Tom Deans

When business succession planning goes bad for a family, it goes bad for the business’s association, franchisor and industry.

Why not help your members and franchisees implement smooth ownership transitions?

Many business owners have family working for them but haven’t talked about ownership change. Confusing management succession with ownership succession can have a devastating effect when the controlling shareholder suffers a health crisis or dies, especially when family members don’t actually want to own the business.

Tom’s keynote speech is a powerful tool to get business owners talking and planning for inevitable life events.

Tom has spoken to a wide range of industry associations, customizing his message to highlight industry-specific trends and challenges.

When business owners fail to communicate with their families and implement thoughtful transition plans, wealth destruction is inevitable. This loss is avoidable if associations and franchisors play a leadership role in educating their members.

Will risks and trends in your industry affect family wealth and the overall success of your industry or franchise? A business’s biggest liability is an owner with no succession plan.

Learn about the dangers of thinking that naming a beneficiary is the same as having a true transition plan.

Many business owners mistakenly assume that theirs is not a family business if their children or spouse aren’t working in it. But if the owner is incapacitated or dies, family may be required to step in, run the business and potentially become the beneficiary of the business.

Tom’s keynote speech takes a look at the practical steps that associations and franchisors can take to help their members and franchisees avoid putting family members into positions where they will likely fail.

No one pays a higher price for business succession planning gone awry than a surviving spouse. Tom’s keen awareness of this fact is what makes him such an engaging and relevant speaker at industry association and franchise events. Indeed, Tom’s keynote is perfect for the entire family.

The current generation of aging business owners will live much longer than their parents did. This fact is seriously affecting modern succession plans. Today, the idea that 95-year-old business owners will maintain control while their 70-year-old children manage the business is already proving problematic. With business owners living longer, it is common for three and sometimes four generations to be working in a business at the same time. This new dynamic is creating profound new challenges and leading many to destroy their wealth and family relationships.

When business owners embrace the idea that businesses are meant to be sold in an orderly way, succession plans become effortless. Hire Tom to speak at your next convention or industry event and introduce your member firms or franchisees to a refreshing new message on a subject as old as business itself.

Tom is an international best-selling author and award-winning speaker. He is neither a business consultant nor is he licensed to sell financial products. His sole focus is providing advisors with training, tools and a new perspective to help families protect and transfer their wealth. His insights are direct, poignant and timely.

With Tom’s help, your clients will understand that their family and their protected wealth is their true legacy, not their business. This understanding will open the door for you to position your most appropriate services and products.

Tom speaks to groups of business advisors and guides them through the 12 Common Sense Questions from Every Family’s Business. The questions lay the foundation for a viable succession plan. Tom’s three-hour Advisor Training workshop will give advisors the knowledge and confidence to walk their clients through the planning process.

Tom will teach you how to help business owners start conversations with family about the sale of their business, building client goodwill, trust and confidence.

This “must experience” exit-planning facilitation is guaranteed to leave a lasting impression on participants and equip them to take concrete steps to work with their advisor to transition the business and protect generational wealth and family relationships.

Tom Deans PhD facilitations seek answers to the 12 questions aimed at protecting family business wealth revealed in his international best-selling book, Every Family’s Business. The answers form a family blueprint to assist a controlling shareholder with his/her exit.

Tom knows that business owners are relieved to hear the solution to a problem that is an emotional quagmire. He has seen first-hand how leaving succession planning too late – until a family member has a health crisis or dies – can destroy family wealth and relationships, almost always in that order.

Few speakers can shake things up and get business owners thinking about succession planning like Tom. He’ll help you start conversations with your clients and, in turn, start conversations between clients and their families, conversations he knows from experience they would otherwise avoid.

Tom draws on his considerable experience as a fourth-generation family business owner to bring a completely new and timely message to aging business owners – who will need the proceeds from the sale of their business to fund their long retirements.

Wealth managers, lawyers, accountants and insurance professionals all have family business clients who need Tom’s help.