Ep 319 5 M&A Crime Scenes That Cost You Millions with Holli Moeini
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Release Date: 04/24/2026
Ep 333 Why $2M to $5M Is Where Owners Lose the Most Cash with Brad Sugars
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Why $2M to $5M Is Where Owners Lose the Most Cash with Brad Sugars Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You just had your best revenue month ever. And somehow, this morning, you were still moving money between accounts to make sure payroll clears. If that describes your week, you're not bad at business, and you're not alone. You're standing in the exact stage almost every growing owner hits somewhere between two and five million in revenue, the stage where cash and profit are supposed to show up and instead go...
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Ep 504 Why Your Business Won’t Let You Go - Letting Others Take Ownership with Jason Henneberry
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Why Your Business Won’t Let You Go - Letting Others Take Ownership with Jason Henneberry You have hired good people. You have tried to step back. And yet, every time something important goes sideways, it still lands on your desk. Jason Henneberry says that is not a people problem or a systems problem. It is a dependency problem, and it has a specific structural cause. Jason is the founder of Dependency Design, a senior partner in a national Canadian mortgage brokerage with more than 600 professionals, and the author of "Why Your Business Won't Let You Go," which you can download free...
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Ep 332 Why 88% of Companies Leave Money on the Table with Per Sjöfors
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Why 88% of Companies Leave Money on the Table with Per Sjöfors Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You ran the math on a price increase once. It worked on paper. You still didn't pull the trigger. That hesitation is not a character flaw, and you are not the only owner who has frozen at that exact spot. Per Sjöfors, the Price Whisperer, has spent decades studying why owners who clearly should raise prices behaviorally cannot, and what it costs them every month they wait. In this episode of Profit Answer Man, Per...
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Ep 331 Problems Scale Faster Than Revenue. Here Is the Fix with Nick Avaria
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Problems Scale Faster Than Revenue. Here Is the Fix with Nick Avaria Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You hired people so you could step back. Instead, you are more in the weeds than before, the business feels harder to run than it did at half the size, and profit is somehow lower despite the growth. That is not a people problem. That is the missing middle, and it has a structure, a cost, and a fix. Nick Avaria has bought and sold seven agencies, all profitably. He has watched founders hit this wall time after...
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Ep 330 Why More Sales Won’t Fix a Broken Business with Doug C. Brown
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Why More Sales Won’t Fix a Broken Business with Doug C. Brown Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You had a strong year by every number that shows up on a dashboard. Revenue up. Team growing. More clients. And you still moved money around to make payroll, or woke up at 3am doing math that did not add up. This is not bad luck. It is what happens when a business is built on revenue logic instead of profit math, and the gap between what comes in and what goes out is not being measured, tracked, or managed. ...
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Ep 329 You're Losing Profit When Your Competition Uses AI with Peter McCarroll
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
You're Losing Profit When Your Competition Uses AI with Peter McCarroll Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: It is 9 am. You have a ChatGPT tab open in your browser. You have had it open for six months. This week you used it to write a follow-up email and summarize a vendor contract. And in the back of your head you have been telling yourself: we are doing the AI thing. You are not doing the AI thing. You are paying for a receipt. Peter McCarroll has built AI into the actual operations of a 15-year accounting...
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Ep 328 Your Best Customers Are Quiet-Quitting. Here's the Proof with Ethan Giffin
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Your Best Customers Are Quiet-Quitting. Here's the Proof with Ethan Giffin Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You haven't lost the account. The customer still picks up the phone. But somewhere in the last 18 months the reorder volume dropped, and nobody flagged it because the relationship still looks fine. That's how B2B quiet quitting works. Your customers don't cancel and don't complain. They just route their consumables to whoever made buying easiest, while keeping your account open for the orders that...
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Ep 327 The Messaging Problem Draining Your Marketing Dollars with Malcolm Reid Sr.
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
The Messaging Problem Draining Your Marketing Dollars with Malcolm Reid Sr. Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You hired the marketing company. You approved the budget. You watched the invoices come in every month. And the calls from the kind of customer you actually want are still not coming. That is not a platform problem. That is not a volume problem. That is a messaging problem, and it is sitting inside your business right now costing you buyers who researched your category, decided who to trust, and...
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Ep 326 The $1.4M Pricing Gap Most Owners Never Find with Emily Bowie
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
The $1.4M Pricing Gap Most Owners Never Find with Emily Bowie Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You pull up the P&L at the end of the month. Profit looks fine. Revenue is up. And you still moved money around to cover payroll. You’re not mismanaging your business. You’re making decisions off an incomplete report, and nobody told you what it was missing. Emily Bowie spent years auditing companies inside Big Four accounting before she started helping business owners see past the P&L. What she finds most...
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Ep 325 How to Grow a Flower Shop from 600k to 9 Million with Michael Jacobson
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
How to Grow a Flower Shop from 600k to 9 Million with Michael Jacobson Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: Most business owners think their profit problem is a sales problem. It often is not. More often, the real issue is waste, weak systems, and not knowing where margin is leaking out of the business. In this episode of Profit Answer Man, Rocky Lalvani talks with Michael Jacobson about how he took a struggling flower shop and transformed it into a multi-location business by focusing on supply chain, technology,...
info_outline5 M&A Crime Scenes That Cost You Millions with Holli Moeini
Find Rocky Lalvani @ www.ProfitComesFirst.com or email him at rocky@profitcomesfirst.com
Make more, work less video: https://youtu.be/
You have worked years to build your business. Revenue is up. You are finally thinking about an exit, or maybe someone has already called asking for your financial statements. But here is the problem most owners never see coming: there are at least five moments in the M&A process where money and risk change hands, and most sellers walk right through them without knowing they just lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In this episode, Rocky Lalvani sits down with Holli Moeini, a 35-year CPA and fractional CFO who has guided buyers and sellers through mergers and acquisitions at every level. Holli breaks down the five "crime scenes" of M&A, shares a real story of a seller who nearly lost $989,000 the night before close, and explains why your balance sheet is the most important financial document no one is reading.
In This Episode:
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Why the balance sheet matters more than the P&L and how errors there silently destroy your EBITDA
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The 30-20-10 rule for diagnosing whether your P&L is healthy or broken
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The five M&A crime scenes: financial story, working capital, due diligence, earn-outs, and integration
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How a seller almost lost nearly $1 million at the closing table and did not even know it
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Why earn out language written in "accounting speak" can cost you your entire payout
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What private equity buyers do with your accounting the day after close
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How EIDL loans created a 30-year albatross on business balance sheets
Key Takeaways:
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If your balance sheet is wrong, your P&L is wrong. You are making decisions based on half the story.
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Use the 30-20-10 rule: gross margin above 30%, SG&A below 20%, net income above 10%. If any number is off, you have a specific problem to fix.
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Being ready to sell does not mean you are selling. It means you have the financial discipline, clean records, and systems that make your business both profitable and bankable today.
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Every term in your deal documents must be defined in plain language. Accounting and legal gray areas are where sophisticated buyers take your money.
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You need cash to grow. Owners who extract too much from the business become unbankable when they hit a blip.
Conclusion:
This episode is a wake-up call for any business owner who has been running their company without looking at the full financial picture. Holli Moeini brings 35 years of experience to a conversation that most owners never have until it is too late. If you are growing but not seeing proportional profit or cash flow, if you have ever wondered whether your business could survive a bank's scrutiny, or if you are even beginning to think about what an exit might look like someday, this is the episode to listen to. The crime scenes are real, but every one of them is fixable. Start with your balance sheet. Fifteen minutes could change everything.
About Holli Moeini:
Holli Moeini is a CFO, CPA, and M&A advisor who helps buyers and sellers strengthen their companies, reduce risk, and maximize value at every stage of a deal. Known for blending financial rigor with real operational experience, she brings clarity and confidence to complex decisions.
Early in her career, Holli played a key role in a nine-figure exit, using GAAP discipline to improve performance and strengthen valuation. That experience shaped her precise, transparent approach to value creation. As an EVP and CFO, she led finance, operations, IT, security, and companywide strategy, guiding organic growth, acquisitions, and major systems implementations. She understands what it takes to run a business, not just analyze one.
Most recently, Holli helped a founder move from not being ready to sell to a successful eight-figure exit in 12 months, uncovering and protecting millions of dollars of value while keeping risk balanced from preparation through closing. A graduate of Pacific Lutheran University, Holli is trusted for her steady leadership, practical insight, and ability to simplify complexity while delivering exceptional outcomes.
Links:
Instagram: instagram.com/hollimoeini
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/hollimoeini
Profit Blueprint Calculator I Profit Comes First: https://lp.profitcomesfirst.com/profitblueprintcalc-page
Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@profitanswerman
Sign up to be notified when the next cohort of the Profit First Experience Course is available!
Free Copy of the Profit Blueprint Book: https://lp.profitcomesfirst.com/landing-page-page
Monthly Newsletter signup: https://lp.profitcomesfirst.com/newsletter-signup
Relay Bank (affiliate link): https://relayfi.com/?referralcode=profitcomesfirst
Profit Answer Man Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/profitanswerman/
My podcast about living a richer more meaningful life: http://richersoul.com/
Music provided by Junan from Junan Podcast
Any financial advice is for educational purposes only and you should consult with an expert for your specific needs.