So ideally a business owner should think about business succession planning when they form the business. Does that happen, most often no because when you’re starting a business you have no idea whether it’s gonna be successful or, you just have no idea. And you also want to put your resources to a place where you can focus on the growth of the business and the success of the business.

But I would still encourage people, when they form the business think about business succession planning because that’s when you’re preparing the governing documents of the business. When you go to a lawyer and they create a corporation, an LLC or a limited partnership for the business owner, those documents come with a partnership agreement, an operating agreement and those agreements spell out how the transfer of the business happens in the event a partner or an owner exits the business, exits because of death, incapacity, bankruptcy, for whatever reason.

And so I would encourage business owners to think about succession planning initially. But also what most frequently happens is the business owner thinks about succession planning as they get older, as the business has matured and the business has value. They start thinking, well, what happens if I can’t run the business any longer and that’s most typically when you see a client thinking about business succession planning.