Sixty minutes on the phone. You’ll hang up knowing which part of your business is costing you the most money, and what to fix first.
It’s 2am and you’re doing the math again.
Not the math in the accounting software. The other math. The one where you work out how many more years you can keep this up.
You built something real. Revenue’s good. People would call you successful.
And you haven’t taken a real vacation in four years, your phone rings at dinner, and last month you did the billing, the marketing and the managing, sometimes in the same afternoon.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth.
You don’t own a business. You own a job that pays badly for the hours and never ends.
What that’s costing you, in dollars
Two owners. Same industry. Roughly the same revenue.
The first works 60 hours a week. Can’t leave. Makes about $150,000. If he went to market tomorrow he’d get maybe two times cash flow, and he’d be lucky to get that.
The second works 20 hours a week. Takes six weeks off a year. Makes $400,000. He could sell tomorrow for ten times cash flow.
Same industry. Same size. One of them owns a business. The other one owns a job.
The difference isn’t talent and it isn’t luck. It’s six systems, and whether they live in your head or on paper.
Every one of them that lives in your head is a reason a buyer pays you less, holds more of your money back, or keeps you working for him for three years after you thought you’d sold.
Why I don’t do free consultations
Thirty years of closing deals teaches you something uncomfortable about advice.
Free advice gets taken about as seriously as it costs.
I’ve watched owners nod through a free consultation, thank me warmly, and do nothing for four years. Then call me the month a buyer shows up, when the useful window has closed and all I can do is document what they already lost.
So there’s a price. One thousand dollars for sixty minutes.
The money isn’t the point. The commitment is. Owners who pay for the hour show up with their numbers, ask real questions, and do something afterward.
What actually happens in the hour
No pitch. No deck. No junior associate taking notes.
You and me on the phone, talking about your business.
What we cover
Where you actually are. Not the version you tell your spouse. What your revenue, your hours and your customer list say about what the business is worth today.
Which of the six systems is bleeding. Attraction, engagement, service, retention, team accountability, or the math. One of them is costing you more than the other five combined. Usually the owner already suspects which.
What a buyer would do about it. I’ve sat on the other side of that table. I’ll tell you the specific mechanism he’d use, an earnout, an escrow, a holdback, a seller note, and roughly what it costs you at closing.
The first two things to fix, in order. Not a list of twenty. Two, sequenced, with what “done” looks like for each.
What you leave with
A copy of the 90-Day Workbook, which is the thing I’d otherwise be telling you to buy.
Your first two systems marked in it, in the order I’d run them.
And a number. What your business would likely fetch today, and what the same business is worth once it runs without you. Most owners have never seen those two figures side by side. The gap is usually the largest financial event of their life, and it’s sitting there unattended.
Thirty years on the other side of the table
I’ve closed more than $250 million in transactions, ranging from $1.5 million to $45 million.
Manufacturing, professional services, healthcare, contracting, franchises, government contracting. Seventeen of them I’ll talk about by sector.
I represent one side of the table. Yours.
One example of what an hour is worth. A seller was weeks from signing a deal structured in a way that would have handed a large piece of his proceeds to the IRS unnecessarily. Restructuring it as an asset sale with a step-up in basis put roughly $700,000 back in his pocket. Same buyer. Same price. Different paperwork.
Nobody catches that in the free consultation they never booked.
Who this is for
You’re doing at least a million a year in sales and you’re profitable.
The business runs through you. You’re the biller, the marketer and the manager, and you’re good at all three, which is exactly the problem.
You want out eventually. Could be three years. Could be ten. You don’t have to know.
You’re tired enough to actually change something.
Notice what isn’t on that list. Your age. Whether you’ve decided to sell. Whether you’re ready to sell.
The owners who get the most out of this hour are the ones nowhere near a transaction. A buyer wants three years of clean books and documented process, and you can’t go back and create last year. The best time to have this conversation is the one where you still have room to act.
Who this isn’t for
If you want somebody to confirm a decision you’ve already made, save your money.
If you’re looking for a broker to list it next month, I’m the wrong call.
And if you want to be told everything is fine, I’ll tell you now that I’ve never once had that hour.
One Hour. One Price.
Sixty minutes. One thousand dollars.
If you get off the phone and don’t believe the hour was worth at least five thousand dollars to you, tell me and I’ll refund it. No form to fill out. You keep the workbook.
I’ve been doing this thirty years and I’ve never had to write that check.
Most business owners get one shot at their exit. One.
The cheapest hour you’ll spend on it.
Prefer email? Write to Jim@JamesMontgomeryLaw.com with “Cup of Coffee” in the subject line and my assistant will send you a short questionnaire first, so we don’t spend the hour on background I could have read beforehand.
Not ready yet? Read the six systems and find out which one is costing you the most. It’s free and it always will be.
The material on this page is general information about how businesses are built and valued. It isn’t legal advice, and reading it doesn’t make me your lawyer. Every business is different, and the details are where the money is. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.