Family- and founder-owned businesses across the metro.
Makers & movers
Machine shops, fabricators, food and specialty manufacturers, wholesale distributors, trucking and logistics operators.
Trades & services
HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, landscaping, and commercial services — the businesses roll-ups are actively buying across Chicagoland right now.
Professional practices
Agencies, accounting and engineering firms, medical and dental practices, and other owner-led firms with loyal books of business.
Most of our clients do between $1 million and $15 million in annual revenue, and most expect to sell within one to five years. If that's roughly you, the consult is worth the half hour.
Brokers get paid when you sell.
We get paid to make selling worth it.
We are
- An owner-side advisory practice. You are our only client in the deal.
- Flat-fee. You know the cost before we start, and it never depends on whether or when you sell.
- Local. We meet at your shop, your office, or your kitchen table — anywhere in Chicagoland.
- Focused on one thing: closing the gap between what your business is worth today and what it could be worth prepared.
We aren't
- A business broker. We don't list your business, market it, or take a commission on the sale.
- A buyer. We never acquire client businesses, so our advice has no angle.
- A pressure operation. If the right answer is "hold for three more years and fix these two things," that's what you'll hear.
- A generalist consultancy. Exit preparation is the entire practice.
Three steps, no mystery.
Free Owner Consult
Thirty minutes, by phone or in person. Your timeline, your numbers in broad strokes, and the two or three gaps most likely costing you value. Useful whether or not we ever work together.
Exit-Readiness Review
A two-week, fixed-fee review of the five things buyers actually examine — financials, owner-dependence, customers, team, and the deal file — ending in a scorecard, a realistic value range, and a prioritized fix list.
Sale-Ready Program
For owners who want the gaps closed, not just named: a monthly engagement that works the fix list until the business can be handed over — and priced like it.
Questions owners actually ask.
I'm not selling for a few years. Is this premature?
The opposite. Two to five years out is the ideal window — long enough to fix what buyers discount, short enough that the work pays off at closing. Owners who start when the buyer calls have already lost most of their leverage.
How is this different from hiring a business broker?
A broker's job is to sell the business you have. Our job is to improve the business you'll sell. Brokers are paid a commission at closing; we're paid a flat fee for preparation, so we have no incentive to push you to market early — or at all. Many clients still hire a broker or banker later; they just walk in with a cleaner company and a stronger file.
What does "exit-ready" actually mean?
A buyer can trust your numbers, the business runs without you for a month, no single customer can sink it, the key people are staying, and every document diligence will ask for already sits in one folder. That's the standard we prepare you to meet.
Do you help with the sale itself?
We stay on your side of the table through diligence and closing if you want us there — same flat monthly basis, coordinating with your attorney and CPA. We don't replace them, and we don't broker the deal.
Is the consult really free?
Yes. Thirty minutes, no obligation, and no follow-up sequence if you decide it's not for you. We reply to every request personally.