Businesses were always valued at 3-5 times annual profit. That’s how I’d do it. So if you turned over £80k, take off say £30k wages for the man to do the work, then your other overheads say £10-15k, the business is worth around £120k. Ofcourse if you’re only turning over around £40k your business is worth bugger all really. Whatever you can get for it.
Window cleaning is different tho, in most cases you are buying the monthly value of the work times whatever the buyer and seller agree, anything from x3 upwards., I sell my work at x5. To say a window cleaning round that turns over £40k is worth bugger all makes you look a bit silly really.
As a business it’s worthless. Someone could get a job paying £25k (which would be the self employed profit on £40k) for nothing. Why would anyone pay £15k for a £25k job?
To have a fairly easy, stress free way of making a living without having to answer to a jobsworth low level manager every day.
To have unlimited growth opportunities.
To be able to do the school run twice a day, and have more time with the family.
The list goes on and on.
I know plenty of people in £25k a year jobs that work stupid long hours in crappy conditions for that £25k. Chefs, barstaff, cleaners, warehouse operatives, taxi drivers, couriers the list goes on. Window cleaning is easier than every single one of them.
Don’t assume everyone wants to scale up their business to have multiple vans and thousands of customers Steve, to say a £40k round is worthless is just simply not true.