Hey Reader,

Something different today. I want to give you a gift that most owners only receive once, at the worst possible time to receive it: the chance to see your business through a buyer's eyes.

What follows is a composite of walkthroughs I've been part of over nine exits and a career of deals, from both sides of the table. For the next few minutes, I'm the buyer. The business is yours.

Let's go.

9:00 AM

I arrive four minutes early. The parking lot tells me my first three things: whether the spots closest to the door belong to customers or to management, whether anyone notices an unfamiliar face walking in, and what the physical plant says about maintenance deferred. You'd be stunned how often the parking lot predicts the balance sheet.

Your front desk person doesn't know I'm coming. Good, I prefer it that way. I'm not evaluating her politeness. I'm evaluating whether she acts like someone who knows what this place is about when nobody prepped her. She does or she doesn't. Either way, I just learned more about your culture than your deck will ever tell me.

9:20 AM

We're in the conference room and I ask you my favorite opening question: “Walk me through what happened here yesterday.” Not the vision. Not the five-year plan. Yesterday.

Owners with real operating systems light up at this question, because yesterday is where their machine lives. Owners without them pivot to the future within ninety seconds, because the future is the only place their business runs smoothly. I let you talk. I'm counting how many sentences start with “I” versus “we” versus a person's name. That ratio is going into my model tonight, whether I call it that or not.

10:15 AM

I ask to meet your leadership team, without you in the room. This is the moment I learn whether you flinch.

If you hesitate, I understand why. You're not sure what they'll say, or worse, you're sure they'll look at the door every time a hard question lands, waiting for you to walk through it. Here's what I'm listening for in that room, and it isn't loyalty: I'm listening for whether they describe decisions they made or decisions they carried out. Deciders raise your multiple. Messengers discount it.

11:30 AM

I ask the question the whole day was building toward, and I ask it casually, like it just occurred to me: “What would break first if you took August off?”

You'll want to say “nothing.” Don't. I've heard “nothing” from a hundred owners, and I believed exactly none of them. The owners who get premium offers say something like: “Honestly? Pricing exceptions would pile up. We built approval rules last year but I still catch myself grabbing them back.” That answer tells me three things: you know your machine, you tell the truth under pressure, and you're building in the right direction. I can price truth. I can't price a performance.

2:00 PM, driving away

Here's what you never see: the conversation in the car. It's not about your product, which was good, or your revenue, which was real. It's this: “How much of that company drives away when the owner does?”

Every walkthrough I've ever done ends with that one question. The parking lot, the front desk, the “yesterday” answer, the leadership room, the August question, they were all the same question wearing different clothes. I wasn't evaluating your business. I was evaluating your absence.

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NEXT STEPS

Action is the Advantage

I do not write this newsletter to motivate you. I write it to move you.

So here is what I want you to do this week:

✓ Run the 9am test this week: walk into your own business like a stranger, four minutes early. Parking lot, front desk, first impressions. Write down what a buyer would have noticed before anyone knew who you were.

✓ Ask your leadership team the August question at your next meeting, and grade the answers honestly: deciders or messengers?

✓ Answer “walk me through yesterday” out loud, right now, and count your own I's, we's, and names. The ratio doesn't lie.

✓ Reply and tell me what your walkthrough found, especially the thing you'd never noticed until you looked like a stranger. I read every reply.

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