Insights
Financial Preparation
When Cleaning Up Your Books Starts Working Against You
Positioning the recent year is legitimate and expected. But three common moves cross from positioning into something a competent buyer simply unwinds. Read the article
Deal Structure
The Highest Offer Is Not Always the Best Offer, and the Structure Is Why
A higher purchase price built on restricted financing can leave a seller worse off over the next five to ten years than a lower one that is cleanly funded. Read the article
Seven Keys Series · Part 7 of 7
You Are Not Buying a Business, You Are Being Handed Its Relationships
The close is not the finish line. It is the moment the buyer inherits a web of relationships the seller spent decades building, and that web does not transfer on the closing date unless someone hands it over on purpose. Read the article
Seven Keys Series · Part 6 of 7
Run Diligence Like a Buyer, Not a Prosecutor
Diligence asks a buyer to go looking for problems while the seller watches. Materiality, decided before you start, is what keeps thoroughness from turning into the thing that loses the deal. Read the article
Seven Keys Series · Part 5 of 7
The LOI Is the Starting Line, Not the Finish Line
Most buyers get the letter of intent wrong in the same two ways, and neither is about the price. They put too much in it, and they think signing it means the hard part is over. Read the article
Seven Keys Series · Part 4 of 7
Four Years of Financials, Two Opposite Pressures
A target’s four years of financials may not be four years of the same thing. The older returns were built to hold taxes down, the recent ones to hold a valuation up. Read the article
Seven Keys Series · Part 3 of 7
Before You Look at a Single Business, Know How You Are Paying for It
How a buyer is funded sorts them into a type, and the type decides the search. Some buyers do not know which type they are. Read the article
Seven Keys Series · Part 2 of 7
The Buy Box Is a Hypothesis, Not a Wish List
What a buyer can afford is a far bigger universe of businesses than what they can actually run. The entries that narrow a search are the exclusions. Read the article
Seven Keys Series · Part 1 of 7
What I Look For Before I Agree to Represent a Buyer
The funding gate everyone talks about is the easy one. The three filters that actually decide whether a search ends at a closing are the ones no spreadsheet catches. Read the article
SBA Financing
What Your Business Sells For May Just Be an Amortization Schedule
Under the SBA rules effective October 1, the price a buyer can finance is largely arithmetic. Why the decision to keep your building changes that number, and how to run it yourself. Read the article
Market Disruption
The 6th D
The five Ds have anchored exit planning for years. Here is the case for a sixth, and why it shows up in a buyer’s model while your P and L still looks perfectly healthy. Read the articleNo insights match your filters yet. Try another audience or clear the search.
