What we do · 03
The company works because you are in it, and you would like that to stop being true. This is the least glamorous work we do and the single largest lever on what your business is worth.
The audit
Owners tend to assume the problem is that they work too many hours. Usually the problem is narrower and more fixable than that: a handful of specific decisions and relationships that only route through one person.
Your calendar
Two weeks of it, honestly. Every recurring item where you are the only person who can do the thing is a line on the discount a buyer will apply.
Decision rights
What gets spent, priced, discounted, hired, or fired without you. Written thresholds, not an understanding.
Seats, not people
Define the seat and its numbers first, then hire into it. Most shops grow the opposite way and end up with roles shaped around whoever happened to be available.
Depth on every seat
One person per critical function is a single point of failure. Cross-training is cheap insurance and it reads well in diligence.
Documented process
The manuals for dispatch, CSR, install, and service. Written, then tested on someone new, because an SOP nobody has followed is fiction.
Licences and relationships
Licences, bonds, insurance, key vendor and warranty terms, and the top customer relationships. If they live in your name or your head, they do not transfer.
The test
It is a crude test and it is the one buyers effectively run on paper. The point is not the holiday. The point is that a company which passes it has documented process, real depth, and numbers somebody else can read, which happens to be the same list as everything else on this site.
Passing it is also what makes keeping the business a genuine option. Owners who never sell get the same prize: a company they choose to work in rather than one they are trapped inside.
In diligence
A buyer looking at a shop that depends on its founder has three moves: pay less, hold more of the price back in an earnout, or require the founder to stay for years after closing. Often all three. None of those are things you negotiate away at the table; they are conclusions drawn from what they find.
Doing this work early changes the conclusion rather than the negotiation. That is the whole idea.
Tell us the shop: trades, trucks, markets, and whether you are scaling, selling, or undecided. If we are not the right fit, you will hear it on the first call.
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