Numbers Buyers Trust — and the Ones That Kill Deals
Built to Sell: A Roadmap for Middle Market Owners — Article 2
of 8 Every middle market transaction begins and ends with a number. That number is not your asking price. It is the adjusted EBITDA a sophisticated buyer is willing to believe — and willing to pay a multiple for. The gap between what you think your business earns and what a buyer will accept as earnings is one of the most consequential and least understood dynamics in the entire transaction process. Buyers do not simply read your income statement and write a check. They scrutinize your financials at a level most owners have never experienced. They hire their own accounting teams to stress-test every line item. They will look for inconsistencies, unexplained fluctuations, undisclosed liabilities, and revenue that may not repeat. What they find — or do not find — determines not just the price they offer, but whether they proceed at all. Understanding what buyers trust, and what makes them walk, is how you build the financial story that commands a premium. What Quality of Earnings Really Mean The Quality of Earnings report — QoE, in deal language — is the buyer's primary financial due diligence tool. It is a detailed analysis of your earnings prepared by an independent accounting firm, examining whether your reported EBITDA is accurate, sustainable, and representative of the ongoing business. For sellers, it has become essential to commission your own sell-side QoE before going to market. Why? Because a buyer's QoE team will find issues. They always do. The question is whether those issues surface as controlled disclosures you have already addressed — or as surprise discoveries that erode buyer confidence mid-process, trigger price reductions, or kill the deal entirely. Sellers who arrive with a clean, professionally prepared sell-side QoE in hand control the narrative. Those who do not give the buyer's accountants unlimited opportunity to set it for them. The QoE process examines your revenue recognition practices, the consistency of your accounting policies, the legitimacy and documentation of your add-backs, working capital trends, and any non-recurring items that have been included in or excluded from reported earnings. It is thorough, and it is designed to find exactly what you do not want found. The Add-Back Conversation Adjusted EBITDA — your normalized, add-back-adjusted earnings — is the foundation of your valuation. The logic is sound: buyers pay for sustainable business earnings, not for the personal expenses, one-time events, and owner-specific items that appear on a private company's P&L. Owner compensation above market rate, personal vehicle expenses, family payroll for non-working relatives, one-time legal settlements, extraordinary professional fees — these are legitimate add-backs that can meaningfully increase your adjusted earnings and therefore your enterprise value. The problem is that add-backs are also where sellers get into trouble. Every add-back you claim will be scrutinized. Buyers will ask for documentation. Their accountants will assess whether each item is genuinely non-recurring, genuinely personal, or genuinely above-market. Aggressive or poorly documented add-backs do not survive due diligence — and when they are challenged, the effect is not just a reduction in that add-back. It is a broader erosion of credibility that causes buyers to question everything else in your financial package. The standard to aim for is conservative, well-documented, and defensible. Every add-back should have backup. If it is owner compensation above market rate, you should know what comparable roles pay in your market and be able to document the delta. If it is a one-time expense, it should genuinely be one-time — not a recurring item reframed as extraordinary. Revenue Quality: What Buyers Are Actually Buying Buyers pay multiples of earnings because they expect those earnings to continue and grow after the transaction closes. That expectation rests entirely on their assessment of your revenue quality. Not all revenue is equal in a buyer's eyes, and the composition of your top line can have an enormous effect on the multiple you receive. Recurring revenue — subscription contracts, long-term service agreements, maintenance contracts, retainer relationships — is the most valuable kind. It is predictable, defensible, and the clearest evidence that your business will continue to perform after the owner steps back. Transactional revenue that must be re-earned with every sale is less valuable, not because it is bad revenue, but because it requires more assumptions about future sales performance. Customer concentration is one of the most common and most damaging issues a buyer encounters. If a single customer represents more than fifteen to twenty percent of your revenue, nearly every sophisticated buyer will view that as a material risk. The fear is simple: if that customer leaves after the transaction — or renegotiates aggressively once they know ownership has changed — the business the buyer paid for no longer exists. The higher the concentration, the more severely it will affect your valuation, your deal structure, and in some cases whether a deal can be financed at all. Three years of lead time allows you to diversify. It is not always possible to eliminate concentration entirely, but demonstrating a deliberate and measurable effort to reduce it — and arriving at the table with clear progress — changes the conversation significantly. Working Capital: The Hidden Negotiation One of the most frequently misunderstood elements of middle market transactions is the working capital peg. In nearly every deal, the buyer expects to receive a business with a normalized level of working capital — the receivables, inventory, and short-term assets and liabilities required to operate at the current run rate. If the business delivers at closing with less than that normalized level, the purchase price is reduced dollar for dollar. If it delivers more, the seller receives the excess. The working capital peg is negotiated in the purchase agreement, and the stakes are significant. Buyers' counsel will propose a peg based on trailing average working capital. Sellers who have not thought carefully about this — or whose financial data is inconsistent — often find themselves accepting a peg that does not reflect their true operating patterns. The result can be a meaningful reduction in net proceeds at closing that was entirely preventable with proper preparation. Understanding
your working capital dynamics — and having clean, consistent monthly data to
support your position — is an important part of the pre-sale financial
preparation that most owners overlook. The Numbers That Kill Deals Beyond add-backs and revenue quality, there is a short list of financial issues that reliably derail transactions or force significant concessions from sellers. Declining margins without a clear and credible explanation. Revenue growth that appears in the financials but cannot be substantiated by underlying contracts or customer data. Inconsistent accounting practices across periods. Tax liabilities or obligations that were not disclosed. Deferred maintenance capital spending that has understated true operating costs. Related-party transactions that were not conducted at arm's length. That
preparation does not happen in the weeks before going to market. It takes
time — typically two to three years of intentional effort. But the payoff is
not just a higher valuation. It is a smoother process, a more confident
seller, and a transaction that closes on your terms. If
you are beginning to think seriously about a sale in the next three to five
years, the most valuable conversation you can have right now is about
preparation. The Decisions you make today will determine what you walk away
with tomorrow.. Contact
Dave Mead at (303) 660-8135 or meaddp@meadconsultinggroup.com. The conversation is free. The cost of waiting is not. ________________________ Next in the series: Article 3 — "Building a Business That Runs Without You." Bead |
Monday, June 22, 2026
Numbers Buyers Trust — and the Ones That Kill Deals
Monday, May 18, 2026
No Time to Wait: Maximizing Value When Your Exit Is Sooner Than Planned:
Built to Sell: A Roadmap for Small & Middle Market Owners
This entire article series is built around a three-year runway — the minimum time required to execute the
preparation strategies that genuinely move the needle on value, structure, and
what you keep after the deal closes. Three years is the right answer for owners
who have the luxury of planning. But not every owner does.
Health events, partner disputes,
market shifts, unsolicited buyer interest, family circumstances – the Dismal
D’s (Death, Disability, Divorce, Disagreement, Debt, and Distress)
- any number of forces can compress
the timeline and put an owner in the position of needing to sell sooner than
they had planned. If that is where you are, the instinct to panic is
understandable. The right response is to set it aside and get strategic
quickly.
Not every preparation step
requires three years. Some of the most impactful work can be accomplished in
twelve to eighteen months. Others can be meaningfully advanced even in six. The
key is to triage correctly — to understand which actions still have time to
move the needle and which ones do not, so you invest your limited runway in the
highest-return activities.
Start With the Advisors — Immediately
If there is one principle that
applies regardless of timeline, it is this: get your team in place before you
do anything else. Your investment banker, your M&A attorney, and your
transaction tax advisor need to be engaged now. Not when you feel ready. Not
after you have cleaned up the financials. Now. In order to do that not only
efficiently but effectively, Mead Consulting can offer assistance to help you
with the selections to avoid making a “quick mistake.”
Your transaction tax advisor in
particular needs maximum lead time to evaluate which strategies are still
viable given your timeline. Some require two to three years and are no longer
available. Others — certain trust structures, charitable giving strategies,
entity reorganizations — may still be executable with twelve to eighteen months
of lead time. The only way to know which ones apply to your situation is to
have the conversation with a tax specialist
immediately. Every week of delay narrows the options.
Clean the Financials First
Of all the preparation steps
outlined previously in the introductory Article 1 in this series, clean
financials offer the highest return for the time invested regardless of how
compressed your timeline is. Buyers cannot pay full price for a business they
cannot understand, and inconsistent or poorly documented financials are the
fastest way to erode a buyer's confidence and your valuation.
Commission a sell-side Quality
of Earnings report. Document your add-backs meticulously. Ensure your last two
to three years of financial statements are consistently prepared and can
withstand scrutiny. Understand your working capital dynamics before a buyer's
team defines them for you. These steps do not require years — they require
focused effort and the right accounting professionals. But they need to start
immediately.
Address Owner Dependency Where You Can
A full three-year program for
reducing owner dependency — building a real management team, transferring
customer relationships, documenting institutional knowledge — is not available
to you on a compressed timeline. But partial progress still matters, and it is
better than none.
In twelve to eighteen months,
you can meaningfully develop one or two key leaders who can credibly represent
the business to buyers. You can begin introducing team members into your most
important customer relationships. You can document the core operating processes
that a new owner would need to understand. You cannot eliminate owner
dependency entirely in this timeframe — but you can change the story from 'this
business cannot survive without the founder' to 'the owner is actively and
successfully building the team for transition.' That is a meaningfully
different message, and sophisticated buyers recognize the difference.
Be Honest About What You Cannot Fix
One of the most important things
a seller on a compressed timeline can do is resist the temptation to obscure
the issues they do not have time to address. Customer concentration that cannot
be resolved in twelve months should be disclosed and contextualized — not
hidden and discovered. Legal or contractual issues that surface in due
diligence do far more damage than issues that are disclosed upfront with a
clear explanation.
Buyers can underwrite known
risks. They cannot underwrite surprises. The seller who presents a candid,
well-documented view of the business — including its weaknesses — and
demonstrates a clear plan for addressing them invites a very different buyer
response than the one whose deal falls apart in due diligence. Honesty,
presented professionally and in context, preserves more value than concealment.
Control What You Can Control
The sellers who maximize value
on a compressed timeline are the ones who resist the urge to let urgency drive
decisions. Competitive processes still matter — even when you feel pressure to
move quickly, your investment banker's ability to run a structured, multi-buyer
process is your most reliable path to a fair price. Deal structure still
matters — the terms of the transaction are often as important as the headline
price. Advisor quality still matters — the temptation to shortcut the team
selection because you are in a hurry is a temptation to resist.
The three-year roadmap exists
because preparation compounds over time. But the principles behind it — clean
financials, capable team, honest disclosure, competitive process, right
advisors — apply regardless of timeline. You may not be able to execute all of
them fully. Execute the ones you can, as well as you can, as quickly as you
can.
We Can Help
The Mead Consulting Group has
helped middle market owners navigate exits under every kind of timeline
pressure — planned and unplanned, ideal and imperfect. We work with experienced
team members ( Transaction Tax, M&A attorneys, Investment bankers and
financial advisors) who know which steps still move the needle with limited
runway, and we have the advisor relationships to assemble a team quickly when
time matters. If you are facing a sooner-than-expected exit, the most important
call you can make is the first one.
Contact Dave Mead at (303)
660-8135 or meaddp@meadconsultinggroup.com.
The conversation is free. The cost of waiting is not.
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Thursday, May 14, 2026
Start With the End in Mind: Built to Sell: A Roadmap for Small & Middle Market Owners - Article 1
[Editor’s Note: The M&A market for SMB owners has been relatively stagnant for the last 2 years. We think it’s time for owners to take the step to be prepared. We recently heard the following call to action for business owners:
“If you had the opportunity to keep an extra 30% or more of your sale
proceeds, Don’t be “that Guy” who passed it up!” -dpm]
Most business owners spend years building something valuable and weeks
planning how to sell it. That gap — between the years of effort and the rushed
preparation at the end — is where wealth quietly disappears.
The owners who walk away with the most from a transaction are rarely the
ones with the highest sale price. They are the ones who started planning early
enough to control the outcome. Three years is not an arbitrary number. It is
the minimum runway required to move the needle on value, on structure, on how
your business presents to buyers, and critically, on what you actually keep
after the deal closes.
A successful sale is not an event. It is the result of a deliberate
process that begins long before the first buyer conversation.
What You Sell For and What You Keep Are Two Different
Numbers
The gap between your gross sale price and your after-tax proceeds can be
enormous — often 30 to 40 cents on every dollar, sometimes more. And most of
the decisions that determine that gap are made years before a buyer walks
through your door.
The tax clock starts long before the transaction process begins. Many of
the most powerful mitigation strategies require two to three years of lead time
to execute properly. Used early, they are legitimate and effective. Attempted
at the last minute, they invite IRS scrutiny and often fail entirely.
The right strategies depend on your entity structure, your basis, your
personal financial picture, and your timeline. But here is what is available to
owners who start early enough to use it.
Basis reduction — Cost segregation studies accelerate depreciation on real property and
equipment, reducing taxable basis before a sale. Section 1202 Qualified Small
Business Stock exclusions can shelter up to $10 million in federal capital
gains entirely — but only if the structure was established correctly, well in
advance. F-reorganizations allow owners to restructure their entity type to
optimize how gain is recognized at closing.
Life insurance strategies — Corporate-owned life insurance (COLI) builds cash value tax-deferred
while serving as an executive benefit tool. Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts
(ILITs) remove the death benefit from your taxable estate entirely. Private
Placement Life Insurance (PPLI) wraps investments inside an insurance structure
to defer or eliminate gains for higher net worth owners.
Charitable and trust structures — A Charitable Remainder Annuity Trust (CRAT) allows you to transfer
appreciated business interests before a sale, defer capital gains, and receive
a fixed income stream over time while generating a partial charitable
deduction. Donor-advised funds offer a simpler alternative for owners with
philanthropic intent.
Timing and structure — Installment sales spread gain recognition across multiple tax years.
Qualified Opportunity Zone reinvestment defers and potentially reduces capital
gains by rolling proceeds into designated funds within 180 days of closing.
Deferred compensation plans established before the transaction reduce ordinary
income in high-earning pre-sale years.
One critical distinction: your regular CPA is not your transaction tax
advisor. Transaction tax is a specialty, and most general practice CPAs are not
equipped to design and execute these strategies. The right advisor lives in this space every day.
Engaging them three years out is not premature — it is exactly right.
Your Investment Banker May Be One of the Most Important
Hires You Will Make
Many owners approach a sale the way they approach most business decisions
— they rely on their existing network, take the first serious call that comes
in, and attempt to manage the process themselves. This is one of the most
expensive mistakes a seller can make.
A skilled investment banker does not simply find buyers. They engineer a
competitive process — identifying the full universe of strategic and financial
buyers, preparing materials that tell your story compellingly, and creating the
competitive tension that is the single most reliable driver of premium pricing.
The difference between a well-run competitive process and a single-buyer
negotiation is frequently measured in millions of dollars.
A buyer negotiating without competition has every incentive to chip away
at price and push risk back onto the seller. A buyer who knows they can lose
the deal behaves very differently.
Beyond price, a seasoned investment banker brings current market
intelligence — realistic valuation ranges, deal structures gaining traction,
and where the landmines are in today's lending environment. They have closed
dozens of transactions in your industry. You are likely closing one. Engaging
them a year or two before going to market — not just when you are ready — gives
you their perspective on positioning the business and what gaps need to be
addressed before the process begins.
Your M&A Attorney Is Not Your Business Attorney
The same principle applies to legal counsel. Your business attorney knows
your company and your history — but a middle market M&A transaction is a
specialized legal undertaking, and the stakes are too high to approach it with
a generalist.
Representations and warranties — the statements you make to a buyer about
the condition of your business — carry significant financial exposure if poorly
drafted. Indemnification provisions determine how much of your proceeds sit in
escrow and what events can trigger a clawback. Deal structure decisions — asset
sale versus stock sale, earnout provisions, rollover equity — all carry legal
implications a generalist may not fully anticipate.
The right M&A attorney has seen every version of these negotiations.
They know where buyers' counsel will push, where you can hold firm, and where
the language in a purchase agreement can cost you far more than their fee if it
goes unexamined. They also understand the interplay between legal structure and
tax outcome — working in close coordination with your transaction tax advisor
to ensure the deal protects you on both fronts. Engaging them early also
surfaces the corporate housekeeping issues — contract assignability, IP
protection, employment agreements — that are far better resolved quietly in
advance than discovered under pressure mid-process.
Build a Financial Story Buyers Will Trust
Sophisticated buyers do not buy your most recent year of earnings. They
buy a pattern — a clear, consistent, and credible financial story that gives
them confidence in future performance. If your financials are difficult to
read, inconsistently prepared, or laden with personal expenses, that confidence
erodes — and so does your multiple.
Three years out is the time to get your financial house in order. Ensure
your statements are clean, consistently prepared, and audit-ready. Identify and
properly document legitimate add-backs that a quality of earnings analysis will
scrutinize. Understand your true EBITDA and how it will be presented to a
buyer's financial team.
Also take a hard look at revenue concentration. If one customer
represents more than 15 to 20 percent of your revenue, that is a risk flag for
every serious buyer. Three years gives you time to diversify your customer base
and arrive at the table with a story that demonstrates resilience rather than
dependency.
Reduce Owner Dependency — Before It Reduces Your Value
The business that cannot operate, make decisions, or retain customers
without the owner at the center is not a business a buyer wants to acquire at a
premium. It is a job they are being asked to buy — and they will price it
accordingly.
Three years is enough time to change this dynamic. Build out your
management team. Hire or develop people who can run the business without you in
the room. Document the processes and institutional knowledge that currently
live only in your head. The owners who arrive at a transaction with a
leadership bench that operates independently — and can demonstrate it —
consistently command the strongest multiples.
Clean Up Legal and Corporate Housekeeping
Nothing slows a deal or erodes buyer confidence faster than legal,
contractual, or governance issues discovered mid-process. Review your corporate
structure and ensure it is properly documented. Audit your contracts for
assignability clauses and anything that could complicate a transfer. Resolve
outstanding litigation. Protect your intellectual property. Ensure key
employees have appropriate non-compete and
confidentiality agreements in place. These items take time — and addressing
them under the pressure of an active deal process is always more costly than
handling them in advance.
Invest in the Strategic Growth Story
Buyers pay multiples of earnings — and higher multiples for businesses
with a credible path to continued growth. A business showing consistent growth,
expanding margins, and a clear value creation story will attract premium buyers
at premium prices. Three years gives you time to invest intentionally in that
story — whether through entering a new market, building recurring revenue,
improving margins through technology, or simply executing with consistency and
documenting the results.
We Can Help
The Mead Consulting Group is not a tax advisory, investment banking,
M&A legal, or financial advisory firm. But over 35 years of working with
middle market owners through transactions, we have built deep relationships
with the best transaction tax specialists, investment bankers, M&A
attorneys, and financial advisors in the business — people who have helped
owners keep significantly more of what they earned and close transactions on
their terms.
More than that, we have spent decades helping owners build businesses
that attract the best buyers at the best prices — by reducing owner dependency,
strengthening management teams, cleaning up financials, and building the growth
story that commands a premium multiple.
If you are beginning to think seriously about a sale in the next three to
five years, the most valuable conversation you can have right now is about
preparation. The decisions you make today will determine what you walk away
with tomorrow.
Contact Dave Mead at (303) 660-8135 or meaddp@meadconsultinggroup.com. The conversation is free. The cost
of waiting is not.
Next in the series: Article 2 — "No Time to Wait - Maximizing Value When Your Exit Is Sooner Than Planned."
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Saturday, May 2, 2026
Your Management Team — Built for Yesterday or Ready for What’s Next?
Most business owners will tell
you their people are their greatest asset. Far fewer can honestly say their
management team is built for where the business needs to go — not just where it
has been.
That’s an uncomfortable
distinction. And right now, in a business environment that is moving fast and
rewarding agility, it’s one that matters more than ever.
Here’s the hard truth: the
management team that got you to where you are today may not be the team that
gets you to where you need to be tomorrow. That isn’t a criticism of loyalty or
effort. It’s simply the reality of business growth. The skills, instincts, and
habits that work well at one stage of a company’s development can quietly
become the ceiling at the next.
Recognize the Signs
How do you know if your team is
built for yesterday? Some signs are obvious. Decisions that should be made
three levels down keep landing on your desk. Meetings produce agreement but not
action. The same problems resurface quarter after quarter with slightly
different explanations. Good people leave, and the team barely notices.
Other signs are subtler. Your
managers are excellent at executing what they know but uncomfortable with what
they don’t. They optimize existing processes rather than questioning whether
those processes still make sense. They manage their departments in isolation
rather than leading across the business. They are, in the truest sense, very
good at yesterday.
None of this makes them bad
people. It makes them human. But it also makes them a constraint — on your
growth, on your agility, and ultimately on the value of your business.
Mapping Your Team: The
Performance-Potential Matrix
One of the most useful tools for
an honest assessment of your management team is a simple two-axis evaluation:
performance on one axis, potential on the other. Where each person lands tells
you something important — not just about them individually, but about the
overall health and readiness of your team.
Figure 1: Performance vs. Potential Matrix
Y-axis: Potential (Low → High)
X-axis: Performance (Low → High)
|
Hidden gem High
potential, needs development and the right role |
Rising star Strong
potential, solid performer — invest heavily |
Top talent Your future
leaders — retain at all costs |
|
Question mark Unclear fit —
assess carefully before investing |
Core player Reliable
contributor — coach toward next level |
High performer Delivers
results — explore growth path |
|
Underperformer Low
performance and potential — act quickly |
Effective contributor Solid today,
limited upside — manage expectations |
Strong contributor High
performance, moderate upside — keep engaged |
|
Low performance |
Medium performance |
High performance |
The
top-right corner — Top Talent — represents the people you are building the future
around. The bottom-left — Underperformer — is where difficult decisions need to happen sooner
rather than later. But pay close attention to the middle column, top row: Rising Stars.
These are the people worth investing in most heavily right now — and the ones
most capable of meeting the demands ahead.
What “Ready for What’s
Next” Actually Looks Like
The managers who thrive in
today’s environment share a few characteristics that go beyond functional
competence. They are intellectually curious — genuinely interested in what’s
changing in the market and what it means for the business. They are comfortable
with ambiguity and can make sound decisions without waiting for perfect
information. They develop people around them rather than protecting their own
domain. And critically, they think like owners — connecting their daily
decisions to the broader direction of the company.
These are not personality traits
you can train into someone who fundamentally doesn’t have them. But they are
qualities you can screen for, hire toward, and build a culture around.
Where AI Fits In
Here is where the conversation
about management readiness gets both more urgent and more interesting.
Artificial intelligence is no longer a technology story. It is a leadership
story.
The managers who will drive your
business forward in the next three to five years are not necessarily the ones
who understand AI at a technical level. They are the ones who know how to use
it as a thinking tool — to sharpen decisions, stress-test assumptions, identify
patterns in customer and financial data, and move faster without sacrificing
judgment.
Consider what this looks like in
practice. A sales manager who uses AI to analyze which customer segments are
most profitable and model the impact of pricing adjustments is operating at a
fundamentally different level than one who relies on intuition and last
quarter’s spreadsheet. An operations leader who uses AI-assisted scenario
planning to anticipate disruptions is more valuable than one who reacts to them
after the fact. A CFO who uses AI to model multiple growth scenarios in real
time gives ownership a qualitatively better picture of the business than one
who produces a static annual forecast.
The gap between managers who
embrace these tools and those who don’t is widening quickly. And here is the
critical point: AI does not replace strong management judgment. It amplifies
it. Which means the managers who combine genuine business acumen with AI
fluency are becoming disproportionately valuable — and disproportionately rare.
Look back at your matrix. Your
Rising Stars and Top Talent are the natural candidates for AI investment. These
are the people with both the capability and the upside to use these tools to
their full potential. Prioritize them for development. Make AI literacy an
explicit expectation — not a nice-to-have.
What To Do About It
Start with an honest assessment.
For each member of your management team, ask two questions: Are they performing
at the level the business needs today? And are they capable of performing at
the level the business will need in two to three years?
Where the answer to either
question is uncertain, act. Invest in development for those with real
potential. Create the expectation — from the top down — that AI literacy is not
optional. And where the fit simply isn’t there, make the difficult but necessary
decisions sooner rather than later.
The companies that win in
uncertain times are led by people who are genuinely ready for what’s next — not
just comfortable with what worked before.
Your
management team is either building that advantage for you — or quietly limiting
it.
The Mead Consulting Group has worked with scores of organizations to help them build high-functioning management teams that plan and act strategically. If you would like to discuss your situation, contact Dave Mead at (303) 660-8135 or meaddp@meadconsultinggroup.com.
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Thursday, April 30, 2026
Smooth Seas Never Made a Skilled Sailor — And This Is Not a Smooth Sea
Smooth Seas Never Made a Skilled Sailor — And This Is Not a Smooth Sea
There's a reason that quote has endured. It isn't motivational filler. It's a simple truth that every experienced business owner eventually learns the hard way: capability is built under pressure, not in spite of it.
Right now, the pressure is real. Economic signals are mixed. Costs are up. Customer confidence is uneven. Supply chains remain unpredictable. For many small and mid-size business owners, the instinct is to pull back — cut expenses, freeze hiring, wait for calmer water. It feels like the responsible thing to do.
It isn't.
History is unambiguous on this point: rough seas are not the great equalizer people assume them to be. They are, in fact, one of the greatest in business. The companies that treat turbulence as a reason to pause are the same ones that look up two years later and wonder how their competitors got so far ahead.
The Differentiation Gap Widens When Things Get Hard
In my 3+ decades working with small and mid-size companies, I've watched this play out over and over — through recessions, credit crises, global disruptions, and everything in between. The companies that come out stronger are almost never the ones that simply survived. They're the ones that made a deliberate choice to while everyone else was playing defense.
Think about what that looks like in practice. When the labor market softens, defensive companies freeze. Offensive companies quietly hire the best talent they couldn't attract a year ago — people who were locked in elsewhere and are now available. When customers pull back, defensive companies slash marketing. Offensive companies invest in relationships, deepen their service model, and come out with stronger loyalty on the other side. When uncertainty makes planning feel futile, defensive companies abandon strategy altogether. Offensive companies sharpen theirs.
The gap between these two types of companies doesn't close when the economy recovers. It compounds.
Clarity Is a Luxury. Agility Is a Strategy. Clarity is often a lagging indicator.
One of the mistakes I see owners, CEOs and Boards make during uncertain periods is waiting for clarity before they act. The problem is that clarity is often a lagging indicator — by the time things feel clear, the window has already moved.
The better approach is to stop trying to predict and start trying to prepare. That means running multiple scenarios. What does our business look like if revenue drops 15%? What does it look like if a key customer reduces orders? What does it look like if we aggressively pursue a new segment while competitors are distracted? Scenario planning isn't about being pessimistic. It's about building the organizational muscle to respond quickly — whatever direction things go.
Companies that do this well don't just survive disruption. They are positioned to accelerate when conditions shift in their favor, while slower-moving competitors are still figuring out what happened.
Use this Moment to Build Capability.
Rough seas create space that doesn't exist in calm ones. Vendors are more negotiable. Talent is more accessible. Customers who felt locked into relationships with larger competitors are suddenly open to conversations. Strategic acquisitions that looked too expensive 18 months ago may now be realistic.
But none of that opportunity is available to companies that are frozen.
This is also a powerful time to do the internal work that gets neglected when business is running fast. Clean up your processes. Get clear on which customers are actually profitable and which ones are consuming resources without real return. Invest in your management team. Build the bench that will allow you to grow without everything running through you.
These aren't just defensive moves. Each one increases the value of your business — whether you're planning to sell in three years or run it for twenty.
Decide to Go.
President Kennedy didn't announce the moon mission when conditions were ideal. He made the commitment when the path forward was anything but certain. What made it real wasn't the announcement — it was the daily discipline that followed. The processes, the people, the relentless focus on a goal that seemed audacious at the time.
The best companies I've worked with operate the same way. They don't wait for the environment to cooperate. They decide what they're building, and they go build it — adjusting course as needed but never stopping forward motion.
The seas are rough right now. That's not a reason to drop anchor.
The question isn't whether conditions are difficult. The question is: what business leaders are deciding to do about it?
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The Mead Consulting Group helps dozens of companies and organizations -like yours - every year with both scenario planning, strategic planning & execution, executive coaching, and preparing to maximize value in an exit. Clients that utilize these processes consistently outperform their competition.
If you would like to discuss your situation, please contact me to set up a complimentary meeting. Dave Mead at (303)660-8135 or meaddp@meadconsultinggroup.com.
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Friday, April 10, 2026
Deciding to Go
[Editor's Note: The decision to become an extraordinary company is not coincidence or happenstance. Rather it is a conscious choice. Shouldn't you be great at what you do? Shouldn't you decide to become the company your customers can't live without? Some companies have remained defensive, chastened by the shock of the early pandemic months. I thought this article that I first published several years ago was appropriate for these times with Artemis in mid-mission -dpm]
Author and speaker Joe Calloway opens many of his presentations with a story from the movie Apollo 13: "The movie opens with a gathering of astronauts to watch Neal Armstrong who is about to become the first human being to walk on the moon. As we hear Armstrong's immortal words, 'One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind,' the mood becomes quiet, even reverential. ...Shortly after the broadcast, the party breaks up and everyone goes their separate ways, Jim Lovell, who is played by Tom Hanks, is alone with his wife, Marilyn in their backyard. Looking up at the moon, Lovell says, 'From now on, we live in a world where man has walked on the moon. It's not a miracle. We just decided to go."
Calloway makes the point that the first step that great companies make is the deliberate decision to pursue greatness. Many organizations talk about change. Sometimes companies will orchestrate management retreats, spending two or three days at some resort developing great ideas in a sea of flip chart paper and white boards. Six months later, everyone wonders, "What happened to those great ideas we had."
Strategic Planning without a "Decision to GO" is a waste of time
Decide to go... or go home. Strategic planning without a "decision to go" is a waste of time. You might think it peculiar that a company like ours would make such a statement. After all, The Mead Consulting Group helps companies develop and execute strategy. But, after more than 35 years helping companies, we have learned that it is the commitment to ACTION that determines success. "Deciding to go" is the biggest differentiator among companies.
What many people don't know (or likely are too young to remember) is that when President John F. Kennedy made the statement in May 1961 that the U.S. would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, it was simply not another political speech. He rallied support in all sectors of government and the country. He helped us all see that this was a major commitment that was worthy of our time, resources, and commitment. He helped us "decide to go." You might say that President Kennedy created what Jim Collins ("Good to Great") calls a BHAG - a Big Hairy Audacious Goal.
Processes Institutionalize commitment
Motivating the populace was just the start. We needed processes and plans to achieve such a feat. After all, at the time of Kennedy's statement, the U.S. space program had not even managed to orbit the earth. To speak of going to the moon struck some as an impossible task. It would have been an impossible task if significant changes were not put in place. NASA and the other key organizations worked together to put organizations, plans, people, and processes in place.
Research shows that not a day went by that at President Kennedy did not inquire about some facet of this commitment - notes to the Vice President about funding from Congress, encouraging commitment to math and science education, speeches to keep the issue in front of the American people - making us all feel proud to play a part in this journey.
Along the way, it became OUR goal. It was the processes and daily commitment of many people - at all levels - that made it work. Kennedy was alive for only the first 1000 days of the journey. During that time he helped us make this BHAG ours. Then we took it the rest of the way.
Become the best at what you do
Organizations define themselves - set their own limits. Leadership helps paint the picture for greatness. It is too easy for small and mid-size companies to say that "we're only a small company" or "we sell undifferentiated, unglamorous products." With that attitude, why bother getting out of bed in the morning. A mentor of mine once told me, "There are no boring jobs, only boring people." What he meant was that people need to be inspired. If you have an undifferentiated product or service, whose fault is that? Do something to transform the customer experience.
Develop a big goal. Then go make it happen. The successful companies are focused on the daily details to accomplish that big goal. Everyone wants to be part of something great.
Become the best at what you do - whatever it is. Make the Decision to Go!
Friday, April 3, 2026
Why Some Companies Grow — And Others Get Stuck
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________________________ The
Mead Consulting Group helps
dozens of companies and organizations -like yours - every year with both
strategic planning & execution, strategic business coaching, and
preparing to maximize value in an exit. Clients that utilize these
processes consistently outperform their competition. If
you would like to discuss your situation, please contact me to set up a
complimentary meeting. Dave Mead at (303)660-8135 or meaddp@meadconsultinggroup.com. Best regards, Dave Mead |