YOUR NEXT ADVENTURE

Three financial advisers discuss the opportunities and challenges that arise when selling a business.

In this debut business book, colleagues Rowe, Fitts, and Weeks guide readers through the process of selling a privately owned business and transitioning to the next phase of life. The guide asks readers to make the process a multiyear one, beginning to evaluate options and set expectations five or more years before the target sale date. While the book addresses the practical aspects of selling a business—communicating with employees, building a transition team, managing cash flow—much of it covers the emotional and psychological questions prospective sellers should consider: How will family members respond? Are you selling in order to retire or to pursue new interests? How do you stay happy and engaged when the business no longer demands your energy and attention? Excerpts from interviews with financial and legal professionals, as well as stories from the authors’ practice, illustrate the concepts presented here. The authors also discuss broader questions of intergenerational wealth transfers, and they urge readers to discuss financial realities and expectations with children and other family members who are likely to benefit from the sale. (This section is addressed primarily to readers with considerable wealth; the families used as examples are distributing millions of dollars to their children.) Each chapter concludes with a series of questions to guide the reader’s decision-making process. The guide is concise but informative, with useful recommendations and suggestions for further exploration, and the writing is unflashy and easily comprehensible. Readers are left with a significant number of actionable takeaways—in particular that selling a business is a long process involving self-knowledge and collaboration with many stakeholders and should be approached thoughtfully. Even readers whose businesses will not provide multimillion-dollar inheritances will find the book’s framework a useful tool for approaching transition planning for a business of any size.

A thoughtful, informative guide to selling a business; reminds readers to weigh both the emotional and financial impacts.