Business Planning Process

The Business Owner Planning Process

From the early days of Consolidated Planning, we existed to serve business owners. In the three decades since, we have served thousands of business owners and through those collective efforts refined a planning process that is seldom matched in the industry. Our focus is on protecting your business asset, helping to grow your business, in particular though Employee Retention, and ultimately helping you to exit the business on your terms. 

• Consultative vs. Traditional
• Puts Your Business on "One Page"
• Coordination Leads to Efficiency 

The Consolidated Business Planning Process^TM

Organize using the Business Owner's Blueprint^TM

We want to bring your entire financial picture into focus. We will clarify and organize the data you gather into your Business Owner's Blueprint^TM.  This provides a clear starting point to assess where your business balance sheet is at this moment in time.

Evaluate Your Planning Issues/Priorities

In order to work on your behalf, we need to understand  what is most important to you. Here, we will take the time to clearly define the goals you, your family and your management team would like to achieve.  We will then use your vision to guide us to the area of your Blueprint to address first.

Typical Planning Priorities:

• Exit Planning:  Eventually, all roads lead to Exit Planning. Therefore, every decision made around business planning should be done through the lens of Exit Planning and as the desired date approaches a more formalized Exit Planning Process will be necessary to ensure that you leave your business when you want to, to who you want to, and for the amount you want to. 
• Business Interruptions:  Continuing your business includes providing a retirement for you, legacy for your family, and for your business, if desired. Here, we plan for all continuation contingencies in order to optimize your financial future - no matter what life throws at you along the way.
• Key Employee Retention:  A business's most valuable assets are generally its employees.  Great employees add outsized value to the bottom line, they are difficult to find - and even more difficult to keep.  Furthermore in order for you to one day retire or sell your business, it must be able to function as well without you as with you. This only happens by recruiting, rewarding and retaining phenomenal people.  Key employee retention provides creative ways to "handcuff" employees to your business for 10, 15, 20 years so your business value is enhanced.
• Maximize Corporate Cash Flow:  What is the highest and best use of cash flow for your business?  How would your answer change if you wanted to retire tomorrow?  Business owners spend most of their careers reinvesting back into their business to grow the company, forsaking their personal balance sheets along the way.  We will help you examine your corporate cash flow to ensure you are building a powerful business and a powerful personal balance sheet so you can one day retire on your terms.

Evaluate & Implement

After determining an area of focus, we will evaluate potential solutions, measure them and provide you with recommendations.  When we have determined a course of action, we will coordinate with tax and legal experts if needed to execute the recommendations.

Review Business Owner's Blueprint^TM Against Planning Priorities

Once we have addressed your top priority, we will then return to the Business Owner's Blueprint^TMto determine where we should focus next.  This iterative process allows us to ensure we address your most pressing needs first and ensures a complete fulfillment of your plan for yourself and for your business.

What to Expect from the Consolidated Business Planning Process

Our Commitment Is To:

• Maintain strictest security, privacy, and confidentiality at all times
• Seek to keep a similar risk tolerance level to that which you currently carry
• Track your financial updates using our proprietary financial tools
• Provide collaboration with your CP representative and support team at any time
• Help build protection from loss into your plan
• Make your goals our goals and help you achieve them
• Respect your contacts and references

We Will Ask You To:

• Please respect our time by being on time for appointments and coming prepared, having completed any work agreed upon
• Understand how we are compensated. Should you choose to do so, you can use our firm to implement any financial products that are appropriate to your overall strategy.
• Expand your sphere of impact by introducing us to the people you care about most, but only if you have benefitted from the process.