The Dependency Report
How much of the business leaves when you do?
The dealership, the distributor, the dental group. The systems are on paper. The calls that make them work are in one head. The report shows you which calls those are, before a buyer, a lender, or your own family has to find out.
What the tax records show
When the owner of a closely held business retires or dies, its profits fall by about three quarters.
That is what U.S. tax records linking 11 million firms to their owners show. The drop is the part of the business that lives in the owner: the work, the relationships, the reputation, and the judgment.
Judgment is the part that can be put on the record. The report shows how much of yours already is.
Smith, Yagan, Zidar, and Zwick, Capitalists in the Twenty-First Century, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2019.
How it works
Eight calls. One report. No score.
Eight calls with you.
One for each area of how the business runs: decisions, people, risk, capital, culture, strategy, adversity, and succession. By voice or typed, on your own time.
Two readings for every area.
Who makes this kind of call today, in your own words. And how much of your judgment on it is now on the record, measured against a fixed set of questions. Measured twice, and both counts shown where they differ.
Where the record is silent, it says so.
An area your record cannot answer is printed as silent. There is no score and no grade, because one number would hide the area that matters.
You read it first.
The report is yours. Nobody else sees it unless you decide to share it.
$5,000, whoever orders it. You can order it for yourself. A buyer, a lender, or your advisor can also ask for one, and you still take the calls and read it first.
What the report is not
It reads what you tell it. It does not look at your staff, your customers, or your books.
Who makes each call is your own statement, and the report labels it that way.
It is not a valuation, and it does not say what the business is worth.
After the report
The report names the gap. A Basalith closes it.
An area that runs through you and is not on the record is the exposure. A Succession Basalith is how you close it: interviews in the areas the report found thin, a separate sign in for the person taking over, and a record they can consult after you step back.
The same method works for one person. Your own judgment, at work and at home, or a parent whose thinking you want to keep.
How it starts
A short conversation, then the first call.
Tell us about the business and what is coming: a sale, a successor, a loan, or nothing yet. We set up your report from there. We run a small number of reports at a time, and the founder reads every one.
Built by David Ha, D.B.A., Visiting Scholar at the Fisher School of Accounting, University of Florida. About the founder