You’ve worked hard all of your life. You’ve achieved financial stability for you and your family. You’ve poured yourself into building your business and you’ve been successful! Thanks to a combination of your hard work, the contribution of key employees, the sacrifices made by your family, and some breaks you had along the way and…you’ve made it. Add a dose of what some would call being fortunate or what others, myself included, would call being blessed by God, and you’ve achieved your goal of building a successful business. You have a lot to be thankful for and grateful for! Now, how are you going to steward the business transition to:

  1. Maximize the value of the business in order to fund the next phase of your life?
  2. Assure that you “net” enough from the sale of the business to prudently fund your “Golden Years” and lifestyle for you and your spouse? (and do you even know how much money that would take?)
  3. Prepare the next generation of business stewards/leaders to wisely manage the business and build upon the good foundation that you’ve laid?
  4. Ensure that the mission, vision, values, and culture that you’ve built into your business continue on into the future and avoid “Mission Drift”?
  5. Effectively hand off the “Baton” to the next generation of stewards?
  6. Not get killed with taxes in the process?

Here is a good quote about minimizing taxes by Judge Learned Hand:

“In America, there are two tax systems; one for the informed and one for the uninformed. Both systems are legal. Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands.”

Your business is like the “Goose that lays the Golden Eggs.”  Don’t kill the Goose (and don’t waste any of those “eggs)!  Now is the time to make it count. Business owners, you can avoid getting killed by taxes and maximize the value of your business. Download our e-book, How to Sell Your Business Without Getting Killed With Taxes, and assure that you “net” enough from the sale of your business and prepare the next generation to ensure that the vision you built continues.

Anyone who is considering selling, transferring or exiting their business sometime in the future could benefit from Stewardship Legacy Coaching. These events and situations, if structured wisely, can contribute to building a strong legacy. Contact our office for a free consultation. Our clients have saved significant amounts of unnecessary taxes, gaining the financial freedom to pursue meaningful activities and to transfer greater wealth to the next generations and to charitable causes. By modeling good stewardship of the money that God entrusted to them, they also have opportunities to transfer wisdom to their families by finishing well; part of which is wisely stewarding the largest single financial transaction of your life.

First appeared on Forbes.com