They can establish a financial fact without proving the actual qualifying work and employment period.
Document the service itself
Identify duties, dates and reliable records. Ownership and management may coexist, but one should not be assumed from a payment label alone.
Physical premises secured for the operation, a qualifying relationship between the entities, qualifying employment abroad, and evidence that the operation will support a managerial or executive position within one year. L-1A preparation should explain each person’s actual authority and primary responsibilities instead of assuming that a shared function proves both roles or automatically prevents either role from qualifying. If the purchase was structured through a holding company, a family trust or the owner personally, the chain has to be traced entity by entity until common ownership and control appear at the top. Headcount is relevant context, not a substitute for proving primarily managerial or executive duties; a function manager must primarily manage the function rather than primarily produce its ordinary output. The proposed American job must be primarily managerial or executive, supported by the actual delegation of operational work; a title and direct production duties do not suffice. The requirement is one continuous year of qualifying employment abroad within the preceding three years, and time worked in the United States for the same organization is normally excluded from the count while the three-year window is extended correspondingly.