Twelve apps, four spreadsheets, an old server, and Michael
A buyer doesn't score your technology on what it cost you. They score it on what it will cost them: the debt, the one-person systems, the security gaps.
The Reading Room
Articles
Writing on business, ownership, and the art of enjoying both, from the Initiative's co-founders.
Page 2
Loyalty isn't a retention plan
Your best people may be loyal to you rather than the business. Find out which, and put it on proper terms, before a buyer prices the risk of them walking.
You know the history. The buyer inherits the paperwork.
The trademark in your name, the code in a contractor's account, the domain held by someone who left. A buyer inherits the paperwork, not your understanding.
Leave for two weeks, and don't fix anything at night
Most businesses can hide how much they depend on the owner for a few days. Leave for two weeks, fix nothing at night, and see what really needs you.
The add-back that costs you more than it adds
Add back the same one-off cost three years running and a buyer sees a recurring cost. A weak add-back costs you the price and their trust in your numbers.
Due diligence has no pass mark
There's no pass mark in due diligence. Everything a buyer finds becomes price, structure, or a clause. The only choice you get is who finds it first.
The Choice
Every venue is running one of two playbooks, and both compound. Neither stands still, which means you are building one or feeding the other, every shift.
That's Just How It Is
The venue still trades, still fills on Friday, and the reviews are not terrible. Normalisation is the stage where decline stops feeling like decline and starts feeling like reality.
When the Room Goes Sideways
The pass is stacking, the floor is guessing, and nobody is running the room. Hospitality crisis is not one catastrophic event, it is a cascade watched live by everyone sitting in it.
It Only Works If It Goes Up
A developer collapse, a tax calendar, and schemes that bind buyers to a recovery. Why Australian housing was priced as a position, not as shelter.
Hire the Spark, Teach the Skill: The Selection Problem Hiding in the Labour Problem
You can teach a person with the spark to run a PMS. You cannot teach a PMS operator to develop the spark. Most operators have built funnels that select hard for the wrong one, then declare a labour shortage.
The questions you will be asked, in the order they will be asked
The order is the method. The cheap questions come first because they are the ones you cannot rehearse.
