The engagement
Each layer only works because the one under it exists.
There is no credible quarterly valuation without clean books. There is no useful strategy conversation without a valuation baseline. And there is no fast sale without years of evidence already assembled. So the order matters more than the list does.
Where it starts
A cost review, at no charge.
We look at what you are actually paying across ten categories of ordinary business spend, assemble the real annual figures, and give you the findings. You keep them either way.
This is deliberately the least committal thing we do. It requires statements and about forty minutes of your time. It does not require you to change accountants, move your books, or sign anything ongoing.
Most of what follows only makes sense to an owner who has already seen us be right about something concrete. This is that something.
What we need
- Twelve months of processing statements
- A recent payroll summary
- Your last insurance renewal
- Telecom, energy, and waste invoices
- Most recent property tax assessment
We flag insurance costs. We do not place insurance and take no placement compensation.
The standing relationship
Five parts, running continuously.
Bookkeeping
We hold the ledger. This is priced near cost and it is not really a product, it is the enabling condition. It is the difference between a valuation computed from primary financial data and one computed from a questionnaire you filled in about yourself. It is also the only claim we make that nobody can argue with.
The quarterly statement, and the conversation it creates
Every quarter we recompute the number and sit down with you. Page one is your position: where the three lanes stand, which assumptions moved, the dated valuation and what drove the change. Page two is the next ninety days, with owners and deadlines. Page three is the map, including the readiness detail.
The score is deliberately on page three. A report card on page one turns the meeting into an argument about the grade instead of a conversation about where you are going.
Cost and vendor review, ongoing
The first review is a snapshot. Rates drift, contracts roll, and categories you declined last year become worth revisiting. So it runs continuously, with re-shop dates, and every placed vendor gets watched for rate creep.
The proof vault, kept current
A structured evidence repository across five domains: financial artifacts, tangible assets, intangible assets and moats, documentation and standard operating procedures, and your own goals and negotiation readiness.
The point of maintaining it rather than building it once is that it stays true. A business with a current vault can run a sale process in roughly ninety days at whatever moment the owner decides, instead of spending six months assembling paperwork while the buyer's interest cools.
Coordination among your advisors
Your CPA, your attorney, your insurance broker, and your vendors all working off one current set of facts instead of four partial ones. This is the layer most owners do not know they are missing until they watch it work.
Running alongside
The OS, if you would rather do it yourself.
Everything above assumes you want somebody else holding it. Some owners do not, and that is a legitimate position.
The same operating system we run is being packaged as a self-serve course. It is sold separately and it is not gated behind the advisory relationship. You can buy it and never speak to us.
And eventually
Where this ends up, when it is time.
Owners who do this work for a few years end up somewhere specific. The books are clean, the evidence is current, the number is known and defensible, and the relationships with people who might one day buy the business already exist, because we have been having those conversations quietly on your behalf.
At that point a transaction is a process rather than a scramble, and we handle it, on the buy side if you are acquiring and on the sell side when you exit.
We mention it here for completeness, not as an invitation. It is the consequence of the years of work above, and it is not something worth talking about in your first conversation with us.
Reference
Transaction work is priced separately from the advisory relationship, on flat fees rather than a percentage of value. The detail sits on the pricing page, at the bottom, where it belongs.
Start at the front
None of that matters yet.
The first step is finding out what you are paying. Everything after it is a decision you get to make later, with better information than you have now.
If you would rather know who you are dealing with first, that isin the founding letter.