What a business is worth
is decided before it lists.
A buyer does not pay for the business you have. They pay for the one they can run without you, at margins they can verify, with earnings they can borrow against. The gap between those two is the work on this page.
This is for owners who are two or three years out and would rather fix the number than accept it.
We do this work
on our own deals.
Every engagement here started as something this firm needed. The models were built to price and defend real transactions. The platform runs at Prime Sweeping, a company we are partners in, before it runs anywhere else.
That is the whole qualification. Not a framework bought from somewhere, and not advice from someone who has never carried the payroll. Nolan built, ran and exited two companies before taking a listing.
The math, and
the machine.
Most owner-operated businesses are carrying work that loses money and cannot see which. Most are also spending hours a week on tasks that no longer need a person. Those are different problems and they get different treatment.
Find out which work is actually profitable.
Revenue is easy to see and margin is not. We build the model that pushes cost down to the level decisions get made at: the job, the route, the crew, the contract, the customer. Once the unit is right, the questions that were arguments become arithmetic.
- What each job actually costs once labor, drive time, equipment and rework are in it
- Which customers and contracts are subsidising the rest
- What a price change does to volume, capacity and take-home
- Where capacity runs out, and what it costs to add the next unit of it
Take the work off the owner.
Our operating platform for service companies, shown running at Prime Sweeping and set up around your routes, pricing and people. The unglamorous middle of the business, where an owner's week actually goes.
- Routes and dispatch that run without the owner on the phone
- Quoting built on measured time and the cost model
- Written procedures and HR forms a new hire can follow on day one
- A weekly scorecard and meeting that run from one screen
Neither half is the point on its own. The model tells you what to change; the systems make the change survive you leaving the room. An owner who does one without the other usually ends up back where they started within a year.
The same drivers
a buyer prices.
This is not general business improvement. It is aimed squarely at the handful of things that decide where in your industry's range you land, which are the same things the valuation model on the home page lets you toggle.
Move those and the multiple moves with them. On earnings of $850K, half a turn is over four hundred thousand dollars at closing, and it is the same business.
Runs without the owner day to day. The single largest driver, and the one systems move fastest.
Recurring or contracted revenue. Knowing which work is worth contracting is a modeling question before it is a sales one.
No customer over 20% of revenue. Concentration is usually invisible until the numbers are cut by customer.
Clean, reviewed financials. A cost model a lender can follow is most of the way to books a buyer can diligence.
List it like any broker,
or bring us on board.
Most brokers meet a company the day it goes to market, when the price is already set. We would rather help set it. There are three ways to work with us, and an owner can start on one and move to another.
Ready to sell inside a year.
Traditional brokerage, done properly: recast financials and an SDE valuation, a confidential offering memorandum, buyer sourcing, lender coordination, negotiation and a managed close. Nothing up front. A success fee at closing on a declining scale.
How a sale runs →One to three years out.
A fractional Chief Strategy Officer on a flat monthly retainer. Two ways in: Advisory, one session a month for the owner selling within eighteen months, or Embedded, a seat inside your leadership team every week with the company running on our platform. What you pay comes back as a credit against the closing fee if you later sell with us.
The fractional CSO seat →An operator with skin in the game.
The Embedded seat with a stake: the Chief Strategy Officer title, a seat at the board table, and a minority interest that vests over time, in exchange for a reduced retainer. By invitation, after we have worked together. We take on a handful of these a year.
The retainer levels are described by what changes for the owner, not by an hour count, and the figures are in the engagement letter. We have done this before: at Prime Sweeping in Duluth we came in as an advisor on pricing and sales and today hold an ownership interest, a board seat and the CSO role.
A conversation,
then a scope.
The three tracks are the shape of an engagement, not a menu, because the first honest answer to most of these questions is that it depends on what the books look like. The first conversation is free and is mostly us asking what you already suspect is wrong.
If there is work worth doing, you get a written scope with what gets built, what it costs and what it should be worth at exit. If there is not, we will say so. We are also the people who would eventually sell the business, so telling you to spend money you do not need to spend is a bad trade for us.
What gets built. The systems, models and documentation, named one by one.
What it costs. Stated in the scope, before anything is built.
What it should be worth at exit. The drivers it moves, and where that puts the business in its range.
See what we
can do for you.
Our platform as it runs at Prime Sweeping, screen by screen: route planning, quoting, a management hub, written procedures and HR forms, built so the business runs without the owner in the room.