Being proactive to communicate your succession plan to staff

We have clients who have asked us, “Well, what happens if something happens to you?” We found that our clients definitely want to know our business succession plan.

But we’ve also found that our staff wants to know that as well. “What’s going to happen to us?” So in having those conversations in the office, we’re really putting our staff’s mind at ease to know that we’re thinking ahead enough for them, that they’re going to be taken care of if something happens. It’s been really beneficial to have those conversations in the office.

We proactively bring it up. And part of it is that I have a family-run business. Steve and I are a second marriage. We actually brought one child from each of us, they’re in their 20s. We brought our eldest kids into the room — it just happened to be that those two were independent and financially savvy. And we brought them in for a family meeting where we laid everything out and said here’s where everything is. Here’s what will happen. So even at that young age, in their 20s, they really had a clear understanding of what would happen if something were to happen to us from a business succession standpoint and from an estate planning standpoint. We made sure that all those pieces were in place.

Hear more in the April episode of the MDRT Podcast: