The McFarland Group has released the second issue of its Transferable Value Index, a quarterly measure of how closely held businesses hold up without their owners. The issue, titled "A Good Business That Still Runs Through You," analyzes 121 assessments submitted between May and September 2026 and opens with a letter from Founder Byron McFarland. The Index scores businesses on two dimensions: Business Durability, which covers earnings consistency, customer diversification, financial visibility, systems, workforce and resilience to disruption; and Owner Independence, which assesses whether new business, client relationships, operations, direction, financial decisions and people decisions depend on one person. Across the cohort, the two dimensions correlate at 0.57, sharing about a third of their variation. This means a business can become significantly sturdier while its owner remains just as central to its operations.
One in six businesses—19 of the 121—falls into a category the Index calls Owner-Dependent Success. These companies score close to the top bracket on durability, 20.5 against 22.0 out of 30, but trail it by eight points on independence, 14.6 against 22.8. The sharpest divide is over people decisions. Six in ten owners say their team closes most new business and holds customer relationships. Fewer than half say their managers handle hiring, pay and terminations for their own teams, and 22 percent say they are personally involved in most people decisions, down to front-line roles. No other question in the Index draws that many owners to its most hands-on answer. The answer to that question tracks closely with the rest of the score: where managers make their own teams' people decisions, businesses average 74 out of 100 on the other eleven questions, and none falls in the Owner-Run category. Where the owner stays personally involved, the average is 56 and nearly half are Owner-Run. Among the Owner-Dependent Success businesses, 68 percent of owners remain personally involved in people decisions, compared with 10 percent in the top bracket.
"Building a durable business rewards involvement: your judgment, your relationships, your standards, stamped on everything," said Byron McFarland, Founder of The McFarland Group. "Building an independent one requires the opposite: removing your judgment, your relationships, your standards from the machinery, one piece at a time, on purpose. Nobody does the second by accident. You have to mean it." The finding carries into a sale. In due diligence, a buyer asks who handles terminations, because the answer shows where responsibility sits. When the answer is still the owner, the leadership team has never made the hardest call in the building. The issue's recommendation for most owners is to start with people decisions and hand them to the managers who will own them after the ownership transition. As in the inaugural issue published in August, the question of who decides what the business does next scores lowest of the twelve on average, at 2.78 on a five-point scale.
The full issue, including McFarland's letter, a map of all 121 businesses and the complete question-by-question breakdown, is free to download without a form at https://www.themcfarlandgroup.com/blog/a-good-business-that-still-runs-through-you. The Transferable Value Index assessment is free at transferablevalueindex.com. It takes about four minutes and returns a score on both dimensions and a placement in one of four categories. The findings reflect assessments reached through The McFarland Group's network, partner coaches and industry events; test submissions were removed and repeat takers counted once. Each of the twelve questions is scored 1 to 5, with each dimension reported out of 30 and the combined Index out of 100. Owners who take the Index are already thinking about an ownership transition, and the shares should be read in that light.
The implications for business owners are significant. The Index shows that durability alone does not make a business transferable. Owners who remain central to people decisions may find their companies less attractive to buyers or less prepared for a management buyout. The McFarland Group, based in Omaha, Nebraska, has guided over $3 billion in business value through more than 200 ownership transitions over two decades, working on M&A advisory, selling a business to management, and performance equity compensation for key leaders. The firm's guiding idea is to go boldly, and its latest Index suggests that the boldest move for many owners may be to step back from the people decisions that keep the business running through them.
