By Donna Glass, JD | Living and Legacy Business Solutions
Conversations about exit planning tend to focus on what goes wrong. The gaps in the instruction steps for carrying out the plan, the documents with conflicting provisions, the advisors who never spoke to each other. Those stories matter because they're very common. But they only tell one side of the story. Here's the other side. The happy side. What it can actually look like when business owners & families get coordinated planning right.
The Story
The owner of a small manufacturing company in her late fifties, Elaine spent 20 years building a business with real value, strong margins, loyal clients, and a team capable of running daily operations without her constant involvement.
At the recommendation of a legacy strategist she'd consulted with in advance, she did something most owners never do. She brought her attorney, her CPA, and her financial advisor into the same room, at the same time, with one shared objective. Not each of them managing their own piece in isolation, but all three working from the same picture of what she actually wanted her business exit to accomplish for her.
Her attorney and CPA worked together on the sale structure after a valuation expert established what the business was actually worth. Her financial advisor designed an investment model based on the anticipated sale values, to give Elaine a realistic idea of her long-term financial outlook so she could prepare for the best & worst case scenarios.
Her legacy strategist helped her keep one thing in view from the start: a coordinated exit isn't just a business transaction, it's a life transition plan. What happened to the company and what happened to Elaine personally were intrinsically linked and should be planned as parts of a whole.
Elaine had her estate planning documents updated to reflect the anticipated sale and income scenarios, with built-in authority to adjust course if the unexpected should occur. Her legacy strategist recommended shared oversight for her estate plan. That meant more than one person making decisions and more than one skillset to look after her business and personal affairs, if she became unable to do so. She rounded things out with guidance from an elder law attorney, who could speak to the financial protections that matter most as people age.
With the business exit accounted for, the legacy strategist helped Elaine turn her attention to the harder question: how would the business sale proceeds actually fund the next 30 plus years of her life? That shift, from accumulating wealth to drawing on it, is called decumulation, and requires its own kind of planning and the timing of it matters. Together they mapped out a plan to insure that a portion of her assets would fund a lifetime stream of income.
When the time came to arrange a sale, there were no surprises. No surprised stakeholders. No unanticipated tax consequences. No document that contradicted another. No emergency management. The sale closed in a fraction of the time most transactions take, because nothing had to be designed at the last minute.
Planning and transparency made all the difference for Elaine. All affected parties were informed and no foreseeable consequences or desired outcomes were overlooked.
The best part was that none of these beneficial outcomes required extraordinary resources. It was really just one decision made early; to maximize her options by making a plan in advance. She brought her advisors together to help her see the complete picture and identify the best and worst case scenarios. Having this perspective in advance, gave her time to make preparation for what she wanted and adjustments for what she couldn’t control.
Most business owners have access to the same caliber of professionals this owner did. What they often lack though, is the belief that their long-term desired outcomes can actually be accomplished by them.
Coordinated planning can be accomplished, but not alone. The first step is making the decision to have it. Then, to insist that the professionals do their best to understand and solve for the outcomes that are most important to the client.
Coordinated planning is not a luxury reserved for owners with unlimited time or unlimited budgets. It's available to any owner willing to begin it early enough to matter.
Elaine sold her business for the value it was actually worth. She understood how the sale proceeds would allow her to live and walked into her next chapter with clarity & control rather than hope & uncertainty.
That is what it can look like when the coordination gaps are addressed. Not a dramatic rescue plan, but an owner who got to plan her exit as carefully as she had planned her business.
If you're ready to embrace a coordinated plan for your own business or family and are not certain where to begin, start with a lightweight review.
The Journey Clarity Scorecard is designed to reveal gaps that may exist in your most critical planning areas. It can show you where you stand as of now, on your own planning journey.
[Take the Journey Clarity Scorecard → https://donna-8d6rjoqv.scoreapp.com]
Donna Glass, JD, is the founder of Living and Legacy Business Solutions, a consulting practice focused on exit strategy, legacy planning, and coordinated gap protection planning for established business owners and professionals approaching retirement transition.