Business planning & coaching for owners
Every owner leaves the business. Few choose the terms.
Altus Financial is two consultants who work with owners of closely-held companies on the decisions that only come around once — who runs it next, what it is worth, and how to stop the whole thing depending on one person.
- Ways we work with owners
- 5Ways we work with owners
- Coaches/ consultants
- 2Coaches/ consultants
- Step documented process
- 5Step documented process
You work directly with Benjamin Minifie and Stanislav Lisovskiy — the same two people from the first conversation to the annual review. We coordinate with the attorney and CPA already at your table, and we do not replace them.
The Odds
None of this is a surprise. It is just rarely written down.
- 50%
of business exits in this country are unplanned. The list of causes is short: divorce, death, disability, distress, disagreement. None of them check your calendar.
Exit Planning Institute, 2023 National State of Owner Readiness — EPI's own estimate
- 41%
of owners have no written contingency plan for any of them.
Exit Planning Institute, 2023 National State of Owner Readiness
- 40%
have not had the business formally valued in the last two years. The number in the agreement, if there is one, came from somewhere else.
Exit Planning Institute, 2023 National State of Owner Readiness
- 5%
of baby-boomer owners have built a formal exit advisory team. Most of this work is not especially hard. It is just nobody's job.
Exit Planning Institute, 2023 National State of Owner Readiness
- 65%
of businesses do not reach their tenth year. That figure counts retirements and sales alongside failures — which is the point: leaving is the norm, not the exception.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Employment Dynamics
Who It's For
More of what you want. Less of what you don't.
Most owners arrive with one of four situations.
- 01
Coaching & Training
The plan is not the hard part — running the business well, week after week, is. You want a coach in the room, not another document to file.
- 02
Buy-Sell
You own the business with someone else, and what happens to their share if they die, are disabled, or simply want out is either unwritten — or written down years ago and never funded.
- 03
Succession
You will step away from this business at some point — by choice or not — and you do not yet know what it is worth or who carries it forward.
- 04
Depth & Retention
The business depends on a handful of specific people, and if any of them left tomorrow you would be the one absorbing the work.
How It Works
Three beats. One documented path.
Step 01 · 1–2 conversations
Discovery
A conversation about the business, not a product pitch. How the company is actually owned, and what you want to happen if an owner dies, is disabled, or decides to leave.
↳ You receiveA written summary of your structure, the gaps we see, and the questions worth answering next.
Step 02 · 2–6 weeks → 4–12 weeks
Analysis · The Plan · Implementation
The number, then the written plan, then the plan put into effect — the sequence coordinated across your attorney, your CPA and whoever else is responsible for a piece of it.
↳ You receiveThe plan in effect — documents executed with your attorney, and each piece of the sequence with the person responsible for it.
Step 03 · Ongoing — annual or trigger-driven
Cadence
A standing rhythm rather than a filed document. Annually, and whenever something material changes the picture.
↳ You receiveA periodic review noting what changed, what it affects, and what needs to be refreshed.
The Index
Connected engagements, one continuity.
The work itself, in the order owners usually meet it.
- 01
Business Coaching
Business Coaching & Consulting
Advisory work for owners who are the bottleneck in their own business — including sales and marketing.
- 02
Owner Dependence & Delegation
Business Coaching & Consulting
Working out what genuinely requires the owner, what only appears to, and how to move the second category off your desk.
- 03
Management Depth & Successor Readiness
Business Coaching & Consulting
Building the layer of management beneath the owner, and getting the company legible enough for someone else to run.
- 04
Business Value Assessment
Valuation & Continuity
A rough, tool-assisted estimate of business value — a starting point for planning, not an appraisal.
- 05
Buy-Sell Agreements
Valuation & Continuity
Working through what a buy-sell agreement should say, and whether the one you have still matches the business it was written for.
How long this takes
Two to five months, from the first conversation to a plan in effect.
That is the honest range. A value assessment takes time to gather and your attorney drafts on their own clock — which is why the worst moment to begin is the moment something has already happened.
The Record
The plan is only as good as the coordination behind it.
Case study
Rewriting a two-owner buy-sell after a decade of growth
- The situation
- Two owners had a buy-sell drafted years earlier, priced off a valuation the business had long outgrown. Neither could say what the agreement would actually pay, and neither had read it since signing.
- How we approached it
- We re-ran the value assessment, worked through cross-purchase versus entity structures with the owners' CPA, and got the two of them to the same answer on each triggering event before their attorney touched the document.
- The outcome
- An agreement aligned to current value, with the owners' attorney revising the document from a set of decisions the owners had already agreed between themselves.
Illustrative example. Not a description of a specific engagement, and not a promise of comparable results.
The Consultants
Talk to a named human — not a call center.
Both see every request, and most engagements are worked by the two of them together.
Business Consultant
Benjamin Minifie
Business consulting for owners — valuation, continuity, and reducing owner dependence
Business Consultant
Stanislav Lisovskiy
Succession and management-depth coaching — the conversations owners avoid
Where to start
Pick the conversation that fits.
Each one reaches both consultants. If none of them is quite it, The Owner's Position Review is the general way in.
- 01
Coaching & Training
A working cadence with a named consultant, covering the things that actually move the year: sales, marketing, how the team is built, and what the business is being built toward.
- 02
Buy-Sell
An agreement your attorney drafts, priced off a number you have actually tested instead of guessed, with the question of how it gets paid settled rather than assumed.
- 03
Succession
A tested estimate of what the business is worth today, and a plan for the transition your attorney and CPA can work from.
- 04
Depth & Retention
An honest read on where the company is concentrated, and a plan for building depth beneath the people you cannot replace.