Insights
What we've learned from the buyer's side of diligence and the owner's side of the desk.
Most failed business sales don't collapse on price, they collapse when the buyer's team starts verifying. Here's what they test, and the twelve-month fix.
Read →The most expensive line in a private-company sale is invisible: how much of the business lives in the owner's head. Here's how buyers price it, and how to unwind it.
Read →Three-quarters of Canadian owners plan to exit within a decade; fewer than one in ten has a plan. Here's the realistic timeline for readiness work, and what each year buys you.
Read →76% of Canadian owners plan to exit within a decade. A former CRA auditor explains the ten dimensions a buyer's diligence team actually tests, in the order they cost you money.
Read →One hour a month, a fixed agenda, a one-page output. The complete monthly management review that breaks the owner-dependence loop, run it yourself starting this month.
Read →What an auditor, and a buyer, opens first, and what good looks like in each one. By Svetlana Mysaka, Director of Communications. Version française incluse.
Read →A practical Manitoba guide to preparing an owner-run business for sale, what Winnipeg-area buyers test in due diligence, the timeline that protects your price, and where to start.
Read →An honest guide to fractional operations leadership for Manitoba businesses, what a fractional COO actually does, how retainers are priced, and the three signs you don't need one.
Read →What Alberta buyers and their diligence teams actually examine before closing, and the preparation sequence that protects your price in Calgary, Edmonton and beyond.
Read →A Saskatchewan owner's guide to succession and sale, widening the buyer pool, employee buyouts, and the readiness work that makes a Prairie business transferable at full value.
Read →Guide pratique pour propriétaires québécois : ce que l'acheteur vérifie vraiment, la dépendance au propriétaire qui fait baisser le prix, et la préparation qui protège votre valeur.
Read →What drives the price of a business exit readiness assessment in Canada, the pricing models to watch for, and what a fixed-fee assessment should include.
Read →What a fractional COO actually does, how it differs from consulting, what engagements cost relative to hiring, and how to tell if your business is ready for one.
Read →The Winnipeg owner's guide to preparing a business for sale, who's buying here, what discounts local businesses, and the preparation sequence that protects your price.
Read →La liste de contrôle complète pour préparer une entreprise à la vente au Québec et au Canada francophone : finances, documentation, dépendance au propriétaire, échéancier.
Read →The complete due-diligence document checklist for selling a Canadian business, what buyers request, in what order, and how to answer in days instead of months.
Read →A self-diagnostic for owner-run businesses. If you were unreachable for 30 days, what breaks first, in what order, and what each break reveals about where the business still depends on you.
Read →Financial diligence tells you what happened. Operational due diligence tells you whether it keeps happening after the owner leaves. A former auditor's read.
Read →A former CRA auditor on documenting SOPs so the work survives your best employee: what to write first, how to keep it simple, and why it lifts your firm's value.
Read →Your business moves at the speed of its slowest step. A former CRA auditor and Lean Black Belt on how to find that bottleneck, relieve it, and follow it as it moves.
Read →Most small businesses run on firefighting. A short weekly meeting and a one-page scorecard of four numbers turns that into a rhythm. A former auditor's playbook.
Read →If every decision still routes to you, the business is fragile and hard to sell. How Canadian owners build a second-in-command and delegate so the company runs without them.
Read →A former CRA auditor and fractional COO on the five numbers that quietly decide profit in an owner-run trades or construction business, and how to start watching them.
Read →A former CRA auditor on why a full, respected firm can still run out of cash: utilization, realization, lockup, and the effective rate that tells the truth.
Read →A former CRA auditor on the numbers that decide a distributor's survival: inventory turns, GMROII, fill rate, and the cash conversion cycle that quietly ties up your money.
Read →A former CRA auditor on the handful of numbers that decide whether an owner-run restaurant is profitable: prime cost, the food-cost gap, labour, pour cost, delivery apps, and the January valley.
Read →A former CRA auditor and fractional COO on the operating numbers that drain owner-run dental, physio, chiro, optometry and vet clinics: empty chairs, unbooked treatment, recall, AR over 90, and net collections.
Read →Turnover, burnout, a team that cannot decide without the owner: the friction we blame on people almost always traces back to a missing process. How a fractional COO dissolves it without a single new hire.
Read →A former CRA auditor on the handful of numbers that decide whether an owner-run shop makes money: quoted versus realized margin, throughput at the constraint, first-pass yield, and more.
Read →A former tax auditor on the gap between knowing how your business works and being able to prove it, and why closing that gap is the core of good operations.
Read →Most operations help installs systems over a team that was never taught why they exist. Provenance trains the team first, so the systems still run after the consultant leaves.
Read →Many Canadian businesses serve clients in one official language and run their operations in the other. That mismatch has a real cost in errors, rework and turnover, and it never shows up on the P&L.
Read →Since June 1, 2025, Quebec firms with 25+ employees must register with the OQLF and run francization. It is an operations project, not a translation job.
Read →A plan and French-speaking staff are not enough. See where active-offer duty breaks in Manitoba, and how an operations assessment fixes it end to end.
Read →Founders win on product and sales, then the operation cracks as they scale. A practical guide to the systems, rhythm and numbers that let a company grow without breaking.
Read →In Canadian private equity and search-fund deals, the thesis is bought but the return is operated. How an operating partner creates value after close.
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