I'm Randy Long, an exit planning advisor, attorney, and wealth manager based in Wilmington, North Carolina. I'm the founder of Long Family Office and, alongside my daughter Ellen, lead Build Prove Sell. Here's what has my attention right now.
Getting companies ready to be sold
Most of my work comes down to one idea: run your company so it is always ready to be sold. A company that's prepared to sell is worth more, runs more efficiently, and gives the owner real options, whether they keep it, hand it to their kids, or go to market. I built the Bulletproof Exit Process around that. A lot of it is getting things clean for a buyer, the accounting, the entity, the books and records, a strong management team, so that nothing is a surprise during due diligence. I tell clients all the time that capital is a coward, and it will run if it senses too much risk in a deal.
Shrinking my firm on purpose
Most advisors at this stage of their career are looking to grow: hire more people, add more clients, build more layers. I'm doing the opposite. Right now I'm taking the wealth management side, Long Family Office, down to two of us and partnering with Savvy Wealth to handle the back office. That frees me to focus on the long exit planning relationships that take years to get right. Smaller and more focused fits the work I actually care about.
Planning for life after the sale
The day an owner sells, the financial picture changes completely. When you live out of a business, a lot is deductible and money moves with flexibility. When you live out of a portfolio, that all goes away: you make the money, you pay the tax, then you pay separately for what the business used to cover. So I spend a lot of time helping families build real net worth outside the company, so the family isn't exposed if something happens to the business, and so the portfolio is ready to do work it never had to do before.
A lot of how I think gets sharpened in Joe Polish's Genius Network, where I get to learn from people like Dan Sullivan. If any of this sounds like where you are, you can find me at Build Prove Sell or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Last updated June 2026.