KEVIN: If you are interested in selling your business, I think one of the best ways to go is to find a manager/potential manager who is looking to own their own shop. Hire them and slowly train them to take over your business with a strategic buy out plan. Slowly transfer interest in your business to them until you hit a certain point and then have a buyout in place.  If you don’t find someone who is interested/capable/financially able to buy your business through a gradual transfer, put it out to the FT community and your local community. Everyone told us we were crazy to make our potential sale public but we felt like we had done right and that it would work out. The outpouring of support from our local community in response to our appeal for a buyer was so tremendous we saved many of the emails and put them in a scrapbook. # of our potential buyers came from that email alone. We also reached out to the FT community and found someone who was looking to buy a FT shop and the rest is history.
In terms of valuation, we had our business professionally valuated by a company in CA that does small business valuations. They were very helpful in taking the time to understand our business, our hopes for it and explaining in great detail why they felt the number they came up with was a fair price. We had a particularly disappointing experience going through a business broker (ours worked as both representative for the seller and buyer and that did not seem right to us) so we brokered the deal ourselves and worked with an attorney to make sure we covered everything needed for a good purchase and sale agreement. The attorney was not cheap but we had to commission fees to a broker.