A TIME to build.

Business valuation isn’t the easiest process. We can help you determine the current worth of your business by analyzing all relevant factors, including your company’s management, capital structure, future earnings, and market value of its assets.

Our team of advisors can also help you consider how the sale of your business will impact you, your family, and your overall financial plan.

We recognize that building a business is hard work—so is transitioning your business to someone else. While many business owners say they have a succession plan, it’s less common to have a full plan in place to transfer a business successfully onto the next generation or a buyer.

Whether you envision a family member or third-party as the future owner of what you’ve worked diligently to build, you may have questions surrounding the sale of your company. As you prepare your business to transition to its next owner, we will help you consider its culture and human capital, as well as how selling or transferring your business will impact your financial picture.

Even if you’re not planning to retire anytime soon, it’s good practice to have these conversations well in advance; they will help set the stage for you to feel confident about your future exit strategy options and plan. Our team has been through the succession planning process ourselves and we are well-equipped with real-life personal and professional experience to help guide you before, during, and after this significant event.

Business owners face challenging risks, which can be mitigated with proper insurance planning. Having a comprehensive insurance strategy will help you identify and address these risks by providing valuable protection and enhancing the overall resilience of your business.

We can help develop and implement insurance solutions that are most appropriate to address your firm’s needs. These may include disability income/overhead expense (OE) insurance—which is particularly important for physicians and attorneys, as well as asset protection, and life insurance—necessary in cases where the loss of business partners or key employees would adversely affect the financial security of other owners, employees, and their families.

As your business grows, creating tailored incentives for key employees (key person incentives) to demonstrate your appreciation for their contributions can be a great way to foster engagement, loyalty, and motivation. We can help you build incentives into your business and overall financial plan.

A well-designed qualified retirement plan allows business owners and their employees to save for retirement on a tax-advantaged basis. If properly designed and managed, it can be an important competitive benefit to help attract and retain talent.

Our independent mindset, fiduciary responsibility, differentiated service model, and long history in this space allow us to better serve business owners by offering retirement plans that incorporate traditional and non-traditional solutions. We strive to simplify the lives of both plan sponsors and participants by providing them with the tools and resources they need as they prepare for retirement.

We provide flexibility in our retirement services plan offering for business owner clients, who can choose for us to play one of two roles:

1. An overall retirement plan service coordinator that helps ensure service providers—such as third-party administrators, recordkeepers/custodians, investment managers, and financial advisors (including ourselves)—are accountable, continuously striving to serve the plan and its participants’ best interests with respect to expenses, education, and plan design; or

2. A true retirement plan service partner that provides a comprehensive, bundled service offering/solution, which includes all services mentioned in option 1 above.

As your business partner, our team will help navigate you through the process of determining the right plan design and funding strategy for your organization, while providing ongoing education and support to your participants.

You’ve worked hard to create a profitable business. Through careful strategic planning, you can minimize your tax burden to keep as much of that profit as possible. We take a comprehensive approach to examining a business plan and the various ways its income earned can be paid out.

As we collaborate and coordinate with tax and other trusted professionals, our team will be by your side to develop forward-looking cash flow scenarios, to make recommendations, and help implement appropriate goals-based investment strategies.

As our client, you have access to the Hightower Strategic Advisory Network (SAN) to help you plan for the future of your business. SAN is a selective consortium of investment banks that, in the aggregate, offer a broad spectrum of investment banking capabilities.

Created to support entrepreneurs and owners of privately held businesses, our relationships with these banks offer deep experience and broad coverage in geography, deal size and sector knowledge.

No matter what you envision next for your business, considering strategic alternatives can help you protect what you’ve built—and help ensure financial security for you and your family. SAN creates a competitive environment for our business owner clients, helping foster viable terms, deal structure, and pricing. As your financial advisor, we can work alongside you to tap into SAN’s broad range of capabilities and strengths, including mergers and acquisitions; valuations; capital raises; and debt restructuring.

LEARN MORE ABOUT SAN BENEFITS

Many of our clients who own businesses have a vision of creating a legacy for their families and loved ones. Because our firm’s 30+ year history began with our trust company, our team of advisors has a deep understanding of the importance of estate planning. We collaborate closely with our business owner clients to create an estate plan that integrates seamlessly into their broader financial plan.

As a corporate fiduciary, our trust company is available to help assist you with transitioning your wealth. As trustee (trustee; co-trustee; agent for trustee; successor; future trustee) or executor (executor; co-executor) for our clients, the trust company’s role is to administer the distribution of wealth and to make decisions in the beneficiary’s best interest.

Our teamwork and professional, transparent guidance in the estate planning and administration process can help minimize conflict and overall burden for our business owner clients.