Understanding what the sale means for everything else.
We work with owners in the years and months before a sale, whether you are still evaluating options or a buyer is already at the table.
Most owners spend twenty or thirty years building the business. The decisions that determine what it all becomes get made in about twelve months.
Those decisions come quickly, and they are often connected. How the deal is structured affects what you keep after taxes. What you keep shapes your retirement timeline, your estate plan, and what you are able to do for your family. Running underneath all of it is a question that has nothing to do with the transaction: What will your life look like when the business is no longer yours to run?
Our job is to make sure the decisions you make in the year around the sale help produce a financial picture you actually want to live in, not just a closing wire that looks good on paper.
The work falls across four areas. Some happen early, some during the transaction, some in the weeks after.
Before the process gets serious
Long before there is a buyer at the table, there is work worth doing: understanding what a sale would actually net you after taxes and obligations, what your financial picture looks like on the other side, what moves are easier to make now than later, and whether the timeline you have in mind matches the financial reality.
During the transaction
Whether the buyer is a competitor, a key employee, a private equity firm, or the next generation of your family, the structure of the deal can matter as much as the price. Asset versus stock sale, earnouts, seller financing, installment treatment, charitable strategies. We can coordinate with your attorney and CPA so the financial implications of the structure are understood before terms are locked in. We don’t drive the deal, but we can make sure it fits your life.
The proceeds
When the wire arrives, you have a number that's often larger than anything you have managed before. Key decisions to make: how quickly to deploy it, how to handle payments that arrive over time, how to position across multiple years, and what reserves to hold for what is next.
What comes next for you
Many owners are surprised by how strange the first year after a sale feels. The phone stops ringing in a specific way and the daily identity that came with running a business shifts. The question of what you want this chapter to be is its own piece of work, whether that's retirement, a new venture, a board seat, or more time with family. We don't tell you the answer. We help make sure your financial picture is set up to support whatever you decide.
