Contact Broker
7385 State Rt 3,
Westerville, Ohio 43082
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About the Company
Summit Succession is Ohio's premier M&A and business brokerage. We sell Main Street and lower-middle-market companies in the $500k–$6M sale price.
We don't just sell businesses; we help people buy them, too. Our team reviews 3–5 acquisition opportunities every day, across every state and industry. Sitting on the buyer's side of the table that often, we know exactly what makes a buyer serious, what makes one walk away, and what makes one pay a premium. We use that to prepare your business before it goes to market, relying on clean financials, defensible earnings, and none of the surprises a buyer uses to chip your price down later.
Our edge:
- 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: 20+ years in finance, M&A, and operating acquired companies.
- Kate Fleming, MBA, CM&AA: Leads acquisitions and the buyer-side process.
- Analytics team running the numbers that drive our valuations.
- Deal execution advisor who accelerates deals to close.
- Financial management team that gets businesses sales-ready by cleaning up accounting records, building defensible financial models, and preparing documentation buyers actually want to see.
- Full-time back office and support team that makes your deal a priority.
The result: cleaner diligence, fewer price reductions, and a price that's defensible when the buyer's CPA shows up.
Broker Biography
Introduction
I've spent more than 20 years in finance and M&A, and I've been part of over 60 business transactions. What I'm proudest of isn't the deal count. It's the dozens of owners I've helped sell their businesses and step into retirement on their own terms.
I currently own more than 20 businesses myself. I know what it's like to build something, to carry the weight of it, and to think about what it means to let it go. When we talk about your business, I'm not guessing at what you're going through. I've lived it, and I'm living it now.
I'm a CFA charterholder and a certified Financial Risk Manager, so I read financial statements the way a serious buyer does. I know where a deal gets questioned, where value gets lost, and how to prepare your business so it holds up under scrutiny.
Most owners I work with have spent decades building something, and selling it is unfamiliar, stressful, and easy to get wrong. My job is to take that weight off you: to get your business genuinely ready before it goes to market, bring it to the right buyers, and guide you from the first conversation to closing without the surprises that sink most deals.
If you're thinking about selling, even if it's a year or two out, let's talk. The earlier we start, the more I can do to protect your price and your timeline.
Services Provided
- Sell-Side Engagements — Main Street & Lower-Middle-Market ($250K–$2M EBITDA)
- Pre-Sale Accounting Clean-Up & Books Remediation
- Sell-Side Quality-of-Earnings (QoE) Preparation
- SDE / Adjusted-EBITDA Normalization & Add-Back Defense
- Business Valuation (Calculation of Value)
- Exit Planning (6–36 month runway engagements)
- Confidential Information Memorandum (CIM) Drafting
- Buyer Identification, Qualification & Matchmaking
- SBA Loan Packaging Support for Buyer Financing
- Deal Negotiation, LOI-to-Close Management & Diligence Defense
Areas Served
Professional Affiliations
Education & Professional Credentials:
Bachelor of Science, Finance – Western Michigan University
Bachelor of Science, Economics – Western Michigan University
Certifications & Designations:
CFA Institute Charterholder
Certified Financial Risk Manager (FRM)
MIT Sloan's Mastering Negotiation and Influence
