About

Built around the people behind the business.

South Twin Consulting was built around a simple observation: the most consequential decisions a business owner will face rarely fit cleanly into a transaction structure. The work here is designed for that reality.

Closely held businesses often face questions that fall outside the scope of traditional transaction advisory – ownership dynamics, family relationships, stakeholder alignment, and long-horizon planning that don't surface in a typical deal process. The interests of the business, the owner, co-owners, family members, key employees, and outside stakeholders are often intertwined in ways that require a different kind of engagement.

Decisions about what happens to the business are also decisions about relationships, legacy, obligations across generations, and what the people who helped build it are owed. All of that belongs in the analysis – not just the financial picture.

South Twin works as a trusted advisor throughout the process: helping owners understand their options, think through the implications, and navigate toward a decision on their own terms. That means knowing the terminology, knowing the partners, knowing the questions to ask at every stage – and having been through this enough times to know where the complications tend to appear. Most owners will face this once, maybe twice. We've done it a dozen times. That difference matters.

Where an engagement calls for outside expertise, South Twin works alongside a network of trusted professionals in transaction advisory, legal structuring, financial planning, and estate planning. Where those relationships don't already exist, we help identify and evaluate the right partners for the situation.

Principal

Dan Horan

dan@south-twin.com

Dan Horan founded South Twin Consulting to address a gap he kept running into: business owners facing ownership transition without an advisor focused entirely on their interests – independent of any particular outcome or transaction.

His interest in this work starts with his own family. Dan grew up working in his father's mid-market distribution business – always with the understanding that he'd take it over one day. When the time came, they made a different decision together: to sell. It turned out to be one of the best decisions they made, not just for the business, but for their relationship. That experience – knowing what it means to be on the ownership side of that choice – shapes how South Twin engages.

Professionally, Dan spent years as a Senior Principal at Indian River Consulting Group, where his work regularly put him at the intersection of business strategy and ownership. He led the strategic planning process for a $100M+ HVAC distributor that resulted in the owners' decision to sell – and has done similar work across manufacturing, distribution, and private equity-backed businesses. He also brings rigorous financial experience from his time leading enterprise strategy and FP&A at Target. He holds an Executive MBA from Hamline University, where he now teaches Critical Thinking and Strategy, and is himself a small business owner.

Principal

Brian Oehler

brian@south-twin.com

Brian Oehler works with owners and ownership groups on the structural and strategic questions that determine what's actually possible at transition – before any specific path has been chosen and before the pressure starts.

He is drawn to the parts of this work that most advisors skip: the conversations between co-owners that haven't happened yet, the gaps in family expectations that nobody has named, the differences in perspective that need to be surfaced before any decision can be made well. His view is that the best engagements end with the ownership group seeing each other's positions clearly – and a documented foundation for how to move when the time comes.

Professionally, Brian's background spans management consulting, operational leadership, and financial analysis across closely held and large-scale organizations. His consulting work has focused on strategy, operations, and the structural decisions that shape how businesses grow and transition. He holds an MBA in Entrepreneurship from the University of Oregon and a degree in Business from the University of Minnesota.