Cornerstone Alliance International

When I started in the industry over 19 years ago, I noticed that very few firms actually talked to each other or would share best practices other than a conference or two a year. Like several of the members of CIA, I wanted to take a leadership position in the industry to help educate and elevate the M&A community. I served as chairman of the International Business Brokers Association, as a board member for M&A Source, and founded the Wisconsin chapter of Midwest Business Broker & Intermediary Association. But still I thought we could do more. By collaborating with a smaller group of proven firms that connect on a regular basis, we could provide the very best results for each and every client.

Concurrently I saw a big issue with business owners considering the sale of their businesses. Most business owners really “didn’t know what they didn’t know” or how to tell if an M&A firm was quality or just talked a good game in an effort to get a large retainer with little chance of a successful sale. After all, they were most likely only going to choose an M&A advisor once in their life.

Little did they know how significant the consequences of choosing the wrong M&A firm would be. It could mean the difference between successfully selling their business, extending their legacy and living out their dreams or shutting it down and liquidating the physical assets for cents on the dollar, while watching their legacy evaporate after years of sacrifices and all their employees now out of work.

With the founding of CIA, we have engineered much of the risk out of the business sale process. Now, our clients can rest assured that they have the best team, strategies and resources available to them by accessing our aggregated, well vetted pool of M&A specialists – our success rate and experience speak for themselves!