Talent

The people available to build the business, from the owner down.

Family: Inputs
Position: A2
Scored: Recorded, not targeted

1:10

Founder to founder

Troy on talent

Troy on what a buyer reads in your org chart: enough capable people in the right seats to run the business at its next size, and the first thing to draw.

In this session

01The first questionWhen owners think about their people, they usually think about how good they are. That matters, but the first question is coverage: do you have enough capable people in the right seats?
02Leaders or bodiesCan your people actually lead, or are they part of the organization and showing up? Talent is everybody you build with, and the question is whether they can run the business at its next size.
03What a buyer asksA buyer will often ask for your org chart before your financials. They want to see what they are buying: a leadership team that can run and grow the company, or a team that is already stuck.
04The first thing to doOn a blank sheet of paper, draw the org chart for your next size, with seats and no names: CEO, controller, CFO, sales leader. You may see that a loyal employee has outgrown a seat; most owners see that long before they are willing to say it out loud.

Troy HoffmanCo-founder

Table 1. Entry 02 in the Exit Elements specification, version 1.4.
Symbol	Tl	Number	02	Family	Tl Inputs	Position	A2
Scored as	Recorded, not targeted	Compounds	None	Worked in	Build	Pillar	Owner outcomes

§1 Definition

What talent is

The people available to build the business, from the owner down.

Talent is the people you have to build with: yourself, your leadership team, and the staff who deliver the work. It is not a judgment on quality alone but on coverage. Do you have enough capable people in the right seats to run the business at its next size?

At $5M a business is often the owner plus a few long-tenured generalists. At $20M it needs functional leaders in finance, operations, and sales. The gap between those two pictures is a Talent gap.

Use cases

Deciding whether your next hire is a controller or a salesperson, recognizing when a loyal employee has outgrown a seat, and understanding why a buyer asks for an org chart before financials.

The inputs family

What every owner starts with. Inputs are recorded as conditions of the engagement rather than scored against a target; they set the clock and the budget for everything else.

What you start with. Time, talent, capital, and demand. Every other element is built against these four.

Meet the family

§2 Measurement

What the assay measures

Headcount and role coverage of the leadership and delivery team relative to the plan.

Critical gapLeaking valueDevelopingStrong34Today100Target

Critical gap: 0 to 24
Leaking value: 25 to 49
Developing: 50 to 74
Strong: 75 to 100

Figure 1. Sample assay for Acme Industrial: talent scores 55 today (developing) against a target of 55 (developing). Sample scores, not a client. Your own assay comes from the exit score and the valuation.

How the scale reads

Every element is scored from 0 to 100 against what a sophisticated buyer expects at close.
Risk elements are scored as control: higher is safer.
Inputs are recorded, not targeted.Applies here
Outcomes are derived from their feeding families.

Figure 2. Radar of the inputs series (Acme Industrial sample): the filled shape is today, the dashed outline is target, and the marked axis is Talent.

§3 Profile

The inputs family in profile

Today's score for every element in the family, drawn as one shape against the dashed outline of the targets. The shape shows where the family is thin: talent is the marked axis.

Tm Tl Cp Dm Pr Gm Rv Oe Rr Rt Cf Pd Md Se Ip Br Ta Sy Od Dd Cc Kp Lc Td Sp Ac Dr Sc Tx Es In Ap Ev Op Fr Lg

Figure 3. Talent at A2 in the standard table: column A, row 2. Columns group the families; the wealth series runs beneath.

§4 Position

The inputs series

4 elements share the family. Read them together: a buyer prices them as a group.

§5 Compounds

Talent stands alone

This element is not part of a named compound. It is priced on its own, through the family it belongs to.

§6 In the FNDRS journey

Where talent gets worked

The assay scores it. The process, the pillars, and the platform move it. Table 2 lists every place this element is on the agenda.

Table 2. Where element 02 appears in the FNDRS journey.
Where	What happens	Alongside	Go
StageBuild	Build the right foundation. Establish a company capable of becoming valuable rather than merely producing founder income. Baseline valuation, health check, constraint inventory, and the first roadmap.	Tm Cp Dm Cf Pd Od Dd Kp Lc Td Ac	The process

Figure 4. The route talent takes: FNDRS tracks its signals and reports on them; the price is not moved by this element on its own.

§7 In the valuation

How FNDRS tracks talent

Tracked Indirect

FNDRS tracks the signals behind this element and reports on them. The element itself does not move the FNDRS number; where it is report-only it never touches the price.

What FNDRS reads

Current headcount, with managerial coverage and staff dependence read as proxies.

Recorded as a condition of the engagement rather than priced on its own.

How the table meets the number

Find out where your talent stands

The exit score is the first assay: fifteen minutes, six pillars, and a first read on the elements that matter most.

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