A short, honest read on how ready your business — and you — are for the exit you actually want. Around fifteen short questions, one at a time — a couple of minutes. At the end you can also see, in two figures, roughly what your business might be worth today and what a prepared exit could target. A picture worth having whether or not we ever speak.
You started this before — pick up where you left off?
Your result
Where this leaves you
—chance of a completed exit among businesses a buyer takes seriously — the pool you enter by understanding what they look for
—and about this across every business that considers selling — only ~3 in 10 of which ever complete a sale
The most useful next step is a short, no-obligation conversation. Leave your details below and we'll be in touch — your result comes with it, so there's nothing to explain.
— or, if you'd rather, email us directly —
hello@architectyourexit.co.uk
Want more? Two optional deep-dives
First — will an exit even happen?
It's the question almost nobody asks, and it matters far more than the price. Most businesses that go to market simply never sell.
Your likelihood of selling
Engaging a corporate financier or an accountant to sell, unprepared, is how many owners end up disappointed: they're paid when a deal completes, so their job is to market what you already have — not to spend the two to five years it takes to make it saleable, around what you actually want from it. There's a quieter limit too: they'll only really take you down one route — a trade sale — because that's the one they're set up to complete. The alternatives that might suit you better, like an EOT, a partial exit or passing it on, rarely get put on the table.
Your readiness picture
And are you ready to run it?
The odds above are about the business. This is about you — how ready you are to run the process on your own terms. Different question, just as decisive, and the one the people you'd normally turn to tend not to ask until it's too late.
Each dimension runs from just starting to fully ready. Where you sit is highlighted — the rungs above are the climb, and the last rung is what "ready" looks like.
The natural next step
That's your readiness read. The most useful thing to do with it is talk it through — a short, no-obligation conversation about what closing your biggest gaps would take. Copy the address and drop us a line from your own email; a sentence on where you've landed is plenty.
hello@architectyourexit.co.uk
Below, if it's useful: an indicative value picture (optional — it asks for a few figures) and what a full Blueprint covers. Neither is needed to get in touch.
Could you get what you want? (optional)
The roughest part of all this, and entirely optional — a deliberately high-level, indicative sense of whether the figure you have in mind is even in the right postcode. It is not a valuation: the real answer depends on the readiness above and on many things specific to your business that only a proper assessment would weigh. Skip it if you'd rather — you don't need it to get in touch. The figures stay in your browser.
Some businesses are valued off revenue — and it shows the margin.
Profit before interest, tax and one-offs, stripped of anything unusual. A round figure is fine.
So we compare your slice, not the whole company, to what you want.
Your target — not a hoped-for maximum, the figure that makes your next chapter work.
Nothing here is sent anywhere. It's worked out in your browser, for you.
Indicative only — not a valuation
As it stands today
—
Indicative, on your current readiness
Properly prepared, could be
—
With the value-changing work done first — a big "if"
As it stands todayPreparedThe amount you want
Remember what this is really about: not squeezing out the maximum, but knowing your destination — the amount and the timing you need — and staying in control of getting there. If you can realise what you want, that's a good result, whatever the theoretical ceiling. (Where there's more than one owner, it also depends on what they want — which may differ from you.)
This is not a valuation. It's a broad, indicative illustration built only from the figures you entered and current published multiples for your sector — benchmarked to UK mid-market EV/EBITDA data (Dealsuite M&A Monitor, H1 2025, overall average ~5.3x) and cross-checked against typical UK SME transaction ranges, then adjusted for size. A real multiple depends on many things specific to your business — the quality and durability of its earnings, customer concentration, growth, how well it runs without the owner, the state of its market and much else — all of which need proper assessment before any figure means anything. Treat it as a sighting shot to frame a conversation, not a number to rely on or act on. Capital Dimensions is not regulated to give valuation or investment advice, and nothing here is either.
Ready to talk it through?
Whether or not you filled in the value picture, the next step is the same — a short, no-obligation conversation about where you've landed and what closing your biggest gaps would take.
hello@architectyourexit.co.uk
What the next step actually gives you
This scorecard is a rough sketch. The Exit Design Blueprint is the considered version — built around your objectives, your numbers and your timing, and curated for you. Every Blueprint is bespoke: it's specific to your situation and objectives (the amount you need, the timing, and any competing objectives between owners). What stays constant is the set of principles behind it — the same for every exit plan — which weigh the stage your business is at, the sector and market you operate in, and how well the things a buyer expects to see are actually in place. Here's the shape of it:
Exit Design Blueprint
Bespoke to you
Curated, not generated
01Your objectives, decoded — what you (and any co-owners) actually want: the amount, the timing, the trade-offs — set down before a word about the business.
02Can you realise what you need? — your target set against what the business could deliver today and prepared, reconciled across the owners.
03Route options, illustrated — the main routes scored against what you want. They're a starting point, not a menu: real plans are hybrids, and bespoke.
04The value drivers a buyer pays for — what's lifting or dragging your multiple, and what would move it.
05Will it complete? — an honest read on deal-readiness, and where competing owner objectives need reconciling.
06A recommended route map & plan — curated for you, with the reasoning shown.
Route options (illustrative)
Route A
Route B
Route C
Can you reach your number? (illustrative)
Today
Prepared
Built from your own answers — these bars only show the shape.
We've shown five main routes for illustration — in practice there are hybrids and others, and what we build is bespoke to the owner(s). Every Blueprint is curated, not auto-generated, against a defined set of principles.
The honest next step
Turn the rough picture into your picture
The one thing this scorecard can't do is the thing that matters most — nothing changes until something is decided. Most owners read a result like this, quietly agree with it, and do nothing for another year. A year of runway is the one asset in an exit you can never buy back.
The next step is that short conversation — copy the address and email us from your own account whenever you're ready:
hello@architectyourexit.co.uk
Not a pitch, and no suggestion you should be selling. The conversation is to see whether the Blueprint is right for you — and it stays yours to decide, at every step. That's the whole point of doing it this way.
Adviser view — not shown to the owner
Fit read & talking points
A separate two-minute check — only if it's on your mind
This scorecard leaves one thing out on purpose: how AI could reshape your business model — what it might replace in what you sell, and where it could cut cost or lift margin. It's becoming its own question, and it's starting to move what a business is worth. If that's a live concern for you, it has its own short tool — but there's no need to do it now.
Capital Dimensions architects the exit around the owner's objectives — surfacing every viable route, engineering the value, and keeping the owner in control. This scorecard is a starting point, not advice, and the figures are indicative only.