Paul Lange

What you'll need to do to

Sell it, raise it, or step out of it.

I've spent nearly four decades on the other side of this table. The thing that decides it is rarely the number people expect me to look at.

Answer 31 questions about how the business runs and see it the way a buyer, an investor, or someone standing in for you would: a score out of 100, the seven readings behind it, and the three answers they're most likely to press on. The full report adds what to do about it: the next six months, each action in order, read by a person before it's sent.

31 questions about how it runs, five about the business itself. Allow 45 minutes to an hour, most of it looking things up.

Choose your next move

Buy the summary report for USD $97 or the full report for USD $500, by card or crypto (BTC or XMR), and start straight away. Your answers save as you go.

More information: Ready to sell?Ready to raise?Ready to step out?

Why this is worth knowing

Most owners find out how much of the business still depends on them at the worst possible moment. When somebody offers to buy it. When a bank asks for the last three years. When they need to stop, and discover they cannot.

You may be selling. You may be raising money, or borrowing against it. You may be planning neither, and just want to know whether the thing runs without you. The three are closer than they look: the same seven questions sit under all of them, though a buyer, an investor and a lender each weigh them differently. A buyer looks hardest, so a buyer's standard is the one the assessment scores against, whether or not you ever meet one.

If you're selling

A buyer is paying for earnings that carry on after you've gone. Whatever still runs through you tends to be priced in: in the price, in the terms, or in how long you're asked to stay.

If you're raising or borrowing

An investor wants to know the plan can be delivered without you carrying it. A lender asks something narrower: whether the repayments are safe if you're not there.

If you want to step out

Nobody is buying anything. The test is whether the business runs for a month while you're away, and which calls, approvals and figures would still find you.

There's a difference between a business and a job with staff.

It is worth knowing which one you own before somebody else tells you.

I'm not going to pretend a questionnaire can replace a fortnight inside a business. It cannot. But the order I look at things in has barely changed in nearly four decades, and there's no good reason it should be a secret, so I've written it down and had it scored.

The first thing I want to know is what happens when the owner isn't there. Not whether they're busy. Most owners are busy, and busy is easy to mistake for necessary. What I want is the specific list: which decisions wait, which clients ask for them by name, which numbers nobody else can produce.

It's an uncomfortable question, and the honest answer is usually longer than the owner expected to say out loud. That discomfort is often the most valuable part of the exercise, which is why I haven't found a gentle way to ask it.

Many of the businesses I've declined to back were profitable. Profit wasn't the problem.

What stopped me was that the earnings and the owner were the same thing, and neither of us could tell where one ended and the other began. It's hard to buy, hard to lend against, and hard to hand to a son or a daughter and call a legacy.

The good news, and I do mean this, is that much of it isn't financial and much of it is fixable. It's generally a matter of writing down what's already in somebody's head, and then living with the consequence of having written it down.

What it actually asks

31 questions about how the business really runs, plus five about the business itself, in eight parts. Allow 45 minutes to an hour, most of it looking things up.

None of it is difficult. A few of them will annoy you, and those are the ones I would pay most attention to.

What comes back is a number out of 100, the seven readings behind it, what somebody from outside is likely to notice, and the three answers they're most likely to press on. You can read it on screen the moment you finish, with a link by email and a PDF to keep.

The seven it reads

  1. How much of it is you
  2. How solid next year's income is
  3. What survives you leaving
  4. Whether someone else can read your numbers
  5. What exists outside people's heads
  6. Whether the earnings hold
  7. Whether it grows without you

Your score is worked out the same way whichever reason you choose. The reason changes the order the report reads the seven in, and whose eyes it reads them through.

It also checks two things the seven can't: whether the business still makes money once you're paid properly for your work, and how much rests on your biggest customer. Either can hold the score down, whatever the seven say.

What comes back

Choose one: the full report or the summary report

Read as:

Where I'd start

The full report on your business

USD $500

  • What a buyer, an investor, or someone standing in for you would see, and the answers that decide it
  • Where your score comes from, area by area
  • The next six months, each action in order, and what done looks like
  • Something in writing at the end of each action, the kind of paper a buyer or a bank asks to see
  • Read by Paul Lange before it is sent, within 72 hours
  • Your summary report in the meantime, on screen the moment you finish, and by email
Full report. What to do about your business. We mould plastic parts for appliance and car manufacturers. Plastic injection moulding, United States. USD 3,800,000 of revenue in the year to December 2025, 12 people, trading since 1954. Where a buyer would place you: 89.5 out of 100. A business.
A sample front page, for a made-up business.

Click below to pay by card or crypto (BTC or XMR). Then start the assessment. Your answers save as you go.

Your summary report and score

USD $97

  • Your score out of 100, and the seven readings behind it
  • The three answers somebody is most likely to press on
  • On screen the moment you finish, with a link by email and a PDF to keep
  • The full report can still be ordered from your score's page, and for three months the USD $97 comes off its price
Ready to sell? What a buyer or an acquirer would see in your business today. Where a buyer would place you: 89.5 out of 100. A business.
A sample front page, for a made-up business.

One action from a sample full report, for a made-up business

Every action in the full report is set out this way, starting from one of your answers. They're ordered across the next 30, 90 and 180 days, with the ones a buyer would mark you down for first at the front.

Action 3. Take another two weeks off, and write down everything that still reached you

You were last away for two weeks with your phone off in July 2026, and family ran it.

What it costs you. You last tested it in July 2026, and a buyer will ask how it went.

What a buyer expects. A buyer expects the business to have run for two weeks in the last year without the owner or the owner's family.

The move. Book the next two weeks away and keep a note of everything that still reached you. That note is your next list of things to hand over.

Who does itYou, and whoever you leave in charge
How longTwo weeks, booked in advance
What it costsThe cost of actually taking the vacation
Done whenyou've been gone two weeks with the phone off and the business is still standing
You end up holdingA dated note of what still reached you while you were away

Both take the same 31 questions and the same 45 minutes to an hour.

If it's for someone else, give them the full report as a gift.

Being straight about what it is not

It's not a valuation, it won't tell you what anyone would pay, and it's not financial, accounting, or legal advice.

It scores what you tell it, so it's only as accurate as your answers. Where you're not sure, look it up rather than guess.

Every finding in the full report starts from one of your own answers, set out under its heading, so you can see exactly where it came from.

I read every full report before it's sent. That read isn't an audit: nobody checks your answers against your records.

No self-assessment can tell you what a particular buyer, investor or lender will decide. Use it to prepare, not to predict.

The full report goes further, and nothing is held back from your summary report to sell it.

Before you start

How long does it take?
Allow 45 minutes to an hour for the 31 questions, most of it finding figures. Your answers save as you go, so it doesn't have to be one sitting.
What should I have to hand?
Last year's revenue and your most recent accounts. If your accounts are more than two years old, or you have fewer than three months of monthly profit and loss figures, your summary report will say a buyer couldn't read the business yet, and show you what's missing, instead of giving a number.
Do I have to give you my email address?
You give one when you pay, and your summary report comes with a link by email and a PDF to keep. We'll also send you two short emails about the full report, and you can stop them at any time.
When does the full report arrive?
Within 72 hours of you finishing the questions, or of paying if you buy it after your score is on screen. It comes to your email address with a link to its own private page. If you buy it before you start, your summary report comes first, on screen the moment you finish and by email.
Is there a shorter way to start?
Yes. The short version asks 15 questions you can answer from memory, and shows you roughly where you stand on three of the seven, as a range rather than a score. There's nothing to buy, and you don't have to tell us who you are. If you go on to the summary report or the full report, your answers come straight in once you've paid, so you won't have to answer anything twice. Start the short version
If I buy the summary report, then want the full report?
For three months after your summary report is first on screen, the USD $97 you paid comes off the full report built from the same answers, and you can change your answers without paying again.
Can I get my money back?
We don't refund a payment because you didn't finish the questions or changed your mind. If you're buying as a consumer and the law gives you a right to cancel, you keep it: write to us within 14 days of paying and before your report is sent, and we refund what we haven't yet provided.
What currency, and how do I pay?
US dollars, by card, or by Bitcoin or Monero.
Who sees my answers?
Your answers are yours. We do not sell them. We do use anonymised data, aggregated, to establish industry, regional and other statistics. Your report goes to you alone; anyone you give its link or code to can open it. Investability Special Terms

If you would like to know

More information
More information
More information

Buy the summary report for USD $97 or the full report for USD $500, by card or crypto (BTC or XMR), and start straight away. Your answers save as you go.

The questions are the same whichever way in you choose. The report then reads your answers as one of three people would: a buyer, an investor, or somebody standing in for you.

Give the full report as a gift

For a partner, a relative, or a business associate who owns a business. They answer the questions whenever they're ready, and their full report comes to them within 72 hours of finishing, read by a person before it is sent.

You choose whether the voucher comes to you to hand over, or goes straight to them, saying it's from you. It works for three years from the day you buy it.

USD $500

Give it as a gift

If you'd rather go through it with someone, that's the work I do with the firm: Manolutions.

Before you go

See your business the way a buyer, an investor, or someone standing in for you would

Answer 15 questions and get the short report: an indicator of where your business stands today.

Show me where I stand