Business Advisory
Where the business and the household meet.
Buy‑sell design and funding, key‑person and executive carve‑outs, split‑dollar arrangements, succession and exit planning, coordination with corporate counsel and M&A advisors.
The business plan and the personal plan never meet
For most owners the business is the largest asset, the primary income source and the retirement plan simultaneously, and it is advised by an entirely separate cast. Corporate counsel, the business CPA and the banker work on one side. Whoever handles the household works on the other. They rarely speak.
The result is predictable. A buy‑sell agreement exists but was never funded. The succession plan assumes a child takes over and the estate plan divides everything equally among three. An exit is negotiated on price and the tax structure is considered after the letter of intent is signed, when almost every lever has already been given away.
One plan, both sides of the ledger
An owner does not have a business plan and a personal plan. They have one plan that happens to be recorded in two sets of documents, and the value of coordination is highest here precisely because the two sets are usually written by people who have never met.
So the business is planned as what it actually is: an estate asset, a concentration of risk, an income structure and eventually a liquidity event. Decisions get sequenced against the household's plan rather than against the fiscal year, which is the only way the tax and estate work has time to matter.
How the structure is organized today and how it is designed to grow. It is drawn long before anything is built, and changing it afterward is expensive.
The team
Who does this work
Corporate counsel, the business CPA and any M&A advisor keep their work and are brought into the team. This pillar rarely replaces anyone; it supplies the coordination layer that was missing, and the household context those advisors have generally never been given.
The Wealth Strategist designs how the business serves the household's plan. The Orchestrator runs the coordination across both sides, and makes sure the agreements that exist are actually funded, which is the most common thing to find undone.
What this covers
In this pillar
- Key person life insurance
- Executive carve‑out plans
- Buy‑sell design and funding
- Split‑dollar arrangements
- Succession and exit planning
The coordination
Nothing decided here stays here
For an owner, this pillar is upstream of nearly everything else. A change to the business changes the estate, the tax position and the risk profile at the same time.
- Estate & Legacy Planning
The business is usually the largest single asset in the estate. Succession intent and the estate documents have to say the same thing, and often do not.
- Risk Mitigation & Asset Protection
Buy‑sell agreements and key‑person exposure are funded with risk instruments. An unfunded agreement obligates people to buy something with money that does not exist.
- Tax Planning & Management
Entity structure, compensation design and exit sequencing are decided years before a sale and determine most of what is owed on it.
The other five pillars
No pillar is engaged on its own. Each is designed by the Wealth Strategist and coordinated by the Wealth Orchestrator as part of one plan.
- Estate & Legacy PlanningThe plan that outlasts you.
- Tax Planning & ManagementThe strategy that compounds in silence.
- Risk Mitigation & Asset ProtectionThe protection layer underneath everything.
- Wealth ManagementThe accumulation and stewardship engine.
- Leverage & LiquidityThe machinery that supports the plan.
Pillar 05 of 06
Plan the business and the household together
A discovery conversation is where both sides of the ledger get looked at in the same room, usually for the first time.
Book a discovery call