Gene is a composite from the book Buyer-Ready, built from real owners, with the figures rounded and blended. He ran a mechanical services company in the Northeast. One Tuesday in March he took a buyer's call in his own parking lot. Six weeks later, at dinner, he heard a number: fourteen million dollars. He shook the man's hand.
Then the buyer's accountants went to work. Gene's biggest customer was a property management group, 28 percent of his work. They had done business on a handshake for 15 years. The signed contract had quietly lapsed. A buyer can't bank a handshake, so every dollar of that work got marked down. After that and the other cuts, the cash at the wire was $9.8 million.
Plenty of plumbers have a Gene customer. A property manager who sends you every clogged drain in 40 buildings. A builder who hands you all his rough-ins. Good work, good people, nothing on paper. To a buyer, that is not a strength. It is a leak.
The free Map shows you where your leaks are while you still have time to fix them. The book shows you how. The Kit puts it to work on your shop.