You built the business over decades. The buyer across the table does deals for a living. Strategic Lever is the independent advisor on your side of that imbalance — no listings, no commissions, and no financial incentive for you to take a fast deal over the right one.
Not the broker who wants the listing. Not the buyer who benefits from your unpreparedness. In our experience, most owners are twelve to twenty-four months of deliberate preparation away from their best outcome — cleaner books, defensible add-backs, reduced owner-dependence, de-risked earnings. That preparation routinely moves the final number more than any negotiation ever will. The rest of the ecosystem gets paid when a transaction happens now. We get paid to get you to the transaction you actually deserve.
A confidential, structured evaluation of where you stand today — through the eyes of the person who matters most: the buyer who will one day scrutinize everything.
What the business is worth in today's market — grounded in normalized earnings and real transaction evidence, not a broker's listing pitch or a rule of thumb from a trade group dinner.
We've been the buyer reading a seller's financials. We look at yours the same way: earnings quality, add-backs that will and won't survive diligence, customer concentration, owner-dependence, and the surprises that kill deals late.
The specific, prioritized moves that change your number — sequenced over 12–24 months, with an honest assessment of which are worth the effort and which aren't.
Like everything we produce, the assessment ends in writing: where you stand, what it's worth, what would move it, and when to go to market. Whether or not we ever work together again.
Before your next substantive reply to them, three rules: don't share financials without an NDA, don't name a price first, and don't negotiate alone against someone who does this for a living. Unsolicited approaches can be genuine opportunities — and they are always tilted toward the buyer who initiated them. We advise owners through exactly this moment: assessing the buyer's seriousness, reality-checking their number, deciding whether to engage exclusively or create competition, and negotiating from a position you control. Call before you reply.
Confidential exit-readiness assessment: valuation reality, diligence-survivability, and your value roadmap.
Executing the roadmap — financial cleanup, de-risking earnings, reducing owner-dependence — over 12–24 months or an accelerated runway.
When you go to market — or when a buyer comes to you — we advise on process, negotiation, structure, and terms alongside your attorney and CPA.
Post-sale transition counsel — earn-outs, seller notes, and handover — so the deal you signed is the deal you actually get.
No exclusive listing agreements. No commissions. No pressure toward any particular outcome — including selling at all. Strategic Lever works fee-for-service, which makes us the only party in your deal conversation with no financial stake in whether, when, or to whom you sell. If the honest answer is "wait two years and fix these three things," that's the answer you'll get. Brokers have their place in a well-run process — after you're prepared, and on terms you understand.
Mark Hirsch has spent 25+ years on every side of these transactions — leading a company's first acquisition end-to-end at a business approaching $100MM in revenue, working PE-backed roll-ups, advising buy-side diligence that surfaced material financial discrepancies before money moved, and guiding owners through structuring, negotiation, and close. When we prepare your business for sale, we're preparing it against the exact scrutiny we've personally applied from the other chair.
"Mark was great at keeping all parties focused on the key dynamics of a deal and bringing clarity to decisions that can otherwise feel complex or uncertain."
Not from a rule of thumb, and not from what a broker quotes to win your listing. Real value comes from normalized earnings with defensible add-backs, the durability of those earnings, transferability without you, and what comparable businesses actually sold for. Most owners hold a number that is meaningfully high or meaningfully low — both errors are expensive. An independent valuation reality-check, from someone with no commission riding on the answer, is the first step of any serious exit.
Before you respond substantively: slow down. The first approach is where owners give away the most leverage — usually by being flattered, unprepared, or both. Don't share financials without an NDA, don't name a price first, and don't negotiate alone against a buyer who does this for a living. Get an independent advisor to reality-check the valuation, assess the buyer's seriousness, and decide whether to engage exclusively or create competition.
Twelve to twenty-four months before you want to transact — sometimes longer. Buyers pay for clean books, transferable operations, and de-risked earnings, and none of those can be manufactured in the month before a sale. Owners who prepare early routinely command materially better prices and terms. If a sale is even on your five-year horizon, preparation should start now.
Sometimes — brokers are useful for running a marketing process and producing buyers. But a broker's commission is earned when a transaction closes, which means their incentive is a closing, not necessarily your best outcome. An independent, fee-for-service exit advisor works the other side of that gap: preparing you before any process starts, reality-checking valuation, and advising on offers with no stake in which answer you choose. Many owners use both; preparation should always come first.
Not from us, and not if the process is run properly. Confidentiality is procedural: NDAs before any information moves, staged disclosure as buyer seriousness is proven, blind profiles in early conversations, and careful control of who inside the business knows what, when. Premature disclosure is one of the most damaging unforced errors in SMB exits — and one of the most preventable.
In rough order: financial records that don't survive diligence, owner-dependence the buyer can't underwrite, valuation expectations set by hope instead of markets, deal fatigue from a disorganized process, and late surprises — customer concentration, lease problems, unresolved liabilities. Nearly every one is preventable with preparation, which is precisely why preparation is worth real money.
Often, yes — a seller note is standard in SMB transactions and can materially improve your price and buyer pool, especially alongside SBA financing. But structure matters enormously: note size, subordination, security, interest, and what happens if the business stumbles under new ownership. It's a structuring decision to make with independent advice — not a concession to accept under deadline.
Whether you're two years out, actively preparing, or holding a buyer's email in your inbox right now — the first conversation costs you nothing but thirty minutes, and it stays between us.
Call 561-789-1565 — ConfidentialPrefer email? Use the contact form — we respond within one business day. Delray Beach, FL · Serving owners nationally