Financial Advisors for Business Owners
Kimberly Green | 2026-03-28
Financial Advisors for Business Owners: A Guide to Finding the Right Fit Owning a business changes your financial situation in ways that most financial advisors aren't trained to handle. Your income is the company. Your retirement plan may be the eventual sale. Your taxes involve business decisions that your financial advisor and CPA need to coordinate on—and often don't. A generalist wealth manager can manage a stock portfolio. What business owners need is an advisor who understands the interplay between business decisions and personal wealth—and has built a practice around making them work together. The Specific Financial Problems Business Owners Face Owner compensation structure: How much to pay yourself in salary vs. distributions, and how to minimize self-employment tax while staying compliant. Business retirement accounts: Solo 401(k), SEP-IRA, defined benefit plans—the options multiply with business income, and the right choice depends on your numbers. Wealth concentration: For most business owners, the company is the retirement plan. That's a concentrated, illiquid bet. An advisor should have a clear view on when and how to diversify. Exit planning: Even if you're not planning to sell, the financial decisions you make today affect what a buyer would pay. Good exit planning starts years before you need it. Tax coordination: Business decisions have personal tax consequences. The advisor and CPA need to work together—not hand notes back and forth once a year. Advisors Built for Business Owners Ian Weiner, CFP, CEPA – Serves Nationally Ian is one of the few financial advisors who holds the CEPA designation—Certified Exit Planning Advisor. That credential represents training specifically in the financial, legal, and tax dimensions of a business transition. For business owners thinking about an exit in the next decade, he's worth knowing. His practice focuses on tax reduction, investment optimization, and wealth preservation for business owners who want to build durable wealth before, during, and after a sale. The CEPA credential signals that he has worked through the specific problems of business transitions—not just read about them. Fee: 0.5% to 1.75% of AUM. Serves clients nationally. Find him: samslist.com/advisor/ian-weiner-cfpr-cepa Anthony Syracuse, CFP – Scottsdale, AZ Anthony's flat-fee model ($7,500/year) is designed for the kind of client who has income and complexity but may not have a large liquid portfolio—a description that fits many business owners whose wealth is tied up in the business. His "Return on Life" planning framework...
