Buyer Beware

• 1The Grave With My Name on ItI bought a business. It buried me. Then I started counting the other graves.Why This Book Exists8 min read

Part I · The Paper Trap

Deals that were structured to fail before the ink dried.

• 2The Kill SwitchHis company was growing forty percent a year. Twenty-one days later it did not exist.Bad Deal Structure12 min read
• 3The Controlling InterestHe owned 28 percent of the company and 100 percent of the guarantee.Bad Deal Structure14 min read

Part II · Bought a Lie

Sellers who sold fiction, and the buyers who paid full price for it.

• 4The $600 TireThe margins were beautiful because the tires on the invoices were not the tires on the trucks.Seller Misrepresentation14 min read
• 5The Warehouse That LiedAn industry veteran, a warehouse full of profit that was never real, and the lender who buried him anyway.Seller Misrepresentation13 min read
• 6Mailbox MoneyThe fraud did not find the dumbest man in the room; it found the smartest one, because he had stopped checking.Seller Misrepresentation13 min read

Part III · Blindsided

The business was never what they thought they bought.

• 7Someone Else Sets the PriceHe fixed everything the deal hid from him, and then someone he never met cut his price by ninety percent overnight.Industry Blindness13 min read
• 8The Rolodex WalkedHe did not buy the revenue; he bought the two people who owned it, and people can leave.Key Employee Departure12 min read
• 9Buying the WeatherEvery number in the deal was real, and the weather that made them left the month he closed.Cycle Risk12 min read
• 10The Numbers GuyHe read swim-school numbers for a living, and the only books that ever fooled him were the ones he bought.Seller Misrepresentation15 min read

Part IV · Lessons Learned

The patterns behind nine funerals, and the checklist that breaks them.

• 11The PatternsNine buyers died nine different deaths, and every autopsy shows the same anatomy.Synthesis12 min read
• 12The Buyer's ChecklistThe questions each buyer in this book wishes they had asked, gathered into the list that decides whether you sign.The Checklist10 min read