How To Sell Your $1M–$20M Business

By Dean Wiltse

There is a specific milestone in the life of a business owner that no one warns you about.

It happens after you survive the startup phase. It happens after you break your first million in revenue. It happens after you have built a management team, survived a few economic downturns, and established yourself as a leader in your region.

You wake up one day and realize you have built something substantial. You aren’t running a “small business” anymore; you are running a sophisticated, multi-million dollar operation. You have $15 million in revenue. You have $3 million in EBITDA. You have 50 employees and complex contracts.

But when you decide it might be time to sell, you discover a frightening reality: You are in “No Man’s Land.”

You have grown too big for the local business brokers who sell coffee shops and dry cleaners. They don’t understand your sophisticated financials, and their buyer pool consists of individuals who can’t afford you.

At the same time, you are often considered “too small” for the massive Wall Street investment banks. They are hunting for billion-dollar mergers and simply don’t have the time or incentive to manage a $15 million transaction.

This is the Underserved Middle.

It is the gap between Main Street and Wall Street. And unfortunately, it is where thousands of the best businesses in America get stuck. Owners in this segment often end up selling for pennies on the dollar—or not selling at all—because the advisory infrastructure simply wasn’t built for them.

At [CurtisWiltse](https://curtiswiltse.com/), we built our entire firm to fill this specific gap. We believe that owners of $1M to $20M businesses deserve the same institutional-grade process, competitive tension, and strategic valuation that the Fortune 500 gets.

Here is why this “Goldilocks” segment is so difficult to navigate, and how a specialized approach can unlock millions in hidden value.

The Mismatch

The first mistake many owners in the Underserved Middle make is hiring a Main Street business broker.

This is understandable. You search for “business broker near me,” and you find a local office that has been around for 20 years. They are nice people. They have sold hundreds of businesses.

But when you look closer, you see what they sell: Pizza franchises. Nail salons. Single-truck landscaping routes. These are businesses typically worth $200,000 to $800,000.

Selling a $15 million manufacturing plant or a $10 million roofing company is not just a bigger version of selling a pizza shop. It is a fundamentally different transaction.

The “Listing” Mentality vs. The “Process” Mentality

Main Street brokers operate on a listing model, similar to real estate. They put your business on a public website (like BizBuySell), stick a price tag on it, and wait for the phone to ring.

For a coffee shop, this works. The buyer is likely a local individual looking to buy a job.

For a mid-sized company, this is disastrous.

● Confidentiality Risk: Public listings are easily discovered by your employees, competitors, and customers. If your key staff finds out you are selling via a website listing, they may leave, destroying your value overnight.

● The Wrong Buyers: Sophisticated buyers—Private Equity groups and Strategic Acquirers—do not spend their days scrolling through public listing sites. They expect to be approached professionally with a confidential, data-backed presentation.

The Valuation Ceiling

Main Street brokers are used to dealing with Seller Discretionary Earnings (SDE) and multiples of 2x or 3x. They often undervalue mid-market businesses because they don’t understand how to model pro forma earnings or how to argue for the strategic premiums that institutional buyers pay.

If you have a business worth $10 million, but your broker treats it like a business worth $1 million, you are leaving generational wealth on the table.

The Wall Street Rejection

Realizing that a local broker is out of their depth, some owners swing to the other extreme. They call a major investment bank—the kind with offices in New York skyscrapers.

The conversation is usually short.

“We love your business,” the banker says. “But our minimum deal size is $100 million. Call us when you get bigger.”

Investment banks operate on a fee structure that makes smaller deals irrelevant to them. They have massive overheads and require massive fees to keep the lights on. A $15 million transaction simply doesn’t move the needle for them.

Or, worse, they do take you on, but they assign your file to their junior team. You end up paying premier fees but getting serviced by a 24-year-old analyst fresh out of college who has never run a business, let alone negotiated a complex exit.

This leaves the owner of the $1M–$20M business stranded. You are an orphan in the M&A marketplace—too complex for the generalists, but “small potatoes” to the giants.

The Danger of Going It Alone

Faced with these two bad options, many capable owners decide to DIY it.

“I built this business,” they think. “I negotiate contracts every day. I’ll just sell it myself.”

This is the most dangerous path of all.

When you negotiate directly with a buyer—especially a sophisticated Private Equity firm or a larger competitor—you are bringing a knife to a gunfight. These buyers have entire teams dedicated to M&A. Their job is to buy your business for the lowest possible price and the most favorable terms.

Without an intermediary, you fall into classic traps:

● The Single Buyer Trap: You negotiate with only one party. They know they have no competition, so they grind your price down during due diligence.

● The Emotional Trap: It is impossible to be objective about your own baby. When a buyer critiques your business to lower the price, you get offended. A deal that should have closed falls apart because emotions took over.

● The Distraction Trap: Selling a business is a full-time job. If you are trying to manage the sale, who is managing the company? We often see revenue dip during a self-managed sale, which gives the buyer an excuse to lower the price even further.

The CurtisWiltse (The Goldilocks Fit)

We saw this gap. We felt the frustration of these owners. And we built CurtisWiltse to solve it.

Our firm is designed specifically for the Underserved Middle. We focus exclusively on businesses with valuations between $1 million and $20 million.

We are not Main Street brokers who list and pray. We are not Wall Street bankers who ignore you. We are the specialized solution for this specific Goldilocks segment.

Here is how we bring institutional-grade processes to the mid-market.

1. The “CEO + PhD” Expertise

This segment requires a unique blend of skills. It requires the operational empathy to understand a founder-led business and the financial rigor to go toe-to-toe with a private equity analyst.

That is the core of our partnership.

● Dean Wiltse (The CEO): As a former NASDAQ CEO who has bought and integrated companies, Dean speaks the language of the strategic buyer. He knows how to position your operational strengths—your team, your processes, your market share—to justify a premium.

● Remington Curtis (The PhD): As a PhD in Accounting and valuation expert, Remington ensures your numbers are bulletproof. He builds the financial models that stand up to scrutiny, ensuring that when we claim a $5 million valuation, we have the data to defend it.

You don’t get a junior analyst. You get the partners.

2. The Controlled Auction (Creating Leverage)

The only way to get maximum value for a mid-market business is to create competitive tension.

A single buyer will offer you a fair price. Three buyers competing for the deal will offer you a premium price.

We run a Controlled Auction Process. Instead of listing your business on a website, we build a confidential list of 50-100 qualified buyers. These include:

● Private Equity Groups: Firms specifically looking for “add-on” acquisitions in your industry.

● Strategic Buyers: Competitors or related companies looking to expand.

● Family Offices: Wealthy families looking for long-term holds.

We reach out to them confidentially. We make them sign NDAs. We present them with a professional Confidential Information Memorandum (CIM). And then, we ask them to submit bids by a specific deadline.

When a buyer knows they are competing, their behavior changes. They move faster. They offer more cash. They drop strict contingencies. We bring the power of Wall Street leverage to your deal.

3. The Add-On Arbitrage Strategy

This is the secret weapon of the $1M–$20M market.

Most businesses in this size range are bought as add-ons or bolt-ons to larger platforms.

● The Math: A large Private Equity platform might trade at 10x EBITDA. Your smaller business might trade at 4x EBITDA on its own.

● The Opportunity: If the platform buys you, they instantly arbitrage that difference. Your $1 million in profit becomes worth $10 million in their hands.

Because we understand this math, we can push buyers to share that value with you. We position your business not just as a standalone entity, but as a strategic piece of a larger puzzle, justifying a higher multiple than a Main Street broker could ever achieve.

Why This is the Most Valuable Segment Right Now

If you are stuck in No Man’s Land, take heart. You are actually sitting in the sweetest spot of the current M&A market.

The Underserved Middle is where the action is in 2026.

1. Private Equity Has Moved Downstream Ten years ago, big PE firms only hunted elephants (companies worth $100M+). Today, there is too much competition at the top. To find returns, they have moved downstream. They are aggressively hunting for stable, profitable businesses in the $2M–$20M range to build their platforms. They _need_your inventory.

2. The Baby Boomer Tsunami As millions of Baby Boomers retire, there is a massive transfer of wealth occurring. But many of these businesses are messy. Buyers are desperate for quality assets in this size range. If you have a clean, profitable $10M business, you are a unicorn in a sea of mediocrity.

3. The Strategic Imperative Large corporations are finding it harder to grow organically due to labor shortages and supply chain issues. It is faster and cheaper for them to buy you—your crews, your trucks, your customer list—than to build it themselves.

The Final Word: You Deserve a Specialist

You didn’t build a Main Street business. You didn’t build a hobby. You built a sophisticated, valuable asset that supports families and serves your community.

You should not have to settle for a For Sale sign in the window. And you shouldn’t have to beg for attention from a skyscraper in Manhattan.

You deserve an advisor who lives in your world. An advisor who understands that a $15 million deal is a life-changing event for you and your family, and treats it with the respect and rigor it demands.

At Curtis & Wiltse, we are proud to champion the Underserved Middle. We know this terrain better than anyone else because it is the only place we operate.

If you are tired of feeling stuck in the gap—unsure of who to trust or what your business is truly worth—let’s have a conversation. Let us show you what an institutional-grade process looks like for a business exactly like yours.

You’ve done the hard work of building it. Now let us do the hard work of valuing it.

We Represent Businesses Across The United States