About Ed Mysogland
I got into this work to do deals. I stayed because owners kept losing them.
Managing Partner of Indiana Business Advisors since 1992. Valuation, exit planning, and the sale itself, for owners of private companies in Indiana and across the country.
- 34years on the owner’s side of the table
- 2,400+transactions closed through Indiana Business Advisors
- 38states where I have advised owners and their families
- 4designations a sale requires: CVA, CM&AA, CEPA, CMEA
How I got here
An industry that treated a life’s work like a real estate listing
I came into business brokerage in 1992 wanting to be an investment banker. Instead I found an industry that ran like a real estate shop: transactional, lightly regulated, and not much concerned with whether the seller got what the business was worth.
Dick Hester and Larry Metzing had founded Indiana Business Advisors in 1981. With them, I built it into something the market was not offering owners of private companies: valuation, equipment appraisal, exit planning, and M&A advisory in one practice. Until then, only bigger companies with bigger advisors could get that combination.
The problem I keep working on has not changed in 34 years. The owner does this once. The buyer across the table has looked at a hundred businesses before yours and knows where the soft spots are. That gap is where owners lose money, lose leverage, and walk out of the biggest financial transaction of their lives feeling that something went wrong, even when it closed.
I wrote Done Deal: Exit Without Regret because I got tired of watching that happen after the fact. If you have raised a child, you may remember reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Done Deal is that book for a business exit: what is coming, in what order, and what to do about it before it arrives.
Most of the owners I work with run companies between $500,000 and $25 million in revenue. The practice is based in Indianapolis. The owners and advisors I work with are not limited to it. If you are outside that range, call anyway. I will tell you whether I am the right person, and who is if I am not.
Why I do this
You built something real.
You showed up before the doors opened and stayed after they closed. You made payroll when it was hard. You hired people who depended on you. You solved problems no business school could have prepared you for, because they were your problems: specific, complicated, yours.
And now you are thinking about selling it.
People who buy businesses designed the exit process. The vocabulary is their vocabulary. The timeline is their timeline. The pressure lands on you. If you walk into that process without preparation, without representation, and without a clear-eyed understanding of what your business is worth and why, you will leave money, time, or the sense of a fair deal behind.
That is what I am here to prevent.
I have spent 34 years on the seller’s side of the table. I have seen what preparation does for an exit, and I have seen what the absence of it costs. The book, the podcast, and the practice all point toward the same owner, the one who deserves a great exit and is willing to do the work to get one.
Exit on your terms.
Credentials
Four disciplines show up on every sale. I hold the designation for each one.
The number you take to market has to survive the buyer’s accountant.
Deal structure, terms, and process. Where the headline price becomes what you keep.
The two or three years before a sale, where most of the value is built or lost.
What the hard assets are worth, on paper and to a lender.
Also a Certified Value Builder advisor. The free assessments on this site come from that work.
How I work
Four things I tell every owner
- The seller’s seat.
- Everything in a sale looks different depending on which side of the table you sit on. Valuation, negotiation, diligence, the months after closing. The buyer has people sitting with them. You should too.
- Preparation is the negotiation.
- By the time you are arguing price with a buyer, the real negotiation is over. Clean financials, a well-told story, and a team that runs without you settled it months earlier. It starts with a number you can defend. In our shop, owners who get a valuation first have a success rate above 80 percent.
- The exit is a beginning, not an ending.
- A sale starts your next chapter, and the quality of that chapter depends on how the exit was run. I am working for your next ten years.
- Nobody calls you after a free assessment unless you ask.
- The assessments on this site are the same tools I use with clients. Take one, read the report, and decide what to do with it. If you want to talk it through, you know where I am.
Beyond the deal table
Where else you will find me
Indiana Business Advisors
Managing Partner since 1992. Valuation, exit planning, and the sale itself, in one practice.
Done Deal: Exit Without Regret
Published in September 2026. The book I wish every owner could read before starting the exit process.
Defenders of Business Value
The podcast I have hosted since 2019, for owners and the advisors who serve them.
FranchiseResale.com
Co-founded in 2022. A resale platform built for franchisors, so a brand can manage the resale of its existing locations with buyers engaged and confidentiality protected.
Butler University, Lacy School of Business
Mentor in the Real Business Experience course since 2016, where students start and run a real business for credit.
ETA Indiana
Organizing committee. The statewide Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition conference at Butler University, where searchers and operators meet the owners selling the businesses they want to buy.
Keep IN
Advisory committee. The State of Indiana’s initiative to keep businesses in Indiana as their owners retire, by building a succession marketplace and helping owners get full value when they hand off.
Indiana Small Business Development Center
Advisory committee. The state network that gives Indiana owners no-cost business advising and training.
The Value Builder System
Certified Value Builder advisor. Served on the international board of directors from 2019 to 2021.
My articles have appeared in the Indianapolis Business Journal and NACVA’s QuickRead. The newer ones are in the Articles section here.
I live in Carmel, Indiana. I am married and have two daughters.
Tell me where you are in the decision.
A buyer called, you are planning a sale, you need a number you can defend, or you are an advisor with a client facing one of those. Start with a conversation. Thirty minutes, no fee, and you leave knowing the next step.