Boomer Exit & Succession Advisory

The macro pull is real and quantified: Teamshares and Old National Bank cite roughly 2.3 to 3 million boomer-owned SMBs holding about $10 trillion in assets, with 58% having no documented transition plan, and a Fortune piece from February 2026 reports McKinsey pegging $5 trillion of these businesses coming to market this decade. The Exit Planning Institute's own stat that only 20 to 30% of businesses that go to market actually sell shows acute unmet pain. Willingness to pay is established (owners already hand brokers 8 to 15% of the sale). But I could not surface direct Reddit threads on r/smallbusiness or r/Entrepreneur of owners desperate for an 'advisor' specifically, so the bottom-up, person-is-searching-for-this signal is weaker than the top-down market size.

The market is heavily validated by paying competitors, which is good, but it is also crowded and partly funded, which caps the score on the inverted-U. The Exit Planning Institute is a $25 to $50 million credentialing machine (CEPA), Value Builder and BizEquity sell advisor tooling, Maus bundles valuation and succession, and brokers like Sunbelt, Morgan & Westfield, and Cornerstone Business Services already do the sell-side work. The exploitable gap is real: brokers ignore the smallest businesses and most owners are unserved, but a solo advisor has almost no defensibility against a credentialed CEPA next door, and search funds plus PE roll-ups are now chasing the same boomer supply with real capital.

Nobody has to be convinced to pay. Morgan & Westfield, MidStreet and Axial confirm brokers charge 8 to 15% success fees on sub-$1M deals plus $10,000 to $25,000 retainers, and Value Builder reports advisors who use its score report charge 60% more on average. Margins on advisory are strong because it is mostly your time and network. The model is clear (retainer plus success fee). The one drag is that deal flow is lumpy and a single closed sale can take 9 to 12 months, so reaching steady revenue means stacking enough engagements, not one big payday.

There is no product to build, so an MVP is just you, a process, and the Value Builder or BizEquity tooling, all available off the shelf, with low capital needed. The hard inputs are the constraint: you need genuine M&A credibility (a CEPA or a real track record), a buyer network, and live deal flow, none of which a newcomer has on day one. There is also a regulatory edge: actually brokering the sale of a business can trigger securities or business-broker licensing in some states, so you have to scope whether you advise or transact.

The why-now is about as strong as it gets. Fox Business, Old National Bank and Project Equity are all running 'silver tsunami' coverage, the February 2026 Fortune and McKinsey numbers put $5 trillion of supply on the clock, and Stanford GSB data shows search-fund acquisition volume grew roughly eightfold from $110 million in 2010 to over $880 million in 2023, so the buyer side is professionalizing into the trend too. Enabling tools (instant valuation platforms) are mature. This is a wave that is cresting now, not five years out.