A lot of founders approach a transaction wanting two things that cannot both survive the close. They want the money a buyer is willing to pay, and they want to keep running the business the way they always have. A sale is, at its core, a transfer of control. The check is what the buyer pays for it. You do not get to cash it and keep the wheel.
That is not a reason to avoid selling. It is a reason to decide, early and honestly, what you actually want. If the goal is to take money off the table and stay in control, the answer may be a different structure, not a sale. If the goal is to exit, then the business has to be built to run without you, because that is exactly what the buyer is paying for and exactly what diligence will test.
The businesses that transition well are the ones where the founder stopped being the operating system before the sale, not during it. The decisions are documented. The team can run the day without the owner in every thread. The numbers are clean enough that a buyer can trust them. That work takes time, which means it starts well before the deal, not when the banker is already in the room.
Deciding what you want from a transaction is the first act of preparing for one. The clearer you are that selling means giving up control, the better the outcome tends to be, for the price and for what you walk away having built.