I’ve been the buyer.

Most people who advise owners on selling a business have only ever sat on the seller’s side of the table. I haven’t. I’ve been the one writing the letter of intent, running the diligence, finding the problems, and deciding what they were worth as a discount.

That’s a different education. You learn what a buyer actually cares about, which is rarely what the owner thinks. You learn which problems kill a deal, which ones just change the terms, and which ones nobody mentions because they aren’t worth the argument.

And you learn how often an owner is surprised by something they could have fixed years earlier, for far less than it ended up costing them.

The track record

I’ve been operating businesses since 1999. In 2006 I stepped in to run operations at Sterne Agee, a capital markets firm doing $14 million a year across four offices. Over the next decade we grew to more than a dozen U.S. offices plus London, and from $14 million to $87 million in revenue, before the firm was sold.

A good part of that growth came through acquisition. We bought a number of firms — typically five to twenty people each, including one in London — and I was the one responsible for making them work after the closing. Leases, systems, compliance, technology, onboarding, the people who stayed and the ones who didn’t.

Since then I’ve acquired and operated businesses of my own in finance and real estate, and I’m still looking at deals. Which means the read I give you on your business is the same read I’d be giving myself if I were buying it.

The pattern I kept seeing

The same thing came up in almost every deal. An owner had built something real — steady customers, a good reputation, profit that supported a family for twenty years — and then lost a meaningful piece of it in the last ninety days.

Not because the business was bad. Because the value lived in the owner’s head and nobody could prove otherwise. Because one customer was forty percent of revenue. Because the books needed a translator. Because the lease had eleven months left and no option to renew.

Every one of those is fixable. None of them is fixable once a buyer is already in diligence.

That’s why C323 exists, and it’s why the work happens years before a sale rather than weeks before one.

How I work

I don’t sell a system. Operational frameworks are like a good suit — they look sharp the day you buy them, then hang in the closet. I’m here for what actually changes.

Being a natural operator isn’t industry-specific. It’s knowing how to organize what’s there, find the gap between where a business is and where it needs to be, and get a team executing against it. AI makes that faster than it has ever been, and we use it — but it’s a tool, not the pitch.

I’ll also tell you what I’m not. I don’t sell businesses, list them, broker them, or introduce you to buyers, and I’m never paid out of a transaction. That’s deliberate. It means I have no reason to tell you the business is ready when it isn’t.

Honest read, plain language, and a plan you can actually work.

If you’re thinking about it, this is the right time.

bobby@c323inc.com  |  205-243-4056

22 Inverness Center Parkway, Suite 157  |  Birmingham, AL 35242