The Last Handshake: How to Sell or Hand Off Your Trades Business for What It’s Worth—Without Getting Burned or Letting Your People Down - Softcover

Sutton, Ray W.

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798188040918

Publisher: Independently published, 2026

Synopsis

You spent thirty years building your business with your own two hands. Don’t lose it all in the last mile.
If you own a plumbing, HVAC, electrical, landscaping, or contracting business and retirement is finally in sight, you are standing in the middle of the biggest wave of small-business exits in American history — the so-called silver tsunami, as millions of baby boomer owners retire, most of them with no succession plan at all. And here is the hard truth nobody warned you about: being the person who can do it all, the one everyone depends on, is exactly the thing that makes your business hard to sell and easy to undervalue. Nobody ever teaches a plumber how to sell a plumbing business. Until now.
The Last Handshake is the plain-spoken, tradesperson-to-tradesperson field guide to selling or handing off your small trades business for what it is truly worth — written not by a consultant in a suit, but in the language of the job site, mixed with humor, hard-won wisdom, and real respect for a lifetime of skilled work.
Inside, you will learn how to:

• Figure out what your business is actually worth using SDE, add-backs, and real-world valuation multiples for plumbing, HVAC, and landscaping companies — and stop guessing with rules of thumb that can be off by six figures.
• Fix the number-one value killer, owner-dependence, so your business runs without you and a buyer will pay top dollar for it.
• Clean up messy books so a buyer and a bank will trust your numbers and finance the deal.
• Understand every kind of buyer, from individual buyers using SBA loans, to competitors, to the private-equity roll-ups aggressively buying up trades shops.
• Sell to your own employees through a management or employee buyout — even when your loyal foreman has no cash.
• Keep the business in the family without blowing up the family, with honest guidance on fairness, readiness, and estate planning.
• Structure seller financing the right way, so you actually get paid and never end up chasing a defaulted note in retirement.
• Negotiate the deal, survive due diligence, and understand taxes and deal structure so you keep the largest possible share of what you built.
• Hand off your employees and customers with grace, protect your good name, and — the part every other book skips — plan a retirement worth exiting into, so you don’t crash the day after closing.

Whether you are aiming to retire in one year or five, whether you want the biggest check or the softest landing for your crew, this comprehensive, heartfelt small-business succession and exit-planning guide will help you write the ending yourself, on your own terms, with your money, your legacy, and your dignity intact.
The last handshake of your career ought to be the best one. This book helps you make it so.
Perfect for retiring contractors, home-service business owners, and anyone planning a small-business exit, succession, or sale.

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798188040918
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 114