Succession Planning Is Critical For Family Wealth
The question of who will own your business after you have moved on is rarely a simple one. Whether it is passed down within the family, transferred to non-family managers or sold to an outside purchaser, this decision will most likely be a difficult one. Unfortunately, business succession statistics are not on your side:
88% of current family business owners believe the same family or families will control their business in five years, but succession statistics undermine this belief. Only about 30% of family and businesses survive into the second generation, 12% are still viable into the third generation, and only about 3% of all family businesses operate into the fourth generation or beyond.
Our succession planning services focus on the following areas:
1) A Discovery Process To Understand Your Mission, Vision, Values, and Goals
It’s tricky to work out when and how to leave your business. We believe that your business succession planning process should start at least 5 to 10 years before you want to leave or sell to allow time to:
- Identify and prepare a successor and/or the next generation;
- Implement appropriate tax, estate planning, business ownership, and insurance strategies;
- Consider the financial planning needs of all parties;
- Assess the value and marketability of the business;
- Take steps to properly finance the business for sale or internal transfer
- Retain the business’ value after the transitioning event.
Our family office, and our strategic network, will help you plan your business succession needs. The first step in our process is understanding your mission, vision, values, and goals for your business and your family’s wealth.
2) Creative Strategies For Your Succession Planning
Before you can successfully leave or pass on your business to new ownership or management, or even adopt a new business direction, you need to develop a long-term strategic plan that meets your desires. The key is to plan early to make sure you are prepared since to successfully transition your business often requires a collaborative approach with internal and external family members, executives, employees, suppliers, bankers, and other professionals.
Our family office facilitates this process to ensure your succession plan will suit your best interests and those of your company.
3) Implementing Your Succession Plan
A well-planned succession improves the likelihood of a successful transition and increases the value of your business to investors or purchasers.
Our family office, or our strategic network experts, will assess your organization’s leadership needs, groom potential leadership successors, and facilitate the gradual handoff of management functions and ownership control.
4) Transitioning From Business Success to Family Significance
A successful decision to move on from your company typically requires that the transition process for your company, and all those involved, will go as smoothly as possible. However, the process does not end here. Managing your newly acquired family wealth and/or ensuring that your business will prosper under the next generation is still critical to your legacy.
The following poem, The Bridge Builder by Will Allen Dromgoole, reminds us of the importance of each of our journeys from success to significance. Retain our family office today to be your strategic partner on your incredible life journey!
An old man going a lone highway,
Came at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim, near,
“You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you this bridge at the evening tide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head:
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him.”
Source: Father: An Anthology of Verse (EP Dutton & Company, 1931)