According to MBA Stack, 40% of all small businesses and franchises are owned by baby boomers.¹  Furthermore 75% of boomer business owners don’t have a plan for retirement and still enjoy running their business. The data also shows that many of these people will have to sell their business to fund retirement with 45% of these people having no savings at all. 10,000 baby boomers retire each day, with 19% of those being business owners. Given these facts we have written a series of articles to cover some of the common issues and myths that we see around the topic of business succession planning.

Your business is an important part of your life story.  Your family has thrived because of your dedication to a business that represents your passion and expertise.  Protecting your lifework and creating a solid succession plan that harmoniously merges family circumstances and business considerations is imperative. There are many misconceptions and misgivings when starting the discussions of succession planning. 

The biggest issue we see is that of procrastination. Most business owners are busy running and growing their business and don’t want to step away to work on something that they feel is too far down the road. This is certainly understandable as the business owner usually has much to do and wears many hats. They always feel like there will be an ideal time to plan later. Unfortunately, sometimes something bad happens out of the blue and now the family is faced with succession planning in the face of chaos.

The most effective planning occurs when done well ahead of time particularly if you are hoping to keep the business in the family.  Identifying and developing emerging leaders takes time. The idea is to plan your succession well ahead of time so that time is on your side as you work through the steps of identifying the leader, developing the plan for how and when the buyout transaction will happen and finally exiting the business when you are ready. The goal is for you as the owner to be able to afford the type of retirement that you want and for the business to continue to thrive after you are gone.

So where do you begin? In almost all cases you should start with a business valuation to get an idea of the current value of the business. You also want to make sure your will is up to date. Finally you want to make sure that you review your life insurance needs to make sure the business and family is protected against the untimely death of the owner.  

At Sgroi Financial we can bring the necessary resources to the table to help you navigate this process. If the thought of succession planning is keeping you up at night, we can help!

1. The State of Bommer- Owned Small Business, Small Business Trends, Nov 6, 2022