Five Stages of Succession Planning

Baby boomer business owners as they head towards the exit door, need a process.We’ve spent so many years at Succession Plus designing and developing a 21-Step process. It’s got five key stages, and they’re all about value.

Firstly, establish what value you’ve got today. Identify the value in your business. Secondly, protect that value. How do you lock up those assets? How do you reduce risk? How do you make sure that if you get hit by the proverbial bus, you don’t lose all that value? The third stage, and probably the most interesting for business owners is maximising the value. There’s eight things you can do in every single business we’ve worked with to improve the value of your business over time, but it takes time. This is not going to happen in three to six months. This is a twelve to eighteen-month process, but it always increases value.

Then when you get to Stage Four, it’s actually about how do you extract that value. Most business owners build up a business over time. There’s a lot of blood, sweat, tears, pain, anguish going into that business, but they never get to extract the value when they’re ready to retire. Stage Four is all about extracting that value, and then after you’ve done that, you actually need to go back again and re-protect that value.

What next? When you’ve retired, you’ve sold your business, the money’s in the bank, you’ve got the assets sorted out. Then you need to think again about asset protection. You need to think about estate planning, and sometimes people want to set up charitable foundations or trusts that can donate, look after their family, look after the next generation, et cetera.

Importantly, it’s a process. It’s not a random outcome that may or may not happen to you. It’s a 21-Step process. Guiding clients through that 21-Step process genuinely ensures the right outcome at the right time, at the right price – when you are ready to retire, when your business is ready to be transitioned, and when your lifestyle and financial goals have been met. It’s about following the process.

Darryl Bates-Brownsword

CEO | Succession Plus UK

Darryl is a dynamic, driven Business Mentor and Coach with over 20 years of experience and passion for creating successful outcomes for founder-led businesses. He is a great connector, team builder, problem solver, and inspirer – showing the way through complexity to simplicity.

He has built 2 international multi-million turnover businesses; one now operating in 16 countries. His quick and analytical approach cuts through to the core issues quickly and identifying the context. He challenges the status quo and gets consistent, repeatable and reliable business results.

Originating in Australia, Darryl’s first career was as an Engineer in the Power Industry. Building businesses brought him to the UK in 2003 where he quickly developed a reputation for combining systems thinking with great creativity to get results in challenging situations.

A keen competitive cyclist, he also has a B Eng (Mech) Engineering and an MBA.