Category Archives: Marketing and Sales

Layers of Disclosure:
A Business Owner’s Guide to Sharing Information in a Sale

If you’re selling a privately held business, disclosure is rarely just a matter of completing a checklist. It’s more like managing a series of “layers” that unfold over time. The timing, depth, and framing of what you share can affect how buyers value your company, how much leverage you retain at the negotiating table, and often overlooked how stable your business remains while the transaction is moving forward. A practical way to think about disclosure is this: you should expand what you share only as the buyer becomes more committed, receives greater legal protections, and the deal becomes more certain. In other words, disclosure should be tied to deal momentum, not simply to the passage of time. Continue reading

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How Much Does the Big Picture Really Matter to Your Business?

It’s hard to have a business conversation today without someone invoking “the Big Picture.” The 24-hour news cycle runs on urgency, outrage, and uncertainty—and it needs a constant supply to keep attention locked in. The result? Everything sounds like a … Continue reading

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Technology Costs and Quality of Earnings

Are you avoiding technology costs? A few months ago, a subscriber to our planning tools called with a tech support question. “Your software doesn’t work,” he said. After some investigation, we identified the problem. He was using a version of … Continue reading

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Impressions of Value in Exit Planning

Business owners, advisors, and buyers frequently have widely different impressions of value when it comes to a business. The Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Survey canvasses intermediaries who sell privately held Main Street and mid-market companies. One question is about the … Continue reading

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Supply Chains and Labor Shortages

Supply chains and labor shortages are the chief topics among the 40 or so business owners I currently work with. Their anecdotes are widespread and widely varied. I wanted to know why, so I did some research on behalf of … Continue reading

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