Civic Grove

The method

What no one else will tell you.

Every product in this category implies it knows the point at which an owner can safely step back. We went looking for that number, properly, through the research and through the rules that lenders and regulators actually apply.

It does not exist. No study, dataset or documented survey identifies a point on any scale of owner dependence where a business becomes safe to leave. There is no such scale, so there is no such point.

That finding shaped everything below — and it is the reason this review looks different from the others.

  1. What the people with money at risk do instead

    When a lender, regulator or licensing body has genuinely had to decide whether a business depends on one person, none of them reached for a scale. They wrote a yes-or-no test — and each one binds because a rule says so, not because someone measured a break point.

    US Small Business AdministrationLife insurance on the owner is mandatory, and cannot be waived, where a business depends on one owner’s active participation.SOP 50 10
    Nova Scotia compulsory tradesIn thirteen trades the certificate belongs to a person, not to a business. Stop-work orders follow if that person leaves.Provincial statute
    Liquor licensingA change in share structure at a corporate licensee counts as a licence transfer, and needs approval first.Provincial regulation

  2. So the review has two parts, and they behave differently

    Things that bind absolutely

    A licence in your own name. One signatory on payments. A guarantee you personally signed. Reported as facts with the rule attached — never scored, never averaged. No strength anywhere else cancels one out.

    Everything else

    A matter of degree — and nobody knows where the lines belong. We sort it into four levels so it can be described and compared, and we say plainly that we chose where those lines go.

  3. Our levels are chosen. Saying so is the whole point.

    Wherever a line gets drawn, a person drew it. That is not a criticism of this review or any other — it is how every graded scale works. Choosing where the line goes is fine. Not saying you chose is not.

    There is a cautionary tale here. In 1988 three researchers picked two ownership thresholds using their judgement. The field adopted both as though they had been discovered. Eleven years later another team showed the relationship disappeared once you controlled properly. Numbers borrow authority the moment everyone forgets who chose them.

    Zieky, in Cizek (ed.), Setting Performance Standards, 2001 · Morck, Shleifer & Vishny 1988 · Himmelberg, Hubbard & Palia 1999

  4. One number here does have evidence behind it

    An area earns a level only if you actually answered at least half its questions. That half is not our invention — it is what published research recommends for exactly this situation: reading one business, rather than averaging thousands of them.

    Below it, the review says it cannot read that area and holds the overall conclusion back until it can. Silence is never scored as strength.

    Bell et al., BMC Research Notes 9:479, 2016

  5. And a serious weakness is never averaged away

    If any of the three readings comes back weak, the review holds its conclusion there — however strong the other two are. The readings above the line simply cannot be reached.

    1. Independent, and tested — out of reach
    2. Broadly independent of you — out of reach
    3. A workable base with specific gaps — out of reach
    4. Held here — one of them came back weakReal constraints to work onWhere this lands

The part that will annoy people

Confident numbers we will not repeat.

These circulate constantly. We went looking for their sources.

  • “Your business should run six weeks without you.” There is no study behind this. Not at six weeks, not at any other figure.

  • “X% of owners can’t take a two-week holiday.” The two most-quoted surveys disagree by a factor of three, and neither publishes who it asked.

  • “Owner dependence costs you 20–50% of value.” Every source we could trace sells a service. None publishes a dataset.

  • “Businesses that run without the owner sell for more.” Plausible, and unmeasured. No study connects the two to a realised sale price.

  • And our own: no level in this review means your business would survive without you. There is no criterion behind a claim like that, so we do not make it — in words or by implication.

Now see what it actually produces.

A complete review for a worked example — written from a complete set of answers, not from a template.

Read the example reviewBegin your own