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Why Informal Networks Still Drive the Most Important International Deals

I’ve sat in boardrooms across three continents and watched two very different kinds of deals get done. The first kind — the institutional kind — follows the script. Bankers prepare books, advisors file memoranda, lawyers exchange redlines, and the process unfolds in a structured, visible, and largely predictable way. The second kind happens differently. A dinner in Singapore. A conversation on the margins of a private conference in Zurich. A phone call between two people who trust each other because someone they both trust made the introduction. Both pathways produce transactions. But in my experience, the second kind — the informal kind — produces the better ones. They close faster, encounter fewer surprises, and leave both parties with something beyond the deal itself: a relationship that continues to generate value long after the papers are signed. Understanding how informal international networks actually function, and learning to operate within them, may be the most underapprecia...
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The Seller's Due Diligence: Why the Smartest Business Owners Audit Themselves Before Anyone Else Does

Most business owners think of due diligence as something that happens to them. A buyer shows up, sends a list, and suddenly you’re scrambling to locate five-year-old contracts, explain a revenue dip, and justify why your top customer represents 40% of sales. That scramble — reactive, defensive, and almost always painful — is entirely avoidable. The most sophisticated sellers I’ve worked with over the past 25 years understand a fundamental truth: the best time to run due diligence on your own business is years before you plan to sell it. Selling a Business Isn’t an Event — It’s a Culmination Here is what I’ve observed across dozens of transactions across North America, Europe, and Asia: the businesses that command premium valuations and close cleanly don’t just have good fundamentals. They have documented good fundamentals. There is a profound difference between a healthy business and one that reads as healthy to an outsider working through a data room. Both matter. But the second ...
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The Hidden Resilience Playbook: How the World's Most Durable Companies Think About Downside Scenarios

Most business planning is optimistic by design. Founders project growth. Leaders set stretch targets. Boards approve budgets built on assumptions that, taken together, require nearly everything to go right. This is not irrationality — it is the fuel that builds businesses. Ambition requires optimism. But after 25 years of advising businesses through recessions, geopolitical shocks, sector disruptions, and unexpected leadership crises, I have come to believe that the single most underinvested discipline in private business management is structured downside thinking. The companies I have watched endure the longest — the ones that are still thriving after 30 or 40 years, that survive leadership transitions and market upheavals, that somehow emerge from every economic cycle stronger — all share one distinguishing habit: they are just as rigorous about their downside scenarios as they are about their growth plans. They do not plan to fail. They plan for the possibility of adversity, metho...
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Why Business Owners Who Master Tax Strategy Outperform Their Peers

I want to be clear about something at the outset: I am not a tax attorney, and this is not tax advice. What I am is a business advisor who has spent 25 years watching private business owners make the same mistake over and over again — and the most expensive version of that mistake, repeated more often than almost anything else I see, is treating tax strategy as a compliance function rather than a business strategy. The owners who outperform over the long run are not necessarily smarter, better capitalized, or operating in better markets. Many of them simply understand that after-tax returns are the only returns that matter — and they have built their business strategy accordingly. The Compliance Mindset vs. the Strategy Mindset Most private business owners think about taxes once a year. They gather documents, meet with their accountant, and pay what they owe. Some push back a little, find some deductions, and feel they have done the work. Then they go back to running their business....
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The Power of the Warm Introduction in Cross-Border Business

There is a moment I have witnessed hundreds of times over 25 years of working across North America, Europe, and Asia. A company arrives in a new market armed with an excellent product, a credible pitch deck, and a willingness to invest. They attend the conferences. They reach out through LinkedIn. They send carefully worded emails. And then they wait. And wait. The response rate is dismal. The meetings that do happen lead nowhere. Months pass. They conclude that the market is difficult, that local competitors have an unfair advantage, or that cultural barriers are simply too high to clear. Then they watch a competitor -- sometimes a smaller company with a weaker offering -- walk into the same market and close three meaningful partnerships in their first month. The difference is almost never the product. It is almost always the introduction. Why Warm Introductions Are the Actual Currency of International Business In domestic markets, a good cold outreach strategy can generate real...
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The Strategic Prioritization Problem: Why Most Leaders Are Busy Doing the Wrong Things

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Why Family Offices Are Becoming the World's Most Sophisticated Dealmakers

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