Most business owners have never had their company professionally valued — a costly gap, given that your business's value shapes every meaningful financial decision you will make over the next five to twenty years.

Value is set by the market, not by what you paid, what you built, or what you need to retire on. Our Market Value Assessment (MVA) delivers a defensible market-based valuation grounded in comparable private company transactions, industry multiples, and rigorous financial analysis.

A valuation is often the first step toward selling, succession planning, estate planning, partner buyouts, or growth through acquisition. It's confidential, obligation-free, and delivered in writing. Whether you sell in one year or five, this is where every serious exit strategy begins.

A properly run sell-side process typically takes six to twelve months from engagement to closing. Some transactions move faster, some take longer — it depends on the business, the market, and the type of buyer we ultimately match you with.

Rushed sales almost always leave value on the table. A well-paced process protects value, filters for the right buyer, and prevents the retrade behaviour that destroys deals in the last mile. Preparation typically takes six to ten weeks. Buyer outreach and negotiation typically take three to five months. Due diligence and closing typically take another two to four months.

Confidentiality is the foundation of our practice. Your business is presented to the market anonymously through a blind teaser — industry, geography, and financial highlights only. Your name, the business name, and identifying operational details are withheld.

Buyers are pre-qualified before they are told anything. They sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement before receiving your Confidential Information Memorandum. Employees, customers, competitors, and suppliers are not informed at any stage — not by us, and we work with you carefully on when and how you tell them.

In 18 years of practice, we have had zero confidentiality breaches. That is not marketing language. It is a track record we protect every day.

Because seller representation is a full commitment, not a side interest. When a firm represents both sides of a transaction, its loyalty is divided, its incentives are compromised, and its negotiating leverage is neutralized.

We work exclusively for sellers. Every buyer we approach knows they are dealing with the seller's advisor — and negotiates accordingly. That single decision changes everything about how a deal gets structured. That side is yours.

Most brokers list a business and wait for buyers. We engineer the outcome instead. Exit Architecture is our end-to-end methodology for building a business into its highest possible sale outcome before it ever goes to market.

That means honest pre-market assessment, targeted operational improvements, tax and structure planning, controlled buyer processes, and disciplined post-LOI defense. It's the difference between listing and architecting — and it's why our clients achieve outcomes that transactional brokerage cannot replicate.

We do not wait for buyers to find you. We identify the right buyers and pursue them directly, using proprietary AI platforms, our own qualified buyer database, and direct access to sophisticated buyer networks including private equity firms, family offices, strategic acquirers, and active fund managers through our Family Office Club and Fund Launch memberships.

Not every prospective buyer deserves access to a confidential opportunity. Every prospect is screened for financial capacity, acquisition track record, and strategic fit before your business is ever named. No premature disclosures. No unqualified inquiries. Only serious, capable buyers reach the conversation stage.

A strategic buyer is typically an operating company in your industry (or an adjacent one) buying your business to grow, expand geographically, add capability, or eliminate competition. They often pay a premium for synergies but may want changes post-close.

A financial buyer — usually a private equity firm, family office, or fund manager — buys your business as an investment, aiming to grow it and sell it or hold it for cash flow. They often preserve the team and culture, but their pricing model is different.

The right buyer depends on your priorities: maximum price, legacy protection, continued involvement, employee outcomes, or a combination. We help you understand the trade-offs before you decide.

For most mid-market transactions, yes — at least in some form. A vendor take-back (VTB) is seller financing, where you take back a note from the buyer. An earn-out ties a portion of the purchase price to future performance.

Both are common tools. Both can also be common tactics used to shift value away from sellers after the LOI is signed. Our job is to structure them so they protect you — reasonable caps, clear metrics, appropriate protections, and defensible triggers. We negotiate hard against structures that transfer risk you should not be carrying.

The tax treatment of your sale can affect 15–30% of your net after-tax proceeds. It is the single largest lever in the entire transaction outside of price itself.

We work closely with M&A-focused tax advisors from our Trusted Advisor Network who specialize in the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption (LCGE), estate freezes, family trust structures, and deal structure optimization. Every deal term is modelled for its after-tax outcome before it is agreed to.

You are always free to use your own accountant. Many clients do. We coordinate with whoever you choose.

Due diligence is the buyer's investigation of your business between LOI and closing. Financial records, contracts, customer concentrations, employee agreements, legal claims, tax positions, environmental issues — everything gets reviewed.

This is where deals are won or lost. Buyers use due diligence to find issues that justify reducing the purchase price — the "retrade" behaviour we defend against aggressively. On almost every deal, they do try — we handle the response.

Our job during DD is to anticipate what buyers will find, prepare responses in advance, and protect the value we negotiated at LOI from post-retrade erosion.

In most transactions, yes — some form of transition is expected. It can range from a 30-day handover to a multi-year employment or consulting agreement, depending on the buyer's needs and your preferences.

Transition terms are negotiable and matter more than most sellers realize. They affect purchase price, tax structure, day-to-day life post-close, and your risk exposure to earn-outs. We negotiate transition terms as carefully as we negotiate price.

Yes. Partial sales, recapitalizations, minority investments, and management buyouts are all viable structures. A partial sale can create immediate liquidity while keeping you involved, or bring in a growth partner without giving up control.

These structures are more complex than a full sale, and most brokers won't structure them well. We do. They require careful thinking about governance, valuation, exit provisions, and future liquidity events — but for the right owner, they are the ideal path.

Family succession is one of the most rewarding and most complicated transitions in a private business. It requires careful thinking about valuation, financing, tax structure, governance, and the family dynamics that make it different from an arm's-length sale.

We help with intergenerational transitions — whether that means a full family transfer, a partial buy-out with continued involvement, or a valuation and structuring exercise that allows you to compare a family transition against a market sale. There's no one-size-fits-all answer, and we don't force one.

No. Many of our best client relationships begin one to five years before a transaction. Early planning gives us time to help you build the business into a version that commands a premium at exit — operational improvements, tax structuring, customer concentration issues, key-person dependencies.

A Market Value Assessment is the natural starting point. It's confidential, obligation-free, and gives you clarity without commitment.

You will work directly with Dwayne Mitchell, founder and lead advisor at Ontario Business Brokers. Karen Mitchell, Director of Client Relations and Operations, coordinates the engagement end to end. There is no handoff to junior staff.

When your transaction requires specialists — legal, tax, banking, wealth planning — we bring them in from our Trusted Advisor Network as needed. But the strategic work and the relationship stay with the founders.

Every client feels like our only client. That is not a marketing line. It is a limit we place on the number of active engagements we take on at any given time.