►EXECUTIVE SUMMARY  1) THE DUMBEST ADD-BACK IN 16 YEARS OF DEALS: A marketing company tried to add back $200K in "failed marketing experiments" to inflate EBITDA from $600K to $1M. Let that sink in — a marketing company calling their own marketing spend a mistake. That's not an add-back, that's an admission of incompetence. 2) YOU'RE NOT SMARTER THAN THE PEOPLE WHO BUILT THE COMPANY: If the founders — who spent 20 years running a marketing firm — couldn't guarantee ROI on every test, what makes you think you'll do better? You'll spend the same money or more on experiments. That $200K isn't going away. It's the cost of staying alive. 3) SKIP THE EXPERIMENTS AND WATCH REVENUE DIE: The programs they kept running? Those only work because they tested dozens of others that failed. Stop testing and you stop growing. This isn't discretionary spend — it's oxygen. Any buyer who swallows this add-back deserves what happens next.