Operator notes from the portfolio.
Where the next dollar goes
Capital allocation across a portfolio of small companies: how we decide between reinvesting, reserving, paying down debt, and funding new ventures.
Read →Stewardship is a better frame than ownership
Faith in business decisions often comes down to one idea: stewardship. How thinking like a steward changes the way I handle capital, people, and risk.
Read →Giving back without the press release
How a small company can build community involvement and corporate giving into its operations, without turning it into a marketing exercise.
Read →Why a staffing company takes its Christmas party seriously
Company culture in a staffing business is built in small, repeated moments. Why FLAT keeps its Christmas party, holiday contests, and team traditions.
Read →Cash discipline is a weekly habit, not a year-end event
Cash flow management for small businesses comes down to a few weekly habits. Here is the routine I use across a portfolio of operating companies.
Read →What I look for before buying a small business
Nino Mihilli on acquiring small businesses: the questions that matter more than the multiple, and the warning signs that tend to show up after closing.
Read →Build next year's budget from the bottom, not from last year
How small business owners can build an annual budget from real drivers instead of last year plus a percentage, and why that habit protects margin.
Read →Q4 is when next year actually gets decided
A Q4 planning approach for owner-operators: why the real decisions about next year happen in October, and the questions worth answering before January.
Read →Why the founder needs a brand of his own
Not for vanity. Because trust transfers between ventures and company brands don't — and in a portfolio that difference compounds.
Read →The scorecard we run every portfolio company against
Five questions, asked the same way every quarter. They're deliberately not the metrics you'd expect.
Read →Faith-driven leadership isn't the soft version
People assume it means being agreeable. In practice it's a standard that makes some decisions harder and most of them clearer.
Read →What twenty years of scaling and exiting actually teaches you
Not the lessons you expect. The useful ones are smaller, less quotable, and mostly about cash, people, and how long things really take.
Read →Knowing when to kill a venture
Persistence is celebrated and quitting isn't, which is why most founders hold on too long. Here's how I try to tell the difference.
Read →Hiring your first real operator
The hardest hire isn't a specialist. It's the person who takes an entire piece of the business off your desk — and most founders get it wrong the same way.
Read →Phoenix is an underrated place to build a company
I've built here for twenty years. The advantages are real, and so are two disadvantages nobody local wants to say out loud.
Read →Let the boring business fund the interesting one
Everyone wants to build the ambitious thing. Almost nobody wants to own the unglamorous business that makes building it possible without permission.
Read →Shared services: the actual advantage of a portfolio
Holding companies justify themselves with synergy and rarely deliver it. Here's what actually shares across ventures — and what stubbornly doesn't.
Read →How we decide what to build next
Everyone has more ideas than capacity. Here are the four filters we run a new venture through before it gets a dollar or a developer.
Read →What a staffing business taught me about software margins
Labor businesses teach you things software founders learn late and expensively. The most useful lesson is that gross margin is a habit, not a number.
Read →Why we hold companies instead of flipping them
The exit is the default goal in almost every founder conversation. After twenty years of building, I think it's the wrong default for most businesses.
Read →Building something that belongs in the group?
Partnerships, ventures, or a company you think fits the portfolio — we'd love to hear from you.
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