A CPA-led brokerage, run by a former IRS auditor.
We get family- and founder-owned Chicagoland businesses ready to sell, then we sell them. When the fit is right, we buy them. The firm exists because almost nobody works the years before a sale, and that's where most of the price is decided.
The years before the sale.
When an owner decides to sell, plenty of people show up to help, from brokers and bankers to attorneys and buyers. Very few of them were around two years earlier, when the books could still have been cleaned up, the biggest customer could have been diluted, and the sales relationships could have been moved off the owner's desk. Those years decide most of the price, and nobody minds them.
The numbers say the same thing. Fewer than one in three owners have a written exit plan when the first buyer calls (Exit Planning Institute). In Chicagoland that is a lot of machine shops, distributors and trade contractors that will change hands over the next decade, most of them less ready than their owners think.
That is the gap this firm was built to fill. We work both sides of the line, the preparation years and the sale itself, with the same people the whole way through. The accountant who rebuilds your earnings in month one is the one defending them to the buyer's accountant in diligence. If the honest answer is wait, you'll hear it early, along with what to do while you wait.
Six things we don't bend on.
- Every path on the table
- List with us, take a buyer we bring, sell to Lakeshore, or wait. If we want to buy the business ourselves, we say so in writing before any listing work starts, and you stay free to go to market instead.
- Fees stated up front
- The Exit-Readiness Review is $4,500 flat. The Sale-Ready Program is from $2,500 a month. A sale is a 10% success fee, agreed in the listing agreement before we go to market. When Lakeshore buys, there is no commission. Nothing is added later. All fees in one place.
- Truth over comfort
- If your price expectation isn't real, you'll hear it in the first month, with the numbers behind it. Sometimes the right answer is wait two years. We would rather lose an engagement than run a sale that won't close.
- Confidential by default
- An exit explored is not an exit announced. Most teams never learn a sale is being prepared. Nothing with your name on it reaches a buyer until they have signed an NDA and been vetted.
- In person, on site
- Shop floor, warehouse, back office. We work Chicago and the six counties on purpose, because the things that move a price are visible on site and invisible in a spreadsheet.
- Your advisors stay yours
- Your CPA keeps your taxes and your attorney keeps your contracts. We coordinate with them, copy them on every milestone you permit, and send the tax, legal and lending questions that come up to them first.
Four people. No handoffs.
The advisor in your first consult runs the engagement. There is no junior team behind the curtain and no account manager between you and the people doing the work.
Fifteen years as an IRS auditor examining businesses, then years on the owner's side of the table. Reads a company from the bank statements up, the way a buyer's accountant will, and leads every engagement from the first consult through closing.
A JD who has coordinated more than sixty closed deals. Jim keeps the CPA, the attorney, the banker and everyone else in the transaction working from one plan, and he keeps the schedule honest from the LOI to funds flow.
A former COO. Genevieve turns the way a business actually runs into SOPs, manuals and delegated authority a buyer can read, so the company can be shown to run without every decision living in the owner's head.
Alex holds the tax seat at the table. Entity questions early on, monthly reporting a lender will accept, the working-capital target before the LOI, and the purchase-price allocation at close, each checked for the most reasonable tax position so more of the price is the price you keep.
West Loop, steps from Union Station. The work happens at your place.
Lakeshore Exit Partners works from 10 South Riverside Plaza, Suite 875, Chicago, IL 60606, on the west bank of the river across Canal Street from Union Station. Owners are welcome here, and some prefer it because nobody at the business sees a visitor.
Most engagements run at the owner's business, though, anywhere in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry or Will county, and in Northwest Indiana by arrangement. A buyer's accountant will walk your floor before they price your company. We would rather walk it first.
The phone is answered by a person, weekdays 9 to 5: (312) 278-2109. Email info@lakeshoreexitpartners.com reaches an advisor directly, not a queue. Contact and directions
The story and the paper are two different things, and a buyer only pays for the paper. Our job is to make sure your paper says what you've been telling people for twenty years.
Lakeshore Exit Partners · Chicago
Thirty minutes with a CPA. Your numbers, straight answers.
Pick two windows and we'll confirm one within a business hour. Or start with the free value range and have it in your inbox within two business days.