Blog

Creating a Business Transition Plan in a Volatile World 

Creating a Business Transition Plan in a Volatile World? 

We frequently meet business owners who are hesitant to make a plan to transition their businesses to successors—often their adult children—during today’s volatile times. If volatility has put your transition on pause, we’d like to help change your mindset by focusing on just two words: volatility and plan.  Volatility  According to Merriam-Webster, the word volatile means: characterized by or subject to rapid or unexpected change. We see the word used a lot lately to describe the financial markets, wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and national politics, to name

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Sustainability in Family Business Transitions

Sustainability in Family Business Transitions

If sustainability in family business transitions means that a company passes to the next generation, and the company continues to do well, then the odds are not great.  It’s an unpleasant reminder, yet the most commonly quoted business transition statics are:  We believe that there are almost as many causes for this dismal record as there are families and understand that external factors come into play as well, such as new competitors, changing regulations, evolving technology, or economic downturns. Today, however, let’s focus on two internal factors that you may

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Four Building Blocks of Sustainable Family Business Transitions 

Four Building Blocks of Sustainable Family Business Transitions 

The transition of family businesses from Generation 1 to Generation 2 are complex, yet complexity increases exponentially in transitions from Generation 2 to Generation 3 and beyond. In this article we look at (1) the reasons for the complexity and (2) four building blocks of sustainable family business transitions.  Families: They’re Complicated!  Transitions from Gen. 1 to Gen. 2 typically involve parents and children in one family unit. This family could be blended (meaning it includes children from prior marriages), and that only some children might want to participate in

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The Time and Taxes Conundrum in Business Transition woman business owner

How Early Preparation Saved a Family Business

Great title for an article, right? A great topic, too … if only it were possible to know if and how early preparation saved a family business.  But there isn’t.  There are simply too many unexpected twists and turns, route changes and reboots in every transition journey to know that early preparation is the one thing that prevented a family business transition from becoming a catastrophic failure.  What we do know is that longer planning runways dramatically increase the odds of successful family business transitions because long runways give owners

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Family Constitutions Keep Families Together. Picture of a happy family in a park.

Five Key Steps in Preparing a Family Business For Transition

“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up somewhere else,” so said Yogi Berra, the man The Economist magazine named in 2005 as the “Wisest Fool of the Past 50 Years.” As far as we know, he was not talking about family business transitions, but his words certainly apply. Through long experience guiding owners, we’ve found that preparation is the best way to increase the odds of transition success. In this article, we share with you five key steps in preparing a family business for transition. Step

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Family Business Transition Tool Kit

Navigating the complicated terrain of private and family business transitions is both an art and a science for everyone involved: owners, successors, their families, and us, as Transition Guides. On the art side of the equation are experience, intuition, careful listening, open-mindedness, humility, confidence, humor, and the attitude that others have the best of intentions. On the science side are setting and prioritizing goals, choosing a transition path, assessing family members’ preparation, willingness and ability to transition successfully, and preparing successors to lead. Today we want to introduce you to

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Using Family Business Governance as a Transition Tool 

Using Family Business Governance as a Transition Tool 

As a family business owner, if you could create a training ground that could:  Preserve family relationships,  Give your successor the opportunity to learn new skills,  Give you the opportunity to learn to mentor,  Protect your business,  Alleviate the worry of losing control, and  Minimize miscommunication, would you jump on it?  For most owners, the answer is an emphatic “yes!” And yet, when we suggest to these same owners that, in anticipation of a transition of ownership to the next generation, they implement some form of formal governance for their

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The Successor’s Transition Journey

The Successor’s Transition Journey

Transitioning ownership of a business is a journey, most obviously for the person transitioning out of ownership (the transitioner). Less appreciated, perhaps, are the challenges a successor encounters on the journey to business ownership. Read about the successor’s transition journey. We’ve written frequently about some of the transitioner’s challenges (e.g., preserving relationships, cutting the ties between owner and business, mentoring successors, to name few) and dilemmas that transitioners encounter when turning over ownership. In this article we focus some of the challenges successors face and how we help transitioners and

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A ceramic piggy bank.

How Much Will Your Company Be Worth in a Business Transition?

The first question most owners wrestle with when they think about the future transition of their businesses to successors is: How much will your company be worth in a business transition? How much is the business worth and how do I figure that out? How much will my business be worth if I sell at the right time? How much at the wrong time? How much do I need from the transition of equity to achieve my financial goals? How much do I deserve from the transition in return for

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