Ask a small-business owner to take a month away and the honest answer is often a laugh. The business works, customers are happy, and the owner is the system: the approvals, the pricing judgment, the relationships and the memory of how things are done.
Buyers notice. A business that depends on one person carries a risk that does not show up on the profit and loss statement, and buyers price that risk in. Lenders do the same, because the cash flow they are lending against may walk out of the door with the seller.
Owner dependence is rarely a personal failing. In most businesses it accumulates, one sensible shortcut at a time, until every important path runs through the same desk. The cure is equally unglamorous: write down how the work moves, give each handoff a named owner, and move recurring decisions to rules that someone else can apply.
A useful test is ninety days. If the business can run for ninety consecutive days with acceptable service, sound financial controls and a stable load on the people running it, the owner has become optional in the best sense. That is the point at which the business is easier to sell, easier to finance and, for many owners, easier to live with.
The work is worth starting long before any sale is planned. Owners who do it may find they no longer want to sell, because the business finally gives them their time back.