There is a category in deal work that deserves a little more suspicion than it often receives: the “one-time” expense.

Sometimes it is real. Sometimes it is absolutely appropriate to adjust. But one of the quiet truths is that a surprising number of one-time expenses have a remarkable habit of appearing year after year in slightly different clothing. Legal expense. Consulting expense. Repair expense. Temporary staffing. Owner-related discretionary costs. Cleanup items. Operational irregularities.

Always explainable. Always exceptional. Always just outside the “real” earnings. And somehow always nearby.

That is where discipline matters. Because a business with a recurring need to explain away recurring costs may not have an earnings problem. It may have a truth problem.

Not dishonesty, necessarily. But softness. Convenience. Narrative inflation.

One of the quiet truths in valuation is that recurring inconvenience often gets mislabeled as nonrecurring noise. And when enough of that happens, the adjusted earnings begin to reflect aspiration more than operating reality.

Not every expense deserves to stay. But not every inconvenient cost deserves to leave, either.