Small Business Consulting

At Spreckels Wealth Management, our small business consulting services focus on increasing the retirement readiness of small business owners and their employees. We do this in two main ways.

SUCCESSION PLANNING

If you own a family business, and are getting ready to retire, succession planning is a process and not an event. You will need a thoughtfully crafted plan in place and a team of key partners guiding the process along the way. These partners include your attorney, accountant, and a business consultant with experience in business succession. Spreckels Wealth Management can help guide you through this process and help you assemble this team.
“Are you really ready to retire and do you have a realistic retirement plan in place for what you will do after life in business?”
“How do you structure the business to maximize the value of the business while making the transition as smooth as possible ?”

The first thing you should do if you are thinking about selling your business is to write down the reasons for why you want to sell.

Many business owners decide to sell their business and retire because they think they have lost their passion, while what they really need is a long vacation. After they sold their life’s work, they realize they were not quite ready after all.

When you have made the decision to sell your business, the most important thing is to make the business as valuable to the buyer as possible if you are dealing with an outside buyer and to make the transition as smooth as possible for clients and customers especially. 

If the business is being passed on to a family-member, family dynamic can complicate the whole transition because of the emotional side. Many families are also not comfortable discussing aging and who should take over the business.

Comfortable or not, succession planning needs be a priority for any family business since that more than 70% of family-owned businesses won’t make it after the transition from founder to second generation.

Developing and implementing a thoughtfully crafted succession plan is the key to the success of a family business from one generation to the next.

We can help you put together an experienced team that can assist you with these key issues –

Who is the buyer?

As we discussed above, are you going to pass the business on to your family or sell it to a outside buyer?

Who’s going to manage the business?

If you decide to leave the business to your family members, do you need a outside person managing the business separate for the family’s ownership?

Efficient tax planning.

This is the most important part when transitioning the business. Improper tax planning can burden the new owner to the point where the business fails soon after the transaction. Especially if a family member is taking over as a family business is not generally a liquid asset, but taxes are typically due when ownership is transferred.

RETIREMENT PLAN SOLUTIONS

We will help you determine the retirement plan solution that will best accomplish your goals and then work with you to implement the plan.

The most important step in successfully implementing a retirement plan is participant education for the workforce. While many advisors may consider participant education someone else’s responsibility, we consider this the cornerstone to a successful retirement plan implementation.

The growth of 401(k) plans and other company retirement plans, has put the burden of investment choice, savings rate choice, and distribution choice on the shoulders of participants. In order to make good decisions in these areas, they need to have a better basic understanding of financial matters, especially retirement saving through 401(k) plans.

We will help you design and implement an education plan that can include live meetings, web meetings, home mailing campaigns and much more.