You spent decades earning your reputation, your customers, and your crew's trust. When it's time to step back, you deserve a buyer who pays for what that's worth, and an M&A partner who helps get you there.
It's time they start enjoying the way life should be.
Seventeen thousand Maine companies are sitting where you sit today, and fewer than four hundred deals a year get bank money to close. The difference between the many and the few is not luck, and it is not the quality of the business. It is preparation.
That is what our playbook is built for: books rebuilt to bank-statement proof, a lender package finished before the first buyer ever calls, five buyer paths worked at once, and a weekly rhythm that answers every question inside 48 hours. Prepared companies leave the 17,000 and join the few hundred that close.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau 2023 Annual Business Survey (56.6% of Maine business owners are 55 or older); SBA Maine 7(a) lending data; owner-age and deal-count figures include MSP estimates.
Your timeline. Your terms. Your name still worth something in town when it's done.
Before you decide anything, you deserve a straight answer: what your business is worth today, what is quietly holding its value down, and a 12-month plan to fix it. Most owners are surprised, usually in a good way.
We bolster your performance, your balance sheet, and your business processes. Then we connect enhanced data transparency systems that give buyers a looking glass into your performance. When buyers see clearly, they bid confidently, and confidence pays premiums.
We run a confidential process and bring curated buyers to your table: Boston- and NYC-based search funds, SBA-backed operators, strategic acquirers, private equity. You keep running the business; we negotiate like it's our own retirement on the line.
Sometimes the smartest exit is joining forces with the shop across the county. We structure the whole combination: valuation of each side, rolled equity, assumed debt, bank financing, and a clean capitalization at close.
We explore every financing strategy until the money is real and the closing is on the calendar.
Maine Succession is run by Justin Bristol, an entrepreneur who has spent his career doing exactly what we will do for you: finding overlooked value, building the systems that prove it, and turning it into real money.
Started his first company in college in his backyard with borrowed power tools, building solar-powered food carts. Scaled it to $250K in sales, serving JetBlue at the Boston Marathon, MetLife, and MullenLowe.
Second employee at a hydropower firm that grew from $5MM to $100MM in valuation. Built the board-level financial reporting and performance transparency systems that institutional investors relied on.
Found a significantly asymmetrical, distressed, abandoned mill property, 30 acres in the Providence, RI metro area, and purchased it for $5K. Turned it into a Qualified Opportunity Zone Fund engine that harbors capital gains tax and appreciation. Today it houses an industrial art studio and an industrial outdoor storage operation, fully leased.
Identified and secured an abandoned hydroelectric power station in the Providence, RI metro area and raised over $250K of equity for its licensing costs, in anticipation of it becoming a $4.5MM to $6MM asset.
Our partners include seasoned professionals with backgrounds in commercial lending and senior bank management, financial and business advisory, private and public equity research, start-ups, business leadership, and most importantly, successfully managing business sales from start to finish. We have the ability to work with your tax, estate, and accounting team, or stand one up on your behalf.
A no-obligation valuation conversation. We learn your business (crews, trucks, backlog, licensing) and give you a straight read on what it's worth and what would make it worth more.
We find the deal-killers before a buyer does, strengthen your numbers and processes, and plumb in the data transparency that makes buyers comfortable paying full price. You stay in control of the timeline.
We run a confidential process with curated buyers, negotiate on your behalf, and manage the deal to financial close, exploring every financing road until the money is in your hands.
This is the whole engagement, from the first confidential conversation to the wire hitting your account. Most sales run seven to nine months. Here is what happens, in what order, and what you get along the way.
Scroll sideways to follow the full process, left to right.
Two owners, one stronger company. Below is an example of how we structure a combination: two Aroostook County septic businesses merged into a single platform, with one family fully bought out, the other rolling equity into the new company, and bank financing sized to close. The companies and figures are illustrative; the mechanics are exactly how a real one is built.
Scroll sideways to see the full structure.
Same company, five kinds of money, five different numbers. Enter your averages from the past three years and see what each buyer type could pay, how much arrives as cash at close, and what carrying a seller note does to the math. Everything runs right here in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Use the average of your past three years. Example numbers are loaded; replace them with yours.
This is a planning estimate, not a valuation or an offer. Real numbers depend on provable books, customer mix, licenses, equipment, and terms. The free conversation gets you the real one.
Tell us a little about your business and we'll set up a confidential valuation conversation. No obligation, no pressure, and nobody hears about it but us.
Prefer to read before you talk? Twelve pages on what your company is worth, why most Maine sales fall through, and how we make sure yours doesn't. Written for owners, not bankers.
Download the briefingThe first conversation is free and confidential. Even if you're five years out, knowing your number now changes what you do next year.
justin@mainesuccession.com · 401-793-6041
Ready to move today? These are the two documents that start an engagement. Fill them out on your computer and email them to justin@mainesuccession.com; we countersign and get to work.
Maine Succession Partners · Portland, ME