The firm has to outlive the partners. The numbers have to prove it can.
A succession, a merger, a partner exit: every one of them prices the firm on the same question. Can anyone believe the earnings without the partners in the room? In 14 days, we show you your firm the way a buyer or an incoming partner will, in dollars, guaranteed: at least 3x the fee in owner-accepted value identified, or you pay nothing.
30 minutes with Russ. No pitch. You leave knowing what a buyer would question first.
The buyout math starts long before the buyout.
Whether it’s a competitor, a consolidator, or your own next generation writing the check, the price lands on earnings somebody can verify and a book that doesn’t walk out the door with a name. Most owners aren’t waiting for the right moment. They’re waiting for numbers they’d be willing to show.
Realization leakage, unbilled WIP, client and partner profitability, a three-week close: none of it is negligence. Growth covered it, and the people producing the numbers were never paid to look. But whoever prices the firm will look, and whatever they can’t believe comes off the number.
Your books tell you what happened. They can’t tell you what to do next.
The decisions weren’t wrong. You made them on the only numbers you had, and those numbers were never built to decide from. Everyone who touches your books is paid to serve something else: the filing, the close, the report. Nobody is paid to prove which clients, matters, and partners actually carry the firm, and that is the job we do.
Three traps that hide behind clean monthly reports.
The Six Trap Diagnostic™ reads your numbers through the decisions that produced them. Three of the six do the most damage in a firm, and every one of them shows up when someone prices the practice.
Polished monthly reports can feel like proof when they are really theater. The story behind realization, utilization, and WIP quietly stopped being true, and nobody is paid to notice.
A billing and close cadence nobody has revisited traps cash for weeks at a time. If the close takes three weeks, every decision that month is made on stale numbers.
The anchor client you are most afraid to reprice or lose is often the one capping your margin, and the one most tied to a single partner. The math never gets run because the answer feels dangerous.
A $30M firm that ran on data, and still wasn’t getting the truth from it.
A clean close is not a fast one, and neither tells you where the cash is stuck.
Cash was trapped in a billing and close cadence nobody had revisited, and clean-looking reports masked the leak. We rebuilt the rhythm, pulled the working capital forward, and put margin on a weekly line of sight.
Anonymized by segment and revenue band until attribution is confirmed.
Two doors. Same engine. Same guarantee.
Both start with 14 days and end with owner-accepted value in dollars: at least 3x the fee identified, or you pay nothing. Typical results run 5x to 10x.
The Sellable-Numbers Scan
A succession, a merger, an approach from a consolidator? The Scan shows you your firm the way whoever writes the check will, in dollars, in 14 days: what their diligence would knock off the number, where the value expansion lives, and the first three moves. From $10,000, fixed.
The Scan, in full →The Decision Diagnostic
Same engine, without the buyer's lens: which clients, matters, and partners actually make money, where the recoverable value sits, and what to do first. The same numbers are costing the firm every month, succession or no succession.
The Diagnostic, in full →Pricing is banded by revenue and fixed before we begin: see the bands. The mechanics are public: read the guarantee. One next step either way: a 30-minute fit call.
Decide from the numbers. Prove it in the cash.
One 30-minute fit call. If it fits, the 14 days start. If your CPA or a fellow managing partner sent you this page, this is the work they meant.