The founder was away for three weeks. Nothing broke. Nothing moved either.

Surviving the owner's holiday proves less than most businesses think it does, and the thing it fails to prove is the one buyers pay for.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for The founder was away for three weeks. Nothing broke. Nothing moved either.

The holiday test is the folk diagnostic for key-person risk. The owner goes away, and if the phone does not ring and the invoices still go out, the business is judged to have grown up. It is a reasonable test of one thing and almost no test at all of another. What a quiet three weeks demonstrates is that the execution of the business does not depend on one person. Orders were fulfilled, payroll ran, someone answered the difficult client. That is real, and it is not nothing. But the…

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