Sitting on a beach can increase the sale price of your company

Monday, 13 July 2026

Every summer, we are asked the same question by shareholders: how much holiday time should I really be taking away from my business? It is, of course, a balance. Take too much and you risk giving the wrong impression to your management team. Take too little and you imply one of two things: either the business is over-reliant on you, or you have some deep-rooted workaholic tendencies. Neither is a good look.

There is a serious point behind this. When a buyer begins to contemplate an acquisition, one of the very first questions they will ask is a form of early due diligence dressed up as small talk: “How does your business survive without you around?” It is always asked. And in a perfect world, it should always be met with the same answer: “It doesn’t need me. My management team runs the business without me.”

In reality, the answers we hear are usually wrapped in excuses. They range from “the business runs perfectly well without me, but I never go for too long as I like to keep an eye on things” to “we normally go abroad, but this year we decided to stay in the UK.” The truth is that these answers almost always give the game away. And rest assured, buyers know it.

If anything, the test has become harder, not easier. In 2026, being physically absent is no longer proof of anything. A shareholder can lie on a sun lounger in the Maldives while quietly running the business from their phone, approving invoices on the beach and joining calls from the hotel bar. Buyers know this too, and the sharper ones will ask not just whether you went away, but whether the business genuinely operated without your input while you were gone.

The pattern we see is consistent: the shareholders who can genuinely switch off, who take long holidays abroad with their families and come back to a business that barely noticed, are almost always the ones with real confidence in their management team. And that confidence is usually well placed.

Bizarre though it sounds, your ability to sit on a beach with little, if any, contact with your business is one of the most demonstrable ways of showing a prospective acquirer that the company runs without you. It is evidence, not anecdote.

So here is a challenge for Summer 2026. Book a proper holiday. Not a long weekend with your laptop, but a genuine stretch of time away, phone notifications off, decisions delegated. When you return, and an incoming acquirer eventually asks how reliant the business is on you, you will be able to answer with more than words. You will have proof, a suntan, and very possibly a higher sale price.

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