PE Readiness
The strategy doc calls this the most time-sensitive item in it: cohort curves cannot be built retroactively. Starting the clock costs almost nothing; starting it late cannot be undone. Every month from here adds another permanent hole in the data room.
Do these five, in this order
Ordered by what each one unlocks, not by how bad it looks. Two rules:perishable before valuable — cohort tracking is first because it is the only item where waiting destroys something that cannot be rebuilt, and it is close to free. Then unlocks before outputs — four dimensions are arithmetic on top of revenue data, so they stay red until Stripe and Arketa are connected, and working them directly is working on symptoms.
- 1Start the cohort clock this weekHoursCole
Stamp every member with a join month and log cancellations against it. That is the whole task — a column and a trigger, not a project.
Cost of waiting: Every month of delay is a month of retention curve that can never be rebuilt. The data does not exist retroactively.
- 2Connect Stripe and ArketaDaysCole
Revenue quality is the heaviest-weighted dimension in the strategy doc, and four others — CAC, LTV:CAC, contribution margin, seasonality — are arithmetic on top of it. Nothing downstream can be computed until money and memberships are readable.
Cost of waiting: Five of ten dimensions stay unanswerable. A sponsor reads that as "they do not know their own numbers".
- 3Fix the $300 credit revenue policy before the next closeHours, with the bookkeeperMaverick
Unredeemed credits are a liability, not revenue. If they are recognised on sale, a quality-of-earnings review restates revenue downward and claws back EBITDA.
Cost of waiting: Every month recognised the wrong way is a month that gets restated in diligence, at the worst possible moment to be arguing about it.
- 4Put a 24-hour clock on every inbound leadBlocked — unblock the workflow audit firstCole
This is the only item on the list that makes money now rather than making the business sellable later. It is currently blocked because contact writes to GoHighLevel are switched off pending the workflow audit.
Cost of waiting: Leads already paid for go cold. Speed-to-lead is also the first operational metric a sponsor tests, because it is the cheapest proxy for whether the team executes.
- 5Decompose seasonality before a buyer does it for youDays, after Stripe is connectedCole
A spring LOI priced on peak-season trailing-twelve-month EBITDA gets repriced at the quality-of-earnings review. Doing the decomposition yourself sets the frame; having it done to you loses the argument.
Cost of waiting: The repricing happens either way. The only variable is whether you brought the number or they did.
What a sponsor will ask for
Ten dimensions from the strategy doc, each with the target it already set. Status carries an icon and a word as well as a colour — a red/amber pair is indistinguishable under the most common form of colour blindness, so the colour is never the signal on its own.
| Status | Dimension | Target | Where we are |
|---|---|---|---|
| ✕ No data | Revenue quality — contracted MRR mix Every dollar segmented into contracted MRR / deferred packages / transactional / retail | ≥60% contracted MRR | Money lives in Stripe and memberships in Arketa; neither is connected. GHL holds no revenue. This is the single heaviest-weighted dimension in the strategy doc. |
| ✕ No data | Cohort retention curves ⏳ perishable M1/M3/M6/M12/M24 survival by join month, 24 months deep | ≤4% monthly churn | Flagged in the strategy doc as the most time-sensitive item in it: these cannot be built retroactively. Every month untracked is a permanent gap in the data room. |
| ◐ Partial | Deferred revenue — the $300 wellness credit Issuance, redemption and expiry tracked separately | Liability, never recognised on sale | 910 contacts carry the wellness-card tag and 758 have it as their source — so issuance is partly visible in GHL. Redemption and expiry are not tracked anywhere. A QoE restates revenue downward if credits are recognised on sale. |
| ✕ No data | Seasonality decomposition Snowbird and seasonal memberships reported separately from year-round MRR | Decomposed before a buyer does it | Needs the revenue feed first. A spring-signed LOI priced on peak TTM EBITDA gets repriced at the QoE. |
| ✕ No data | 4-wall contribution margin Per-unit P&L with rent marked to market | 25–35% 4-wall, 15–25% unit EBITDA | No P&L feed. The strategy doc notes below-market mall rent is a normalisation item worth ~$576K of enterprise value at 8× — better to model it now than discover it in diligence. |
| ◐ Partial | CAC and LTV:CAC Blended acquisition cost against member lifetime value | ≥3.5× LTV:CAC, CAC ≤$180 | The lead side is measurable from GHL. Neither spend nor lifetime value is — no ad-spend feed, no revenue per member. |
| ◐ Partial | Lead-to-member funnel Documented, measurable conversion at each stage | Every stage instrumented | Leads and opportunities are measurable. The conversion event — consultation booked and showed — is not, because appointment outcomes are almost never recorded. |
| ⛔ Blocked | Speed-to-lead and follow-up discipline Evidence that inbound leads are worked systematically | No unworked lead older than 24h | Measurable once writes are on and outcomes are recorded. Today 1,620 opportunities sit open against 6 ever won, which is the opposite of the story this dimension needs to tell. |
| ◐ Partial | Marketing attribution Which channels produce members, not just leads | Cross-source attribution | 91% of contacts carry no source value at all. Attribution cannot be reconstructed for those; it can be captured going forward. |
| ✕ No data | Clean cash controls All revenue banked and substantiated | No unbanked cash | Unsubstantiated cash revenue is rejected outright in diligence — no exceptions, in a cash-pay wellness business especially. |
The funnel we can measure
One series, so no legend — the title names it. Everything downstream of a booked consultation is missing because outcomes are not recorded.
Revenue mix — the heaviest-weighted dimension
Targets from the strategy doc. Actuals are deliberately absent rather than estimated: money is in Stripe and memberships in Arketa, and neither is connected. A guessed mix is worse than a blank one, because a sponsor will check it.
✕ No actuals. Connecting Stripe and Arketa is what turns this from a target list into a metric.