Business Value Risk · Victoria, BC
Does your future wealth depend on the value of your business?
Most business owners have a financial plan. Far fewer have examined the business risks that will ultimately determine whether that plan succeeds.
I help business owners and their advisors identify and address the risks that affect business value, transferability, saleability, buyer confidence, and future wealth outcomes.
- Founded 1998
- 40+ years C-suite
- Two IPOs (NASDAQ + CVE)
- CPA, CGA
- EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 Nominee
Why I started asking different questions
I trained as a CPA and spent more than forty years in senior operating roles: CFO, CTO, COO, and CEO. I worked with national and multinational companies, helped take two companies public, and opened operations in several countries.
That work taught me something I did not expect to learn. Buyers and investors were never really paying for what a business had already done. They were pricing what they believed it would do next, without its current owner in the middle of it, and they discounted heavily for anything that looked uncertain to them.
Since 1998 I have run my own practice, helping owners improve, grow, transition, and protect what they have built. Over that time the language of the work has changed more than the work has. The question underneath it has not changed at all: what would a buyer, a lender, or a successor see in this business that the owner cannot see from the inside?
- 40+Years in the C-suite
- 10+Countries opened
- 2Companies taken public
- 25+Years helping business owners
The question most financial plans never ask
For many owners the business is the largest asset they own. It often carries more weight in the retirement plan than the investment portfolio does.
Yet the plan usually treats the business as a single number. A future value, an assumed multiple, a date. That number gets carried forward year after year without anyone testing what sits behind it.
Most financial plans assume a future business value. What if that assumption is wrong?
Advisors who build those plans are often the first to sense the gap, without having a practical way to test it. The cost of finding out late is not only a lower number. It is a narrower set of options at the exact moment the owner needs choices most.
Buyers do not buy the past. They price future risk.
How buyers assess risk
A strong track record helps, but it is not what sets the price. A buyer is asking a narrower question: how likely is this business to keep performing once I own it, and what could go wrong that I would then own as well? Every answer that stays uncertain becomes a discount, a holdback, or a reason to walk away.
These are the risks buyers examine most closely.
Owner dependence
The business runs on relationships, judgment, and decisions that sit with the owner and have never been transferred to anyone else.
Customer concentration
A small number of customers account for enough revenue that losing one of them would change the business.
Weak leadership depth
There is no second layer capable of running the business if the owner steps back.
Inconsistent financial reporting
The numbers cannot be relied on without explanation, and a buyer discounts whatever cannot be verified.
Missing systems and processes
The work gets done well, but it gets done from memory rather than from a process someone else could follow.
Limited growth capacity
The business is at the ceiling of what its current people, capital, or capacity can deliver.
Succession risk
There is no clear answer to who leads the business next, inside the family or outside it.
Unpredictable revenue
Revenue arrives in a pattern that is hard to forecast, which makes future performance hard to price.
How I work
A family doctor does not prescribe before examining. Neither do I.
Most owners already have a list of things they suspect are wrong. What they usually do not have is an ordered view of which of those things a buyer, a lender, or a successor would actually care about, and in what sequence they are worth addressing.
Diagnose
I work through the business the way an outside party would assess it, looking for the risks that affect value, transferability, and future performance.
Prioritize
Not every risk is worth fixing, and not every risk is urgent. I separate what matters from what does not, so that effort goes where it changes the outcome.
Build the right team
Most of what needs doing is implementation work, and it is usually best done by specialists. I help identify who is needed and bring them in alongside the accountant, lawyer, banker, and advisor the owner already trusts.
Support the owner and their advisors
I stay involved through the process, so that everyone keeps a consistent view of what is being addressed and why.
To be plain about my role
- I do not manage money or sell financial products.
- I do not broker transactions or act as an M&A advisor.
- I am not a valuator.
- I do not take over day to day management.
- I am not the implementation resource for every issue I find.
I diagnose, I prioritize, and I connect.
For Wealth Advisors
Your clients trust you with their wealth
Many business-owning clients carry a risk that appears nowhere in the portfolio. It sits inside the business, and it can quietly undo a plan that looks sound on paper.
I work as a specialist resource to advisors. I do not manage money, sell products, or compete for the client relationship. I assess the business risks that could affect value, saleability, and future wealth outcomes, and I report back in terms you can use in a planning conversation.
If your future plans depend on the value of your business, start by understanding the risks.
It is a thirty-minute conversation, not a pitch. You tell me about the business and what you are planning for, and I will tell you whether a closer look would show you anything you do not already know. If it would not, I will say so.