Scalewrights

The Buyer’s Read

A buyer will discount something before you ever see the number. See it first.

A buyer’s first hour creates discounts you never see until the offer is lower. Their team opens about twenty pages and prices what it can check; everything it cannot check, it discounts. Run that first hour on your own company before they do. Send the file as it is, the data room or the folder, the last twelve months of numbers, the plan, any letter you have received, before you reply to anyone. Inside ten business days you get a written read: every discount their team would take, named, with the page that removes it; your earnings four ways on one page; and the terms you have been offered or should expect, scored. Then two working sessions, two weeks apart, the second to set your own number. $2,500 flat, The Summit™ and its fourteen templates included.

Illustration: a cairn and a flag on a summit above the cloud line, and a sealed letter weighted by a stone on the rock beside it.
The letter arrives on a Tuesday. What you are paid is decided by what is already on the page.
What you get, step by step →

What you get

Your file, read the way a buyer’s team reads it. In writing. With every discount named.

The written reading

The twenty pages of the first hour scored on the Five Cs: is each one complete, is it consistent with the other nineteen, is it current, is it checkable by someone outside the company, and is it clear enough to be read once — and your band: below the cloud line, the approach, the summit.

Every discount, named

What their team would take off the price, page by page, with the page that removes each one and the chapter of The Summit™ that builds it. Sorted the way the book sorts them: fix, disclose, or price.

The bridge, and the strike

What any offer you have received — or expect — implies against trailing, run-rate, and adjusted earnings, on one page. Then the hold case from your own plan, and the strike price above it — set together in the second session so your board can adopt it before you answer anyone.

The three things to build, and two sessions

Not a list of everything. The three pages a buyer’s first hour will discount first, in the order the book builds them, each with the chapter and the template that finishes it. Two working sessions, two weeks apart: the first decides what you fix, the second reads what you fixed.

Who reads your file

Not a junior analyst. Not a template.

Every Buyer’s Read is done personally by Dr. Scott Kimball: twenty years as an operator, EVP of a nutrition manufacturer through its growth and its sale to private equity, then Chief People Officer of the acquirer, making six manufacturers across seven plants into one company. Since then, hundreds of founder decks and files read from the other side of the table.

One thing said plainly, because it matters. Scott also invests at seed through CLMB Ventures, which he co-owns. The two are kept deliberately separate, under one rule:

Scott is not your banker and does not take a share of the price. The Read buys his work, not a buyer.

Flat fee. No equity. No success fee. Never a percentage of your revenue, your raise or your sale price, and no introductions for sale, to CLMB or to anyone else. He is not your lawyer or your accountant; the agreement stays with counsel and the numbers with your accountant. He is the person who tells you what their team will discount, before they do.

How it works

Four steps. About fifteen minutes of your time.

STEP 01

Say hello

One email: your company, where you are — a letter received, a letter expected, none yet — trailing twelve-month revenue, and your Summit score if you have run the check. Same day you get back a secure payment link, with the engagement terms and the mutual NDA to read first. $2,500 flat — one price, everything below.

STEP 02

You send the file

Pay through the link: one tick at checkout accepts the engagement terms and the mutual NDA, and the intake sheet follows within a business day. Then the file as it is: the data room index or the folder, the last twelve months of numbers, the plan, any letter or term sheet you have received, and your own answer to “what would they discount?” As it is — not as you would want a stranger to see it. That is the reading.

STEP 03

The written reading

Inside ten business days: the twenty pages of the first hour scored on the Five Cs, every discount named with the page that removes it and the chapter that builds it, the bridge — what an offer implies against trailing, run-rate, and earnings — and the three things to build before you reply.

STEP 04

Two sessions

The first walks the reading with you and decides what you fix. The second, two weeks later, reads what you fixed and sets the strike — the number your board adopts before any letter is answered. A written punch list follows each. Mutual NDA both directions — read it here.

Book the Buyer’s Read →

The email is how it starts today; a same-day reply carries the secure payment link. Payment once we have agreed it is the right step. Written reading inside ten business days of a complete intake. Full refund any time before it’s delivered.

When the letter is real

The Re-Rate 180 — the hundred and eighty days from the strike to the wire, run alongside you.

The Buyer’s Read is my red pen on the file as it stands, and the strike set from it. When the letter is real, the questions change from what to fix to who owns day forty. The Re-Rate 180 is the engagement behind The Summit™: the 180 days from the strike to the wire, run alongside you — the calendar dated from the letter, the room kept current, the diligence sessions run with the founder out of most of them, the nine terms scored across every bidder, and the peg and the waterfall before the signature.

How the Re-Rate 180 works →

The reading is the way in — it tells us both whether the hundred and eighty days are the right next step.

Nobody answers a letter. Score it first.

A buyer’s team prices what it can check in the first hour. Find out what they will find — before they do.

Book the Buyer’s Read →

Flat fees only — never a percentage of the transaction, never a success fee, never a commission. Scalewrights is an advisory firm, not a broker-dealer, investment adviser, placement agent, business broker, or law or accounting firm; we do not sell companies, find buyers, or take a share of the price. The Buyer’s Read is educational and directional guidance — not a valuation, a fairness opinion, or legal, tax, or investment advice. The strike is your number, not an appraisal. Use counsel for the agreement and an accountant for the numbers.