Ten Years of Goals and Enterprise Value Was Never One.
CSI Group sets objectives for one year, three years, and ten. Enterprise value has never been on the list. Revenue and profit were, and co-CEO Bobby Greco now thinks that was the wrong scoreboard.
August 21, 2026
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1 min read
CSI Group is a multi-service accounting and financial services firm, running several service lines under one roof, including financial services and tax work. It has an operating rhythm most founders would envy: annual OKRs, plus financial objectives laid out one, three, and ten years ahead, with the executive team measured against them.
On a call about growth and ownership, Greco stopped on a gap in the firm's own goal sheet.
His question was whether enterprise value belongs on the wall next to the rest, so the leadership team can see how its own actions move it.
The answer in the room was that a firm like this gets priced as a sum of its parts. Each revenue line carries its own multiple. Sticky, recurring, advisory-style revenue is valued very differently from work that resets to zero every year, so two firms with the same top line can be worth materially different amounts. Which means the number your team is chasing determines the price you eventually get offered.
Why it matters to you.
If revenue and profit are the only numbers on the wall, your team will optimize for them, and they will grow the wrong revenue enthusiastically and on target. Nobody is doing anything wrong. They are hitting the goals you gave them. Two firms with identical revenue and identical EBITDA can carry very different price tags based purely on which service lines the revenue sits in. Putting enterprise value on the scoreboard, and tying some compensation to it, is how you get a leadership team pulling toward the price rather than the top line. It costs nothing to add and it changes what people choose to sell.
“One thing we don't have on there is enterprise value. We just never did. It was always about revenue and profit. It was never enterprise value, because in our company, not all revenue is the same. Revenue for financial services, it leads to higher enterprise value than for tax services, for example. - Bobby Greco, co-CEO, CSI Group”
Your one thing.
Split last year's revenue by service line and ask which lines a buyer would pay the highest multiple for. Is that where your growth is actually coming from?
Collective 54 is where boutique service firm founders go to make more money, scale with less friction, and build a firm worth buying.
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