Can I value my business myself?

Yes — to within a range you can defend. The arithmetic is not the hard part and never was. What you cannot do alone is be objective about your own assumptions, which is exactly why the useful output is a number with its workings attached, so someone else can argue with the workings instead of the conclusion.

#What you can do reliably yourself

• Normalise three years of earnings and document every adjustment
• Establish which earnings figure applies — SDE or EBITDA
• Apply a multiple from comparable transactions in your size band
• Calculate net debt and the working capital position
• Identify which single assumption moves the range most

#Where self-valuation reliably goes wrong

Three predictable places. Add-backs you consider obvious and a buyer will not accept. A multiple borrowed from businesses several times your size. And a forecast built, usually unconsciously, backwards from a number you had in mind before you started.

None of these are failures of skill. They are what happens when the person doing the analysis has spent a decade building the thing being analysed. Common valuation mistakes lists the nine that recur.

#When you need someone else

When a tax authority, a court or a lender requires a signed document with professional liability behind it. For everything else — knowing whether an offer is reasonable, deciding whether to start a process, working out what to fix first — your own defensible range is enough, and it is enough far earlier than most owners think.

How to value a business is the full sequence.