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Business Owners

Who takes over when I’m done — and what is it worth?

For most owners the business is the largest, least liquid, and least diversified thing they own — and the retirement plan, whether or not anyone has said so out loud. Planning around that means building wealth outside the company, choosing the right retirement plan structure, and making the exit something other than a single buyer showing up.

Between managing employees, building client relationships, and maintaining the quality of your products or services, growing a business is a demanding task.

Your business is usually the largest and least liquid thing you own. We plan around that: retirement plans for your team, key-person coverage, and an exit that doesn’t depend on one buyer showing up.

A business owner working at the bench in their own workshop

The decisions that actually matter now

  1. Concentration you did not choose deliberately

    Your income, your net worth, and often your building all depend on the same enterprise. Diversifying outside it is not a lack of faith in the business; it is what makes a bad year in the business survivable rather than existential.

  2. Which retirement plan structure fits

    SEP IRA, SIMPLE, safe harbor 401(k), or a cash balance plan alongside one — each has a different contribution ceiling, a different administrative load, and different obligations to your employees. The right answer depends on your age, your payroll, and how much you actually want to shelter.

  3. What happens if a partner or key person is gone tomorrow

    A buy-sell agreement decides who may own the business and at what price. Funding decides whether that agreement is worth anything when it is triggered. Unfunded agreements are common and they fail exactly when they are needed.

  4. The exit, planned as a range rather than an event

    Third-party sale, transfer to family, sale to management, or winding down — each carries a different valuation, a different tax treatment, and a different timeline. The work is knowing which of them your business is actually a candidate for, years before you need to pick one.

What working together looks like at this stage

We plan the personal balance sheet and the business one against each other, because for an owner they are not separable. What the company can distribute, what it needs to retain, and what you personally require in retirement are the same conversation, and treating them as three is how owners end up asset-rich and cash-poor at exactly the wrong moment.

Concretely, that means building liquid wealth outside the business on a deliberate schedule, choosing a retirement plan that suits both your goals and your obligations to your team, putting key-person and buy-sell coverage in place where it is genuinely needed, and coordinating with your CPA and attorney rather than duplicating them.

We are not business valuation specialists and we do not pretend otherwise. What we do is make sure the number your plan depends on is one someone qualified actually produced, and that the plan still works if that number turns out to be lower.

What we see go wrong

  • The valuation nobody has tested

    A retirement plan resting on what the business is assumed to be worth, where the assumption has never been checked against what a buyer would actually pay for it.

  • Every liquid dollar reinvested in the company

    Reinvesting is usually the right instinct while you are growing. Carried far enough, it leaves no personal reserve at all, so an ordinary bad quarter turns into a forced decision.

  • A buy-sell agreement with nothing behind it

    The document specifies a price. Nothing specifies where the money comes from. When it triggers, the surviving owner discovers they must buy out a family they cannot afford to pay.

  • No plan for the buyer not arriving

    Succession plans that consist entirely of selling to a third party have one point of failure. Owners who also know what a transfer to management or family would require have somewhere to go when the market for their business is thin.

Business Owners

Questions we get asked

  • It depends on your age, your payroll, and how much you want to shelter. A SEP IRA is simple with a high ceiling; a safe harbor 401(k) suits businesses with employees; a cash balance plan alongside one can shelter considerably more for an older owner with strong profits and real administrative appetite.

Not quite you?