This page explains where the material on this site comes from, how I handle client information and how I am paid. If you are considering sending me your financials, you should be able to see how I treat information before you do.
Where the content comes from
Everything here comes out of advisory work with operating businesses. It is not researched and summarized from other people’s articles.
That means the examples are real situations with real numbers, and it also means the material is bounded by what I have actually seen. I work with owner-operated companies roughly between $250,000 and $5 million in revenue, mostly service businesses. The advice reflects that. Where something depends on facts I cannot know from an article, I say so rather than generalizing past what I know.
When I am reasoning from a pattern rather than something established, I try to say which. “In my experience” and “my general rule is” mean something different from a statement of fact, and I use them deliberately.
Confidentiality
I do not name clients, industries or locations. Not in articles, not in social posts and not in conversation with other clients.
Standard practice in advisory writing is to say something like “a client of mine in home services.” I hold a stricter line, for a specific reason: the businesses I work with are concentrated geographically. In a single metro, within a single trade, at a stated revenue level, “anonymized” stops being anonymous. Any two of those three details will identify a company to anyone who knows the market, which includes that company’s competitors, employees and customers.
So the rule I use is: industry, location and financial detail — at most one of the three appears in any example.
In practice I keep the financial detail, because the arithmetic is the useful part, and I drop the industry and the location entirely. That is why you will read about “a recurring-service business” doing specific numbers rather than a named trade in a named city.
Most examples are composites. Where a point is illustrated by more than one engagement, I combine them. A composite is not identifiable by construction, and it is usually a better teaching example than any single case.
I do not write about live situations. Nothing about a negotiation in progress, a price increase being planned or a personnel decision being made.
Nothing about individual employees. No names, no personal circumstances, nothing about anyone’s health, family or finances. Where a staffing situation illustrates something useful, it is described structurally: what the role required, what was missing, what changed.
Numbers are rounded or shaded except where the exact figure is the point of the example. When you see a precise number, it is precise because the calculation depends on it.
How I am compensated
I take skin in the game. There is a small advisory fee, set below what a fixed-fee engagement would cost, plus a position tied to how the business performs.
I am telling you this here because it is a material disclosure and it should change how you read the rest of the site. An advisor paid by the hour has an incentive to remain necessary. An advisor paid on growth has an incentive to be right and then become unnecessary. Neither is automatically better and both have failure modes. You should know which one you are reading.
Where I name a tool, a bank or a piece of software anywhere on this site, it is because I use it. Nothing here is sponsored.
What this is not
This is not professional advice. I am not a CPA, an attorney, a licensed financial advisor or an investment adviser. Nothing here is accounting, tax, legal or investment advice, and reading it does not create an advisory relationship.
The material is written for a general audience of business owners and it cannot account for your specific circumstances. Decisions about your compensation structure, tax treatment, contracts, employment practices or capital structure should involve professionals qualified in those areas. I work alongside those people rather than in place of them, and in most engagements one of my recommendations is to get better ones.
It is not a guarantee of results. Examples describe what happened in specific situations with specific facts. Your business is different.
Corrections and updates
Every article shows a published date and a last-updated date. If I change something substantive after publication, I note what changed rather than editing silently.
If you find an error, tell me. Contact → I would rather fix it than defend it.
On length and AI
The articles here are long, often several thousand words. That is deliberate. A short post on cash flow is worse than no post, because it leaves an owner believing they have understood something they have not. If a topic can be covered properly in 800 words, I write 800 words. Most of these cannot.
I use AI tools in my work and in producing this material, in the same way I use a spreadsheet: for structure, drafting and analysis. The substance comes from actual engagements and actual transcripts of actual conversations, and I read and revise everything that goes out under my name. Nothing publishes here that I have not personally reviewed for accuracy and for whether it reflects what I think.
I mention it because it is a fair question to have about anything published in 2026, and because I would rather answer it plainly than have you wonder.
Questions about any of this? Get in touch →