Services
Leadership Transition
It's a great challenge to have. A growing business that's consuming more and more of your time. You need a way to hand off responsibilities to trusted team members while staying confident the work gets done in a way that's consistent with what's made your company successful. And you need to free up the bigger blocks of uninterrupted time required to think, plan, and build the relationships that drive your next phase of growth.
This is harder for owners than it looks. You've made every decision and known every detail for a long time. The instinct to stay in the weeds isn't a flaw, it's how you built the company. But there's a real difference between hiring someone to perform tasks and handing someone responsibility for an outcome. Most owners have done the first many times. The second is new territory.
A few things tend to matter most:
Information flow. You need to know how the business is doing without being the one in the room when every decision gets made. We design the rhythm and the reporting that gives you confidence without putting you back in the weeds.
Defining what "good" looks like, and where you stay involved. You know what a great outcome looks like; you've just never had to write it down. We articulate the priorities and standards that have always lived in your head, so someone else can deliver them, and eventually improve on them. We also get explicit about which decisions still come to you, so you stay connected to what matters most, and your team isn't guessing about where your line is.
Hiring and promoting for responsibility. Whether the right person is already on your team or needs to be recruited, the criteria are different from past hires. And when the role involves leading others, skill in the work itself isn't what predicts a great leader.
How we work together. We start with a focused assessment that typically takes a few weeks. That brings me up to speed on you, your company, and your team, and delivers a Leadership Succession and Information Flow Plan tailored to your next organizational milestone. From there, most clients move into an ongoing retainer to implement the plan. Every engagement is custom to what you actually need.
Exit Planning
You've built something meaningful, and you're starting to think about what comes next. Whatever your reasons, and they're as varied as the businesses owners build, finding the right next owner for a company you've poured your heart into will likely be one of the hardest things you've ever done.
Most owners come to a sale process without a clear picture of what's actually ahead. Brokers, investment bankers, and M&A attorneys all play essential roles, but each is focused on their part of the transaction — not on walking you through the whole arc before it starts. And there's a fundamental tension that nobody quite prepares you for: the sale of your company is deeply personal to you, and entirely analytical to the buyer. Bridging that gap, both emotionally and strategically, is most of the work.
The keys to a successful exit:
Understanding market value through the buyer's eyes. Buyers, both financial and strategic, assess companies through a well-defined lens, and it's rarely the same lens you use. Over-reliance on the owner, customer concentration, and a list of other factors quietly cap value or kill deals. Knowing how your company stacks up early gives you time to grow in alignment and go to market in the strongest possible posture.
Knowing the full process before you're in it. A sale involves a long sequence of decisions, conversations, and tradeoffs, many of which surprise owners only as they're happening. I walk you through the entire arc up front, so when the moments come that matter to you, you're ready for them rather than reacting to them.
Clarity about your "why." Before the process starts, you need to be honest with yourself about what you're really after; financial outcome, legacy, the right home for your team, what you'll do next, or some combination. There will be hard calls along the way, and clarity about your preferred outcome is what makes them answerable.
How we work together. We start with an overview of the sale process, then move into a focused readiness assessment of your company. This typically takes 6–8 weeks depending on information availability, and we deliver a Readiness Assessment across 10 dimensions of value, viewed through the lens of potential acquirers. From there, most clients move into an ongoing retainer to close the gaps the assessment surfaces and prepare for a successful transaction. Every engagement is custom to what you actually need.