When a person start a business, they are thinking about what they want to sell, who their customers will be, and how they will run their business every day. But as they get older, they start to think about what will happen to their business when they want to retire. That’s where Succession+ comes in! If the company will be turned over to a family member or employee to run it, there are lots of things that can be done to make that successful. If the owner wants to sell the business to someone else, there are steps to take there. Succession+ is a company that can help a business figure out what all the options are, what is the best way to handle that transition, and how much is a business worth. That’s important because the business owner can tell you how much money the company makes today and how much they need to spend to run the business, but what about how much money the business could make? And are there things that could be done today to make it worth more money? We call that the business “valuation” and most business owners need help with that!

Mark Dorman was a financial advisor, helping his clients manage their finances. He worked with a large number of business owners and he started thinking about what would happen when they were ready for retirement? He was doing a great job planning for their retirement from a personal perspective, but what about the company? He started adding services to his business that included valuing businesses and helping business owners fix issues that increased their business value. At this same time Dr. Craig West was a Certified Public Accountant in Australia. He was also working with business owners to do their taxes and started thinking about what would happen when the business owners were ready to retire. He developed a system he called, “Succession+” and is now the largest succession planning company in all of Australia. As Mark researched programs and options for his clients, he found Succession+ and felt that program would benefit his customers. He worked with the company in Australia and is now the United States office of Succession+.

When you run a business, you are busy. There are a lot of things to get done every day and thinking about the future is hard. On a to do list of 100 things, thinking about what will happen to the business is probably number 100. But it takes planning and there are actions that need to be taken to get it done correctly, so we have to work with business owners to get them to move that process up in their to do list and make it a top priority. 

We can serve any business in the United States, but we tend to stick to the Great Lakes region. We can do work both in person and virtually so we really can partner a company with the advisor that will help them the most. Our goal is to work with 200 businesses every year. 

We have worked really hard over the years to reduce the amount of paper we use. But any paper we do need to use and then get rid of is shredded and recycled. 

The Small Business Administration (SBA) is part of the Federal Government. Their job is to support small business because according to Forbes Magazine, 33.3 million businesses in the United States are considered small business. That is 99.9% of all businesses in the United States! They offer a couple different services but we get involved when a business needed help with money. The SBA has loans for businesses and we can help a company connect with someone to handle that loan.

Typically we have our openings on our website, but if you are a business advisor, we can partner with you as well. We want to have a diverse group of business advisors that come from different backgrounds. They still have their own business and can bring in their own clients, but we also work with them to find business. 

Why do employees like to work here?

When you are in a business to care about other people, you also care about your team. We are really making a difference in the future of these companies and that is a great feeling.