Week has run into week for a few months now, and all of sudden it’s spring. It’s like you blinked and winter passed. Your normal hard-charging pace seemed to speed up to levels you’ve never experienced these past few months. You’ve fallen behind with personal hobbies and family plans, as you’ve been pulling seven-day weeks just to keep up with your business.

Today things finally slowed down. The phone has been quiet. Nobody has been coming into your office. You feel like you can breathe. You’ve got a few minutes, maybe a few hours, to work on your business.

For the first time in months, you open up your desk and pull out your notebook with your priorities listed. Amidst a list with some items crossed off as done and others awaiting your time and effort, one stares you right in the face: “succession plan”.

Every time you consult your list you see that one and then pick something else to work on. Planning your exit is something that just never seems to reach the top of your priority list. It’s never the right time to deal with this one, so you’ve ignored it.

If this is you, we implore you to consider digging down and figuring this out pronto. Let’s discuss why.

The 5 D’s

The 5 D’s are untimely and/or unanticipated life events: death, divorce, disability, distress, and disagreement. Talk about uninviting topics to discuss, right?! The 5 D’s are the unfortunately too frequent drivers of business ownership changes. If this list is too daunting to consider, let’s just take the one we all succumb to: death.

Most of us have vivid memories of 9/11/2001. Just two years later in 2003, I was working in the financial district of Lower Manhattan in a cubicle farm with several young investment bankers who lived through that day. They were acutely aware of their mortality and lived with a realization that we don’t have forever on this earth. One analyst in particular had made the decision to return to his hometown of Toronto instead of staying in New York after his 2-year program completed, in large part, because even as a 24-year old, 9/11 had made him long to be closer to friends and family. For some of us, 2020 (year of the COVID-19 pandemic) taught us a similar lesson.

None of us can escape death, so why would you take the risk of leaving your loved ones with a mess to clean up by not getting your stuff figured out?

Explore Your Default Plan

Some of you might be thinking, “I’m aware of my mortality and I’ve got a plan.” My advice to you is to explore your plan with trusted family, friends, and advisers.

Perhaps you assume you’ll “pass it to the kids”. In today’s climate, this may not be a real possibility. Your kids may have no interest in running mom or dad’s business. They very well may be off on their own pursuits. Have you ever discussed passing the business to your kids with your kids? Even if they are thrilled with the idea of following in your footsteps one day, they may not be ready to shoulder this responsibility yet if something changes tomorrow.

Whatever your default plan, recognize that if poorly planned you could end up with a variety of poor outcomes. Returning to our example, if you do not prepare the next generation to own the business, passing the business to them may do more harm than good to yourself, your children, your employees, customers, and vendors. In plain English, if planned poorly you are more likely to leave a mess than a gift for the next generation.

While it may sound painful, a small dose of periodic concentrated effort can go a long way to providing peace of mind for yourself and your loved ones by developing a clearly articulated succession plan.

Are you interested in learning more about exiting your business on your terms? Talk to Doescher Group today to figure out the right first steps for you.