Last week I met with a seller a second time after a prior buyer fell through due to lack of industry experience. The business has customer concentration that I'm looking to mitigate, so I presented several different options to the seller with respect to LOI terms. One option I presented is a performance based seller note, and the broker advised them during our call that this should be limited to a 12 month time period unless they stayed involved to some extent. I mentioned that the seller wouldn't be able to stay onboard for more than 12 months due to SBA rules (unless they retained some equity and were willing to sign a personal guarantee), and the broker stated that this is only the case if the seller continues to get paid. In short, the broker suggested that the seller stay onboard in an unpaid advisory capacity for an additional 12 months so that the performance based seller note I propose can cover 24 months rather than just 12 months. Is this type of arrangement permissible? I've never considered retaining a seller in an unpaid capacity before because I didn't think someone would be willing to do so, but the seller seemed willing to do so during our call. I explained to the seller that if we're not able to come to agreement on a performance based seller note that I'll likely need to reduce the purchase price as a trade-off. The broker stated to me that other sellers with whom she has worked have come to similar agreements, and that the SBA doesn't technically need to know about this, but I'm not sure how I would be able to enforce the terms of the performance based seller note without the lender et al knowing about it. Any thoughts?