Straight answers

The questions I get asked.

Isn't this just exit planning?

It's the front half of it, and it's the half that decides how the back half goes. If you want to sell, the work is a business a buyer can finance and a lender will underwrite. If you want to stay, the work is a business that doesn't need you in it. Those are the same build. I do the build.

When you're ready to actually sell, you'll want a broker or an M&A firm, and I'll help you pick one and read what they put in front of you. I just won't be taking a cut of it.

I want out in about two years. Am I too late for this?

No, that's good timing. Two years is enough to fix the things that kill deals in diligence and not enough to fix them after you've already listed. Come in on the Groundwork, we'll build the list in order of what a buyer will actually price, and you'll go to market with a clean file instead of a story.

If you told me six months, I'd say something different, and I'd say it on the first call.

Do you only work in Midland?

I'm based in Midland and that's where I know people, but the work is statewide and always has been. Inside about two hundred miles I'll drive out. Past that it's done remotely, which for this kind of analysis makes almost no difference — I'm working on your numbers and your process, and both travel fine.

Do you have to come walk my shop?

Not usually. The job walk is a video walkthrough with you and whoever runs your crews, plus photographs and documents. I've found people show me more that way than when a stranger with a clipboard is standing in the bay. If you'd rather have me there and you're outside the drive radius, that's an add-on and I'll quote it plainly.

How is this different from my CPA?

Your CPA tells you what happened. I tell you what it should have been and what it's costing you that it wasn't. Different job, different question, and you need both. If your books are a mess, my first finding will be to go fix that with them.

I'm too busy to take on a project like this.

That's the diagnosis, not the objection. If you're too busy to spend two hours a month on why you're too busy, we've found the problem. The monthly work is built around a founder who's already running something — I designed it that way because I am one.

Why should I pay for the Groundwork before the monthly work?

Because I won't guess. I've watched consultants start monthly retainers on a hunch and spend six months discovering things a proper read would have found in three weeks. The Groundwork is where the actual analysis happens. The monthly work is where we fix what it found.

What if you find out my business isn't worth much?

Then you'll hear it now, from me, in private — instead of in eighteen months from a buyer's advisor in front of your family. And you'll get the list. Almost everything that holds a small business's value down is fixable before you list. Almost none of it is fixable after.

Can't I get this free from the SBDC?

Some of it. The UTPB Small Business Development Center is in Midland, it's free, and it's good at what it does. It doesn't do owner-independence or transition work, and it isn't going to spend three weeks inside your numbers. Use both. If money's tight, start there — I'll say so on the call.

Somebody offered me a free opinion of value. Why would I pay $3,500?

Because a free opinion of value is a lead magnet for a listing agreement, and the number it produces is worth what you paid. What I sell is the analysis underneath the number — what's holding it down and what to do about it. Take the free one too. It costs nothing and it'll show you what I mean.

How many hours do I get?

That's the wrong unit and I won't sell it that way. What you get is progress on the three problems worth money, measured the same way every month, with before-and-after numbers. If I solve something in an hour that I expected to take twenty, you shouldn't get less for it.

What happens if something happens to you?

Your agreement names a person who steps in. There's a written procedure and money set aside for it. Your files come back to you within a set number of days, no matter what. That holds if we've fallen out. It holds if you owe me money.