Business owners
Most of your wealth has your company's name on it
Your balance sheet, your income, and your identity all point at the same asset. Planning has to start with that concentration rather than ignore it.
Sound familiar
What people in your position bring us
The company is the portfolio
Years of profit went back into the business because that was the best available return. It also means one asset carries your income, your net worth, and your retirement at the same time.
You do not know what a buyer would pay
Most owners have a number in mind. Whether it matches what the market would pay, and what specifically drives the difference, is answerable well before you ever go to market.
The same price, very different outcomes
Deal structure, purchase price allocation, escrow, and earnouts decide what you keep from an identical headline number. Those terms get negotiated under time pressure unless you understood them first.
Planning windows that close
Certain gifting, trust, and charitable strategies need to be in place well before a sale is imminent. Once a letter of intent exists, the list of available options gets considerably shorter.
Agreements without funding behind them
A buy-sell agreement your attorney drafted is an intention until there is money to execute it. The same is true of key-person exposure on whoever the business cannot afford to lose.
Retirement plans left at the default
The plan you set up when the company was smaller may no longer suit your income or your goals. There are structures that let owners contribute far more, and they are frequently unexplored.
Personal and business finances tangled
Guarantees, loans between you and the company, and property held in mixed ways. It complicates a sale, and it complicates your estate.
No succession conversation yet
Whether it is family, a partner, or a sale to a third party, the plan usually exists in your head. Everyone else is guessing.
Where we start
Working back from the exit
The first question is not what the business is worth. It is what you need, which comes from what you actually spend and how long the money has to last. That produces a target the transaction has to clear.
Then we look at the gap between that number and what a buyer would likely pay today, and at what would close it. Customer concentration, dependence on you personally, and messy financials all show up in a multiple, and each is improvable with a two or three year runway.
Alongside that runs the personal work: getting wealth outside the business, funding the agreements that already exist on paper, and using the planning window before a deal is on the table. Your attorney and CPA handle the transaction. We hold your outcome.
The work that follows
What we usually end up covering
- What this involves →
Business exit planning
Two owners can sign the same purchase price and keep different amounts, sometimes by a wide margin. The difference is structure, timing, and planning that happened years earlier.
- What this involves →
Tax strategy
Most tax advice assumes you own a business. When your income is a paycheck, the levers are fewer, and using them depends entirely on timing.
- What this involves →
Estate & legacy
Most estate problems we find are not missing documents. They are documents that no longer match the accounts, the titling, or the family.
- What this involves →
Life insurance & cash value
The useful order is obligation first, product second. Most people meet it the other way around, which is why the subject carries so much suspicion.
- What this involves →
Retirement income
It is the question most people ask late and quietly. Answering it properly takes an afternoon, and the answer changes how you feel about the next ten years.
- What this involves →
Investment management
Allocation is a consequence of what your money has to do and when. Reversing that order is how people end up with a portfolio that has nothing to do with their life.
Free tool
At what age does work become optional?
The question most people ask late and quietly. It has a specific answer, and five inputs will get you close enough to know whether the date is where you assumed. If a business is the asset that funds it, there is a field for what a sale would net.
- Age today
- 45
- Invested
- $1,200,000
- Added each year
- $90,000
- Spending target
- $180,000
- Work becomes optional
- 61
How this starts
Three steps, and the first one costs you an hour
Step 01
Tell us your story
About an hour, no cost, no obligation to do anything afterward.
- How you got to this point, in your own words. Career, family, the decisions that shaped the last ten years.
- What keeps your attention at odd hours. Usually it is more specific than money in general.
- What success looks like to you. Not a number we hand you, the version you would describe to a friend.
- Who is already in your corner: your CPA, your attorney, anyone else we should be working alongside.
Straight about money
The first meeting is free
If we go ahead together, planning carries a fee, and you will know the number before you commit to anything. For households above $1 million in assets we manage, it is typically waived.
Straight answers
Business owners: common questions
Three years out is a reasonable target and five is better. The transaction itself is not what needs the runway; the preparation is. Improving the metrics a buyer prices takes time, and several gifting and trust strategies must be implemented well before a sale is imminent to be useful. Starting after a letter of intent still helps, with fewer options on the table.
A formal valuation is the precise answer and there are situations that call for one. Before that, an informed range based on your industry, size, margins, growth, and comparable transactions is usually enough to plan against. What matters most is understanding which specific factors are pushing your multiple up or down, because those are the ones you can work on.
Only if it is funded. An agreement establishes what should happen when an owner dies, becomes disabled, or leaves; it does not by itself produce the money to buy that owner's interest. Reviewing whether funding exists, whether the valuation method still makes sense, and whether the agreement matches your current ownership is a short exercise that prevents a serious problem.
That is usually the central work. It includes choosing a retirement plan structure the company can support and that fits your income, moving profit into assets that do not depend on the business, and making sure the concentration you are carrying is a deliberate decision rather than an accumulated one.
This material is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as tax, legal, or investment advice. Neither GGM Wealth Advisors nor Cambridge provides tax or legal advice. Please consult a qualified professional about your specific situation. Estimates are illustrative, based solely on the figures you enter and simplified assumptions. Your actual results will differ.
Let's start with a conversation
Bring whatever is on your mind: a vest date you are unsure about, an offer you are weighing, a business you might sell in three years. Nothing to prepare, no cost, and you will leave with something useful whether or not we end up working together.