Short essays on the specific, unglamorous questions that come up in a California operating business. Written by Marco Perry. No newsletters, no lead magnets, no tracking pixels.
Most retention schedules are copied from a template and never revisited. Then, three years in, someone requests an incident log from 2022 and nobody can find it. Here is the two-page schedule we actually use with our own clients, and the three questions that make it work.
Regulatory correspondence has a specific shape. The header tells you the agency's mood. The middle tells you the substance. The footer tells you the deadline. Most owners read the middle and miss the deadline. A short field guide.
Indemnity, hold-harmless, jurisdiction, unilateral termination, price escalation, and one small paragraph about insurance certificates. If you have signed a vendor contract in the last three years, one of these has probably moved risk onto your side of the ledger.
We send every client a written Friday update, whether or not there is news to report. Ten years in, this remains the single most valuable habit of the practice. Why boring, on-time updates outperform any client-portal software you can buy.
Diligence at the low end of the middle market is a different discipline than at $200M. The lawyers are smaller, the deadlines are tighter, and the tolerance for surprises is close to zero. The five-week schedule we use.
Most Central Valley family businesses will change hands in the next decade. Very few of them have a written succession plan. This is not because owners don't care; it is because the first draft is the hardest one to write. A short guide to the first draft.
A COI proves a policy existed on the day it was printed. It proves nothing about whether the policy covers you, whether it is still in force, or whether the carrier will actually pay. Three questions that get you closer to an answer.
The economics of a one-advisor practice are unusual. The temptation to grow is constant. Ten years in, here is what we have learned about why staying small is the harder — and, for our clients, the better — path.
We mail a printed digest of the previous six months' essays to retainer clients twice a year. No opt-in forms, no third-party mailers, no tracking. Ask on your first call.