🏈 THE SIDELINE

Look, most of us think being a good leader means being everywhere.

Every meeting, decision, and fire that needs putting out.

I used to think that too. If I wasn't in the thick of it, I wasn't really leading.

But here's what I learned watching businesses that actually scale and exit well.

Owners who create lasting success know they don't have to exhaust themselves doing it it all.

They build a team that can run plays independently.

You know what's wild about Belichick?

He's one of the winningest coaches ever, but not because he was some motivational speaker or went after flashy players.

He won because he built teams that could execute without him breathing down their necks.

Belichick set things up right from the start. Once gameday hit, his work was basically done.

That's the same move we have to make as business owners if we actually want to scale this thing and have real exit options.

👋 Hey again, I’m Kinza, and I spend an unreasonable amount of time studying how owner-operated businesses actually scale and exit.

This week we’re covering what it means to be a Head Coach leading your company.

Want to see where you stand?

You can take the free quiz here: 👉 Ownerquiz.com

Let’s dive in.

FROM THE FILM ROOM
🌎 Expand your thinking

• 330 deals closed and the biggest reasons they fail (Link)

  • 40%: financials overstated, customer concentration, declining performance, eating working capital (so important to work with someone who doesn’t misrepresent your financials)

  • 30%: seller dynamics (shady, backed out, etc)

  • 10%: funding fell apart

  • 10%: legal fatigue (stock v asset, working capital, reps/warr.)

  • 10%: buyer/broker/misc issues

• BlackRock’s CEO warns AI could be capitalism’s next big failure (Link)

• How to work w/private equity (Henry S. & 4 PE funds @ZoomInfo) (Link)…sneak peak: You don’t have to do everything they tell you

• $150 window cleaning startup to successful seven-figure exit  (Link)

• Process spatially. Learnings building a $40M rev roofing co (Link)

• BizBuySell’s 2025 report: SMB sales stabilized after rocky start. (Link)

  

  With more sellers entering the market and buyers becoming increasingly sophisticated, owners who prepare early will be in the best position to succeed. That means clean tax returns, documented processes, and reduced owner dependence.

🛠️ Tool Stack of the Week:

• Video generation: Synthesia, Google Veo, OpusClip

• Image generation: Nano Banana, GPT-4o, Midjourney

• Meeting assistants (I categorically refuse to recommend more of these)

• Automation: n8n, Manus

• Writing: Rytr, Sudowrite

• Scheduling: Reclaim, Clockwise

• Voice generation: ElevenLabs, Murf

• Music generation: Suno, Udio

• Marketing: AdCreative, AirOps

• Prompt of the week: Use this prompt to turn your client work and business decisions into LinkedIn posts that attract future clients (without oversharing or breaching trust).

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### Prompt: Turn Real Client Work Into High-Trust LinkedIn Content

**Role**
Act as a business owner reflecting on real client work. You understand how to demonstrate judgment and results without oversharing, breaching confidentiality, or turning the post into marketing copy.

You write like an operator, not a creator.

**Task**
Take the real situation, client interaction, or problem described below and convert it into a LinkedIn post that attracts future clients facing the same issue.

Focus on the **problem pattern and decision-making**, not the client, tools, or proprietary details.

**Output Structure**

1. **Opening line**
   A direct observation or moment from the work that signals relevance.

2. **The situation (anonymized)**

* What was going wrong
* Why it mattered
* What most people would have missed

3. **The thinking**

* How the issue was diagnosed
* What tradeoff or constraint shaped the decision
* What was deliberately not done

4. **The outcome or shift**

* What changed as a result
* Described at a high level
* No exact numbers or sensitive details

5. **The pattern**

* Why this issue shows up across many businesses
* What it says about how owners operate

6. **Soft CTA**
   A low-pressure line that signals who this is relevant for.

**Guardrails**

* No client names or identifying details
* No proprietary tactics or step-by-step execution
* No hype, metrics flexing, or before-after framing
* No emojis, no em dashes, no buzzwords

**Input**

REAL SITUATION OR CLIENT WORK
[Describe what actually happened]

WHO THIS POST SHOULD ATTRACT
[Type of client or problem owner]

BOUNDARIES
[Any details that must not be shared]

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BUILDING A WINNING PROGRAM
📈 3 Lessons About Scale From Bill Belichick

Belichick was crazy about a few things:

• Everyone knew their role

• Standards were crystallllll clear

• The real work happened in practice, not during the game

Once they were playing, he didn't override his guys every snap. He trusted what they'd built together and dealt with issues after.

In our world, that means he stopped being the person everything had to run through.

Great coaches don't add value by jumping in all the time. They build a company that works without them having to.

1. Systems scale better than star players

Most owners try to scale by hiring more people or buying more tools. The businesses that actually scale remove the owner from routine decisions. When the owner stops being the default answer, the business starts moving on its own.

Example: If your team asks "What should we charge this client?" every time, you're the bottleneck. Write down your pricing structures so they can quote without you.

Belichick would let talented players walk if they didn't fit how the team operated.

Same thing in business. If you're relying on rockstar employees or just grinding yourself into the ground, you're capping your growth. Good processes mean any employee can perform consistently. That's what lets you actually grow without everything falling apart.

How to do this: Pick one thing you do repeatedly and document the steps. Then have someone on your team do it without asking you questions.

2. Being clear means you don’t need to intervene

His players knew their role in every play before they ever stepped on the field.

When your team knows what they own and how decisions get made, stuff moves like cars on the Autobahn. You're not the bottleneck anymore champ!

How to do this: Write down who owns what decisions in your business. Not who helps or gives input, but who actually makes the call. If you're the answer to everything, start delegating one decision type at a time.

3. The post-game reel beats real-time correction

Belichick coached through film sessions, not by freaking out mid-play.

When you keep jumping in to fix things while they're happening, you slow everyone down. A better approach is to review what happened, adjust the system, and let your team run the next play without you hovering.

How to do this: Set a weekly review time. Look at what went wrong, figure out the pattern, fix the system. Then stay out of the way until the next review. Stop firefighting in the moment.

THE FOURTH QUARTER
💰 3 Lessons About Exit From Bill Belichick

1. Replacing you increases value

Belichick didn't design the Patriots around any single player.

When your revenue, relationships, or decisions all depend on one person (especially you), buyers see that as a huge risk. The more replaceable each role is, including yours, the more your business is actually worth.

How to do this: Make a list of everything only you can do right now. Pick one thing and train someone else to handle it. Then another. Keep going until you're not the single point of failure.

2. Document everything…like everything.

The Patriots didn't just wing it on instinct. They had preparation and playbooks for everything.

Buyers don't trust what only lives in your head. They trust what's written down, tested, and can be repeated by whoever comes next. Every process you document makes your business easier for someone else to take over.

How to do this: Next time you do something important, record yourself doing it or write it down as you go. Voice memos. Screenshots. Just get it out of your head and into a format someone else can follow.

3. The best handoffs are planned

Belichick planned for people leaving.

Exit-ready owners assume turnover will happen and design around it. If losing one person tanks your business, you don't have a transferable business yet.

How to do this: Identify your biggest dependency (probably you, but could be a key employee). Build redundancy. Cross-train people. Create backup plans. If that person disappeared tomorrow, what breaks? Fix that first.

Being a Head Coach like Bill Belichick doesn't mean you care less.

It means doing the hard work early so you don't have to intervene later.

If your business only runs when you're in the middle of everything, you're still doing the work instead of leading it. But when it runs because of what you've built? That's when you've actually created something transferable.

That's the shift that makes a business scalable and sellable.

FINAL WHISTLE
And that’s a wrap!

Thank you for being part of this journey…whether you’ve been here since Day 1 or you just recently discovered this newsletter, I want to say…

THANK YOU!

I appreciate you reading. It really means the world. And I hope you’ve been getting value from all these resources.

That said, I’m already cooking up tons of new stuff for 2026.

I’d love your input.

Drop a comment (or hit reply) and let me know:

• What are your biggest unsolved problems?

• What do you enjoy reading about?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Cheering for you,
Kinza