About the practice
Built in Chicago, for the owners who built Chicago.
Lakeshore Exit Partners exists because of a simple, uncomfortable math problem: the region's largest-ever generation of business owners is approaching retirement, and most of their businesses are not ready to be sold well. Somebody local should be on the owner's side of that. That's the whole firm.
Why we exist
The gap nobody's minding.
When an owner decides to sell, an entire industry appears — brokers to list it, bankers to run the process, lawyers to paper it, buyers to price it. Almost nobody works the years before that moment, when most of the value is actually won or lost.
A business that runs without its owner, with numbers a stranger can trust, routinely commands multiples that an identical-but-unprepared business never sees. That preparation window is our entire practice — and doing it well requires being here: at the shop in Elk Grove, the warehouse in Bolingbrook, the office in Waukegan. Exit preparation is a local trade. We kept it one.
How we operate
Principles we don't bend.
Owner-side only
We never represent buyers and never take control of a client's company. When we share in the upside through our Equity Partnership, it's a disclosed minority stake — earned on your side of the table, never across from it.
Fees you can see through
Flat fees stated before we start, or an equity stake disclosed up front — never a hidden percentage or an hourly meter. Either way, you know exactly how we're paid, so you know exactly why we're advising what we advise.
Truth over comfort
If your business isn't ready, or your price expectation isn't real, you'll hear it in the first month — not after a failed process.
Confidential by default
An exit explored is not an exit announced. We work quietly, and most teams never know until the owner decides they should.
Who you'll work with
A senior advisor. The same one, all the way through.
Lakeshore is deliberately a practice, not a pyramid. The advisor who sits with you in the first consult — a CPA by training — is the advisor who works your engagement, supported by specialist help in accounting, operations, and deal preparation where your situation calls for it. Your own CPA and attorney stay in the loop the whole way; we speak their language because it's ours too. No hand-offs to juniors, no account managers, no bait and switch.
We'd rather serve fewer Chicagoland owners properly than many owners thinly. If our plate is full, we'll tell you and point you somewhere good.
Start here
Thirty minutes. Your numbers. Straight answers.
The free Owner Consult is the easiest way to find out whether we're useful to you.