Sara B. Stern Start Here: A Guide for Family Business Succession

Start Here: Family Business Succession gives you a step by step method to start your family business succession. WARNING When done well, passing your family business to the next generation leaves you poised to take great care of your family, your employees, your customers, and your community. When done well, family business succession is a powerful way to build continuity in your business and leave a well-defined family legacy for generations to come. When done well, it is a fantastic way to create and maintain generational wealth for your family and security for your employees. When done well, it will look easy from the outside. Family business succession is not for the faint of heart, strategy is involved, tough decisions get made and major risk factors get faced. It is critical to have healthy communication and a lot of patience. Succession planning takes time-it can't be rushed. When a family rushes through family business succession, it is typically because some unavoidable issue caused the need for speed-perhaps there was a disaster, a family death, or both. Or, perhaps you didn't take the time to do it because you thought it would work itself out. Research and experience show that family business succession doesn't work itself out. When you wait too long you may have to rush. When family business succession is rushed, there are typically major risks to the business and family. Often, there is a great deal of wealth and stability lost in the process. Sometimes the business is forced to close when family business succession has not been planned in advance. Thank goodness you're using this book right now, when there isn't an emergency. This practical guide is designed to take you through a process to successfully transition the ownership of your business from one generation to the next. The activities in this guide are meant to help you create a solid foundation for ongoing family business ownership. It is designed to give you the clarity, communication, and consistency needed to work through the process in a way that serves your family and business well. This guide is meant to help you get your fellow owners in agreement about how you will maximize opportunity and minimize risk for your family and business. It is meant to help you be good at making short and long term decisions that serve your business and family. It is not meant to help you organize your business, clarify your vision or gain traction inside of your business. It is also not intended to help get your family healthy and productive. This guide is meant to help get your ownership group clear, healthy, and productive so you can pass your business from one generation to the next. This guide does not dive into the needs of the family or the business. The focus here is simply ownership. The average family business succession takes eight years (some take fewer years and some take more). Answering the following questions as an ownership team (not the team that runs the day to day business and not the family) improves the chances of your family business succession going well:What are our values?What is the legacy we're trying to build?What will things be like in ten years?What is our ownership philosophy?What is our plan (three years, one year and 90 days)?What do we need to solve to accomplish this? Family business succession happens in all three areas: family, business and ownership. The place to start for smooth succession in a family business is with ownership. The activities and ideas in this guide are focused on ownership.