Exit planning conversations tend to focus on the voluntary transition, an owner who decides they are ready to move on, begins preparing the business, and eventually negotiates a sale on favorable terms. That is the version of the story everyone hopes for. It is not always the version they get.
In my experience working with business owners, the planned, orderly transitions require considerable anticipation. However, there are any number of the “Dismal Ds” including death, disability, and disease, can create forced transitions that happen on a timeline and under conditions that benefit no one.
The business owner who hasn’t anticipated those possibilities is not just taking a personal risk. They are leaving their family, their employees, and their legacy exposed to outcomes that could have been prevented.
Contingency and Continuity
There is a difference between a contingency plan and a continuity plan. A contingency plan addresses a business interruption, loss of records, or natural disaster. Many companies have one. They may include backups, alternative workspaces, and emergency lines of credit.
Contingency plans typically lean on one critical factor. They anticipate the presence of the owner to lead the business through a crisis. What if the crisis is the incapacity of the owner? In such cases, a continuity plan is the more appropriate backstop.
Death is the most obvious, and the most clearly planned for in many companies. Life insurance is a standard recommendation, and many owners have some coverage. But does the coverage reflect the actual value of the business? Does anyone know what to do with the business if the owner dies tomorrow — including who is authorized to sign checks, which vendors need to be notified, and who assumes key relationships with major customers?
Disability from disease or accident is statistically more likely than death, and less consistently planned for. A business that can’t function without the owner present faces a serious cash flow crisis if that owner is incapacitated for three months, six months, or longer. In cases where the owner is expected to recover, the business may go into a kind of stasis, postponing critical decisions or new initiatives.
In these cases, the owner may be forced to return too quickly to address failing performance or comes back to a company in crisis.
None of these events can be anticipated. They only need to be handled well.
The Business Continuity Gap
If you asked ten of your business owner clients what would happen to their company if they were unable to work for six months starting tomorrow, how many of them could give you a confident, specific answer?
In reality, very few. Most would describe a rough plan that relies on one or two key people, assumes that customers will stay, and hopes the business will hold together until the owner recovers. That is not a plan. That is optimism.
A real business continuity plan documents who has authority to make financial decisions. It identifies the company’s critical relationships and who is responsible for maintaining them. It specifies where important documents are located, what outstanding obligations need to be honored, and what the first steps are in each of several different contingency scenarios.
The plan should also inform a family member or trusted associate where the owner’s personal passwords are recorded.
It exists in writing, and it exists somewhere that is accessible to the people who will need it, which means not just in the owner’s head.
Buy-Sell Agreements can Address Continuity
For businesses with multiple owners, a buy-sell agreement is not optional. It is the document that answers the most important question in a partner’s death, disability, or departure: who buys whose interest, at what price, and on what terms?
Without a buy-sell agreement, those questions get resolved by negotiation under pressure (Dissention) or by litigation. The results are rarely favorable for anyone involved.
A buy-sell agreement that hasn’t been reviewed in ten years can be almost as dangerous as not having one. If the valuation mechanism in the agreement uses a formula that made sense when it was drafted but doesn’t reflect current market conditions, the resulting price can be wildly wrong in either direction.
The funding mechanism matters as well. A buy-sell agreement that requires a surviving partner to write a large check immediately, without insurance or financing in place to make that possible, is a plan on paper that can’t function in practice.
The Myriad of Dismal Ds
Other Ds are just as threatening to the company but are much more difficult to plan for. Divorce can force a liquidity event in a business that isn’t prepared for one. Distress may include financial challenges that force a sale when the profitability is poor. Disagreement between partners can paralyze a company and force a transition under the worst possible conditions. Defection of a key employee or customer may also deal an unrecoverable blow.
Disenchantment (burnout,) Disinterest, Distraction and Depression may put an owner out of commission as certainly as any physical illness. In such cases, planning is useless. Only a key employee or partner, operating in a culture of honesty, can address the issues.
The challenge with both contingency and continuity planning is that they require preparing for scenarios that feel remote. Business owners are optimistic by nature. They don’t build companies by dwelling on worst-case scenarios. The same forward-looking confidence that made them successful entrepreneurs also makes them resistant to planning for events they don’t expect to happen.
Your role as an advisor is to make the planning feel less like preparing for disaster and more like protecting everything they’ve built. Frame it correctly, and most owners will engage. The protection their family deserves. The employees who depend on the company continuing. The legacy that shouldn’t disappear because of an event no one planned for.
John F. Dini develops transition and succession strategies that allow business owners to exit their companies on their own schedule, with the proceeds they seek and complete control over the process. He takes a coaching approach to client engagements, focusing on helping owners of companies with $1M to $250M in revenue achieve both their desired lifestyles and legacies.
