In our last blog we focused on retirement benefit improvement, helping to making sure your corporate plans are efficient as possible.

Since then, we have created our own Pooled Employer Plan (PEP) designed to help business owners create and maintain the best possible plan with the least possible time and effort for your staff. A PEP can assume many of the responsibility of running your plan including the time and cost of the audit and 5500.

Underlying these thoughts and efforts, though, is an even bigger issue, the true focus of all business owners; creating companies of maximum value that can be harvested or passed on at the optimum moment. Retirement plans are, after all, a way to recruit and retain the best talent to help you create that value.

It strikes us that we are entering a very rich and welcoming environment for exiting and harvesting the wealth of a closely held business; a favorable regulatory framework, lower interest rate intentions, a significantly growing pool of private equity dollars and a trend toward bigger is better consolidation that seems to have no end in sight. Not too mention the challenge of an AI driven world.

Closely-held business owners should be thinking about this now, even if they are not ready to exit. Planning can be crucial to get maximum value at the right moment when the window is open.

And that planning has to take place across multiple fronts:

• Business: You want to get maximum value -- the highest multiple of your best EBITDA. That means revenue, strong management independent of you, diverse and dedicated customer list, manageable debt.
• Personal Planning: What are you going to do? How much to do you need to live the next phase of your life without your business? Is the business value there yet? Nothing short of a detailed wealth plan is a must.
• Tax Considerations: Corporate structure, sale structure, trust and estate planning all effect the net result for you and require thought and preparation.
• Personnel: The best value comes for companies that have management and personnel that will carry on without you. Are you at that point?

As a Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA®), we help business owners manage this journey. Our planning tool, RBC Wealth Plan, can analyze your personal financial needs and wants in dynamic detail, live and interactive, including extensive scenario analysis. Our Corporate Services team will guide you and connect you to expertise for business valuation, tax considerations, deal structure and book creation.

And of course, our Retirement Plan Management team is here if current benefits need to be upgraded to help you get where you need to be. We think personnel is crucial to creating optimum value. Jim Collins, in Good to Great, called it getting the right people on the bus. Our next few blog sessions will focus on the challenges of getting the management and personnel in proper shape for the ultimate exit. First up will be a session with the former Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at ADP, now a consultant to middle market companies helping them translate Fortune 500 processes to entrepreneurial companies. Please look for our blog announcements in your email or LinkedIn.