The Index scores five factors a buyer weighs. Here's what each means for your business.
Whether a stranger can tell what makes you different from the builder down the road. Vague positioning reads as replaceable, and replaceable businesses compete on price.
Whether you can charge for the value of your work instead of matching the market's lowest price.
Whether work shows up predictably or you're always hunting. A business that generates its own demand is worth more than one that depends on the owner's hustle.
Whether the business runs when you're not in the building. A buyer needs to know what would stop without you.
Whether a buyer could step in and keep it running. Everything else rolls up into this.
A readout is a number out of 100, a readiness band, and a per-pillar breakdown. Green where you're strong, amber where a buyer would hesitate. Here's a sample: a business scoring 68, solid on demand and positioning, exposed on owner-dependence and transferability. The kind of business that runs well, mostly through the owner.
BUILDER BRAND PE INDEX™ · SAMPLE READOUT SAMPLE A business that runs without its owner sells for a meaningfully higher multiple than one that depends on the owner to function. Across small construction and field-service businesses, owner-operated companies typically transact around 2 to 3 times earnings. Systematized businesses with management and recurring demand in place command 4 to 6 times or more. Owner-dependence alone can pull 20 to 50 percent off the value in severe cases. A buyer using financing has to prove the cash flow survives your exit. The PE Index shows you where you sit on that curve before a buyer ever runs the math on you.
The Index shows where you stand across five pillars. An amber score points to an area to investigate. The Excavation examines why and sets a plan for what to do next.
Forge is the business-model intelligence engine we built and give away free. It uses live market data to examine your business and question its assumptions. It flags where value may be leaking and where you could improve. You can run it yourself.
The Excavation turns the research into direction for your business. We work through what to change, what to leave alone, who to pursue, and what to fix first. You leave with a business-model reading, strategic direction, and a ranked Scope of Work. It sets out what to build, in what order, on what timeline, and at what price. You're paying for the judgment behind that plan and the specification for building it.
Scott Wise came up in the construction industry as a residential drafter, close enough to contractors to see the same problem over and over. The work was excellent and the branding made it look like anything but. Great operators were leaving real money on the table because nothing about how they showed up matched the quality of what they built.
So he went to work on it. Builder Branding Co. exists to fix that gap for his fellow builders. We sharpen the brand, build the systems, and drive the enterprise value that lets an operator stop running on hustle. Then they can start preparing, on purpose, for the day they sell. Stronger brand, stronger business, stronger multiple when it's time to exit.
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