Before You Open Your Mouth

The seller picked the lower offer. Not because they were bad at math, but because the other buyer just felt safer.

Kaustubh Deo writes about small-business acquisitions, but Issue 135 of his newsletter stopped me cold because it's not really about M&A. It's about something I see every day in consulting: people decide whether they trust you before you've said anything meaningful. They're reading your face. Your energy. Whether you seem like someone who's going to show up and stay, or someone who's going to extract and exit.

In deals, they call this the “punchable face” problem, and it cuts both ways. If you walk in projecting PE-fund energy (sorry to my money-bro friends) into a room full of people who built something with their hands, you've already lost. But it's not just acquisition. I've watched brilliant consultants blow discovery calls because the client read them as “here to bill hours,” not “here to solve this.” Same dynamic. Different stakes.

The hard part is you can't fake your way out of this. People are remarkably good at detecting misalignment between what you're saying and what you actually think. The only real answer is to actually care about the business, the people, and the outcome. That care shows up before you speak. It changes how you ask questions. It changes what you notice. It changes whether the seller (or the client, or the team) believes you're there for them or there for yourself.

Trust isn't built in the pitch. It's built in whether your face matches your intentions.

What does your face say when you walk into a room? Not your words, your presence. That's the thing worth working on.