BUSINESS OWNERS

The Hardest Part Isn't Selling the Business.

The exit, the tax strategy, the estate plan, the portfolio after liquidity; these decisions determine whether the wealth you created outlasts the business that created it.

What we hear from business owners

If I sell, how much actually stays with my family after taxes?

How do I protect what I've built from lawsuits, creditors, and divorce, before and after the exit?

What does my life look like six months after closing? Do I even have a plan for that?

Who's coordinating my M&A attorney, CPA, and estate lawyer?

If I sell, how much actually stays with my family after taxes?

How do I protect what I've built from lawsuits, creditors, and divorce, before and after the exit?

What does my life look like six months after closing? Do I even have a plan for that?

Who's coordinating my M&A attorney, CPA, and estate lawyer?

If I sell, how much actually stays with my family after taxes?

How do I protect what I've built from lawsuits, creditors, and divorce, before and after the exit?

What does my life look like six months after closing? Do I even have a plan for that?

Who's coordinating my M&A attorney, CPA, and estate lawyer?

How We Work With Business Owners

Three chapters. One coordinated strategy.

Create a framework for family wealth and legacy.

The business is growing, cash flow is complex, and most of your net worth sits in a single illiquid asset. This is when the most valuable planning happens, and when most advisors aren't paying attention yet. We model scenarios around your business valuation, personal liquidity needs, and family protection so that when an opportunity appears, you're negotiating from a position of strength rather than reacting under pressure.

Entity structuring and buy-sell agreements designed for tax efficiency and asset protection
Executive compensation and deferred income strategy
Concentrated position risk management

When the exit becomes real.

A business sale is a tax event, a legal event, a family event, and an identity event, often all within the same six months. The difference between a well-coordinated exit and a reactive one can be measured in millions of after-tax dollars. Your team works alongside your M&A counsel and CPA to structure the transaction, model the tax consequences of different deal structures, and update your estate plan before closing rather than after.

Pre-transaction trust and gifting strategies to minimize estate and capital gains tax
Coordination across your transaction team
Charitable strategies (donor-advised funds, CRTs) timed to the liquidity event for maximum impact

The chapter no one prepares you for.

You dedicated a large portion of your life to your business. Then one morning it's done, and you're sitting on more capital than you've ever held, a calendar with nothing on it, and a line of inbound calls from people who want to manage the proceeds. This is when discipline matters most. We replace business income with a sustainable withdrawal strategy, diversify concentrated proceeds across a tax-efficient timeline, and build a portfolio around the life you're walking into, not the one you're leaving behind.

Ongoing coordination of your tax, estate, and investment strategy as a unified system
Tax-efficient diversification
Post-exit cash flow design to replace business income without unnecessary risk

If your wealth has outgrown ordinary advice, we should talk.

Schedule a Conversation

Frequently asked questions

Ideally, three to five years before you intend to transition. Many of the most impactful tax and estate strategies require years of runway to implement. The earlier your team is involved, the more options you have, and the more you keep after taxes.

Concentration is the single largest financial risk for most business owners. Your team models scenarios around your current exposure, structures asset protection through trusts and entities, and designs a diversification timeline that begins well before a liquidity event.

FirsTrust charges a single, transparent fee based on assets under management. There are no commissions, no hourly billing, and no additional charges for planning, tax coordination, or estate work. Your fee covers the full team. Details are on our Fees page.

We're the coordinator, not the replacement. Your team works alongside your existing CPA and attorney to ensure that investment decisions reflect your tax position, estate plans stay aligned with the portfolio, and changes in one area are accounted for in every other.