Protecting family, business and and lifestyle.

Without protecting it, your life can be suddenly turned upside down.

Protecting your family, business, employees, yourself, and lifestyle is critical. Tomorrow, you could be in a fatal car accident or struck down with an illness. This could leave your business and family in a very insecure and risky situation, with no money or hope.

With some thoughtful planning, you can vastly improve the outcomes for your family, business, and employees. Only about a third of all family businesses successfully transition to the second generation.

No matter how well you protect your business, even the best businesses have the occasional revenue slumps. However, you can usually minimise the impact by introducing better and more timely strategies and insuring against possible disasters.

Your struggle will intensify when bad days become bad weeks, months, and years. Real problems need to be addressed urgently with new strategies. Worrying is unproductive and won’t fix anything; bigger businesses will not go away. Sales slumps often cause people to cancel critical insurance policies to cut expenses.

Your succession plan is critical. Any good succession plan has two aspects, one of which is to ensure dreams are not shattered: management succession and business succession.

Effective succession and estate planning is not a one-off action.

It is continuously updated to meet changing circumstances. Family and personal relationships, as do laws and taxes, constantly change. Once you have collected this important information, gather your family members and discuss the information you want to include in the plan. Update your plan at least twice a year to address any new issues.

You should provide guidance for those closest to you. Gather all the relevant materials and documents, and advise your family and key people of their location. Too often, I have heard of family members ultimately finding insurance certificates and life insurance policies stuffed in old sock drawers. Good instructions will prevent your demise from becoming a wild goose chase for your loved ones.

This part of succession planning is complex, and many people don’t talk about it, much less create a plan for protecting their family, and it’s not for lack of caring. In reality, the interests of one family member may not be aligned with those of another family member. These situations can become even more complicated when there is a marriage, a divorce, or a death, and the surviving spouse holds shares and voting rights but is not involved in the business.

Succession planning is a key component of a substantial business strategy. Good succession planning is an excellent tool for selecting successors, building consensus, and strengthening relationships. It can also provide an essential overview of the company’s insurance required to protect everything.

These steps will save problems, frustration, time, and money. They will help ensure the continued success of your business and the accomplishment of your dreams.

Quotable quotes.

“One of the things we often miss in succession planning is that it should be gradual and thoughtful, with lots of sharing of information, knowledge and perspective, so that it’s almost a non-event when it happens”. Anne Mulcahy

“So many financial dreams are thwarted by failing to act upon good intentions”. Suze Orman