Mark Fleming, CFA, FRM

Introduction

Summit Succession is the Central Ohio M&A and business-brokerage. We sell Main Street and lower-middle-market companies in the $500k–$6M sale price.

What we do differently — and the reason most of our engagements start with a referral from a CPA, attorney, or wealth manager — is the work that happens before the listing goes live. Most brokers list and hope. We don't. Before we take a business to market, we:
- Clean up the books to a buyer-ready standard (accrual where it matters, reclassified owner perks, normalized payroll, fixed inter-company items).
- Build a defensible SDE/EBITDA bridge with documented add-backs that survive a buyer's Quality-of-Earnings review.
- Identify and address the issues a serious buyer will use to decrease your price — customer concentration, related-party rent, key-employee dependence, working-capital gaps — before they're discovered, not after the LOI.
- Produce a confidential blind teaser and a full CIM that we'd be willing to defend in front of a lender, a search-fund operator, or a private-equity associate.

The team behind this work:
- Mark Fleming, CFA, FRM — Founder/CEO. 20+ years in finance, M&A, and operating acquired companies.
- Katie Fleming, MBA, CM&AA — Partner. Leads acquisitions, outreach, and the buyer-side process.
- Norvin Villa, CPA — Financial analysis, recasting, QoE prep.
- Francis Calpo — Director of SBA Loans. Manages lender packaging and buyer qualification so financing doesn't kill the deal at week ten.
- Plus a full-time back-office accounting and operations team.

The result: cleaner diligence, fewer price reductions, and a price that's defensible when the buyer's CPA shows up.

If you're 0–36 months from selling, the right time to talk to us is now — before you list, not after a deal fell apart.