Jim Casler
Jim Casler
North Coast Ag Advisors
Family Business Planning

231-218-7525

Know Your Numbers. 
Know Your Business.
  • Home
  • Financial Management
  • Succession Planning
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • In The News
  • Contact

Your Succession Planning Team

5/11/2014

0 Comments

 
Indeed, you could do this all on your own.  And maybe you did when the business was handed down to you many years ago.  Times have changed.  Laws are complicated.  The dollar amounts are much bigger.  Successors are different these days.  Uncle Sam always wants his share!

Your financial security plan (i.e. retirement) may very well rest on the shoulders of your successor(s).  Is this something to leave to chance and hope you get it right?  Indeed, after getting the ball rolling and pointed in the right direction, some family businesses have done spectacularly well in completing a successful transition without too much assistance from professional advisors.  Unfortunately, this is not usually the norm.
You and your family will often need the advice of qualified professionals with specialized training and experience in key legal, financial, tax and risk management areas of expertise. Using a team approach to coordinate the advice and discussions with professional advisors can save you significant time and financial resources in the long run.  The following is a simple overview of how a farm succession advisory team can be assembled. There are many variations.  
"Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work."

- Vince Lombardi

The issues and processes for developing a farm business succession plan and a personal estate plan are very complex. Tax laws are constantly changing. Planning for your financial security and developing plans that ensure a stable future can also be complicated. All while ensuring that the farm has adequate resources and scale to monetize (or fund) your retirement.  
As a business owner, it is difficult and nearly impossible to successfully manage your business and keep abreast of the legal, financial and other issues necessary to plan and implement a successful succession plan.  After all, you cannot be expected to be an expert in everything.

More importantly however is the compounding impact of bring multiple professionals together at various points during the succession planning process to ensure that your team of advisors work together to address the interdependent parts of a succession plan.  These advisors should all act as a team, rather than a group of talented individuals in specific fields of expertise. 

Without a coordinated team effort, it can be quite frustrating and counter-productive for families planning their futures to receive conflicting suggestions from their advisors when these advisors have not taken the time to coordinate their advice with the family and their other advisors. 

Time and money is often wasted going back and forth between advisors. Sometimes, families just simply give up after being discouraged by the process and fail to fully develop their plans. 

Having a neutral third party working on behalf of the “family business” and not any one individual helps to ensure that all advisors work together using the team approach.  This can greatly reduce the chances of conflicting advice.  While it usually happens innocently, it is often a result of the various advisors not fully understanding the reasoning or trade-offs associated with another advisor’s recommendations.  

Collaboration amongst advisors usually results in advice that is much more relevant and effective than as if they had worked independently of one another. 




0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    Agriculture
    Benchmarking
    Best Practices
    Business Planning
    Challenges
    Communication
    Conflict Resolution
    Core Values
    Delegation
    Dysfunction
    Education
    Family Business
    Family Farms
    Family Meetings
    FarmFutures.com
    Farm Management
    Farm Pictures
    Financial Management
    Generation Gap
    Goals
    Harvesting
    Humor
    Improvements
    Interviews
    Jim Casler
    Job Descriptions
    Leadership
    Lessons
    Long Term Planning
    Management Systems
    Management Transition
    Michigan
    Mission
    Newsletter
    North Coast Ag
    Operating Philosophies
    Operations Manual
    Outside Business
    Personal Accountability
    Pictures
    Podcasts
    Policy Creation
    Press
    Project
    Project Planning
    Quotes
    Responsibility
    Roles
    Standard Operating Procedures
    Strategic Planning
    Strategy
    Succession Planning
    Teamwork
    Testimonials
    Thanksgiving
    Thought Of The Day
    Transition Planning
    Traverse City
    Video
    Vineyards
    Vision
    Wine
    Winery Benchmark Programs


    Reader Feedback

    Archives

    June 2020
    August 2016
    July 2016
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014

    RSS Feed



    Author
    Picture
    Jim Casler
    Tweets by @JimCasler
Services
Family Business Planning
Financial Management
Succession Planning
Real Estate

Testimonials
Newsletter
About
Contact Jim

Know Your Numbers.
Know Your Business.
​


​Contact Jim
PO Box 2, Kaleva, MI 49645
231-218-7525
email
Copyright  2016 - 2023
Sitemap
Jim Casler - agriculture - family-business - family farm - financial management  - consultant  - advisor - succession, business and transition planning - real estate - Michigan