Business Succession – It’s A Journey
Discover a different and more successful approach to business transition.
Introducing the Award-Winning Book – It’s A Journey: The MUST-HAVE Roadmap to Successful Succession Planning
Create wins for yourself, your successors, family, and company. Author, CEO, and WealthCoach Laura Chiesman, CFP®, CDFA®, and Author, Speaker, CEO, and TIGER21 Leader Elizabeth Ledoux describe their proprietary planning process that has helped 100 percent of business owners like you, when craft business transitions, be successful. Although NOT the first book written on this topic, it is the first to set and clear a high bar for success, making maintaining relationships as important as minimizing taxes or maximizing sale price most commonly focused on.
The Three Irrefutable Facts.
Learn the three Important Facts To Know About Successful Business Succession!
ONE – It’s A Journey, Not An Event.
It’s tempting to think of business succession as the day you receive payment for your equity or sign your last check as CEO. While important milestones, business succession is a journey that begins when owners acknowledge that one day they will leave their companies and wonder exactly how they’re going to do so. Transition journeys end when everyone is living their dream.
TWO – You Are Not Alone.
If the prospect of transferring your business to someone else seems overwhelming, you are not alone. You know that the stakes are high because the choices you make as an owner impact not just your life, but lives of your successors, employees, clients, and all the people who rely on your business to continue to be successful for their success and well-being.
THREE – You Need a Roadmap.
At this point, it’s not uncommon to procrastinate any action or to feel stuck. It’s A Journey was written to inspire the procrastinators and free the stuck by providing step by step overview of successful succession planning using The Transition Roadmap Developer™.
The Seven Rules Of The Road
To help owners to plan their transition journeys, the book discusses seven guiding principles have been found to be extraordinarily valuable:
- Put relationships First.
- Owners Are In Charge Of Their Journeys.
- No Transition Is Perfect.
- It’s Your Next Adventure. Go For It!
- Choose Your Destination With Intention.
- Step Away From Mutual Dependency.
- Your Transition Roadmap Is Indispensable.
The Big 6 Questions to Help Build your Roadmap.
As soon as most owners begin to think about business succession, they jump immediately to questions about business value and transaction strategies. These are important questions, but owners who dive into them first often become entangled in a quicksand of endless options. When we work with owners, we ask them to consider—in order—six questions. After answering the first four, it’s much easier to answer the last two. You’ll find a chapter devoted to each of these questions in It’s A Journey. Learn more
The Business Owner Confidence Survey™
Owners rarely have answers to all six questions when they begin to construct their Transition Roadmaps. They know some and are unsure of others. If you would like to assess your level of confidence in these six questions and several others, you’ll find The Business Owner Confidence Survey™ in It’s A Journey. We would be happy to send you one as well. We can help you organize your thoughts as you think about these questions. Your answers will be recorded on your Transition Compass: the first component of your Transition Roadmap.
The Transition Roadmap –
Don’t take the journey without it.
The Transition Roadmap helps owners:
- Chart a path to the destination you choose based on your answers to The Big 6.
- Organize the transition in a way that preserves the relationships that are important to you.
- Navigate the transition with those you want on the journey with you.
- Motivate your success or and your team to work together with clarity and vision.
- Adapt as necessary to increase the odds of reaching your Next Adventure™ successfully
- Keep yourself (and others) focused on your priorities and destination.
- Demonstrate your care for others.
- Provide mile markers on the road to your destination.
- Show everyone the distance yet to be traveled.
Your Roadmap consists of Four Elements that help you communicate your transition plan to others and execute it with clarity and confidence.
- Element 1: Your Transition Compass
- Element 2: Your Transition Timeline
- Element 3: Your Transition Strategy Statement
- Element 4: The Focused Action Navigator
With your Roadmap in hand, there are two more steps you can take to increase your odds of success. The first is to draw upon the expertise of a team of advisors. The second is to become a great dancer.
Your Transition Team and Three Phases.
No one advisor can possibly be an expert in every facet of business succession, so we suggest that you assemble a “Cabinet of Advisors.” Great team members / advisors share certain qualities, and the book can provide some questions you can use to uncover them.
The book covers the types of advisors to complete your transition team. It also covers the three phases to the dance during an internal business transition
Your Next Step – We Are Here To Help.
The It’s A Journey book is packed with information and tools to help you navigate your business succession planning journey with success. Hopefully, the insights above have motived you to take steps toward your eventual business transition. To move forward with your journey, no matter how far along the road you are or still need to go, gain access to the full book by purchasing it here, or reach out to Laura Chiesman with FirstWave Financial to discuss how she can be a resource you and help determine your next best steps.
Join the group of business owners and clients who have beaten the odds and transferred their businesses successfully by contacting FirstWave Financial today!
You can read this page, Call to Talk to Laura, or Download a free copy of It’s A Journey whitepaper
Laura Chiesman, President and WealthCoach
CFP®, CDFA®President & WealthCoach™
FirstWave Financial
1300 Highway A1A, Satellite Beach, FL 32937
www.firstwavefinancial.com
321-773-7773
[email protected]
Where to Buy: It’s A Journey is available where you buy books online.
About the Authors:
Laura Chiesman
Owner and President of FirstWave Financial
Helping individuals, families, and business owners transform financial complexity and confusion into a confident financial future.
Thank you for visiting this site and for your interest in It’s A Journey! I’m excited about the impact this book will have on the lives of family and small business owners across the country. It will be exciting to see your results!
For over 25 years, Laura Chiesman has developed financial planning and wealth management strategies for individuals and families to enable them to achieve their immediate and lifetime financial goals. As a business owner, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERTM (CFP®) professional and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst® (CDFA®), Laura brings a unique perspective to comprehensive plans that deliver WealthConfidence™ and peace of mind in uncertain times.
As a WealthCoach™ Laura tailors each person’s WealthPlan™ , a financial plan and wealth management strategy, to their resources, needs and goals. When working with business owners, she partners with The Transition Strategists (a consulting firm that works with owners in the U.S. and across the globe) to create business transition and succession strategies that support an owner’s desire to maintain important relationships and create a clear path to a bright future for owners, their businesses and their successors.
As president of FirstWave Financial, Laura leads her team of financial professionals as they deliver independent, objective and trusted planning and investment strategies designed to help their clients transform financial complexity and confusion into simplicity and confidence. As a volunteer, she brings the same energy to her community. She is a governing board member of Genesis House, a shelter for women and children, and serves on the Community Foundation for Brevard board, an organization that matches nonprofit organizations to philanthropists. As the 2019 Campaign Chair for the United Way of Brevard, Laura was privileged to help raise millions of dollars to improve the health, education and financial stability of thousands of Brevard County, Florida, residents.
Laura is an active member of the Oceanside Charter Chapter of the American Business Women’s Association and the Women Presidents’ Organization, a global peer advisory group whose members own multimillion-dollar companies in a wide range of industries. By investing time and energy in one another and their businesses, members drive everyone to the next level. Laura’s commitment to these organizations reflects her willingness to share what she has learned in her career and to learn from other entrepreneurs.
Laura is a speaker and author on the topics of wealth management and financial issues, investment and retirement planning, life events and transitions, and business succession.
For resources and information about Laura’s work in wealth management and financial planning, visit www.firstwavefinancial.com.
Elizabeth Ledoux
Founder of The Transition Strategists
Thought leader and speaker on the topics of succession planning, navigating transitions for companies and leaders, family business, strategic growth, and the business journey.
I’m so glad you’re here! And am excited to be part of your transition journey. We put all of our best work, experience, and thinking into this book to help you navigate your own path to your next adventure. I hope you begin to dive into the strategies and apply them. Here’s to your journey!
Elizabeth Ledoux is the founder of The Transition Strategists, an international boutique consultancy offering transition and succession planning strategies to family and private businesses as well as individuals. She is also a thought leader and sought-after speaker, addressing the topics of business succession planning, navigating transitions for companies and leaders, strategic growth, and the business journey.
With a career spanning over 30 years, Elizabeth has compassionately and effectively helped hundreds of business owners navigate the complex family dynamics that come with family business shifts. Her focus, personally and as a business succession consultant, is putting relationships first. She believes that whatever you want to achieve in life and in business is possible when the relationships that surround and support you are whole and intact. Elizabeth’s many years of working with families has allowed her to make a positive impact not only on the families, but also on all those served by their businesses. One hundred percent of the family businesses that Elizabeth has helped are thriving, a track record that crushes the dismal statistics related to the transition of family businesses.
Elizabeth knows that even when people don’t think they have a choice in life or in business, they are actually making decisions. One of her life foundations is to put the odds in her favor with each daily choice she makes, up to and including her exercise, food and interactions. She encourages her friends, family and clients to do the same. Elizabeth is an entrepreneur at heart and has founded several businesses, including BizMultiplier LLC, SofTeach, and ROCG. In 2003 she was named as an owner of a Top 100 Women-Owned Business in Colorado. The Harvard Business School has recognized Elizabeth’s work linking the growth and development of the entrepreneur to company success.
Elizabeth is a fifth generation Coloradoan who loves the outdoors and spending time in nature. She met her husband skiing in British Columbia, and their shared sense of adventure created an immediate connection. When she is not on the slopes, you’ll find Elizabeth golfing, fly fishing, or riding in her beautiful backyard in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Elizabeth serves as a Denver Chair for TIGER 21, the premier peer membership organization for high-net-worth wealth creators and preservers. She served as the Denver Chair and Calgary Chair of the Women Presidents’ Organization. In addition to It’s A Journey, Elizabeth is a coauthor of Accelerate Your Entrepreneurial Flight: How to Energize Value and Entrepreneurial Growth (2013) and Understanding the Growth of the Entrepreneur: How to Accelerate Your Growth as an Entrepreneur (2014).
© 2022 It’s A Journey – The Succession Planning Book – Laura Chiesman & Elizabeth Ledoux – Disclosure & Privacy Policy
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