A business doing $8M in annual revenue with $1.2M in EBITDA is worth approximately $5M at a 4x multiple. Without a plan, that business is statistically likely to close when the owner is ready to leave, recovering nothing.

With proper planning, a structured installment sale with seller financing, estate equalization, and an ILIT, the same owner could receive $5.5M or more, pay significantly less in tax by spreading the gain, and protect their spouse's retirement income. The cost of that advisory work is typically recovered many times over in tax savings alone.

Start with the course.
Build the foundation first.

Our self-paced Exit Planning Foundations course covers everything a business owner needs to understand before making the most important financial decision of their life. Six modules, your own timeline.

Acquisition vs. startup, the math is not close

Startups have a five-year survival rate of roughly 20 percent. An acquired business with proven cash flow, an existing customer base, and a trained team generates income on day one. With an SBA 7(a) loan requiring as little as 10 percent down, a buyer acquiring a business generating $300,000 in owner income could finance that deal with as little as $100,000 to $150,000 in personal capital.

Start with the course.
Get the foundation first.

Our self-paced Acquisition Essentials course walks you through exactly how to source, evaluate, finance, and close a business acquisition. Eight modules, your own timeline, built for first-time buyers.

What McKinsey found, and what it means

A 2026 McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility report identified what researchers are calling the Great Ownership Transfer, a demographic milestone with consequences for communities, workers, and the future of local economic life across America.

By 2035, approximately six million small and medium businesses will face ownership transitions. More than one million are viable candidates for sale, representing up to five trillion dollars in enterprise value. Today, 92 percent of small business exits result in closure, not because those businesses lack value, but because the planning that would make a transfer possible simply does not exist for most owners. Without significant change, McKinsey warns, this wave could result in widespread economic erosion rather than renewal.

A business is not just a financial asset. It is the embodiment of someone's life work, their relationships, their values, and their community standing. Every exit we advise on honors that. Every acquisition we support carries it forward.

Business ownership is the foundational wealth driver in America, with equity, upside, tax advantages, and the potential for generational transfer that no salary can replicate. We believe more people deserve access to that driver. We are building the infrastructure to make it real.

Local business ownership is not just good economics. It is what makes communities worth living in. When dollars circulate locally, when owners know their customers by name, when a business sponsors the school fundraiser, that is community. We protect it deliberately, one ownership transfer at a time.

Fellows Program

A structured education program for aspiring business buyers who are building the knowledge, confidence, and capital access to pursue their first acquisition. Seats are competitive, application-based, and grant-funded, meaning most participants pay nothing to attend.

Buyer Advisory Clients

For buyers who are actively pursuing a specific acquisition and want the full advisory team, valuation analysis, due diligence coordination, legal documentation, and trust and estate strategy, behind them. Many Advisory Clients are Fellows Program graduates who are ready to act.

An introduction to entrepreneurship through acquisition, what it is, why buying beats starting from scratch, and how to know if you are ready to pursue it. Available free through our content channels to anyone who is curious.

Eight modules covering deal sourcing, financial analysis, valuation, capital stacks, due diligence, LOI and closing mechanics, and first-year operations. Delivered in fellows group format with peer accountability, live deal review, and direct access to the Steward advisory team.

Sector-specific deep dives covering what is unique about buying and operating businesses in each industry, licensing, valuation nuances, operational dynamics, and due diligence that a general program cannot cover.

Monthly peer group for first-year owners, guest workshops on cash flow management and people leadership, alumni mentor matching, and continued connection to the Steward community. The support that every new owner needs and most never find.

First-generation wealth builders in Black, Latino, and other communities who have the drive and the capital but need the knowledge, the network, and the confidence to act on this opportunity.

Community members in small towns who want to keep local businesses local but have never had access to the advisory infrastructure to make that happen. The Fellows Program meets them where they are.

Buyers with strong leadership foundations and real capability who face structural barriers to capital access and have rarely seen pathways into business ownership modeled for people like them.

For over a decade Sheila has worked directly with executives, senior leaders, and high-performing adults in the education sector, developing the leadership capacity and organizational systems that drive measurable outcomes. In that work she managed some of her organization's highest-revenue client relationships, stewarding multimillion-dollar contracts at the highest level of expectation.

That career gave her a precise understanding of how adults learn, how leaders make decisions under pressure, and what it takes to move someone from intention to action. It also surfaced a harder truth. Better access to education and professional development opens doors, but research consistently shows it does not, on its own, close the wealth gap. Business ownership is where equity is actually built, where income compounds into assets, and where wealth transfers across generations.

The data makes the gap plain. Most business owners, regardless of background, do not have an exit plan or the advisory team to execute one. The Exit Planning Institute estimates that only 32 percent of owners have a documented exit plan, and McKinsey warns that the coming generational wave of business transfers may result in widespread economic erosion rather than renewal if that does not change. The stakes are highest for owners in rural markets and underrepresented communities, where the advisory infrastructure has historically been thinnest, but the opportunity, and the need, belongs to every owner who has built something worth protecting.

She founded Steward Advisory Group to meet that demand. Her advisory methodology draws on extensive coursework through the Exit Planning Institute, the leading authority on exit planning education since 2005, and is shaped by a career built on one discipline: teaching high-performing adults to execute at the highest level. Las Vegas based. Mission driven.

Ray provides the legal infrastructure that most exit planning engagements are missing. A seasoned M&A and estate planning attorney, he brings deep expertise in deal structuring, trust architecture, tax strategy, and the legal mechanics of ownership transfer. He handles the documentation and deal structures that protect what sellers have spent a lifetime building and set buyers up to grow from day one.

As a business owner and father of two daughters, Ray thinks about these questions personally as well as professionally. He has spent his career mastering the legal and financial vehicles that create generational wealth and lasting legacy, and he founded Steward in part because he wanted to put that expertise to work for people navigating the same decisions he thinks about for his own family.

His practice is built on a simple conviction: the right structure, put in place at the right time, changes what a business is worth and what it can become for the people who come after you.

Without a plan, Ramon faced the outcome that claims 92 percent of business exits. A business worth millions, statistically likely to close. Thirty-four people whose livelihoods depended on decisions that had never been made. A retirement that existed on paper but not in practice. And a family that had never had the conversation about what happened next.

We started with a formal valuation and a honest conversation about what Ramon actually wanted this exit to mean. The buyer who ultimately acquired the business was a local operator chosen in part because he shared Ramon's values. Every employee was retained. The deal structure protected Linda's retirement and reduced their combined tax liability by $380,000. The business stayed in Las Vegas.