Business succession planning for family and privately held businesses
I help owners understand what their business is worth, the factors affecting its full potential value, and how to prepare for a sale, a transfer, or a smaller role.
Start with your questions.
Succession Advisor to Family or Closely-held Businesses
What is the business worth now? What could it be worth, and by when? What do you need for life afterwards?
Today
What a buyer would pay now
What it could be
After the work of getting it ready
Here's the paradox. With mid-market companies, the owner and leader is often the primary determinant of past success. But to an acquirer, the soon-to-be-former leader's centrality to the business is a major risk factor after the acquisition.
"If you truly want to sell to a strategic buyer and drive tremendous value, the more redundant you are in the business, the higher the value you can drive."
John Ratliff, my Scaling Up Coaches mentor
The three questions we prioritize
- How sellable and attractive is your business?
- How reliant are you on the sale to finance your Freedom?
- What does a happy exit look like, and are you ready?
We help you see your business as an acquirer will
- Whether there is too much owner-centricity.
- How dependent your business is on any one employee, customer or supplier.
- Your history of producing sales and profit, combined with the professionalism of your record keeping.
- How well differentiated you are from competitors.
- Customer satisfaction and a history of repeat purchases.
- Your likelihood to grow in the future, and at what rate.
What happens to your people, and what happens to you
You want to step back. You also feel responsible for the people who helped you build this. Handing them to a new owner feels like leaving them behind, and there's nowhere to put that. Not with your spouse. Not with anybody on the payroll.
Then there's you. You've run this company for most of your working life, and what you do and who you are have been the same answer that whole time. Sell it, or hand it to your daughter, and somebody asks you what you're up to now. You'll want an answer ready before they ask.
I'm not bringing this up to worry you. It gets settled either way, said out loud or not. Better that you're the one settling it.
So the work covers both sides of it. What you want for yourself, and what the change does to the people who work for you and the people at home. Who on your team could take over decisions you make today, and when do they hear that any of this is happening.
We work through that alongside the numbers.
I've built and sold a business myself
I founded a company in 1983 and sold it in 1990. I scaled and sold the properties I ran, twice. I ran companies as CEO, starting with ten people and finishing with 175. Then I went into coaching business owners.
I take no percentage of a sale. Whichever way you decide, I get paid the same, so what I tell you about the business is the same either way. There's no version of this where I earn more because you sold.
I work with owners three to five years out, while there's still time to fix the things holding the price down.
Every testimonial on this site is about coaching, not about a sale
Read more coaching testimonialsTom helped us to gain clarity, focus, reduce drama, improve the team culture, and ultimately make the entrepreneurship journey more rewarding.
Shane Jette, Chief Executive Officer, Facility Improvement Corp.
Tom was very helpful with implementing ideas to help with our future business plans and introducing new tools to help with accountability.
Ryan Fenssler, Agency Owner, Touching Hearts, Denver
The first step is one conversation
1
Talk through where you stand
Tell me what you're looking at doing. It costs nothing, and at the end of it we both know whether this is the right work for you.
2
Put your goals and the numbers together
We spend about ninety days on what you need financially, how the business actually runs, and what you want out of the years after it.
3
Fix what's worth fixing
Often our coaching extends beyond the ninety days to address the priorities identified.
Ninety days in, you have a written plan in your own words
Your goals
What you need financially and what you want from life after the business.
Business priorities
What needs attention before you step back.
An action plan
What happens next, who is responsible, and the time frames.
I don't know your industry, but they all rhyme
You know your trade better than I ever will, and I won't pretend otherwise. What I've seen, over and over, is that the problems that hold a privately held company back look the same whatever it makes or sells.
So we split the work. You bring what you know about your industry and your customers. I bring what I've seen in companies like yours, and the questions a buyer or a successor will ask about any of them.
You'll know your number, and you'll know who told you and why
Business first, since that's the reason you're reading. You'll have a number you can stand behind. You'll know the two or three things holding it down. And you'll have years left to do something about them, so by the time you go to market you've already fixed what a buyer would have knocked the price down for.
Then the part money doesn't cover. The questions nobody asks you get asked here, early enough that you can still change your mind. And your people hear it from you, on a day you picked.
Owners who pick their own timing come out better than owners whose timing gets picked for them by a health scare or a buyer at the door.
Tell me what you have in mind and we'll talk about where to start.
No cost for that conversation. Nobody at your company hears about it from me.