Insights: Value Creation
Getting the business ready for a buyer or a lender, measured against what they actually review.
The Real Cost of a Machine Hour
The operating cost your dealer quotes is the smallest number in the equation. The one that decides whether a machine makes money is the one you have to build yourself.
A Sales Engine That Does Not Depend on You Being in the Room
In most lower middle market companies, the owner is the sales process. That works until it caps the business, and it always caps the business. Here is how to build the engine instead.
Your Crews Are Paid to Drive, and Nobody Measures It
Route density decides your maintenance margin more than anything on the price sheet, and almost no one tracks the one number that shows it: how much of a paid day the crew spends between stops instead of on them.
The Questionnaire That Decides Your Contract
A spreadsheet from your biggest customer's procurement team asks about your energy, emissions, and waste. It reads like paperwork. It's a condition of keeping the account.
The Software Stack Nobody Decided To Build
Nobody sat down and designed the software your company runs on. It accumulated, one reasonable subscription at a time, until no single person could name it all.
Count the Cash You Can't Spend
You can quote your revenue to the dollar and still have no idea how much of your own money is frozen in inventory and idle machines. The number has a name, and it's usually about 4 months long.
Why Turnarounds Stall in Month Six
The plan is usually fine. What breaks is capacity: the same handful of people are asked to run the business and change it at the same time, and something has to give.
Two Businesses, One P&L
Most electrical contractors run a project business and a service business under one roof, then report them as one blended number that hides which one actually earns.
Your Real Payer Is the Carrier, and It Pays on Its Own Clock
On an insurance job the homeowner signs the contract, but the carrier writes the check, and it writes it on the adjuster's timeline. That gap is where roofing cash flow lives or dies.
The Business That Only You Can Run
If the company stops working the week you are unreachable, you do not own a business yet. You own a very demanding job, and buyers pay a lot less for a job.
The Clients You Never Costed
Most firms know their realization to the decimal and have no idea which clients are losing money. The average hides the 2 accounts you'd fire if you could see them.
Your Billing Rate Is a Fiction Until You Multiply It
A published rate of 220 dollars an hour is not what you collect. Two discounts sit between the rate sheet and the bank, and most owners track both loosely.
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