Our Story
Quality of earnings and operating partners for owner-led businesses.
LIMESTONE Strategic Partners does two kinds of work for businesses of roughly $500K to $5M of EBITDA. On a deal, we prove the earnings for the buyer, the seller or the lender on a fixed fee, and we test whether those earnings transfer to a new owner. In a business, we take the CFO and operating partner seats. We do not broker, and we do not take listings.
Why the firm exists
More than half of Indiana’s business owners are 55 or older.
The Indiana Business Research Center puts 51.7% of the state’s business owners at 55 or older, with roughly $207 billion of output behind them, and most have not planned the transition. A business of this size usually gets a financial checklist when it changes hands. The firm was founded in 2024 to read the operation as well as the numbers, because both partners have worked inside operating businesses, and to stay on as the operating partner where an owner wants one. Indiana-rooted. Serving buyers and owners nationwide.
Source: Indiana Business Research Center, IU Kelley School of Business, for the Indiana Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Keep IN Silver Tsunami reports, Phase 1 and Phase 3, 2026.
How we look at a business
Every engagement reads the numbers and the operation.
A quality of earnings proves what the business earned: cash tied to the bank, every add-back tested, the working capital it needs to run. That is the first lens. The second asks whether those earnings survive a change of owner: who the customers really buy from, which seats only the owner can fill, and whether the business runs on systems or on one person. Both are on every engagement, in one report, and the second is what catches an earnings figure that is accurate and still does not transfer.
The numbers
Led by Ryan Anoskey, CPA
Proof of cash from the bank statements to the tax return. Every add-back tested against documents, with the rejected items shown. Owner compensation reset to market. The working capital peg, computed and tested. One adjusted earnings figure a lender can underwrite.
The operation
Led by Jared Luegers, CFA
Management interviews on the owner’s seat, the key people and the customers. Concentration and contract position. Whether the systems or the owner run the business. A written read on whether the earnings hold once the owner steps back, and what the first hundred days will ask of a new one.
Independence
We sit on the diligence side of the deal and nowhere else.
We do not take companies to market, we take no success fee, and we never work both sides of a transaction. When a client is ready to sell, the sale goes to the advisor they choose and we stay on the numbers. When the right answer is a smaller scope, or none, we say so before anyone spends money. Every report carries two sets of eyes, and LIMESTONE issues it.
Who does the work
Two partners, and both are on every engagement.
Ryan Anoskey, CPA, leads the numbers: more than 100 quality of earnings reviews, buy-side and sell-side, and the report LIMESTONE issues. Jared Luegers, CFA, reads the operation and performs the documented second review. The person who reached the conclusion is the person on the call. Who does what, stage by stage, is on the Team page, and each partner’s record is on their profile.
What to expect
You will get a straight answer.
We will tell you when you are not ready, when a structure someone is pitching you is wrong, and when we are not the right fit. The name is Indiana limestone, the stone the state is built from, quarried about an hour north of Jasper, where the founder grew up.