A family-owned broadcast company with $35-42 million in revenue faced collapse when both the CFO and controller resigned in the same week, exposing severe financial mismanagement. The company had never produced a budget or financial reporting package, operated on a decade-old Great Plains system with entirely manual processes, and had just refinanced $8 million in debt based on EBITDA projections that were off by $2 million.
When Enhance arrived, the company was losing $2 million annually in non-political years and broke its new bank covenants just two months into the engagement, threatening bankruptcy. Enhance immediately stabilized the accounting team, created the company's first budget and three-year financial model, renegotiated bank covenants, and executed a dramatic cost-reduction plan that eliminated $4 million from the cost structure over four years. The transformation included establishing an advisory board, professionalizing the family office's commercial property operations, and coaching the 200-employee company's leadership team in financial discipline and strategic thinking.
Enhance implemented a comprehensive turnaround strategy, starting with crisis stabilization and progressing to long-term organizational transformation.
Key actions included:
"We were fearful the company wasn't going to survive. But the model showed us a positive path forward, and we achieved it."
- COO
The engagement delivered a complete organizational turnaround, transforming the company from the brink of bankruptcy into a stable, profitable operation. Over four years, Enhance cut a total of $4 million from the cost structure, enabling the company to achieve $1.5 million EBITDA in non-political years and $5-6 million in political years.
The bank covenant crisis was successfully resolved, with the lending bank remaining satisfied throughout the engagement. The company avoided bankruptcy and maintained operations despite the challenging broadcast industry facing significant disruption. By implementing professional financial management and strategic governance, Enhance enabled the family to preserve their legacy business and position it for continued viability.
The transformation extended beyond the broadcast company to the entire family office, where enhanced financial controls and professional property management increased the profitability of commercial real estate holdings and ensured compliance across all entities.