Entrepreneurship 101: Push harder. Know when to quit. Stay the course. Pivot when necessary.

It’s all contradictory. The maddening part is that it's all true, depending on context. The really tough part is figuring out which applies to your situation, right now.

Here's a reframe that's helped me: what if some of your projects are meant to be sold? 

Not scaled. Not optimized. Not “pushed through.” Sold. Early, on purpose, to someone who wants what you've built.

These are known as ‘micro-exits.’ Small sales of small assets. A side project you built to scratch an itch. A tool you made for a specific niche. A digital product generating modest revenue that you’ve lost your spark for.

These are fuel. Sell them, pocket the cash, and redirect your attention toward the work you want to stay with.

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Stuart Faught has sold 18 businesses.

Not billion-dollar exits. Small ones. Vertical SaaS products for dentists, orthodontists, HVAC companies, med spas, home care agencies. He builds each one to around $50k in annual recurring revenue, preps it for sale, closes the deal, and moves on.

This is his career, by design.

It started in 2009. He was working at a dental software company in Southern California, and he hated it. Not the industry, just the grind. The meetings about meetings. The slow suffocation of corporate process.

So he started a side business: SEO services for dental practices. He already knew the customers, so he started there. But while working with those clinics, he noticed something. The real pain wasn't Google rankings. It was reviews. Collecting them, managing them, responding to them.

He built a simple reputation tool. Sold it to those same dentists. Then sold the whole business.

That first exit taught him the pattern. Small software for one vertical is easier to grow and easier to sell than generic tools competing with everyone. He leaned into it.

Over the next fifteen years: orthodontics, HVAC, med spas, home care. Eighteen acquisitions. Same playbook each time.

The speed is the surprising part. Faught closes most deals in 30 to 45 days. One business doing roughly $100k ARR sold for around $500k in just over a month.

He isn’t some negotiation or timing wizard. He’s just… well-prepared.

Before listing anything on Acquire.com, he organizes everything a buyer would need: metrics, SOPs, logins, support flows, key relationships. He records video walkthroughs so a buyer can understand the business in an hour, flat. Clean documentation means short diligence, which means fast closes.

Today, he's building Covington.ai, referral intelligence for dental specialists. Same method, same vertical focus. He's talking to customers, shipping iteratively, and not rushing toward scale.

For Faught, micro-exits aren't a fallback when things stall. They're a career design choice. A way to stay in the early stage forever, solving new problems, then handing them off before the work turns into maintenance.

Faught's career works because he knows what stage of business energizes him. 

Every decision flows from that clarity.

You need the same clarity about your own portfolio.

Most entrepreneurs accumulate. Projects, commitments, client relationships, half-built ideas. Some of it still serves you. Some of it is just… there, taking up space and mental bandwidth because you never decided what to do with it.

Here's a simple audit to fix that.

Open a fresh document. Write down every project, product, recurring commitment, and responsibility you're currently holding. Client work, side projects, that newsletter you started in 2022, the productized service you keep meaning to revisit.

Get it all out. The goal is a complete inventory, even the stuff you'd rather not think about.

For everything on your list, ask:

Be real with yourself. “It used to energize me” counts as draining. “It's stable but I'm bored” counts as stagnating.

Based on your answers, place each item into one of these categories:

Double down. These energize you and are growing. They deserve more of your time and attention. Protect them.

Develop for transfer. These could be handed off, but they're not ready yet. They need documentation, cleaner systems, or a few tweaks before someone else could run them. Worth the investment to get them there.

Delegate or sell. These are ready to go. The systems exist, the revenue is stable, and you're not the bottleneck. Find a buyer, hire a contractor, or hand it to a partner.

Kill. These drain you, aren't growing, and aren't worth the effort to make transferable. Shut them down. Archive them. Let yourself move on.

Some things won't sort cleanly. If a project is draining you but still growing, that's prime “develop for transfer” material. It has value; you're just not the right person to keep running it. Get it ready to hand off while the momentum is still there.

If something energizes you but has stagnated, be honest about why. Does it need a strategic reset? Or is it a passion project you're keeping alive out of love, not logic? There's no shame in the latter. But it pays to know the difference.

This bucket is where most of the work lives.

For each item here, identify the gaps. What would a new owner or operator need to understand? What's still stuck in your head?

Start with:

You don't need to finish this in a week. Faught treats documentation as part of building, not a one-time project. Spend 30 minutes a week on each “develop for transfer” item. In a few months, they'll be ready.

Put a recurring reminder on your calendar: portfolio audit, once per quarter. Your answers will change. Projects that energized you six months ago might start draining you. Things in “develop for transfer” will graduate to “delegate or sell.”

The goal is to keep your portfolio intentional. Prune what's weighing you down. Double down on what's working. And always know what you're carrying.

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