Acquisition Ready Every Quarter

Playing to Win

December 23, 2025

newsletter-title

Welcome to the latest newsletter
of Playing to Win!

My newsletter is designed specifically to help business owners like you grow your companies with tried & applied bits of business knowledge, all communicated in actionable, bite-sized chunks. I will share insights and advice aimed at enhancing your business operations, boosting your success, and allowing you to focus more on what truly matters. Let's work together to achieve your goals and make your endeavors a reality.

Key Points of the Newsletter

  • Run your company like it might be acquired in 90 days and your daily discipline will improve today.
  • Clean flow beats bigger floors; rearrange space and standards before you add bodies.
  • Use a 30-60-90 plan to baseline, fix flow, then lock gains with training and light audits.

Acquisition Ready Every Quarter

The best time to prep for an acquisition is long before you need one, because the levers that lift valuation are the same levers that make today easier: reliable cash flow, low operational variance, and a team that executes without heroics.
 
Begin with a candid baseline across five systems—Acquire, Fulfill, Collect, Develop, Enable.
 
Map the actual flow of work at different times of day, capture time-through-process and first-pass yield on what your customers care about, and photograph both best-in-class and problem spots so the whole team sees the same reality.
 
Baselines aren’t about blame; they are the starting line for compounding improvement.

For the next 60 days, pursue friction like it owes you money.
 
Rearrange the environment so work can start without hunting for tools, label what matters, and kit materials in order of use.
 
Document the “one best way” for the workflows that drive most of your volume—sequence, tolerances, and the single failure mode you expect under pressure—then add simple escalation paths so decisions land fast at each handoff. 
 
Shift your scorecard toward the leading inputs that predict quality and cycle time, because lagging complaints arrive too late to fix.

In days 61–90, cement the gains.
 
Train to the new standards, add lightweight visual controls where drift occurs, and run a short weekly audit that checks only the inputs that matter.
 
When a miss appears, correct it, update the standard, and train the change in the same week. Layer in a weekly operating review that anchors on your P&L and these few operational signals, and you’ve built a business that would pass diligence on any Tuesday afternoon.
 
Even if you never sell, you’ll enjoy the premium that comes from being acquisition ready every quarter—steadier cash, calmer teams, and customers who feel the reliability in every interaction.

Stay tuned for more insights in our next newsletter. Remember, it's the small adjustments that often make the biggest impact on your business's profitability. Here's to your continued success!

Stay driven to push your business forward,
Ryan Niddel