I built Bedrock for the wrong customer

We launched a new company this spring, and I thought I knew exactly who our customer was.

I was totally wrong.

And the business is better for it.

The idea was simple. Bedrock does quality of earnings work — basically, the deep financial diligence you run on a business before you buy it.

I knew there was a need.

And I’ve spent years building an audience full of people buying businesses through my conference, my various social media channels, this newsletter, and 500+ episodes of the Acquisitions Anonymous podcast.

So it seemed obvious: business buyers would be our customers.

Instead, the phone started ringing with sellers.

Brokers and owners who weren't buying anything. They wanted to sell, and they wanted help getting the deal across the finish line.

Here's what I missed: buyers and sellers want opposite things.

A buyer wants a steal of a deal. A seller wants a fair one. But more than that, they want certainty that the deal actually closes.

Why? Because while a buyer can be looking at lots of deals at once, a seller usually has just one thing to sell: the business they've spent their life building.

That asymmetry changes everything. Nobody wants to spend nine months selling a company only to watch it collapse at the closing table.

So sellers started hiring us before they ever went to market.

They'd commission a sell-side QoE, get their own books buttoned up, and walk into the process with independently-proven numbers so there were no surprises down the road.

Smart. Boring. Effective.

I built the thing for buyers, and the sellers showed up. Happy to be wrong about that one.

When you're selling a business, certainty of close is worth more than the last dollar of price.

If selling your business is anywhere on your five-year horizon, imagine a buyer opening your books tomorrow.

Pull last year's P&L.

Find every add-back, every owner perk, every "we'll explain that one later" line item.

Write down how you'd defend each one to a skeptical stranger holding a check.

Because most deals die on trust, not price. Messy numbers make a buyer wonder what else is messy.

If you’re interested, Bedrock CEO Will McCurdy wrote a great article on the Bedrock site:

The Seller's Guide to Surviving a Quality of Earnings Review.

Thanks!

Michael

P.S. And if you’re buying or selling a business between $1M-$40M, Will does great work. Fast turnarounds and flat fee pricing. You can book a call with him here.

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