Bond Ladders: Managing Your Company’s Stagnant Finances

Many business owners are struggling right now, but there’s an opportunity for savvy professionals to use this time to take advantage of some estate planning tricks. Here’s what I mean.  Most of us are working from home these days, and you’re probably asking yourself how you can be more productive in light of all these circumstances. Today I want to give you an idea of how to proceed if you have an estate that you will want to transfer to your children someday without paying a lot of estate taxes. You might think that right now is a bad time to talk about estate planning, but it’s actually the best time. Here’s why :

Today I’ll share a few strategies that you, as your team’s leader, can utilize to enhance your team’s bond and ensure that you outlast this crisis and prosper long beyond that. Especially given the current situation our country and the rest of the world is going through, I thought now was a good time to talk about leadership. Remember: As leaders, your team is looking for assurance, not a match to set their hair on fire. Maintaining calm during a crisis is critical. This is a time of opportunity—not to gain revenue but to gather your team together and make them stronger. Today I’ll share a few strategies that you, as your team’s leader, can utilize to enhance your team’s bond and ensure that you outlast this crisis and prosper long beyond that.

If you want the next generation to keep your company growing, you need to apply the right financial analytics to it. If you own a family business and you want to transition that business to the next generation, how do you ensure that generation succeeds? Although family members are the people you might want to take over the business, they often aren’t ready to run the company in a way that not only succeeds in the short-term but also grows the company in the long-term.

If you’re a business owner near the age of retirement, here are a few things to keep in mind about selling your business. There are lots of different ways of selling your business to outsiders. You can go to business brokers, finance people, investment banks, and so on. At Nabity Business Advisors, we’ll work with you to make sure that everything is packaged properly so that when the time comes to take the business to the market, you and your management team are ready. Having a third party involved will help you find the best candidate to take over your business.

In this installment of our series on transitioning stock, we’ll be discussing how business owners should handle the logistics of this deal. Welcome back to our series on how to transition stock from your business. As we mentioned in part one, transitioning stock to family members can be a tricky process. This is especially true when only some of your family members are active in the business, or even when all family members are active, but only a couple are really putting in the time and effort to make it successful. When the time comes to start thinking about transitioning your stock to family members, the first point to consider is your business’ value. Because you and your family are likely somewhat biased, having a neutral third party analyze the value of your business is generally the best approach. Such an analysis will not only be more accurate than one conducted by you or your family members, but it will also help to reduce internal conflict. After you’ve assessed your business’ value, it’s time to think critically about who will be the most capable successor. There may be cases where one of your children is CEO material, but there may be other instances in which looking outside of the company will reap the best results. The most important thing is that you find someone who is truly equipped to lead in your stead. Again, having a third-party (like Nabity Business Advisors) to help you with this decision can ease this process. Once these details have been settled, the next step is to make a plan for executing the deal. Do you write a lump-sum check? Do you sell all your stock in exchange for a note? Should you seek a loan from the bank? There are many different ways to go about handling this transaction, and, again, the best way to determine which strategy is right for you will be to have an outside firm come in and look at your business’ specific circumstances. The value of this third-party guidance is impossible to overstate. As a final note, please realize that this decision is about more than just the integrity of your business. Handling this transition incorrectly has the potential to destroy your family. This is the core reason why having an intermediary involved is so crucial. We at Nabity Business Advisors specialize in facilitating transitions like this, so don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any other questions or would like more information. We look forward to connecting with you soon. As a final note: Be on the lookout for part three of this series. You won’t want to miss it. 

If you want to learn about transitioning your stock upon retirement, this new three-part video series is for you. If you own and run a company, a time will come when you will need to transition your stock to a new shareholder. Even if you aren’t ready to retire yet, there are several steps you should start taking to prepare right now. We’ll go over a few of the most important steps in our latest series: Strategies for Transitioning Your Stock. Whether you decide to sell or gift your stock to a friend, colleague, or family member, the first step you must take is to consider your estate plan. For instance, should you own your stock outright, or should “ownership” of your stock fall to your trust? Owning your stock outright, as opposed to running ownership of your company through a trust, could result in a hefty estate tax when the time comes to sell your stock. Getting your estate plan in order early on is critical. On that note, don’t split wealth evenly between your children if some of them aren’t working within the business. It may seem like the obvious choice, but giving stock to children who aren’t active in the business can create a lot of conflict later on. Jealousy, animosity, and general negativity can begin to fester, otherwise. A good alternative is to simply supplement your other children’s inheritance with wealth from other sources. This way, you are still leaving equal assets behind. Getting a life insurance policy that will help create equity among your estate’s recipients is another great option. If you’d like to learn how the process of transitioning stock to family members actually works, be on the lookout for part two of this series, which will be coming up soon. As always, if you have any other questions or would like more information, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

An independent third party can be extremely valuable to both business owners who are looking to sell and those who want to buy their businesses. Have you wondered about whether it would be a good idea to get somebody from the outside to come inside your business and help you get ready to sell it? Or have you wondered about whether it’s a good idea to get a third party involved to help you negotiate the terms of a purchase of a business? I’m here today to share my thoughts on this matter. When people own companies and they’re getting to the point of retiring, they aren’t usually prepared. Maybe they don’t know the right way to sell or what the actual value of the company is. At Nabity Business Advisors, we help owners figure out the true value of their company and the best way to sell it. There are a lot of options out there. Sometimes it’s better to get a firm on board like ours to help negotiate the transition. Using a 3rd party helps separate yourself from the negotiation and we can help get a deal done where everyone is happy with the outcome. For buyers, having someone to study prospective organizations is key. That way, you’ll know that you’re getting into a good business transaction with good people. If it’s a merger, this is especially important. We can separate you from the transaction, look at what a fair price is, look at the people you’re going to be merging with, and make sure everything is a good fit. With a firm like ours in the middle, we can work hard to find out the greater good of the whole. One last thing I wanted to mention was regarding family transactions. When you’re dealing with parents, kids, and siblings, conflicts can arise. We try to build trust with all the family members involved in a situation like this so we can do the right thing by the business and by each member of the family. We will make sure everyone still loves each other at the end so that Christmas isn’t ruined. If you have any questions for me, don’t hesitate to reach out and give me a call or send me an email today. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

If your company has multiple key shareholders and one of them dies, what happens? We’ll discuss the potential outcomes, as well as how to plan for this unfortunate scenario, today. If you own a company with multiple stockholders, what happens when one of the key stockholders dies? Ideally, you should be prepared for this scenario before it occurs, and today we’ll share a few of the most important preliminary steps.

The future success of your company is largely dependent on the upper-level hires that you make. Here’s why. Everywhere I go, I hear one thing: “It’s an incredibly tough market out there for top talent.” However, some companies can’t staff key positions because they can’t find good people to fill them. If you’re in this situation, listen up, because I’ve got some great ideas to help you recruit and retain top talent in your business.