Protect the multiple. Protect the close.
Owner dependence is the discount most buyers price automatically. I help sell-side M&A advisors find and reduce it before diligence, so the deal closes on the terms you signed and your client keeps the value they built.
Book a discovery callI've sat on the buyer's side of the table.
For 20 years I have walked into messy rooms and put structure where there wasn't any, across financial services, state government, a luxury brand, and executive coaching at every level. The work I am known for is telling the truth in rooms where everyone else is offering the comfortable version of it.
Now I bring that work to the lower middle market M&A deal. Advisors hire me to do one thing: keep the people inside the business from costing their client the deal they spent years building. I find the owner dependence and key-person risk a sophisticated buyer will use to chip the price, and I help take it off the table before the buyer ever sees it.
When I do my job right, your deal closes faster, on the terms you signed in the LOI, with your client's value and legacy intact.
You quarterback the deal. I cover the people.
You are the one quarterbacking a sell-side process for an owner-led business, roughly $10M to $50M in enterprise value.
You might be the boutique investment banker watching a buyer dig into operations, knowing one tribal-knowledge weak point could cost a turn on the multiple. You might be the M&A attorney trying to keep reps and warranties clean while the seller's personnel and contractor files are a mess. Either way, your client built this company around themselves, and that dependence is now the most volatile variable in the deal.
Your job is to close, on the terms you signed, without the people inside the company becoming the reason it didn't.
That is where I come in.
Before, during, and after the buyer looks.
In a lower middle market sale, the human capital piece is the most volatile variable in the entire deal. Buyers know. They use it to compress your multiple, drag out diligence, and walk away with a better price than the LOI promised. My job is to make sure they can't.
Defend the Multiple
Before you go to market, I find the people risks a buyer will use and help take them off the table. Owner dependence and key-person analysis. Retention design with stay agreements and long-term incentives. A labor liability review of contractor classification, non-competes, and handbooks. The buyer runs diligence and finds nothing to re-trade on.
Your client holds the multiple you negotiated.
Hold the Line
You are in diligence and the buyer is asking questions you don't love. A key person just took a recruiter call. I sit second chair to the banker or attorney and answer the people questions in the currency a buyer thinks in: deal certainty, transferability, post-close risk. Your job is to keep the deal moving.
My job is to make sure the people side isn't the thing that stops it.
Protect the Earn-Out
The wire hits, but your client's money isn't safe until the earn-out vests and the buyer is satisfied with what they bought. I build retention frameworks tied to the same milestones that trigger seller proceeds and help transfer the relationships and knowledge the business runs on.
The deal you closed becomes the deal your client actually gets paid for.
The most underpriced risk in the deal.
I have spent my career as the person leaders called to walk into chaos, put structure on it, and tell the truth in a room where everyone else was offering the comfortable version.
I watched deals worth tens of millions get decided on spreadsheets, where the variable most likely to make or break the next five years, the people inside the company, was treated like a footnote.
The wrong people left. The right people were blindsided.
SGR Advisory exists because in the lower middle market, owner dependence is the most underpriced risk in the deal. Buyers know it. Sellers learn it the hard way.
My work makes sure what gets signed in the LOI is what closes at the wire, and what closes at the wire is still standing a year later.
Warm with the people. Ruthless about the deal.
I am not the advisor who flatters you and bills you. I take chaos and put structure on it. I find the thing nobody is naming, and I name it. I am warm with the people and ruthless about the deal. I will defend you in front of the buyer, and I will tell you privately when your own assumption is the thing hurting you.
Bankers call me their secret weapon. Owners call me the one person in the room who wasn't telling them only the comfortable version. I am simply opposed to the idea that the people inside a company should be the reason it loses the deal it spent years building.
Let's talk.
If you have a deal in motion, or one on the twelve-month horizon, the most useful thing I can do is spend 30 minutes on where the people risks live in your specific situation. No pitch. No deck. Just a real read on what's at stake.