Field notes on the numbers behind what your company is worth.
A sale price is a multiple times earnings. These pieces work both numbers: growing what the company earns, and making the numbers a buyer can believe. Written from inside the engagements.
Sellable numbers
The numbers a buyer can believe, built before the buyer shows up.
You can't sell a company on numbers you don't trust yourself
Buyers don't walk over messy numbers. They discount them. Here's what a buyer re-prices, and how to fix it before you go to market.
Worth more
Pricing, mix, and margin truth: grow the earnings a buyer pays a multiple on.
A sale price is a multiple times earnings. Grow both.
The years before a sale are when a company's value is made or left on the table. Here are the five levers that move both numbers in the sale-price equation.
Surviving diligence
Deals die in diligence, and it is almost never the business. It is believability.
Deals die in diligence. Believable numbers are the fix.
Most broken deals don't break on price. They break when a buyer stops trusting the numbers. Here are the five findings that re-trade a deal, and how to clear them first.
The exit clock
Timing, triggers, and the cost of waiting for numbers you would be willing to show.
The trailing-twelve clock doesn't start until the numbers are true
Owners think the sale clock starts when they decide to sell. It starts when the numbers are believable. Every month you wait moves the sale date a month.
Read it in the language of your business.
The same two numbers, told in the words of your industry: what a buyer prices, where the margin hides, and what diligence questions first.
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The one-page decision slide every board should see
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The bridge term sheet that does not crater the next round
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Trapped value in stalled portcos: where it sits and how to name it
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What a stalled portco actually is
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What the lead investor is actually asking when they ask 'what's new'
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The board packet rewrite: three sections to cut, four to add
The writing is free. The Scan pays for itself.
At least 3x the fee in owner-accepted value, in 14 days, or you pay nothing. The owners who book usually started in the field notes.