Every decision comes back to you.
Every problem needs you. Every client wants you.
You are not running a business. You are the business.
And until that changes, you cannot sell it, step back from it, or stop worrying about it.
The Owner Dependency Report tells you exactly where you are trapped -- and what it will cost you if nothing changes.
Free score in minutes. Unlock your full human-reviewed report for £97 afterward — only if you want - full refund within 7 days if it's not right
This is not about succession planning.
Succession planning is for people who have already solved this problem.
This is for owners who:
- cannot take a proper holiday without checking their phone
- have good people but still make most of the decisions
- know the business would struggle without them but have never quantified how much
- are thinking about selling in the next few years and do not know what a buyer would actually see
- are tired in a way that is hard to explain to anyone who has not built something themselves
If you sold your business tomorrow, owner dependency would likely be the first thing a buyer's adviser flagged. It is the most common reason businesses sell for less than expected, require the owner to stay on after sale, or do not sell at all.
Most owners find this out too late.
Preview: Sample Owner Dependency Report
What the full report contains
Your Owner Dependency Index Score
A single number from 0 to 100. Five bands from Owner-Trapped to Owner-Independent. No ambiguity about where you stand.
Nine Dimension Scores
Absence Risk. Decision Dependency. Customer and Revenue Dependency. Sales Dependency. Operational Dependency. Management Maturity. Financial Visibility. Successor Readiness. Key Employee Dependency.
Your Three Critical Risks
The three areas most likely to keep you trapped or reduce your business value. Drawn from your answers, not generic templates.
Confidence Flags
Where your answers were vague or optimistic, the report says so. Because a buyer will.
Your 90-Day Priority Plan
Three phases. Specific actions. Sequenced to make the most impact first.
The Buyer's View
What an acquirer would see in the first hour of due diligence. Written plainly. This is the section most owners find uncomfortable. That is the point.
Your full report is built on a proprietary scoring methodology we developed: nine weighted dimensions, covering everything from absence risk to successor readiness, each scored against a defined rubric rather than a general impression.
You answer through a structured conversation, not a form. Where an answer is vague or unverified, the assessment asks a follow-up before scoring it; the same way a careful advisor would press for specifics rather than taking your first answer at face value. We use AI to conduct that conversation and apply the methodology consistently, every time, without an hourly rate attached.
The result is a scored report specific to your business: where you stand, what a buyer would actually see, and what to fix first.
No consultant assigned. No follow-up call. No upsell pressure. The report is what you're buying; a full scored assessment across nine dimensions, your three highest-risk areas individually analysed, a buyer's-eye view of your business, and a 90-day plan with named actions and success metrics.
Who is this for?
This is for you if:
You own a profitable owner-led business (with employees). You are thinking about stepping back or selling in the next 12–36 months, and you suspect too much still depends on you.
This is not for you if:
You want a valuation, a broker, tax advice, legal advice, or a generic business plan.
You are a solo operator, freelancer or one-(wo)man-band.
How it works
The Owner Dependency Report is designed to give you a clear answer quickly — without a consultant call, sales process, or long advisory engagement.
- 1Complete your free assessment. It will take around fifteen minutes. In a messenger chat you answer a structured set of questions about how your business actually operates: decisions, staff, clients, sales, processes, finance, management depth, and successor readiness. This is not a generic checklist. The questions are designed to identify where the business still depends on your personal involvement, judgement, relationships, memory, or daily presence. The core questions are augmented by clarifying questions depending on your responses. This helps us dig deeper to ensure your report is especially relevant.
- 2Immediately after completing the assessment you'll receive your score in minutes. This is completely free. If you want to go deeper and get your human-reviewed full report, only then do you pay the one-time fee. Allow up to 24 hours for your detailed personal report to be emailed directly to you.
- 3Your answers are human-reviewed and converted into a practical Owner Dependency Report, including your overall dependency score, risk level, nine-dimension breakdown, key exposure points, and areas requiring attention.The report shows not just whether your business is owner-dependent, but where that dependency is most likely to affect transferability, valuation, succession, or operational resilience.
- 4Use the 90-day action plan
You receive a focused improvement plan showing what to fix first. The goal is not to overwhelm you with theory. It is to help you understand the specific changes that would make the business less dependent on you and more capable of operating, scaling, or transferring without constant founder involvement. No broker referral.
After your free assessment and score, you decide if you would like to get your full, detailed report for £97. No obligation at all.
Your business. Human-reviewed within 24 hours
Private and confidential. Your answers are not shared with brokers or advisors.
Your full report is still backed by a 100% Money Back Guarantee for 7 Days
You have nothing to lose
Free score in minutes. Unlock your full human-reviewed report for £97 afterward — full refund within 7 days if it's not right
You will not know until you take the assessment.
But here is what the score means.
81-100 -- Owner-Independent The business runs without you. Transferable, resilient, and sellable at full value. Most owners never reach this band without deliberate work.
66-80 -- Succession-Ready With Fixes Strong foundations. Specific gaps that need addressing before a sale or step-back becomes clean.
46-65 -- Partially Transferable Some structure exists. But significant dependency remains across key functions.
26-45 -- Highly Owner-Dependent The business relies on you across decisions, relationships and delivery. Exit is possible but costly.
0-25 -- Owner-Trapped The business cannot function without you in any meaningful sense. This is not a judgment. It is a starting point.
Why I Built This
Kieran Galvin
MBA, CMgr, FCIM, FMCI, FRSA
Founder of OwnerDependent
International business builder, franchisor and licensing operator
A large number of owner-led businesses are now reaching the same uncomfortable point.
The owner is ready to step back, reduce day-to-day involvement, bring in management, prepare for investment, or think seriously about an eventual sale. But the business has never truly been tested without them.
That creates a hidden risk.
From the outside, the business may look established, profitable and valuable. Inside, it may still depend heavily on the owner’s judgement, relationships, approvals, memory, problem-solving, habits and daily presence.
I know this problem because I am not looking at it academically.
I’m Kieran Galvin, founder of OwnerDependent. I have spent more than two decades building and operating businesses across multiple countries. I have built brands, teams, systems, franchise models, licensing structures and cross-border operations. Like many owners at this stage, I am now asking the harder exit question: not simply what the business is worth, but how transferable it really is.
That process forces a blunt question most owners avoid until too late:
If I stepped back tomorrow, what would actually happen?
Not what the org chart suggests.
Not what the team says in meetings.
Not what I would like to believe.
What would actually happen.
When I looked for a practical way to answer that question, I found two poor options.
The first was to pay thousands to an advisor or broker, usually once the owner has already decided to sell. That is the wrong time to discover the business still depends too heavily on its owner.
The second was a generic checklist asking whether the business has “clear processes” or “defined roles”, which tells most serious owners little more than they already suspect.
So I built the assessment I wanted to exist.
A structured owner-dependency diagnostic, scored across nine dimensions, designed for owners who are not necessarily ready to sell, but are ready to understand how exposed their business really is.
It takes around fifteen minutes. It costs less than a conventional advisory call. And it gives you a practical, scored report rather than a vague conversation, a broker pitch, or another checklist pretending to be strategy.
If you suspect your business depends on you more than it should, this assessment was built for exactly that moment — by someone asking the same question from the inside.
Straight answers to the obvious questions.
Yes. Your answers generate your report and nothing else. They are not passed to brokers, shared with advisors, or stored for marketing purposes.
No. A broker finds buyers. This tells you what a broker would find before you engage one. Most founders who use this report are 12 to 36 months away from a sale conversation. That is exactly the right time - before you engage a broker.
Profitability and transferability are not the same thing. A profitable business that depends on its founder to remain profitable is a risk, not an asset, in a buyer's eyes. The discount applied to founder-dependent businesses is real and significant.
Because there is no consulting firm behind it. No consultant is assigned to your account. Nobody will call you. The report arrives and that is the product. If you want further support after reading it, that option exists. It is never pushed. There is enough information in your report (12 to 15 pages) that you should not need a consultancy firm.
The owners who plan ahead choose their exit.
The ones who don't have it chosen for them.
Health. Burnout. A key person leaving. A buyer who walks away.
The window to fix owner dependency is not unlimited.
The report takes 15 minutes. The problems it identifies can take months to fix.
15 minutes. See your score instantly. No payment required.
The Owner Dependency Index, the Owner Dependency Report are © 2026 Double Five Ltd.