Financial Advisor for Business Owners & Business Exit Planning
A Financial Advisor for Business Owners Facing a Sale, a Succession, or Both
We plan the transaction and the decades on either side of it, coordinating your CPA, attorney, and transaction professionals from one set of numbers, so the largest financial event of your life is not the first time those people have spoken to each other.
Your company is an asset. It is not a plan.
Who We Serve, and What We're Registered to Do
A closely held business is usually the largest line on the balance sheet and the hardest one to move. The work starts by measuring that concentration honestly, then building around the company as it actually exists rather than assuming a sale has already happened.
Before a transaction is anywhere on the calendar, we work on:
- How much of your family's net worth depends on one company, expressed as a number instead of a feeling.
- Separating business risk from personal assets, so a difficult year inside the company does not reach the household.
- Buy-sell agreement review and funding, so the agreement still reflects what the business is worth today and who would actually have the cash to honor it.
- Key-person and disability coverage sized to what the company would genuinely need to survive the loss of an owner or a critical employee.
- Personal and business financial statements clean enough that a buyer's diligence turns up nothing you did not already know.
Start Three to Five Years Before You Want to Sell
The decisions that change an owner's outcome — entity structure, owner compensation, gifting, holding periods, the condition of the books — need years to season before they are worth anything. Three to five years of runway gives a coordinated team room to use them.
Owners who come to us twelve months out still have real options. They simply have fewer of them, and the ones that remain are more expensive. Before you commit to anything, it is fair to know
what an engagement involves and what it costs.
Know What the Company Is Worth Before Someone Tells You
A defensible valuation range is the number every other decision depends on, and most owners are carrying a figure in their head that has never been tested. We work with your valuation professional to establish the range, then run it against what your family actually needs the sale to produce.
That comparison usually surfaces one of two things: the company is worth more than the plan requires, which opens the door to gifting and charitable strategy, or there is a gap. A gap found three years out is a business problem with time to fix it. A gap found at the letter of intent is a retirement problem.
The drivers a buyer prices are specific and improvable — customer concentration, dependence on the owner, recurring revenue, the depth of the management team, and the quality of the financial reporting.
Six Ways Out, and They Do Not Cost the Same
The exit path decides the price, the timing, the tax treatment, and how much of your life the transition consumes. Each of these is a real option for an Iowa owner, and each one is planned differently:
- A transfer to the next generation, where family dynamics and the parents' income needs matter as much as the valuation.
- A sale to key employees, often financed over years and dependent on whether those employees can actually carry the debt.
- An ESOP, which turns the company into the buyer and carries Iowa tax provisions worth understanding well in advance.
- A strategic buyer already in your industry, typically the highest price and the fastest loss of control over how the business is run.
- A private equity or financial buyer, frequently structured with rollover equity and a required period of continued involvement.
- An outright third-party sale, the cleanest break and the largest single tax year most owners will ever have.
Business Exit Planning Iowa Owners Should Start Early
Iowa's tax landscape has changed in ways that matter specifically to owners transferring or selling a closely held company, and several of the provisions reward planning done years ahead of a transaction:
- Iowa's individual income tax is a flat 3.8 percent beginning with tax year 2025, which affects how proceeds, distributions, and deferred payments are sequenced across years.
- Iowa's inheritance tax is fully repealed for deaths on or after January 1, 2025, which changes the arithmetic on passing a closely held company to children rather than selling it.
- Iowa allows an employee-owner a one-time, irrevocable lifetime election to exclude net capital gain on the sale of qualified employer securities held at least ten cumulative years, phased to 100 percent of the gain for tax years 2025 and later.
- Iowa provides a separate capital gain deduction on the sale of employer securities to a qualified Iowa ESOP.
Every one of these is narrow and fact dependent. Holding periods, entity type, who the buyer is, and how the deal is papered all decide whether a provision applies at all, which is exactly why they belong in a conversation three years out and not in the week before closing.
Etzel Financial Resources does not offer legal or tax advice. Please consult the appropriate professional regarding your individual circumstance.
Move Value Before the Sale, Not After It
Shares are easier to transfer when the company is worth less, which means the most effective wealth transfer work happens before a buyer sets a price. That is the window for gifting interests to children or trusts, funding a family entity, and deciding whether a concentrated, low-basis position should fund a charitable vehicle instead of a tax bill.
Waiting until the wire clears converts the same intentions into a much smaller version of themselves. We coordinate the charitable giving and estate planning side of an exit with your attorney and CPA, so the estate documents, the gifting schedule, and the transaction timeline are all built from the same assumptions.
Etzel Financial Resources does not offer legal or tax advice. Please consult the appropriate professional regarding your individual circumstance.
Your Own Paycheck Is a Planning Decision
Closely held owners set their own compensation, and that decision quietly drives the tax bill, the retirement savings, and the story the financial statements tell a buyer. Executive compensation planning for an owner is not a separate service here. It is part of how the exit gets built.
- Balancing salary against distributions, so current taxes and future Social Security and retirement contributions are both accounted for.
- Choosing a company retirement plan that fits the owner's own deferral goals and the workforce the company actually has.
- Designing deferred or equity-style compensation to hold the key employees a buyer will insist on retaining.
- Recognizing when the key employee you are working to retain is the most likely buyer, and planning the compensation and the succession as one decision.
One Transaction, One Set of Numbers, Everyone Reading Them
The greatest financial mistakes rarely happen because an advisor is incompetent. They happen because good advisors work independently instead of collaboratively, and a business sale is the one event where that gap costs real money.
By the time a deal is live, an owner has a CPA, an attorney, possibly an investment banker or business broker, an insurance professional, and a lender — and is usually the only person who has spoken to all of them. Under
the Virtual Family Office model, we take the coordination seat. Your existing professionals stay exactly where they are; we make sure they are working from the same numbers, the same timeline, and the same understanding of what the family needs the transaction to accomplish.
The Day After Closing Is the Part Nobody Plans
Most exit advice stops at the closing table. The question owners actually lose sleep over comes the morning after, when a single illiquid position that was ninety percent of the balance sheet turns into cash that now has to produce income for the rest of your life. This is where the exit becomes ordinary financial planning again, and where the work gets built well before closing.
- An income plan that replaces the distributions your household was living on.
- A tax year that just became the largest one of your life, sequenced deliberately rather than absorbed all at once.
- Proceeds reinvested in a way that does not quietly recreate the same concentration you just escaped.
- Charitable gifts and family transfers timed against the year of sale, when the deduction is worth the most.
- An estate plan updated for liquid assets, since the documents were almost certainly written to move shares.
What Working Through an Exit With Us Actually Looks Like
Step 1:
Discovery Meeting
We listen before we recommend anything. This conversation covers the company, the family, the timeline you have in mind, and the professionals already advising you. Nothing is presented and nothing is sold.
Step 1:
Financial Stress Test
We pressure-test the current plan against the exit paths that are realistic for your business, including the ones you have not considered, and show where the plan holds and where it breaks.
Step 1:
Discovery Meeting
We listen before we recommend anything. This conversation covers the company, the family, the timeline you have in mind, and the professionals already advising you. Nothing is presented and nothing is sold.
We listen before we recommend anything. This conversation covers the company, the family, the timeline you have in mind, and the professionals already advising you. Nothing is presented and nothing is sold.
Step 1:
Discovery Meeting
Step 1:
Discovery Meeting
We listen before we recommend anything. This conversation covers the company, the family, the timeline you have in mind, and the professionals already advising you. Nothing is presented and nothing is sold.
Step 2:
Financial Stress Test
We pressure-test the current plan against the exit paths that are realistic for your business, including the ones you have not considered, and show where the plan holds and where it breaks.
Step 3:
Personalized Recommendations
You receive a written set of recommendations covering the transaction, the tax and transfer work that has to happen first, and the income plan for afterward, with the sequence and timing spelled out.
Step 4:
Full Implementation Support
We coordinate the execution with your CPA, attorney, insurance professional, and transaction team, and stay in the seat through closing and into the years that follow.
Who You Are Actually Working With
Scott Etzel is an Investment Advisor Representative offering investment advisory services through Independent Wealth Network, Inc., an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. He holds the Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor (CRPC) designation earned in 2007, the Series 7 and Series 66 registrations, and state insurance licenses, and works most often with closely held business owners, corporate executives, and medical professionals holding $1M to $10M+ in investable assets. The ADV Part 2 and the FINRA BrokerCheck record are published in the site footer, and client assets are held at third-party custodians, Charles Schwab and TIAA.
Where We Work With Iowa Business Owners
- Our Urbandale office at 2350 NW 128th Street serves owners across the Des Moines metro, including West Des Moines, Clive, Johnston, Waukee, Grimes, and Ankeny.
- Our Clear Lake office at 29 Lido Road serves North Iowa, including Mason City, Ventura, and the surrounding lakes communities.
- We work with owners statewide across Iowa and into the surrounding Midwest, where the tax and succession questions run on the same rules.
- The Virtual Family Office model supports fully remote relationships, so an owner who has already moved out of state can keep the same team through the transaction.
Questions Owners Ask Before They Start Exit Planning
What is business exit planning?
Business exit planning is the work of preparing a company, its owner, and the owner's family for the day the business changes hands. It covers valuation, choosing an exit path, tax and estate positioning, retaining key employees, and building the income plan that replaces the company once it is gone. It is planning work rather than transaction work, which is why it starts years before a buyer is involved.
When should I start exit planning for my business?
Three to five years before you intend to sell is the practical answer, because the strategies that change your outcome depend on holding periods, clean financial statements, and gifting done while the valuation is still modest. Owners closer to a sale still have meaningful options, and starting late is far better than not starting. The one timeline that rarely works is beginning after a letter of intent is signed.
Do I need a financial advisor to sell my business?
An investment banker or broker sells the company, and an attorney papers the deal. A financial advisor answers the question those two cannot: whether the proceeds, after tax, actually fund the life you and your spouse expect to live. Bringing that perspective in early also means the deal structure gets evaluated against your personal plan while the terms are still negotiable.
Who should be on my team when I sell my company?
A CPA, a transaction attorney, a valuation professional, an investment banker or business broker depending on the size of the deal, an insurance professional, your lender, and a financial advisor holding the personal plan. The team matters less than whether it functions as one. We keep the professionals you already trust and take responsibility for making sure they are all working from the same set of numbers.
What do I do with the money after I sell my business?
The proceeds have to do four jobs at once: generate income, survive a very large tax year, avoid recreating the concentration you just eliminated, and eventually pass to the people and causes you care about. We build that plan before closing, so the money has somewhere to go the day it arrives rather than sitting in cash while the decisions get made under pressure.
Is there an Iowa tax break for selling my business to my employees?
Iowa provides a capital gain deduction on the sale of employer securities to a qualified Iowa ESOP, and separately allows an employee-owner a one-time, irrevocable lifetime election to exclude net capital gain on qualified employer securities held at least ten cumulative years, phased to 100 percent of the gain for tax years 2025 and later. Both are narrow, fact-dependent provisions with requirements that have to be satisfied long before a sale. Whether either applies to your situation is a determination for your CPA and attorney, and Etzel Financial Resources does not offer legal or tax advice.
How do I take money out of my business without wrecking my tax year?
The lever is usually sequence rather than amount, spreading distributions, deferred payments, retirement plan contributions, and charitable gifts across tax years instead of stacking them into one. For owners approaching a sale, that planning has to account for the transaction year, which will almost certainly be the highest-income year of your life. We model the sequence and coordinate it with your CPA before the decisions are made.
What’s On Your Mind?
Start the Conversation While You Still Have Time to Use It
No Pressure. Just a Conversation That Brings Clarity.
The sale is one day. The plan is the twenty years on either side of it, and the decisions that shape it are made long before anyone shakes hands. If you are three to five years out, or if you are not sure how far out you are, that is the right moment to talk.
Email
setzel@etzelfinancialresources.com is the fastest first step for anything involving documents, which describes most of what an owner wants a second set of eyes on. If the conversation needs more room than that, book the 30-minute exploratory call or call
515-490-6831.
Etzel Financial Resources does not offer legal or tax advice. Please consult the appropriate professional regarding your individual circumstance.