Thank you for your thoughts. The way my mind works I am either fully in or fully out. I just can't do things half way. That is probably why I have never had a vacation longer than 5 business days in 30 years. I have no desire to maintain control. I am selling because it is time to move to another chapter and I have no desire to take the business back. I am going to sell to my two senior people that have been with me for more than 20 years. They will pay me out over 5 years. I do not need the income or proceeds for retirement but very much do want them to succeed. So in addition to the sales price we will have a consulting contract. I will work 3 days per week until December and then I will stay on for a year on an as needed basis.
The "business" has been very good to me and I hope it will now be very good to them. They have earned it.
Already shopping for woodworking equipment and planning a 1 month vacation in Europe. It is still somewhat surreal to me.
I think my whole ideal of building it and then letting someone run it got implanted in me at an early age. My Dad was a workaholic (and still is) so he wasn't around much for family activities so I learned I never wanted to do that. So what is the opposite of this? Create a business and have someone run it for you once its built up so you can have an excess of the most valuable asset, TIME. I think my ideal situation might eventually be to sell a small portion to get a cash infusion but I'm not sure how realistic this is as most probably want to buy the whole company.
As far as vacations, I can't say this any louder...MAKE UP FOR LOST TIME!! Book that month vacation as soon as you can. My wife and I just did our first 6 week long vacation the end of last year and it was absolutely amazing. We live in a cold weather state so being able to get out of town and back to the warmth was great. We rented a home on VRBO and it was so much better than doing the hotel thing, at least for extended stays. It really started to feel like our own home after a week or two and we didn't miss our actual home at all. We are now planning 2016-2017 winter trip ideas.
All of this made possible because I had a Dad who was a workaholic, a business that succeeded, and a wife on the same page.