How Business Succession Planning Protects Family-Owned Companies?
How Business Succession Planning Protects Family-Owned Companies? There’s a guy I’ve known for years, built his business from nothing back in the early '80s, garage-startup type of story you’d see framed on a wall somewhere. He ran that thing for decades, had his kids working summers there since they were teenagers, always just assumed one of them would eventually step in and take over. Never put anything in writing though. Never sat everyone down and actually worked out who, or how, or what would happen if more than one kid wanted the job. He passed away suddenly a handful of years back, and what came after wasn’t good. The business is gone now, basically. Sold off piece by piece, split between siblings who didn’t talk to each other for a stretch afterward. That story isn’t some rare tragedy, unfortunately. It happens constantly with family businesses that never got around to real succession planning, mostly because nobody wants to sit with the idea of a future where the founder i...