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Triathlon Partners

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Planning for Business Owners

One advisor responsible for the connections.

Triathlon Partners works with closely held business owners on the coordination of investment, retirement, insurance, and exit strategy decisions. The integration role across specialists, with a fiduciary standard and disclosed compensation.

Most business owner planning is fragmented. The CPA optimizes the tax return. The attorney drafts the estate documents. The insurance agent sells policies. Each is competent in their lane. None of them coordinates across lanes, and the seams between specialists are where wealth quietly goes missing.

Triathlon Partners takes the coordination role. We work alongside the client's existing CPA and attorney, not in place of them. Each specialist still executes their piece. The coordinator owns the connections, and notices when the tax strategy conflicts with the estate plan, when the buy-sell does not match the trigger it was drafted for, or when the qualified plan was designed for a smaller business.

·How We Advise

Five planning areas, coordinated as a single plan.

i.

Investment and Retirement Plan Management

Portfolio construction and ongoing management for individuals, business owners, and trusts. Qualified plan design and oversight, including 401(k), profit sharing, and cash balance structures. Individual rollover and IRA management coordinated with the broader plan.

ii.

Employee Retention Strategies

Continuity and key person coverage on the people who drive revenue. Retention structures beyond salary and bonus, including deferred compensation and executive bonus arrangements designed to hold key employees through the events that matter most to the business.

iii.

Buy-Sell and Continuity Strategies

Funded buy-sell structures for both death and disability triggers. Valuation reviews on a schedule the agreement actually requires. Cross-purchase, entity redemption, and hybrid structures coordinated with the client's attorney to match the funding to the trigger.

iv.

Benefit Packaging

Health, disability, and long-term care designed as carve-outs that convert business deductions into personal coverage. Executive bonus plans, group long-term disability with individual gap layers, and business overhead expense coverage on the owner.

v.

Exit Planning

Coordinated planning around a future business sale or transition. Deferred sales trusts, premium-financed life insurance for estate liquidity, and the financial planning side of the exit. Executed alongside the owner's CPA and attorney on the tax and legal components.

·The Coordination Role

We work alongside your CPA and attorney, not in place of them.

The CPA owns the tax work. The attorney owns the documents. The third-party administrator owns the plan compliance. Each role is necessary and none of them is replaced.

Triathlon Partners owns the role no one else is paid for: the connections across the specialists, reviewed against the business and the household as a single coordinated plan.

·Watch & Read

More on business owner planning.

Video

Key Employee Retention

Losing a key employee disrupts operations and revenue. Proactive structures can help retain valuable people and build a cash cushion against departures.
Video

Succession Planning

Selling a business is an ordeal even with a buyer identified early. Whether it is a family transfer or a sale to a key employee, financing can be arranged years in advance to support tax efficiency and valuation.
YouTube Channel

Triathlon Partners TV

Ira Koyner, "The Original IRA," shares clear, actionable insights on retirement, structured notes, tax reduction, and wealth protection, in plain English.
Financial Fortress for Business Owners by Ira S. Koyner
About the Founder

Ira Koyner spent nearly three decades managing institutional risk at large global banks.

That background in foreign exchange options trading runs through how Triathlon Partners approaches planning. Strong outcomes do not come from optimism. They come from structure.

His book, Financial Fortress for Business Owners, describes the planning discipline in detail. It is the second volume in the Financial Fortress series.

View on Amazon About the Book
·Common Questions

About business owner coordination.

A coordinating advisor owns the connections across your specialists rather than replacing any of them. The CPA still handles tax, the attorney still drafts documents, and the plan administrator still handles compliance.

The coordinator reviews how those pieces interact, catching conflicts between the tax strategy and the estate plan, mismatches between a buy-sell agreement and its funding, or a retirement plan that no longer fits the size of the business.

No. Triathlon Partners works alongside your existing CPA and attorney, not in place of them. Each specialist continues to execute their own work.

The firm takes the coordination role that typically no one is paid for: reviewing the business and the household as a single connected plan.

A funded buy-sell agreement is a plan for what happens to an ownership interest when an owner dies, becomes disabled, or exits, paired with a funding source so the remaining owners or the business can actually carry it out. Funding is often arranged through life or disability insurance.

The structure, whether cross-purchase, entity redemption, or hybrid, is coordinated with the attorney so the funding matches the trigger the agreement was drafted for.

Exit and succession planning generally benefits from a long runway, often years before a sale or transition. Whether a business passes to family or to a key employee, financing and structuring the transfer well in advance creates more options and can improve tax efficiency.

Starting early gives the plan time to align the business value, the owner's personal finances, and the tax and legal work.

·Next Step

A thirty-minute conversation to see whether we are a fit.

No preparation required. We discuss the structures currently in place, the gaps that may exist, and whether a coordinated planning relationship makes sense for your situation.

Schedule a 30-Minute Introduction

Triathlon Partners LLC · Connecticut-based registered investment adviser and independent insurance brokerage.