Selling small/medium sized businesses in Canada
I am hopeful that this novel will help some entrepreneurs sell and navigate the sale of their business. Over the next decade, $2 trillion in Canadian small business value will change hands as the founder generation ages out. 76% of SME owners plan to exit. Only 9% have a formal succession plan. The gap between those two numbers is where fortunes are lost — not to bad luck, but to bad timing, bad structure, and decisions that seemed harmless until they weren't.
The $2 Trillion Handshake is the Canadian founder's field guide to getting this right. It walks you through every stage of a successful exit: how to stop being the bottleneck in your own business, how buyers actually calculate what your company is worth, how to use the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption and the new Employee Ownership Trust to keep more of what you've built, and how to navigate the deal itself — from the first unsolicited offer to the wire clearing.
This book covers what your accountant hasn't told you, what your lawyer assumes you already know, and what most founders only learn after it's too late to act on it.
This book is for you if:
- You own a Canadian small or mid-sized business and plan to sell in the next 3–10 years
- You've been told your business is worth "a multiple of EBITDA" and have no idea what that means for you
- You want to understand the tax structures — LCGE, share vs. asset sale, family trusts — before you're sitting across from a buyer
- You've received an unsolicited offer and don't know whether to take it seriously