Ready to Retire From Your Business? Avoid These 4 Mistakes

You’ve poured a lot of time and effort into building your business and watching it grow. In fact, you’ve probably built a contingency plan to troubleshoot any emergency that’s thrown your way, but what you may not have thought about is an exit strategy. OK, maybe you don’t feel ready to retire or even plan for it. But that’s a mistake. There’s a great deal of uncertainty that can impact your business without a well-defined succession plan in place. You might think it’s a given that you’ll hand the business over to a family member. But what if you become unable to run the business before your family is prepared to take over? Or perhaps you’re banking on the money it will bring in when you sell it. But what if it isn’t worth what you’d hoped? To guarantee stability when it’s time to leave your business, you need to plan accordingly. Use these four tips to avoid common retirement mistakes: 1. Don’t Assume That Your Family Members Want the Business If it’s important to you that your business lives on after you hang up your hat, make sure your family is fully prepared to take over. It may seem obvious to you that your family will step in, but that isn’t necessarily the case. You need to make sure someone in your family wants the job, is qualified for the responsibility, and can make smart business decisions. Properly groom your successor to ensure the business prospers. 2. Don’t Linger Once You Let Go Whether you gift your business to a family member or sell it to a trusted employee, you need to be able to let go. This can be difficult because of the emotional [...]