Defend Your Number
A buyer doesn’t argue with your number. Their team finds the gaps under it and prices each one down.
Defend Your Number closes the five steps under your number, Proof, Revenue, Independence, Continuity, and Endgame, with the tools, checklists, templates, and worked examples for each.
$500Bought one at a time: $586.59
It shows where a buyer looks and what moves your number. It does not value your business.
Defend Your Number closes the five steps under your number, Proof, Revenue, Independence, Continuity, and Endgame, with the tools, checklists, templates, and worked examples for each.
It shows where a buyer looks and what moves your number. It does not value your business.
From Ron’s articles in Forbes Business Council and Fast Company Executive Board.
★★★★★Home run for business owners!
“The author did an incredible job of understanding and communicating the small details that are so often overlooked by business owners. Ron Smith explains how the watch works instead of simply telling you what time it is and that distinction is crucial for any business owner looking to grow. ...”
Picture the owner who already knows
An owner (composite) had a number in mind and was sure of it. A buyer’s team did not argue it; they found the gaps underneath, a handshake customer, an undocumented add-back, a key person with nothing signed, and priced each one down. Defend Your Number is how you close those gaps first, so there is nothing left to cut.
An afternoon, at your own pace, with the tools doing the parts owners usually skip.
★★★★★Great book!
“Fantastic book. The author offered knowledgeable insights into businesses and being “buyer-ready”. A book that you’d reach for over and over in different phases of your business. Would also make a great gift!”
What you get
The Gap TableWith the calculator that totals itself as you type. Every cut a buyer would try to take, in dollars. On your screen tonight.
Every calculator and template we makeAdd-backs, buyer financing, working capital, the Evidence Lock, the Offer Arrived plan, the letter to your CPA, your Deal on One Page, your Trade Pack, the Quarterly Review, and all 18 working documents.
Know Your Number, in the mailBuyer-Ready, the paperback, and the Official Workbook in lay-flat coil.
The Buyer-Ready Playbooks
Six workbook-style guides, about 150 pages each, one for every place a buyer looks before they name a price. After the Gap Table, the spines spell PRICE.
- 01 The Gap Table.
Every cut a buyer would take, in dollars, on one page.
- 02 Proof.
Earnings a stranger can verify without trusting you.
- 03 Revenue.
Revenue a buyer believes will still be there.
- 04 Independence.
A business that runs without you.
- 05 Continuity.
What happens if you’re suddenly not there.
- 06 Endgame.
Your number, your terms, and the certainty behind them.
Printed to order. Your digital tools open the moment you pay.
★★★★★An important read for business owners
“As a small business owner, I know how easy it is to get caught up in the day-to-day of building a business and lose sight of the bigger picture. The idea behind Buyer-Ready is an important reminder to think strategically about the long-term value and future of what you’re building. A timely topic for entrepreneurs and business owners alike!”
★★★★★A smart gift for any business owner
“I gave Buyer-Ready to a friend who was in the middle of selling his business, and he told me it was genuinely helpful throughout the process. If someone you know is thinking about an exit, or just wants to protect what they’ve built, this is an easy book to recommend.”
★★★★★Great Book
“Great book and very informative as a business owner.”
What not knowing costs
Before any offer, a buyer’s team writes up everything wrong with your business. You never see it.
When a buyer gets serious, their accountants list every place they can lower your price. Then they use that list on the last day, when you have no time left to fix anything.
Three in four deals like yours take at least one cut after the handshake. When the owner wasn’t ready, the average cut is about 18 percent. On a $15 million deal, that’s $2.7 million.
Source: Cordis Institute Working Paper 001 (Ron is Head of Research at the Institute). Ron wrote up the Gap Table method in his Forbes Business Council article.
Your CPA keeps your books correct. This is a different job: making them provable to a stranger, which is what a buyer pays for.
Trades business, 19 techs. $3.1M in earnings at about six times: an $18.6M headline.
About a third of his number. Most of it is fixable. Not in the last month: in the years before anyone calls.
★★★★★Great Book!
“Gifted this book to a friend who owns a business and is interested in the selling process. They absolutely loved it!”
What is inside, and what each piece sells for alone
| In the box | Alone |
|---|---|
| Everything in Know Your Number | $379.59 |
| Deal Math | $49 |
| Offer Arrived Kit | $79 |
| Working Documents Library | $79 |
| Playbooks two through six, course editions (Proof, Revenue, Independence, Continuity, Endgame) | Included, digital now |
| Twelve months of the Readiness Report | Included when it launches |
| Total if you bought them one at a time | $586.59 |
| Your price | $500 |
That is $586.59 of tools for $500. Every line with a price is a price we actually charge for that item on its own. Lines marked included are not sold on their own yet, so they are not in the total.
$500, or three payments of $175 ($525 total). Anything you already spent on Know Your Number credits in full within 30 days.
This is for owners ready to close the gaps under their number. If you do not have a number yet, start with Know Your Number first, it credits in full toward this within 30 days.
Use it, do the work, and if you are not better off than when you started, email me within 30 days for a full refund. You keep the tools.
The Seven Steps to Buyer-Ready
When software sees that an offer is in hand, or that you plan to sell inside two years with real revenue behind you, you get one plain invitation to do the last mile with Ron and the Cordis Group team, the Cordis MRI. No pressure, one invitation, only if you qualify.
Then this is a physical, not a funeral. A buyer-ready business borrows better, runs without you, and is safer for your family, none of which needs a sale.
- 1 The Map
See every place a buyer would knock the price down, in about ten minutes, before you change a thing.
- 2 The Gap Table
Put a dollar figure on each of those gaps, so you are working from a number instead of a worry.
- 3 ProofDefend Your Number
Turn the claims about your business into evidence a buyer’s diligence team cannot wave away.
- 4 Revenue
Show that the money comes back next year without you holding it up, because repeatable revenue is what gets paid for.
- 5 Independence
Take yourself out of the daily critical path, so the business is worth as much the day after you leave as the day before.
- 6 Continuity
Lock down the people, customers, and contracts so none of them can walk when ownership changes hands.
- 7 Endgame
Have the deal file, the walk-away number, and the plan ready, so the offer finds you prepared instead of the other way around.
Buy on or before November 30 and I print and mail all six Playbooks, free. After that they are digital only.
The guarantee
Use it, do the work, and if you are not better off than when you started, email me within 30 days and I will refund you in full. You keep the tools.
$500, or three payments of $175 ($525 total). Anything you already spent on Know Your Number credits in full within 30 days.
P.S. Start with one tool tonight. The first one fits in an evening.
Your email stays with me and is never sold or shared.
Fair questions
“$500 is a lot.”
It is three payments of $175, and it credits back anything you already spent on the rung below. Against a business worth seven figures, where a single unfixed gap moves the price by six, this is the cheapest insurance you will buy all year.
“I’ll do it myself from the book.”
You can, and the book will get you far. Defend Your Number is the same work with the documents filled in, the order set, and the Readiness Report keeping score, so you actually finish instead of starting. The owners who stall are the ones working from a blank page.
“I already have an advisor.”
Then bring them the file. Everything here is built to hand to a CPA, an attorney, or a banker in the form they expect. It does not replace your advisor; it makes their hours count, because you are not paying them to gather what you could have gathered yourself.
“What if I never sell?”
Then you spent a few hundred dollars to run a tighter, more bankable, less you-dependent business, and to be ready the day the unexpected call comes. “Not for sale” should never mean “not prepared.”
- “Is it just PDFs?”
- No. Two printed books in the mail and calculators that total themselves as you type.
- “Is my information safe?”
- What you type stays on your device. The calculators don’t send your numbers anywhere or save them on our side, and the working documents are files you keep.
- “I already know my number.”
- You know the number you’d say. The Gap Table shows the number you can defend, and the distance between them. Walt’s headline was $18.6 million, and he could have told you that to the dollar. A little north of $6 million of it was sitting in the buyer’s memo. Knowing the first number doesn’t tell you the second.
- “I don’t have time for a project.”
- It isn’t one. Your first number takes one evening. Then five tools, not 18, in the order your stage calls for. After that, one sitting a quarter.
- “What if a buyer calls next month?”
- Open the Offer Arrived plan first. It covers what to say, and never say, in the first 48 hours.
- “Why not just hire an advisor?”
- You can, and a good one is worth it. Do the first pass yourself and their hours go further.
Not legal, tax or investment advice. Anything that touches your documents, your taxes or your money after a sale goes to your attorney, your CPA and your financial advisor, with a checklist of what to ask them.
No. Nobody honest values a business from a form. This shows you where a buyer looks and how to build your own defensible number.