Name: Don’t leave your family in the dark
Uploaded: 2022-10-12
Description: Life is unpredictable, which is why we need to be prepared. Your family and your leadership team need to be ready to step in if something leaves you unavailable, short or long-term. Don’t leave them in the dark.

Life is unpredictable, which is why we need to be prepared. Your family and your leadership team need to be ready to step in if something leaves you unavailable, short or long-term. Don’t leave them in the dark.

Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute. This week, coming to you from a very foggy, cloudy Lincoln City, Oregon. I am on this beautiful Pacific Beach coast, but you can hardly see it. And that actually is what I want to talk to you about today is, what happens when there's fog, or murkiness in your business and in your family? So right now, we're in the middle of helping an agency owner's wife untangle the financial affairs of both the business and their personal life. Agency owner, way too young, passed away suddenly in an accident. And we are now trying to sort out the finances of the business and of how that affects his family, because he left things murky and foggy. He did not, there was not clarity. He did not sit down with his wife, and walk her through the financial things she had, she needs to know, and she has every right to know. He was equally murky with his own team about finances and billing. He did a lot of the billing himself and as we're uncovering it, we're finding mistakes, we're finding confusion at a time when his family does not need that.

So here's what I'm going to tell you. Once a quarter, you need to sit down with your outside CPA or financial counsel, and walk them through your books. You need to have them understand at that very granular level, what's happening in your business. And you need to sit down at least once a quarter, and walk your family, your spouse, your partner, your best friend if you're single, somebody in your personal life, your parents, someone needs to understand how the business finances and your personal finances come together. They have to know how to react, how to deal with. They need a list of contact, names and numbers. They need account numbers. They need all of that. You owe that to them. You owe that to them to prepare that and not just to prepare it and leave it in an envelope, but to walk them through it once a quarter so that if something happens to you, let's just say, you have a kidney stone and you're on morphine and you can't talk for a couple days, or God forbid something more serious happens to you, that they are equipped to deal with whatever it is that's going on in your business and at home.

This is going to take us months to unravel and sort through. And in the meantime, this family is struggling not only with their grief, but also now with financial pressures that they just don't need to have. So please, get things locked up, remove the fog and the confusion, and bring clarity both to your business partners and to your family so that if something happens, they can step in and do what needs to be done to take care of your business, to take care of your employees, and to take care of your family. This is not something we should put off. Please do this now, please.

Okay, I'll see you next week.

« Your Final Bow | Timesheet Refreshers »

Don’t leave your family in the dark

View Video Transcript