It is time to say it like it is.
Family Business Succession doesn’t need to be so difficult and so expensive.
Here is the truth.
If you have fewer than 500 employees and can sit down and talk with each other, most of the help you will find for family business succession is time-intensive, extremely costly, painful, confusing, and sometimes terribly ineffective, sometimes causing more harm than good.
If your family business has fewer than 500 employees
and you and your fellow owners can:
sit around a table and talk
be vulnerable
learn and grow
You might be able to do a large part of your succession planning on your own.
And you do NOT need:
multi-hundreds of thousands of dollars of family business advising
hours and dollars spent in one-on-one conversations with your attorney, financial advisor, and/or family business advisor
to take years to define your values or mission or family charter
customized solutions
one of a kind agendas
to learn a whole bunch of big words and complicated theories
fancy advisors who wear suits (unless you really like the person in the suit)
Because I’m tired of family business solutions for small businesses being over priced, over customized, over stuffed with theory, and full of highfalutin mumbo jumbo, I created simple resources to help you run a healthy and successful family business for generations.
To be successful with these tools you will need to:
understand a few, simple concepts
make a handful of very important decisions
meet regularly
be willing to say the hard things
have a sense of humor
If you can’t do that, I can’t help you.
Here are the super simple things I have for you. You can pay as little as zero dollars and as much as $75,000. You pick.
Every other week, I host the free Family Business Office Hour. From 1-2pm central time on Mondays, you can ask as many questions as you want about how to run a healthy family business for generations. Easy peasy, lemon squeasy.
Family Business Office Hour
If you want more, read the book.
This book takes you step-by-step, through six important questions to answer when it is time to pass your family business to the next generation.
This guide has short concepts, examples of other family businesses who used this method and exercises to help you get started with family business succession.
Published since 2019, it has also helped many family businesses get organized about their family business ownership, well before succession begins.
This $20 book includes space to write your own thoughts before you sit down with your fellow family business owners.
If you want more
Take my course.
This is a great add-on to the Start Here book. For $139 you get life-time access to this course (including all additions I make over time).
This course describes what a healthy family business looks like, including who the leaders are, what fair looks like, ground rules, meetings, and who makes which decisions. When paired with the Start Here book, you have what you need to build a great family business and get started with succession.
If you still want more.
I work one-on-one with a limited number of family businesses each year. Reach out and let’s talk. Be warned though, I’m going to encourage you to do this work using the other methods first. Other family businesses have done this, I think you can too.
If we work together, you pay me by the day. This will cost between $40,000 and $75,000 per year. I typically work with my clients for 1-2 years.