How Two Business Transitions Shaped the Second Edition of It’s A Journey
Five years ago, Elizabeth Ledoux and Laura Chiesman sat down to write a book about business transition planning. They had watched too many owners arrive at the most significant decision of their working lives with no roadmap in front of them, and they wanted to put one in their hands. What neither of them fully […]
Lessons from a Successor Turned Transitioner with Laura Chiesman
Episode Description: Elizabeth welcomes back Laura Chiesman, managing partner and financial advisor with Savant Wealth Management and her co-author on It’s a Journey: The Must-Have Roadmap to Successful Succession Planning. Laura has lived both sides of a business transition. In 2015 she purchased her firm from its original founder, and years later she became the […]
How to Know You Are Ready for Life After Your Business Transition
When a business owner sits down with me to talk about their transition, they usually come prepared. They can talk about valuation. They can walk me through who might take over and roughly when. Many of them can describe the legacy they hope to leave with genuine feeling, because they have thought about it for […]
5 Ways a Business Transition Strategy Pays You Back While You Stay
Many business owners delay transition planning because they believe it signals the beginning of the end. The opposite is true. A business transition strategy starts creating value the moment you begin, long before any change in ownership or leadership takes place. We call this the multiplier effect, and it shows up in five measurable ways: […]
The Multiplier in Motion: Five Things That Compound When You Plan and Stay
Episode Description: In this solo episode, Elizabeth picks up where the countdown myth left off. If planning doesn’t mean leaving, what does it mean? Her answer is the multiplier effect, the idea that a transition strategy starts paying you back long before you ever step out or step back. She walks through five things that compound the […]
Emotional challenges of transitioning out of your business
After more than thirty years of walking beside business owners through their transitions, I can tell you where most plans actually stall. It’s almost never the valuation. It’s rarely the legal structure or the tax strategy. Those pieces are complicated, but they’re solvable, and there are plenty of talented advisors who solve them every day. […]
Business Transition Planning Is Not a Countdown. It’s a Multiplier
Somewhere on your to-do list, there’s a line that says something like “start transition planning.” It’s been there for a while. Not because you forgot about it, but because every time you look at it, it feels like it’s asking you to admit something you’re not ready to admit. So you move it. To next […]
Planning Without Leaving: Why a Transition Strategy Is a Multiplier, Not a Countdown
Episode Description: In this solo episode, Elizabeth speaks directly to the owners she calls still building visionaries: the ones who aren’t winding down, who are still growing, and who are still the reason so much of the business works. She unpacks the countdown myth, the belief that starting a transition strategy starts the clock on […]
What a Four-Generation Family Business Can Teach You About Building a Win-Win-Win
A few weeks ago, Andrea Carpenter and I sat down with Family Business Magazine for a live webinar on preparing the next generation for ownership. We were joined by two people who know this journey from the inside: Laurie and Brad Irish-Jones of Irish Family Companies, a fourth-generation family business that has been serving Western […]