Succession · Diaz Industries
Is your business ready to be sold? Seven in ten are not.
You spent a working life building it. Most owners who take a business to market never find a buyer, and it is almost never because the business was bad. It is because nobody could examine it.
Answer eleven questionsThe business is fine. The file is not.
01 · The problem
Between seventy and eighty percent of privately held businesses listed for sale never complete a transaction. Below half a million dollars of earnings, closer to one in seven closes. A buyer cannot underwrite what is not written down, so the deal dies quietly in diligence and the owner concludes the business was worth less than they thought.
The causes are not mysterious and they are not about your industry. Unrealistic pricing accounts for roughly a third of failures. Financial records a buyer cannot verify account for another quarter. A business that stops when the owner leaves accounts for a fifth. Each of those is a document problem wearing the costume of a value problem, and each one is fixable in weeks.
Fix them before you go to market and you are selling a company. Leave them and you are asking a stranger to take your word for it.
Six documents. One file. Sixty days.
02 · The work
Financial normalization
Three years restated into the form a buyer expects. Owner benefits, one-time items and personal expenses identified, separated and evidenced line by line. This is the single largest cause of collapsed transactions and the first thing we touch.
Documented operations
The work of the business written down as procedures a competent stranger can follow. Suppliers, pricing logic, scheduling, quality control, and the specific things you do that nobody has ever recorded because you have never needed to.
Owner-dependency remediation
A written map of every decision that currently requires you, and the plan that moves each one to a person, a document or a system. Buyers apply a discount to businesses that stop when the owner leaves. This is how you close it.
Transfer schedule
Every asset, licence, permit, lease, contract, warranty and registration that must move, listed with its transfer condition and its consent requirement. In British Columbia this includes any real property interest, which we handle ourselves.
Information memorandum
The document a serious buyer reads first. Business, market, financial summary, customer profile, operations and the risks stated plainly by us rather than discovered later by their accountant, which is the difference between a negotiation and a retrade.
Buyer data room
Indexed, access-controlled and populated before the first enquiry rather than assembled in a panic after it, with prepared answers to the forty questions every buyer asks.
What we can do for you depends on where you are.
03 · Jurisdiction
We say this plainly rather than in a footnote. Real estate is a licensed activity and licences do not cross borders. Preparation travels anywhere. Selling does not.
One firm, from unsellable to sold.
British Columbia is the only place where we can take the whole thing end to end. We prepare the file, we value the business, we list it, we market it, we bring the buyers, and where the transaction carries land or a building we act on that too. You are not handing your business between four firms who each know one quarter of it.
- YesPreparation of the complete transfer file, all six documents
- YesBusiness listing, marketing and buyer search across the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley
- YesCommercial real estate: the building, the land, or the lease assignment, under licence
- YesNegotiation support and diligence management through to completion
- YesOngoing operating management if you want the business improved before it is sold
Commercial real estate and business brokerage services in British Columbia are provided by Juan Manuel Diaz Personal Real Estate Corporation, licensed through RE/MAX Truepeak Realty. Preparation work is contracted separately through Diaz Industries. Not intended to solicit properties already under contract or clients already under agency agreement.
Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley. Industrial, investment and business brokerage under licence.
We prepare it. Your broker sells it.
In the United States we do the preparation and nothing that requires a licence we do not hold. That is not a limitation on the useful part. The file is what decides whether your sale closes, and the file is entirely ours to build. When it is ready we hand it to the broker or investment bank of your choice, and a broker receiving a business already documented to this standard will tell you what that is worth to them.
- YesPreparation of the complete transfer file, all six documents
- YesFinancial normalization and add-back evidence your buyer's accountant will accept
- YesInformation memorandum, data room and buyer question pack
- YesDiligence support alongside your chosen broker, attorney and CPA
- NoWe do not offer real estate trading services in the United States and will not act on the property. Your local licensed broker does that, and we will work to their timetable.
Nothing on this page is legal, tax or accounting advice. United States engagements are preparation and documentation services only. Where a transaction requires a licensed real estate broker, business broker or securities intermediary, that person is engaged by you directly.
Preparation work travels. We deliver the file to your broker, wherever you are.
Preparation anywhere. Property where we are licensed.
Across the rest of Canada the preparation service is identical to British Columbia and the listing is handled by a local brokerage you choose or we introduce. In Mexico we are not visitors. Diaz Industries operates there, is licensed for property in Baja California Sur, and its people have run manufacturing, logistics and technology supply businesses inside the country rather than reading about them.
- YesComplete transfer file preparation, in English or Spanish
- YesMexican property interests in Baja California Sur, under licence, through Costa Horizon Estates
- YesCross-border transactions where the buyer is Canadian or American and the business is Mexican
- YesIntroduction to a licensed local brokerage for the listing itself
- NoWe do not act on property outside British Columbia and Baja California Sur.
Mexican property services are provided through the Costa Horizon Estates brand, licensed in Baja California Sur. Correspondence and documents are produced in English or Spanish at your election.
Canada and Mexico. Licensed and regulated in both, and fluent in both sets of rules.
Eleven questions. No contact details.
04 · Assessment
Answer honestly and you will see exactly what your file is missing, what those items cost commissioned separately at current market rates, and what the same work costs here. Nothing is transmitted anywhere. The result is calculated in your browser and disappears when you close the tab.
Result
What is missing from your file
What it costs either way
Commissioned separately
-
Independent providers quoted individually and coordinated by you across four to six months. Ranges are published 2026 market rates for these exact items.
Diaz Industries, one engagement
-
Costs that remain payable in either column and which we name rather than bury: a certified valuation where a formal report is required, legal fees on the transaction itself, and brokerage commission if a broker is appointed. Outside British Columbia that broker is not us.
Published, fixed, and payable whether or not it sells.
05 · Fees
We do not price the preparation as a percentage of your sale, because a fee that rises with your outcome is a fee with an opinion about your outcome. Where we also act as your broker in British Columbia, that commission is separate, disclosed in writing, and payable only on completion.
Readiness Report
5 business days
$950
- Structured review against the ten conditions
- Written gap schedule, in priority order
- Indicative value range and what closes the discount
- Ninety-day plan you are free to execute yourself
Credited in full against a Transfer File commenced within ninety days.
Transfer File: Standard
60 days
$7,500
- Financial normalization, three years
- Documented core operations
- Owner-dependency map and remediation plan
- Transfer schedule of assets, licences and contracts
- Information memorandum
- Indexed buyer data room
The common engagement for owner-operated businesses under five million in revenue.
Transfer File: Complete
90 days
$14,500
- Everything in Standard
- Certified valuation coordinated and integrated
- Real property interest addressed, British Columbia
- Digital presence and customer records rebuilt
- Buyer question pack, forty prepared answers
- Two rounds of diligence support after listing
For businesses carrying property, multiple entities, or staff transferring with the sale.
The same components, commissioned separately
| Component | Independent provider, 2026 market range |
|---|---|
| Financial normalization and quality of earnings review | $5,000 to $8,000 |
| Business valuation, calculation-level report | $3,000 to $8,000 |
| Operations documentation, 60 to 100 hours at consulting rates | $6,000 to $20,000 |
| Information memorandum preparation | $3,000 to $10,000 |
| Transfer schedule and data room assembly | $1,500 to $5,000 |
| Digital presence and customer records rebuild | $3,000 to $10,000 |
| Assembled separately | $21,500 to $61,000 |
| Assembled here | $7,500 to $14,500 |
Ranges are drawn from published 2026 fee guidance and are stated openly so you can verify them before speaking to anyone, including us. Quality of earnings pricing reflects provider guidance for transactions between one and three million dollars. Valuation pricing reflects Canadian chartered business valuator guidance for owner-managed companies. Business brokerage commission is separate from every figure above and commonly runs eight to twelve percent on transactions under one million dollars, with minimum fees frequently between fifteen and fifty thousand dollars. Fees quoted in United States dollars, exclusive of applicable taxes.
A fifty-year-old manufacturer. Its best month ever, on our watch.
06 · Evidence
An established British Columbia manufacturer, half a century old, was losing revenue and key people to franchised chains undercutting it on consumer work. The diagnostic showed the problem was not the pricing. It was the customer.
We moved them off consumer vehicles toward industrial buyers: fleets, municipalities, processors, heavy equipment dealers. People who need engineered systems built to specification and who do not shop the lowest quote. That stopped the bleeding.
Then we found the ocean nobody else was in. The same shop, the same people, the same welding, was worth considerably more to the marine industry. Almost no local competition, a far higher tolerance for specification, and customers who cannot simply drive to a franchise.
Alongside it we took on the management itself: organising and motivating the team, installing reporting, and replacing the accounting firm so that ownership, management and advisors were finally reading the same numbers. That last part is also what makes a business sellable, which is the point of this page.
Client identity withheld under a binding non-disclosure agreement. Figures are drawn from the client's own reporting and available for discussion under NDA. Past results do not guarantee future performance.
07 · Standing
Most advisors have never owned the problem. We have run the businesses we write about.
Canada
Based in British Columbia. Consulting, trade and licensed commercial real estate practice across the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley, conducted through Juan Manuel Diaz Personal Real Estate Corporation at RE/MAX Truepeak Realty. Industrial, investment and business brokerage.
Mexico
Commercial Director of an established industrial packaging manufacturer. Co-owner of a logistics operation in Estado de México and a technology supply business serving national accounts. Licensed for property in Baja California Sur.
What that means here
Twenty years operating companies, much of it opposite Fortune 500 counterparties, and forty people under direct leadership today. We have sold businesses and we have been the operator inside one being sold. Both sides of that table are familiar.
Diaz Industries is not an accounting firm, a law firm or a certified valuation practice, and nothing here is legal, tax or accounting advice. Certified valuations are performed by qualified valuators, legal instruments by counsel. Where those are required we say so, coordinate them, and disclose their cost before you commit.
Thirty minutes. No charge, and no obligation.
08 · Enquire
Tell us what the business does, roughly what it earns, and when you want to be out. If preparation will not change your outcome we will say so, and there is no fee for hearing it.
Correspondence in English or Spanish. Engagements accepted across Canada, in Mexico, and in the United States for preparation work.