Succession Planning for Businesses Under $5M

If your business does under $5 million a year, you're probably the owner, the accountant, and the HR department — often before lunch. The idea of convening a governance committee to plan your business's future is more than a little absurd when there's no one to convene. Succession Planning for Businesses Under $5M is a short, practical, no-jargon guide built entirely around what you can actually do without a team behind you. No 400-page academic frameworks. No consultants on retainers. Just a clear, sequenced plan you can work through in stolen twenty-minute windows — starting with the one document that protects your business this week, whether or not you've figured out anything else yet. Inside, you'll find: - A 20-minute Emergency Plan that protects your business if something happens to you tomorrow — before you've decided anything else - A decision framework for choosing between family takeover, employee buyout, outside sale, or a deliberate wind-down - Real scripts for the family conversation everyone avoids - A plain-English way to calculate what your business is actually worth - How to fund a buyout when your successor doesn't have the cash - Which legal documents genuinely need an attorney — and which don't - A step-by-step path to getting your business sale-ready, if that's the direction you choose - A single-page action plan that ties everything together, with separate tracks depending on whether you have five years or five months Nearly two-thirds of family-owned businesses have no succession plan at all — most often because the owner assumes the business is "too small" to need one. It isn't. This book meets you where you actually are: busy, capable, and ready for a plan you can finish, not just read.