Our Services

Every sell-side engagement begins the same way: with a conversation about what you've built and the future you envision for you, your family, and your company. From there, we work through an initial assessment — a grounded look at your financials, operations, customer base, competition, and all the things that make your business unique and valuable. That feeds directly into a business valuation. Rather than a single number pulled from a textbook formula, we build a defensible range based on normalized earnings (your financials adjusted for owner-specific items a new owner wouldn't incur) and what comparable businesses in your industry and region have actually sold for. The goal here isn't to impress you with a high number — it's to anchor the process in what the market will realistically support.

Once you decide to proceed, we prepare confidential marketing materials and present the opportunity to a curated group of qualified buyers — strategic acquirers running businesses like yours as well as financial buyers like private equity. Interested parties sign non-disclosure agreements, review the materials, and submit an Indication of Interest, or IOI. An IOI is a non-binding letter telling us roughly what a buyer is willing to pay and how they'd structure the deal. We use these to narrow the field and invite the most credible buyers into management meetings — where you and the buyer sit across the table, ask real questions, and get a sense of whether there's a genuine fit.

The buyer that best combines price, terms, and certainty of closing then submits a Letter of Intent, or LOI. The LOI is still non-binding, but it does commit both parties to an exclusivity period — typically 60 to 90 days — during which the buyer and their team (attorneys, accountants, lenders, etc.) conduct due diligence. This is the most demanding stretch of the process, and it's where most deals either solidify or run into trouble. Our job during diligence is to keep the work organized and work through issues as they surface — because they always surface.

Closing occurs after the lawyers finalize the definitive purchase agreement and the final terms are locked in: The specifics of the purchase price, any holdbacks or escrow, representations and warranties, and any post-close arrangements like a consulting period or earn-out (future at-risk payments for performance). When everything is signed and funds flow, the business transfers and you move into whatever transition role you and the buyer have agreed to — for some, it could be weeks, months, even years. For others there may be no post sale transition at all. From first conversation to closing, a well-run sell-side process typically takes 6 to 12 months, and Iris Co. is alongside you at every step.

Buy-side engagements typically begin with a planning conversation — what you're looking to acquire, why, and how it fits the business you're already running. We work through acquisition criteria together: industry, size, geography, revenue and margin profile, customer concentration, the operational characteristics that matter to you, and the deal size you can realistically finance. From there we move into sourcing — reaching into our network, working proprietary channels, and engaging directly with owners who aren't formally on the market.

When a target surfaces, we run an initial fit assessment before you ever put a number on paper. We then help you craft an IOI or LOI that's competitive enough to win the seller's attention but structured to protect you. This is where experienced buyers succeed with structure: understanding working capital targets, escrow, seller notes, earn-outs, and the representations and warranties is an essential part of the process.

Once an LOI is signed and you're in exclusivity, due diligence begins — and on the buy-side, this is where we earn our keep. We manage the process end-to-end: quality of earnings analysis with your accountant, legal diligence with your attorney, operational and commercial diligence, lender coordination, insurance review, environmental work if the deal involves real estate, and anything industry-specific the target requires. Our role is to orchestrate the advisor team so you can stay focused on running your existing business. Every deal produces surprises in diligence. Our job is to surface these early, quantify them, and translate them into purchase price adjustments, indemnification, or walk-away decisions before you're too far down the road to course-correct.

Negotiation and structuring run in parallel with diligence all the way to closing. Deal structure is often where value is created. Finally, we help you structure a feasible transition plan with the seller. From kickoff to closing, a well-run buy-side engagement typically runs six to nine months, and Iris Co. is alongside you through all of it.

Not every business owner we meet is ready to transact today, and for many, the most valuable work we do results in a sale — but not right away. Some owners want thoughtful analysis before major decisions to determine what the business earns after normalizing owner compensation and one-time items, what it's likely worth today, and what specific changes over the next two to five years would meaningfully move that number. Others need pre-sale preparation — cleaning up financials, addressing customer concentration, documenting processes that currently live in the owner's head, and resolving the issues that quietly erode value during diligence. This is unglamorous work, and it's some of the highest-return work an owner can do. A business prepared eighteen months in advance of a sale routinely closes at a materially higher price than the same business taken to market cold.

A related part of our practice is helping owners assemble and coordinate the right professional team. The legal, financial, and operational advisors that help you optimize your business. Over the years we've built relationships with attorneys, CPAs, wealth advisors, and management consultants across North Dakota and the surrounding region — people whose work we know and trust. When a client needs counsel we can't or shouldn't provide ourselves, and they don’t have the knowledge in their existing advisor team, we make introductions to advisors genuinely suited to the question at hand. You remain in the driver's seat on every one of these decisions; our role is to make sure you're choosing from the right set of options.

Finally, because many of the transactions we advise on involve commercial real estate — owner-occupied facilities, investment properties tied to the business, or real estate that needs to be separated from the operating company before a sale — Jacob holds a North Dakota real estate salesperson license #12144 and conducts real estate brokerage through Stillwater Commercial Real Estate. That means the real estate side of a transaction is handled by a fully licensed team that understands how it connects to the larger deal, rather than treated as a separate engagement with a separate broker who sees only part of the picture.