When it comes to succession planning, many agency owners think about the eventual closing or sale of their agency. Truth be told, most of you are not really prepping for that day as early or in as detailed a way as you should. You greatly reduce your options when you don’t have a long-range succession plan in place. But sometimes, there is no long-range scenario. Most agency owners have no plan in place for a sudden change — the proverbial hit by the bus scenario. I know it’s not pleasant to think about, but you owe it to your family, your employees, and your clients to have a plan in place. If something unexpected happens to you — your family and team are not going to be in a mental or emotional place to make good decisions. They will be rightfully dealing with the loss. Do not add to their burden by leaving things up in the air. I recorded a video on this topic (I am adding new videos every week on LinkedIn — are we connected there?) that I want to make sure you watch. I know the topic is morbid — but you owe it to those you love, work with, and work for to have a contingency plan in place. I know you get a lot of information coming to you — but please don’t ignore this topic just because you don’t want to think about it. This is far too big a burden to pass onto those you love. Working out the details is going to take you the better part of a year, so set a goal of having this handled by the end of 2021. Do it for [...]