No. Most people start with a single, fixed-fee deal service, a Quality of Earnings, a readiness review, or a financial model. If it makes sense to keep us on afterward as your CFO and operating partner, we can. It is never required.
Yes. On a deal we work for you and only you, and we do not stay on unless you ask us to. On sell-side work we never take the listing, and we hand the client back to their advisor. Our read only helps if it is honest, so we show the add-backs we reject.
Deal services are fixed-fee, scoped to the work, with one number quoted up front after a short call. No public rate card, no meter running. Embedded work is a monthly engagement. Book a call and we send a scoped number, usually within one business day.
A focused sell-side review is typically about three weeks from the last critical item on our request list. Larger scopes run longer. We reply to every inquiry within one business day.
For deal services, lower-middle-market and Main Street Indiana deals, roughly $500K to $3M EBITDA (up to about $30M in revenue). For embedded work, established owners roughly $3M to $30M in revenue. It is our sweet spot, not a hard limit; if you are near the edges, ask.
Different jobs. Your CPA reports the past. Your broker runs the sale. We prove and build the value in between, and we work alongside both. We are not brokers or investment bankers, and we do not compete for their fee.
Sometimes, and only where it fits and you want it. On embedded engagements we can align through equity or value-based pricing: a retainer for the work and a share of the value we create, so we win when you do. It is never required to work with us.
Advisory is senior judgment on a regular cadence, experienced eyes on the big calls. Embedded is both partners in the seats doing the work with your team. Embedded is the flagship, for when the business runs through you and needs operators in the building.
Pre-revenue startups, and owners who just want bookkeeping or steady-state back-office help. To be clear, an established, revenue-generating business raising capital to grow is very much a fit. By “startup” we mean pre-revenue and unproven, not a real business that is growing. If you are not sure, ask, and if we are not the right fit we will point you somewhere better.
Yes, and a good share of our buy-side work is exactly that. Searchers and ETA buyers get quoted like a fund three times their size, or get thin work. QoEs start at $7,500, and pre-LOI most searchers start with a Red-Flag Review, which costs less and is credited toward the full scope if the deal proceeds.
Lenders set their own requirements, so no honest firm can promise you an approval. We build to what an SBA 7(a) lender opens first: proof of cash, a defensible working-capital peg, debt service calculated independently, and the add-backs we rejected shown next to the ones we allowed. A clean report and a declined loan are compatible outcomes, which is why lender readiness is its own piece of work.
A focused review is typically about three weeks from the last critical item on our request list, and a Red-Flag screen is much faster. We run two operational engagements at a time by design, so if the calendar is full we will give you the date rather than take the work and be late.
A Quality of Earnings proves the earnings were real. It is historical by design. Operational and commercial due diligence, what we call the operator read, tests whether those earnings survive new ownership: owner dependency, customer concentration, bench depth, systems, and calls to the customers themselves. Most buyers at this size take both.
We are Indiana-first and in the work statewide. We do take deals elsewhere when the relationship or the situation fits, but Indiana is where we are rooted and where our operating knowledge is deepest, so that is what we lead with.