Steelman

You have the numbers.
We build the case.

To steelman an argument is to build its strongest honest form. That is what we do with financials. Send us the documents you have and the outcome you need, and we will hand back a live, interactive model that makes the decision obvious — and holds up when the other side pushes on it.

See two worked examples How it works

Turnaround: Days, not months; First working version inside a week.
Basis: Reconciled to source; The model reproduces your filed statements exactly.
Output: A live model; Interactive, private, shareable by link.

What clients send us

Scanned operating statementsA pro forma nobody trustsThree spreadsheets that disagreeAn aging reportRent rollsA term sheetCovenant calculationsLast year's auditA business plan from 2019The email chainBank statements as PDFsA rate calendarScanned operating statementsA pro forma nobody trustsThree spreadsheets that disagreeAn aging reportRent rollsA term sheetCovenant calculationsLast year's auditA business plan from 2019The email chainBank statements as PDFsA rate calendar

What you get

Not a deck. A model they can push on.

A slide with a number on it invites an argument about the number. A model invites the other side to try to break it — and when they cannot, the argument is over. Move the assumptions below and watch the answer respond.

Try it

A 100-room hotel raises its rate and empties out a little. Does it win?

Charge more and you will sell fewer rooms. Everybody knows that. What almost nobody checks is what those rooms were actually contributing once you subtract what it cost to service them.

Room rate$184.80

+10% on $168.00

Occupancy74.0%

4.0% below today — 1,460 fewer room nights a year

Why the empty rooms cost less than you think

A room you do not sell is a room you do not clean, supply, or pay a commission on. That is about $42.00 a night that leaves with it. Payroll, utilities and debt do not move either way — so every room you keep now carries a bigger share of margin.

The answer

Change in annual profit

+$270k

Revenue

higher rate, fewer rooms

+$208k

Cost that left with the empty rooms

1,460 nights × $42.00

+$61k

Change in profit

+$270k

Margin per room night

$142.80

was $126.00

Asset value at 9%

$10.0M

was $7.0M

This is the arithmetic we run on your own statements. The difference there is that every input is reconciled to a source document before it is allowed anywhere near a conclusion.

The problem

The case is already in your numbers. Nobody can see it.

Almost every hard decision we are brought into has the same shape. The evidence exists — it is sitting in an operating statement, a rent roll, an aging report — but it is buried in a format nobody reads carefully, and the person who needs to act on it has ten minutes.

So the decision gets made on impression instead of arithmetic. A lender calls a loan that had a fixable working-capital problem. A buyer walks from an asset that was mispriced in their favour. An owner accepts a number that their own budget contradicts.

We are not reporting on your numbers. We are constructing the strongest defensible argument those numbers support — and then making it impossible to look away from.

How it works

Three steps. Usually inside a week.

You send us the mess

Operating statements, a half-finished pro forma, three spreadsheets that disagree, a term sheet, the email chain. Whatever exists. We do not need it organised — organising it is the job.

We find what the numbers actually say

Every figure gets reconciled to its source and the model gets calibrated until it reproduces your statements to the dollar. Only then do we look for the argument. If the numbers don't support the case you wanted, you hear that first, from us.

You get something that makes the decision obvious

A private, interactive site — not a deck. The other side can move the assumptions themselves and watch the answer hold. That is what makes it persuasive: it survives being poked at.

See it

Two worked examples

Two complete engagements, built end to end. Client work stays private, so these stand in its place — same structure, same rigour, same thing landing in your hands at the end of it.

View both

Hospitality · mispriced asset

The Harlow Hotel

An 88-key hotel selling out its best nights at a discount its own budget planned. The case for paying more than the broker's number — and the evidence the seller wrote themselves.

Open the model

Manufacturing · covenant breach

Kestrel Fabrication

A profitable fabricator that breached a fixed-charge covenant. Not insolvent — illiquid, with $909k trapped in the balance sheet. The case for the lender to hold rather than act.