Selling Your Business Is a Process, Not a Checklist

William got home to an empty house one evening recently. Cleared out emails over dinner, eventually switched over to Instagram, and mid-scroll came across an ad from a national wealth management firm: well-produced, clearly well-funded, and at the end of it a ten-point checklist for selling your business, with a prompt to hand over your name, email, and phone number to get access.

He laughed.

Not because checklists are worthless, but because he has seen this pattern his entire career.

Thirty days to six-pack abs. Five steps to losing weight. Ten points to selling your business. The format is always the same because it works as a marketing tool. It makes something complicated feel attainable. It gets people to give up their email address.

But selling a business is one of the most complex, personal, and consequential transactions a business owner will ever go through. And the idea that it fits neatly into ten universal steps is a fiction.

Why No Two Sales Look the Same

For one business owner the process might involve three critical steps. For another it might involve twenty. What needs to be uncovered, addressed, and resolved before going to market depends entirely on the business, the owner, the industry, the structure, and a dozen other variables that no generic checklist can account for.

Some doors you open during preparation will reveal more work. A detail about real estate ownership, an insurance structure that needs to be unwound, a legal entity that wasn’t set up correctly years ago. Others will show you that everything is already well in order and that particular box is checked. You won’t know which is which until you start working through your specific situation.

What Actually Helps

Rather than asking for your email address in exchange for a downloadable checklist, William points to something more valuable. The real stories of business owners who have been through the process. What they did right. What they did wrong. What they wish they had done differently and when.

Those stories, shared consistently through Portus Perspectives and on the Portus website, give business owners a far more honest and useful picture of what the process actually looks like than any ten point framework ever could.

Build Your Own Process

William closes with an observation that is worth taking seriously. Deep down, most business owners already know which parts of their business need work. The same way most people know whether they are eating too much sugar or not exercising enough. The checklist isn’t the missing piece. The commitment to working through the things you already know need attention is.

Focus on those. Build a process around them. And surround yourself with the right people to help you work through what you uncover along the way.

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I got home last night and house was empty, kids were out of the house doing different things, wife was too. So, uh, you know, got home, made myself some dinner, uh, put the computer on the, uh, dining room table– or the, um, the kitchen table and, and started clearing out emails and, and did that for a while. And eventually I got tired and switched over to my phone and hopped on Instagram for a few minutes, and I was scrolling through, and I, I saw an ad from a, we’ll call it a national wealth management firm, if you will.

And the– it was a great video, very well pr- uh, very well produced. Uh, you could tell they’ve, you know, got money to throw behind their marketing efforts. And it was– What it boiled down to in the end is, you know, it was a ten-point checklist for selling your business. And as the video kept going, you saw [00:01:00] the, you know, click here for more information or whatever ends up being in that Instagram component, right?

And it was gonna be asking you for your name and your email address and, and most likely your, your cell phone number or your mobile number, or maybe not. Maybe they’re just gonna bombard you with emails. And I kinda chuckled, right? We’ve seen it across all different aspects of our lives, right? Um, thirty days to a six-pack abs, um, ten steps to losing weight, um, and, um, and so many other things that we wanna achieve, uh, achieve in life, people oftentimes boil down to, you know, five steps, thirty days, whatever it ends up being.

And the reason we do that is because it makes it, makes it feel attainable. Um, it makes it feel simple. It makes ’em feel like, “Hey, we’ve got this,” right? And that’s a great marketing trick. It’s a great way to get people to give up something as small as their email address. But in reality is selling your business isn’t a ten-point checklist, right?

Um, should there be things [00:02:00] that you make sure you accomplish? Of course there is. Um, is it ten points? Uh, maybe for you it is. Maybe for the next person it’s three points, and maybe for the other person it’s twenty points. Um, but there is, um, there are processes to take. Um, there are things to go through.

There’s people to engage with. Um, there are– there are things that unquestionably need to be done and uncovered, and in the process of uncovering that, it might open up further doors, or it might paint the picture that this door’s already very well cleared out, very well taken care of, um, when you go to sell the business.

So, you know, checklists, days, all of those things are super helpful. Um, but rather than asking you to give us a name and email address, what we’re gonna do is, down below, we’re gonna include, um, some things that we think you should do, some things that we think you should explore. And then we’d ask you to follow along on, on Portus Perspectives here and, um, and over on our [00:03:00] website some of the stories that we share.

And um, about business owners that have been through the same process, um, what it was like for them, what were some of the opportunities and challenges that were uncovered during their own process, right? Not during their checklist, but during their process of going to market. What did they do right? What did they do wrong?

What do they wish they’d done? That way you can create your own checklist of things that you need to do, things that you know you need to accomplish ’cause the reality is, it’s just like our, our own health, um, our own wellness. Um, we all know that we eat a, um, too many chocolates during the day, or we have too many sodas, or we drink, uh, too much wine, or whatever it is, right, that’s pr- preventing us from, from getting to where we wanna be from a health perspective.

Same thing. I mean, we, we generally know, um, deep down what aspects of the business probably need some additional work. So let’s focus on those things, move away from the checklist, and focus on the things that we [00:04:00] know we need to develop processes and systems in order to allow you to get to the place you want to.

So again, check down below and, um, if you got any questions about it, uh, feel free to, to drop us an email. Um, we’re happy to answer any questions along the way.

If you liked today’s video, hit the subscribe button down below, or better yet, just leave us a comment.

ORIGINAL MEDIA SOURCE(S):

William Bissett: The Instagram Ad That Got It Wrong About Selling Your Business | Portus Perspectives

Originally Recorded on June 5, 2026

Portus Perspectives: Episode 23

By /Published On: June 15, 2026/