For Advisors and Brokers
Your client stays your client. We do the work you don't have time to do.
We work alongside CPAs, financial advisors, estate attorneys, bankers, business brokers, and other exit planners. When you introduce an owner, we contract directly with them. You're never a party to the agreement, you pay nothing, and we pay you nothing. No referral fees in either direction, ever.
For business brokers: the Relisting Readiness Plan
For an owner whose business was listed and didn't sell. You know what buyers said. We look at the business itself the way buyers and lenders do, and turn that into a plan to fix it before it goes back on the market. We work alongside you, not in place of you.
- A conversation with you about why the sale didn't close, and with the owner.
- Everything in the Exit Baseline: what the business really earns, its price range and where it sits, the 16-factor score, anything that could stop a sale, and the bank loan test.
- A written plan at three levels: fix what made buyers walk away, fix what pulled the price down, and rebuild the value more fully. It's written so the owner, their team, or another firm could carry it out without us.
- What we need: permission to see everything buyers saw on the most recent listing.
- What we don't do: review, price, or advise on any offer in hand, replace you, or list the business.
How it works with you
- You stay the advisor. You keep leading on tax, legal, financial, or the sale. We don't give advice in your lane, and we don't sell your client anything else.
- We do the hands-on work: the scoring, the plan, and the build. Written procedures, systems, and the steps that make a business run without its owner.
- If you've already written the plan, we can do the work it calls for.
- We keep you in the loop, with your client's permission.
A session for your clients
"Your Business, Your Options" is a free 75-minute session for business owners, hosted by you. It covers the ways owners leave a business, what buyers pay for, the personal side of stepping away, and a practical first step. There's no sales pitch. Owners leave with their own Owner Dependence Score and the Owner's Transition Guide.
Who we don't work with
We don't work with restaurants. We also don't work with septic, grease trap, waste hauling, or excavation businesses, because a separate company Mark owns buys businesses in those industries. Dont Shut Down never advises businesses in those industries and never buys a business it advises. It's written into every agreement.
Your client's name stays private
We never name a client, or use their story, without their written permission.