Start before you are exhausted
The fixes that improve value usually take time: books, team, systems, customer concentration, and owner role.
Make the business legible
A buyer should understand where revenue comes from, what work is profitable, who runs the work, and what the owner actually does.
Reduce key-person risk
If the owner is the salesperson, estimator, manager, dispatcher, and customer relationship, the buyer sees risk.
Field note
A sale process exposes what ownership has tolerated
Messy add-backs, informal roles, owner-only customer relationships, and weak job-cost visibility may feel normal inside the company. They feel risky to a buyer.
The owner who prepares early gets to fix those issues before a buyer uses them as leverage.
Turn the question into evidence
The right next step is to compare what the owner feels against what the numbers, workflow, team, and customer cycle show.