Nick Bradley

Most founders build great businesses but leave millions on the table when they exit.

Why? You’ve been optimizing for revenue, not enterprise value.

By the time you’re ready to sell, the issues that destroy multiples are already baked in - and buyers see them immediately.

I install the operational infrastructure and growth systems that prepare founder-led businesses for 8-9 figure exits.

Not “exit prep” in your final six months. This is 12-36 month transformation work.

The 3 Exits Every Founder Must Complete:

1. Exit the Chaos - Build systems so the business runs on infrastructure, not heroics

2. Exit the Operations - Develop leadership so you’re CEO, not operator

3. Exit the Business - Sell for premium multiples

Most founders are still trapped in Exit #1 when they decide to sell.

My Background:

I spent 10 years as a Private Equity CEO and Operating Partner across 27 transactions totaling over $5 billion in exits. I’ve sat on both sides of the table - building businesses and evaluating them for acquisition.

I’m also the author of Exit for Millions, the #1 bestselling book on building businesses for premium exit.

How I Work:

It starts with a Strategic Consult - a half-day intensive where I show you what your business is worth today, what it could be worth tomorrow, what’s limiting your value, and the roadmap to exit for big multiples.

From there, we work together through a structured 1-3 year partnership where I install the operational infrastructure and growth systems that transform your business into an institutional-grade asset ready for premium exit.

Ready to find out what your business is worth?

DM me or email jenna@highvalueexit.com

CEO & Founder, Exit Specialist / Business Scale-Up Mentor

We Help Successful CEOs, Founders, & Entrepreneurs Build High Value, High-Impact, Exitable Businesses.

​Our passion is empowering growth-minded business owners to scale rapidly towards a high-value exit and ultimately, freedom.

That’s why we’ve developed exclusive masterminds, full-service partnerships, and dedicated support to accelerate your impact, and give you back the power and control you deserve.

Our Scale-to-Sale Methodology is the result of 60+ years of combined experience with private equity firms and business transactions, designed specifically for rapid scale toward financial independence.

In working with us, you will gain the focus, direction, and momentum to intentionally and consistently grow your company’s value…

Giving you the leverage and power you need to generate rapid, impressive growth, and with it, the freedom to live your life on your terms.

PE firms aren't geniuses. They just know something you don't.

How to turn $10M into $50M in 3-5 years while you're grinding for 15% growth.

After 12 years in PE, I'm going to give you their playbook.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻:

𝟭. 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵

Not just any growth. Predictable, repeatable, scalable growth through systems.

You know, the boring stuff founders avoid because it's not sexy.

𝟮. 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗻 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻

PE firms are ruthless about EBITDA. Cut waste. Optimize pricing.

A 3-point margin improvement on $20M = $600K added to valuation. That's real money, not vanity metrics.

𝟯. 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴

Strategic debt accelerates growth without diluting equity. PE uses leverage intelligently.

Most founders are terrified of debt. PE firms use it like rocket fuel.

𝟰. 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰 𝗔𝗰𝗾𝘂𝗶𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀

This is where monster returns happen. I was part of a 12-acquisition roll-up that exited for $2B at 14x.

While you're obsessing over organic growth, someone's building an empire through M&A.

𝟱. 𝗠𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻

Move from 4x to 8x by becoming more attractive than competitors. Better systems. Stronger team. Lower risk.

Same business. Double the exit price.

𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀:

Most founders pull one lever: revenue.

PE firms pull all five simultaneously.

That's how they create 5x returns in 36 months while you're grinding for 15% annual growth.

You don't need to sell to PE to use this playbook.

Start pulling all five levers. Systematically.

That's how you build a business buyers fight over.

𝗪𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝟱 𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝘂𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀? 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁? 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗼𝘄.

#FounderJourney #ExitPlanning #InvestorGradeBusiness #HighValueBusiness #PrivateEquity #BusinessExit

I help founders build investor-grade businesses that achieve 8-9 figure exits | Former Private Equity CEO & Operating Partner | Mentor & Board Advisor | $5B+ in Exits

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Accelera Partners

Helping PE investors unlock people-powered value creation in their portfolio companies. We do this through leadership due diligence, assessment, alignment, and development.

Founder

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship

Winning Moves  |  Accelerate Value Creation

Book + online platform + advisory. Helping PE-backed companies to make value creation happen more consistently, predictably, and reliably.

Author & Creator

Various Growth-Stage Companies

Board of Directors

Alpine Investors

Principal & Operating Exec within top-decile mid-market PE firm. Within the firm, focused on portfolio management: eg. board leadership; growth & acquisition strategy; portfolio leadership & talent. Within the portfolio, took on several leadership assignments within portfolio companies in "moments of transition" — turnaround, carve-out, management rebuild.

Principal

Riverside Insights

Partnered with an amazing, purposeful team to lead the PE-backed carve-out of educational & clinical assessment business from a publically-traded publishing company. Achieved carve-out under-budget and ahead-of-schedule.

COO / GM

Beneco

CEO / Board of Directors

Citi

Consultant (Private Wealth Management Group)

Retirement Capital Advisors

Investment Research and Portfolio Management

Privately Held Business

Operations Management

Nearly two decades in private equity have taught me one thing: the game is changing. Fast. 

Gone are the days when investors could bank on financial engineering and multiple arbitrage to generate outsized returns. 

Welcome to the Value Creation Era of PE. The winners in this era? They'll be the firms that are surgical and systematic about driving value creation—and the ones that recognize you need the right leadership and talent in place to make it happen.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: many PE firms and portfolio companies aren't built to win in this new era.

→ Shoddy hiring and talent practices
→ Skipping org due diligence pre-deal 
→ No systematic approach to value creation planning
→ Failing to get the right team in place to drive that plan 

We see these same mistakes over and over. And early on in my own PE career, I learned the hard way that these things can be supremely costly. 

🚫 Lose precious time
🚫 Put value creation at risk
🚫 Leave returns on the table

Luckily, over years in the trenches at a top-decile PE firm—as an investor, operator, and board member—I figured out a thing or two about:

→ How to size up a target’s value creation readiness before investing.
→ How to get newly-acquired companies off to a strong start in the First 100.
→ How to ensure you have the right leaders in the most critical port-co roles.
→ How to develop leaders capable of meeting PE’s sky-high demands. 

In 2021, I made the leap: left a cushy role in PE to help more firms win in this new era. Through Accelera Partners, I help PE firms accelerate what I call "people-powered value creation" in four ways:

• Org due diligence - https://bit.ly/orgduedili
• Executive assessment - https://bit.ly/execassmnt
• Executive development - https://bit.ly/leadershipalpha
• Value creation planning - https://bit.ly/fst100

The bigger vision beyond advisory work? I’m building a constellation of businesses, projects and partnerships to help PE leaders accelerate people-powered value creation in their companies. Recent projects: 

→ Wrote the bestseller Winning Moves (the “defacto playbook” for PE value creation)
→ Created Ascend, a group-based leadership accelerator for PE-backed executives
→ Dropping a new book/product in 2025 on turbo-boosting value creation with AI
→ Teaching the next gen of value creators at Chicago Booth

Want to learn more?
→ My bestselling book on PE value creation >> https://amzn.to/3WsV0XP
→ Leadership accelerator for PE-backed execs >> https://bit.ly/ascendla
→ Loads of resources for PE professionals and execs >> https://bit.ly/dcremons

Dan Cremons

"Value creation" has lost its punch. 

Not because it's unimportant, but because it's overused to the point of exhaustion. 

Every IC deck mentions it. 
Every consultant sells it. 
Every board preaches it. 

This has diluted & confused the meaning. So let's simplify: 

Value creation = anything that creates equity value. 

And in a PE-backed company, there are only 5 ways to do that:

① Grow your revenue
② Expand your margins
③ Complete strategic acquisitions
④ Pay down debt
⑤ Expand your exit multiple

The rest is just details.

Driving equity value isn’t easy, but got to start with stripping away the fluff and focusing on the fundamentals. 

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Talks about #talent, #leadership, #humancapital, #privateequity, and #valuecreation

Former PE Investor & CEO // Current PE Advisor // Author // 𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘮𝘣𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘗𝘌-𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯

I’ve done the 8am CVG → LGA flight probably a half dozen times for work this year. But flying with a little travel buddy hit differently.

Been thinking a lot about work/life integration. And I'm considering making this a more regular thing next year.

Anyone cracked the code on how to do business travel with a kid in tow?

I relearned an important lesson this year: 

I was talking to a PE-backed CEO in Q1, and came across my notes today. 

As a first-time CEO, he's grown his company from $3m ARR at time of original acquisition to $30m ARR today. 2 recaps, and has grown equity value something like 20x. 

He mentioned something that stuck, along the lines of: 

"Many of the things that have driven our success I hadn't done before. (...) There were a lot of new challenges for me."

I was looking at my chicken scratch notes from our call this morning, and I got to thinking: 

I'll take...

→ learning aptitude
→ growth mindset
→ persistence 

...over a been-there-done-that exec who scores lower in those areas any day of the week.

When I wrote Winning Moves 3 years ago, a few firms declined to be interviewed. Why? "Our value creation playbook is proprietary." 

That's fine. But don't kid yourself: A value creation playbook is hardly like the recipe for Coca Cola. In most cases, that secret sauce isn't all that secret. 

Lot's of PE firms are running the same plays. 

Yet some still operate from scarcity mindset: "We can't share our playbook! It's our competitive advantage!"

A working theory of mine: 

The firms who proactively share what they're learning will win bigger long-term.

Why? Because sharing creates a flywheel. A virtuous cycle. 

Putting your thoughts & learnings into the ether will help: 

→ Attract talent
→ Attract investors
→ Attract target companies

It's like what happened in B2B with inbound a decade ago. The companies that taught the most also grew the most.

Cool to see that PE is catching on. Love seeing more investment in thought leadership marketing. 

Scarcity thinking = hoard knowledge 
Abundance thinking = share knowledge

PE Career Lesson #74: Results don't just magically happen. 

What some PE folks think happens:

→ Write the check
→ Share some best practices
→ Watch numbers go up
→ Collect returns

What actually happens:

→ People challenges
→ Execution roadblocks
→ Founder disagreements
→ Daily operational battles
→ Unexpected market shifts
→ Constant problem-solving
→ Unexpected customer issues

The gap is massive. And distance can create delusion. 

For this reason, my rule for any PE firm I'd one day start:

Everyone spends 6+ months in a portfolio company.

Not visiting. 
Not observing. 
Actually working.

You can't add value to what you don't understand.
And you can't understand from 30,000 feet.

IYKYK

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Apparently Winning Moves is the #3 most gifted PE/M&A book on Amazon. Who knew?

PE folks apparently love gifting this book. 

Show some love to the PE operator in your life this Black Friday. Forget the coffee mug. Give the gift of knowledge. 👊

Sometimes, a PE port-co mgmt teams just want to hear their board say:

"We've got your back."
"We believe in you."
"We trust your call."
"Go for it." 

They don't always need strategic input.
Sometimes, they just need confidence.

Ever seen a 100,000x MOIC deal in private equity? Found one: 

Got a message from a reader of Winning Moves. A CRO at a smaller PE-backed software biz. 

He paid $10 for the book. 

Said the book helped give him the confidence to pull the pricing lever (chapter 9): 

• Ending excessive discounting 
• Shifting to value-based pricing 
• Raising price after years of no change 

Result: $1M+ boost to Y1 ARR & EBITDA.

LOVE seeing people put these ideas into action and capture big gains. 

$10 book → $1M+ in value

Cool to see new data from the World Economic Forum backing up what’s been our hunch since we started our Ascend executive accelerator:

The skills expected to matter most by 2030 aren’t technical. 
They’re leadership and human.

In the top-right quadrant (skills that are both core today and growing in importance):

→ Leadership & social influence
→ Resilience, flexibility & agility
→ Motivation & self-awareness
→ Empathy & active listening
→ Talent management

That list looks a lot like the focus areas we’ve been building around in Ascend.
Excited to keep helping more PE execs skate to where the puck is going.

(Info about the program is in the comments below.)

I'm inventing a new LinkedIn term: "value-jack" (v.) (val·yew·jak)

It’s when a service provider latches onto some random subpoint in your post, bends it just enough to make it about their offering, and drops a two-paragraph sales pitch disguised as a comment.

Time to settle the greatest, nerdiest, most consequential debate of the modern PE era: 

"EBITDA" = 

A) EE-buh-duh 

B) EE-bit-dah 

C) EH-buh-dah 

D) EH-bit-dah 

E) EE-bit-dee-A 

F) Some questions are better left unanswered


(P.S. If you say "EH-buh-dah" we need to talk)

Struggling to retain good people in your company? Welp, you don’t actually have a “retention” problem...

You have a: 

→ Trust problem
→ Cultural problem
→ Leadership problem
→ Recognition problem
→ Compensation problem
→ Employee experience problem
→ Employee development problem

Retention is not the problem.
That's the result of the problem.

Hot take: Human psychology should be a prereq in ANY business curriculum. It is very difficult to...

→ Hire well
→ Built trust
→ Lead others
→ Drive change
→ Sell effectively
→ Negotiate deals
→ Influence others
→ Make quality decisions

...if we don't understand how human beings (ourselves and others) work.

Wish I would have taken more courses on this stuff in my school days. But been trying to play catch-up since. 

Who's with me?

It's Q4 board meeting season in PE Land. 3 valuable ways a PE board member can contribute in a board meeting ⤵️

#1. - APPRECIATIONS
↳ Call out what's working and what's going well
↳ Acknowledge effort, progress, and wins publicly
↳ Reinforce the specific behaviors you want repeated

#2 - QUESTIONS
↳ Ask the question that unlock fresh thinking
↳ Expand management's thinking on critical decisions
↳ Challenge underlying assumptions without being combative

#3 - CONSIDERATIONS
↳ Share battle-tested experience
↳ Give management your best thinking 
↳ Offer new perspective on the thorniest issues

Most of us will overindex on #3. 

But an old mentor taught me a good rule of thumb:
Aim for a roughly balanced mix across all three.

10 powerful phrases I've heard empowering leaders use, and added to my repertoire. Add them to yours ⤵️ 

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10 Phrases Empowering Leaders Use

If you’re a PE leader, stop asking "What should our AI strategy be?" It's the wrong question. 

Here's why:

An economic theory of mine: avocado toast is a fairly reliable barometer for inflation. And my oh my... avocadoflation is hitting NYC harrrrd.

The Fed should hire a millennial and start brunching.

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