I need to tell you something that's been bothering me.
Over the past 7 years, I've met with hundreds of business owners who built incredible companies. Owners doing $3M, $5M, $10M+ in revenue doing impactful work for their employees and clients.
And when they finally came to us ready to sell - ready for the freedom they'd been grinding toward for 10, 15, 20 years - their businesses weren't ready.
The financials were a mess. There was no system for tracking key metrics. The entire operation ran through the owner's head. And the valuation? Way below what it could have been with a little preparation.
Here's the stat that keeps me up at night: 70% of businesses that go to market fail to sell. Not because they're bad businesses, because they weren't prepared.
Think about that. You sacrifice the birthdays. The dance recitals. The family vacations. You wake in a cold sweat at 3 AM because of that surprise invoice that just landed, and now you don't know if you'll make payroll. You carry this constant feeling of running out of money even while the business is growing. The worst part? After all of that hard work, you can't even sell the business to retire.
It's the tragic ending to far too many business owners' stories.
Which is why I'm excited to share that we just launched our Exit Planning division at Breakwater, led by David Moon. David comes from UBC, PwC, and Brookfield - and he's seen firsthand what separates businesses that sell for top dollar from the ones that fall apart at the finish line.
Here's the difference between our Exit Planning and M&A Advisory practices:
M&A is for when you're ready to sell now.
Exit Planning is for owners who want to prepare — so when the time comes, you're not scrambling.
We're talking about cleaning up your financials, reducing owner dependency, building the systems buyers actually want to see, and improving your valuation before you ever go to market.
And here's the kicker — this work doesn't just help you sell someday. It makes your business more profitable today.
To kick things off, we're taking on 5 pilot clients. 2 spots are already filled, which means there are only 3 left.
If you're doing $2M–$50M in revenue and thinking about an exit in the next 2–5 years, this was built for you.
idea of the week 💡
Credit: IdeaBrowser.com
Problem: Twenty million Americans work nights (paramedics, police, etc.) then flip back to days, sometimes with barely a weekend to recover. Every sleep app assumes a consistent bedtime and a stable circadian rhythm. The advice is fine. It’s just useless when Tuesday starts at 7pm and Thursday starts at 7am.
Idea: 7 to 7 is a sleep coach that learns the rotation. Sync with Apple Watch or Fitbit. Input next week's schedule. The app builds a transition plan for the brutal flip from nights back to days. Night to day after 48 hours off? Delay sleep two hours each day. Block morning light until 10am. Caffeine cutoff moves to 2pm. The protocol shifts with the schedule.
How to build it: Build on iOS with HealthKit for sleep and heart rate. RPI's Light and Health Research Center has decades of circadian research that forms the science underneath. Onboarding takes three inputs: shift pattern, usual sleep hours, next start time. The system delivers a transition plan 48 hours before each rotation. Test with 20 ER nurses from r/nursing and shift work Facebook groups, tracking them through three full rotations. Store fatigue scores in Firebase and measure which protocols reduce exhaustion after the flip. Sixty transitions from nurses working real shifts become the dataset the recommendations run on.
How it makes money: Charge $9.99/month for individuals. First users are already in nursing subreddits and shift work Facebook groups, trading sleep hacks and hoping something sticks. B2B is where the model scales. Hospital systems pay $10K-50K annually for unit-wide dashboards tracking sleep scores, fatigue trends, and correlation with sick days and turnover. Burnout costs hospitals $50K+ per nurse who walks out the door. A tool that keeps staff healthier pays for itself before anyone runs the numbers.
friday fitness
give one of these workouts a try this weekend
at-home workout:
Complete 4 rounds:
12 push-ups
15 reverse lunges (each leg)
20 bicycle crunches
30-second hollow body hold
10 burpees
gym workout
5 sets of:
Back Squat: 5 reps
Barbell Row: 8 reps
Incline Dumbbell Press: 8 reps
Romanian Deadlift: 10 reps
Weighted Plank: 45 seconds
outdoor workout
For time:
Run 400m
30 air squats
20 push-ups
Run 400m
30 jump lunges
20 dips (park bench)
Run 400m
tweet of the week
a good reminder for anyone building a business right now
my plugs
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every second counts