Passing your business to the children need not be a bloodbath

15/12/2022 24 min

Listen "Passing your business to the children need not be a bloodbath"

Episode Synopsis

•  David Bentall went through one and has learned
•  “It was a very, very painful thing for our family”
(Total Recorded Time is 24:23)
Your children.  Maybe, just maybe, your grandchildren.  But that’s about it when it comes to passing along the family business that you’ve spent a lifetime building, according to numerous studfies.
In a monarchy, where ye old kingdom is expected to be passed down, any objective assessment of an heir’s competence would be considered offensive. Unfortunately, some families adopt this same perspective when it comes to the family business.
In this Bizgnus Interviews edition we meet David Bentall who provides lessons learned from his personal experience as a family enterprise successor and his career advising other family businesses.
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For Mr. Bentall, his family’s inability to handle leadership succession resulted in bitter dissolution of one of the largest real estate development companies in Canada.
“It was a very, very painful thing for our family,” he says.
He says he learned from the experience and for the past 25 years has been teaching others how to properly plan for a smooth leadership succession.
Mr. Bentall says that with a family employment policy, both generations can be assisted in making wise choices and getting the succession process right.
Mr. Bentall is founder of Next Step Advisors, which advises family enterprises.
His newest book is  “Dear Younger Me: Wisdom for Family Enterprise Successors,” (Castle Quay Books, May 2021).
For more information:  NextStepAdvisors.ca