you are not prepared to have an honest conversation about what is actually going on. The business part is straightforward. The conversation that precedes it sometimes is not.
Steve Sandor
The first conversation is never about the business. It is about what the business needs to become so your life can have some time back.
Steve has sat with family business owners in both of those moments, the health diagnosis and the quiet morning. He knows what it costs to keep the brave face on.
When his own marriage ended, he had four young children, a business to run, and every reason to do what most people do. Keep moving, stay practical, solve the next thing. He made a different choice. He and his ex-wife put themselves on the same side of the divorce, and against the advice of their lawyers decided the most important thing they could still do together was raise a family. Over the next twenty years, that is what they did.
Two people on the same side of a situation that usually creates adversaries. It is the same instinct he brings to every owner he works with, finding the version of this where everyone gets what actually matters.
Request your Exitability Index
A few questions about your business and where you are at. Steve reads every one himself and replies either way.
The business was supposed to work for you
If it has ended up the other way around, that is fixable. But only if it is built to be exitable.
Apply for your Exitability Index