The team behind business owners
You run the business.We run the rest.
One team handling the work many owners coordinate alone. We run the picture quarter after quarter, so you stop being your own integrator and start being the owner again.
One team handling the work many owners coordinate alone. We run the picture quarter after quarter, so you stop being your own integrator and start being the owner again.
Many owners focus on growing revenue. Fewer focus on building enterprise value, which is what actually determines what your business is worth when it’s time to sell, transfer, or step back.
Every owner exits someday. Far fewer are ready when the moment comes, and an exit you didn’t choose can be the most expensive kind.
Your retirement plan and your business plan are the same plan. If they’re not built together, one of them is wrong.
One bad day (a lawsuit, a key partner leaving, a health event) can undo decades of work. Many owners are one event away from a crisis they never planned for.
A CPA, an attorney, an investment guy, an insurance broker: none of them looking at the whole picture, all of them sending you bills. The integration cost lands on you. Here’s what changes when one team handles it.
General characterizations of common setups, not descriptions of any specific firm.
Bright Forecast doesn’t replace the specialists in your life. We coordinate them, so the work stops landing back on your desk. Here’s what the quarterback role actually looks like in practice.
Quarterly tax strategy. Year-end positioning. Entity structure decisions. We sit in those conversations so the tax picture stays aligned with the bigger plan, not optimized in isolation.
Estate documents, buy-sell agreements, and operating agreements, drafted by your attorney and kept current with the financial plan instead of filed away to go stale.
When financing matters (an acquisition, expansion, or refinance), your lender gets the full financial picture from one coherent source. Clear numbers make for a stronger conversation.
Personal, business, key-person, and buy-sell coverage, coordinated as one strategy and reviewed every year, not a stack of disconnected policies sold one at a time.
Compensation design, equity, retention structures, and family governance, handled with the same coordination, because the people around the business are part of the plan, not separate from it.
This is how we think about a business owner’s life: not as a portfolio plus some side relationships, but as one integrated system. It’s also why the work landing on your desk every Friday stops being yours to integrate.
Four engagement levels, from the full owner-and-business flagship down to focused investment management. The Total Plan covers all eight categories of work; the others draw from the same map at smaller scope. Start where it makes sense, move up when you want to.
Business value building (the Bright Forecast Method’s ninety-day cycles, designed to improve what the business is worth) and exit and succession planning across every transition option, plus family governance for continuity across generations.
The long-arc plan for the business itself: what happens if something happens to you (continuity), how you transfer ownership when the time comes (succession), how you sell when you’re ready (exit), and how you reduce your role over time (transition). Many owners think about one of these, usually exit. Real life rarely cooperates.
What we doWe map all four scenarios because many transitions are forced, not planned. We coordinate the legal documents (drafted by your attorney), family conversations, buy-sell agreements, and tax structure, so if any of these is triggered, by choice or otherwise, the path is already mapped.
Time saved: you’re not managing four separate professional relationships across this work. Value impact: planning all four scenarios is designed to leave fewer decisions to chance when a transition comes.
What your business is actually worth (EBITDA), the industry-specific drivers buyers and lenders tend to pay more for, how much value transfers vs. walks out the door without you (Management Team), and the gap between current and target value (Value Gap). Many owners have only a rough idea of what their business is worth.
What we doEBITDA is the headline number; the 18 drivers are where the actual work happens. We benchmark against comparable businesses, identify the highest-leverage drivers for your industry, and build a multi-year roadmap to work on the value gap. When a lender, a court, or the IRS needs a certified number, we coordinate a credentialed appraiser and make sure it’s built on the same drivers.
Time saved: no separate valuation consultant relationship to manage. Value impact: steady value-driver work is designed to lift what the business is worth over several years, so the same effort can build more wealth.
The retirement-plan vehicles that let high-income owners shelter the most money from taxes and reward key employees efficiently. A 401(k) with profit sharing is the baseline. A Cash Balance plan can stack significant additional deferral on top of the 401(k), with limits that scale by age and income. A Defined Benefit plan stacks even higher for late-career owners. An ESOP can transition the business to employees in a tax-advantaged way.
What we doWe run the design analysis on your specific demographics and income picture, coordinate with the third-party administrator, and pressure-test the plan annually as your situation changes. Many owners stop at a basic 401(k) and may be leaving legitimate tax savings on the table.
Time saved: you don’t shop multiple providers or interpret actuarial reports. Wealth impact: a right-sized plan is built to be tax-efficient, with the aim of keeping more of what the business earns each year.
The protection layer across personal, business, and family. Life and disability insurance for the family. Long-term care for one of the largest costs many retirees face. Property & Casualty (auto, home, umbrella liability) for everyday catastrophic risk. Group benefits to recruit and retain. Captive insurance: for some profitable businesses, an advanced strategy evaluated with captive specialists and your tax advisor, with significant tax and regulatory requirements.
What we doWe review your coverage every year against your current life, not what you bought ten years ago. Property and casualty coverage is evaluated against your exposures and coordinated with your P&C agent, and we work with your existing advisors so nothing falls between policies and coverage isn’t doubled up. Key-person and buy-sell coverage is sized to current values, not stale ones.
Time saved: one team keeps the whole insurance picture in view instead of three brokers giving conflicting advice. Wealth impact: helps limit the damage one bad event can do to decades of work.
Your written, dynamic personal financial plan, your investment portfolio, your retirement income strategy, and your tax plan. The four pieces that tie everything else together.
What we doThis is the work financial advisors traditionally focus on, often without the context of the business, which for owners is usually the biggest asset on the table. We build the personal plan around your concentration in the business: how much risk you can take outside it, how to harvest income tax-efficiently, when to start diversifying personal wealth, and what retirement actually looks like in dollars. Updated annually.
Time saved: one plan connecting every financial decision instead of three disjointed brokerage accounts and conflicting advice. Wealth impact: integrated planning is designed to catch opportunities that disconnected advice can miss.
How you and your key people get paid. Bonus plans tied to specific metrics. Deferred compensation for retention. Real or phantom stock equity for true alignment.
What we doFor owners, this is two things: structuring your own compensation with taxes in mind (W-2, distributions, or deferral, decided with your CPA), and building retention plans that give your top people a reason to stay for the long haul. It’s common to under-pay key talent on the front end and over-pay on the back end through equity giveaways or retention crises. We design the structures with your CPA and attorney so the documentation, tax treatment, and accounting all line up.
Time saved: no back-and-forth between attorney, CPA, and broker; we coordinate the design. Value impact: a stable key team is something buyers look at closely, and well-designed phantom equity can give the people who make the business work a stake in staying.
The transfer plan: who gets what, when, and how, for both the business and personal assets. Legal Documents are the foundation (will, trust, durable POA, healthcare directive). Business Succession is the legal infrastructure for transferring the company (buy-sell, voting trust, family limited partnership). The Legacy Plan is what you want this all to mean. The Estate Tax Plan, built with your attorney and CPA, looks at how to reduce what gets taxed at transition.
What we doWe coordinate with your attorney so business agreements actually match your estate documents. It’s common to find a ten-year-old will that still names a business partner who left years ago. We review the estate plan with you every year or two and flag what needs updating as life changes: marriages, births, business transitions, and tax-law changes.
Time saved: no managing two separate sets of documents (business and personal) that could conflict at the worst possible moment. Wealth impact: estate errors at transition can cost families a meaningful share of net worth in unnecessary taxes and disputes.
For owners with family wealth or a family business: the structure for how the family makes decisions about money and business across generations. Family Meetings on a regular rhythm. Defined ownership rules. The dynasty plan for keeping wealth coordinated across 2nd- and 3rd-generation heirs. Family Membership criteria: who’s employed in the business, who’s on the board, who’s a beneficiary only.
What we doWe facilitate the structures that help keep “stuff money makes weird” from breaking the family. Many families never have these conversations until a crisis forces them, and by then the legal and emotional damage is done. We build the governance before the wealth does the breaking.
Time saved: a structured family decision-making process can replace dozens of one-off arguments and crisis calls. Wealth impact: governance is one of the things that separates family wealth that endures from family wealth that fades within a few generations.
Business plan integration with your CPA and attorney, deeper tax strategy (entity structure, owner comp, retirement plan design), and full estate coordination, not just the basics.
We coordinate with your CPA, attorney, and operations team so business decisions show up in your personal plan, and personal decisions get made with the business in view.
A written, dynamic plan connecting your business income, personal expenses, savings strategy, and retirement target. Updated annually so it keeps up with the business and your life.
Portfolios across taxable and retirement accounts, built around your concentration in the business rather than a generic 60/40 allocation, and reviewed regularly.
Life, disability, key-person, buy-sell funding, umbrella, and business continuation coverage, reviewed every year so the amounts keep up with your situation.
Coordinated tax planning across business and personal: entity structure, owner compensation, retirement plan design, charitable strategies. The work that happens before the year starts.
Will, trust, durable POA, healthcare directive, beneficiary designations, and family business agreements, coordinated with your attorney so nothing falls between the layers.
A written, dynamic financial plan, a retirement income strategy with real numbers, and estate document foundations done right, not just a managed account in isolation.
A written, dynamic plan covering income, expenses, savings strategy, debt management, and a clear retirement target. Updated annually so it keeps pace with your life.
Building toward a specific retirement target: Social Security strategy, account drawdown sequencing, and the math on what a sustainable lifestyle actually costs. Not “you’re probably fine,” but actual numbers.
Diversified, tax-aware portfolio aligned with your time horizon, risk tolerance, and goals, reviewed regularly across taxable and retirement accounts.
Life, disability, umbrella liability, and long-term care coverage, reviewed annually to match your current life, not the life you had when the policy was issued.
Asset-location decisions, tax-loss harvesting, and qualified vs. non-qualified account funding strategy, aimed at keeping taxes down without contorting your portfolio to do it.
Will, durable POA, healthcare directive, and beneficiary review: the foundation documents every adult should keep current. We check that they exist, match each other, and reflect what you actually want, and coordinate any updates with your attorney.
Diversified portfolio aligned with your time horizon, risk tolerance, and tax situation, and reviewed regularly.
Annual rebalancing to target weights, with tax-aware adjustments to preserve cost basis wherever possible.
Auto, home, umbrella liability, and life insurance review, to check that the protections in place match your current life, not the policies you set up before the kids or before the house.
One in-person or video meeting per year to review the portfolio, market conditions, and any life changes that should change the plan.
Honest pricing requires knowing what you actually need. A $30M owner with three entities, a stale buy-sell, and a sale 24 months out is a different engagement than a $3M owner who needs investment management and a written plan. Until we understand your situation, any number we put on a page would be wrong. The 15-minute call exists to scope what you need and give you a real, directional answer, including an honest “we’re not the right fit” if that’s the truth.
15 minutes. One conversation. You’ll leave with a clearer view of where you stand and what the next step looks like, whether that’s with us or not.