Start at the
objective.

Choose the exit. Build the plan to reach it.

‍Discover surfaces the options. Design is where you select one — the optimal exit for this business, this owner, this timeframe — and everything works back from that decision.

Some things take two years. Some take two weeks. Some aren’t worth doing at all. Knowing which is which is the entire value of working backwards, and it only becomes knowable once the objective is fixed.

‍You get: exit path selection — buyer type, price, structure, timing, your role afterward · a prioritized roadmap sequenced by impact over effort · the targeted work specific to your chosen buyer · owner and resource mapping · a milestone plan to the target date.

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Close the gaps. Build the value. Take it to market.

‍The long phase, and the one that creates the value. Strategy, innovation, growth, and operational work — not as separate services, but as the specific things that move the number.

This is where owner dependency gets designed out. Where the commercial engine gets documented. Where the management layer gets built. Where revenue quality improves.
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Twelve to thirty-six months of work, done in the right order. Then the business goes to market. Which buyers get engaged, how it’s presented, what’s disclosed and when, and how multiple parties are managed to create real competitive tension. Expect one to three months of tire-kicking and negotiation before anything is on paper.

‍Deliver ends at the letter of intent.

You get: weekly sessions and priority support · the sequenced gap-closure work · progress reviewed and re-cut as reality intervenes · buyer engagement strategy and presentation · negotiation support through to LOI.

Who does the work: Closing the gaps is brand, digital, and commercial work — positioning, website, content, systems, the engine that has to run without you. How that gets done is your call.

Your own team may be able to handle it. Some of it needs an agency, and if you have one you trust, I'll work with them and hold them to the plan. Where it's useful, I can also deliver it through ske_la, my sister brand and digital practice — no hand-off, and no one learning your business from scratch. It's an option, not a condition. The plan matters more than who executes it.

Get every penny you’re owed — including the money that arrives years after close.

‍Defend begins at the letter of intent — the moment the buyer stops forming an impression and starts building a case. Often a case for paying less.

Everything before this was aspirational. Defend is the reality.

In deals of this size, the headline number isn’t what lands in your account. The rest sits in holdbacks and earnouts, paid over years, measured by accounting you no longer run. And the terms that govern all of it are written before close — while everyone is focused on the headline and celebrating.

‍The money you lose after the deal is lost in the drafting.

‍Then, at close, your leverage inverts. The buyer owns the products and the customers. Your team is being dismantled — your best people leaving or hired by the acquirer. You’re contractually obliged to support the buyer through the TSA while your own company degrades underneath you.

Every incentive the buyer had to be reasonable disappeared when the first cash moved. And you’re exhausted, because you thought it was finished. Most advisors leave at signing. That is precisely when you become most vulnerable. This period is brutal and all-consuming. It is also where the last of your money is decided.

‍You get: diligence preparation and response · anticipating and countering buyer tactics · holdback and earnout structure, definitions and measurement · TSA scope, resourcing and dispute terms, agreed pre-deal · retention of the people you still need · management of the post-close period through to final payment.