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Podcast: Purposefully Planning the Exit from Your Business

By Noah Rosenfarb
Published: May 27, 2013 | Last updated: December 5, 2017
Key Takeaways

Why should you start planning the exit from your business now? Well, it can help prepare you emotionally and financially to go from wealth accumulation to wealth utilization.

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In this session, you will learn about:

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  • 3 things owners can do now to start the exit planning (succession planning) process;
  • The best pre-sale tax and estate planning opportunities;
  • How to prepare emotionally and financially to go from wealth accumulation to wealth utilization;
  • Tax strategies that the wealthy are using right now; and
  • The most important things families can do to maintain harmony after selling a business.

About the Guest

John A. Warnick is the founder of the Purposeful Planning Institute and Family Wealth Transitions & Solutions. John balances his enthusiasm for tax savings with in-depth discovery and purposeful questions to ensure the planning is congruent with his client’s core values. He delivers workshops across the nation for estate planning attorneys and financial planners, sharing the six paradigms of Purposeful Planning and the Seven Keys of the Purposeful Trust.

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Read the Full Transcript Here:

Noah Rosenfarb: This is Noah Rosenfarb for the Divestopedia Exit Strategy podcast, and with us today, a great guest, John A. Warnick. A recovering tax attorney, the Founder of Purposeful Planning Institute, John A. consults with families of wealth and families in business through his consulting practice Family Wealth Transitions and Solutions.Really glad to have you with us today, John, and let’s jump right into it. I want to know, based on your experience, what three things can any owner start doing right now to prepare for an exit?

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John A. Warnick: Well, Noah, thank you. It’s really a privilege to be with you this morning. I think the three things that I would suggest that an owner start doing yesterday to prepare for their exit from the business would be first, find a new owner, and I’ll mention that, that’s not what people are thinking when they hear that. I think I would suggest finding what I call a Value Maximization Consultant. And the third would be creating what I call a Team of Affinity.

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Noah Rosenfarb: So maybe describe a little bit of each of those because I think most people might say, where do I find them? How do I start looking? So why don’t you give them some advice?


John A. Warnick: The reality is the new owner that I’m speaking of is the owner himself or herself. You need to find the new owner. That is what is going to excite you and get you up every morning with the same level of energy and excitement that you had when you started your business, when you were in the kind of most productive years of that business. What is there ahead of you that would give you that same excitement and energy? Because if you don’t find that new owner, you’re going to be filled with what I call Seller’s Remorse.


Noah Rosenfarb: Yes. And then the other interesting thing you recommend is finding a Value Maximizer. Is that someone that you’d like to have on your team full-time? Is that a consultant? How often do you see that expressing itself with preparing for…


John A. Warnick: Well, I think that this can — it’s most often done through the consulting arrangement, but this is an individual. It could actually be depending on the size of the business. It could be a Board of Directors of outside experts that sit on your board. But the idea here is to really get strategic advice around how you’re going to maximize the value of the business.

I’ve seen so many clients just make up their mind, “Snap, I’m going to sell the business,” and go immediately to a business broker or an investment banker without any thought towards “How can we really make this business more valuable to a potential buyer?” So that is — this really is starting early and probably 5 or 10 years before someone really wants to seriously pursue an exit planning stratetgy, I think they need to be dealing with this Value Maximizer, as you called it.


Noah Rosenfarb: Great. And then the third piece you mentioned was about finding a team to collaborate with.


John A. Warnick: A Team of Affinity is this collaborative team description that I like. I think that it’s very important that every member of your team of advisers have an affinity for where you’re going and that they’re bringing their best skills and advice to the table and that they will work well and complement each other. And if you don’t have that level of affinity for your purposes and your interest and people who will collaborate well with each other, I don’t think you’re going to get the maximum benefit from the Advisory Team. So I really do feel there’s tremendous power in collaboration and you’ve got to find the right collaborative advisers. And if you don’t have — if you have someone who isn’t a good collaborator, you have to ask yourself, should this individual really be part of my team going forward?


Noah Rosenfarb: And one of the ways I see that manifest in the early stages is when talking about tax and estate planning for clients that are contemplating a transition and you need to integrate your personal financial plan with your business plan and your estate tax attorney and your accountant. So tell me a little bit from your experience, where do you see the best pre-sale tax and estate planning opportunities arise? And how would clients go about finding out that information and implementing them, those suggestions?


John A. Warnick: Well, I think that’s a great question, Noah, and it’s important for all those people listening to our conversation this morning to realize that there are opportunities to really minimize the tax consequences as well as to really nicely and strategically set up estate planning opportunities. So this exit planning field is one that’s right for the type of advice you’re suggesting clients should be looking to. And I just wrote the two techniques that I most commonly discuss with clients that are in this stage of the life of a business would be a a sale to a Grantor Retained Annuity Trust or it’s cousin, an Intentionally Defective Grantor Trust, what is called an IDIGIT, or the Chartitable Remainder trust. The Charitable Remainder Trust has fallen in popularity. We don’t see much of it today because of the incredibly low interest rate environment. But still, in the right situation with a client who has a strong, strong philanthropic mission or purpose in mind, a Charitable Remainder Trust or its cousin, the Family Foundation, should not be overlooked.


Noah Rosenfarb: Maybe you could give us our brief description of grantor-retained annuity trust, the grant that you referred to?


John A. Warnick: Well, the grant, the easiest way to describe a grant is what the grant is going to do is create a strategy that allows the future growth and appreciation in the business interest it’s transferred to the grant to escape federal transfer taxation. You get back in what we call a zeroed out grant. You zero out the gift so that what you put into the grant, you get back over the term of the grant with a minimum return that is equal to what the discount rate is the IRS uses for estate and gift tax planning purposes.

And that rate’s incredibly low right now (2013), in the mid-1% range. And so today, effectively, a grant is almost interest-free. This is an incredible planning strategy and means that if you’re going to unleash because — let’s say that the interest in the businesses is held through either stock or a membership interest and an LLC, you’re going to transfer that stock or LLC interest some percentage of your ownership to this grant. You’ll get back today’s value.

But today’s value is suppressed. It’s suppressed by two discounts that we see in the business valuation world. One is a discount for lack of marketability and the other is a discount for lack of control or a minority interest discount. Those two interests with an operating business could very easily conservatively be in a 35% to 40% discount. You’re going to unlock that discount when you put the sale in motion and cause it to happen. And that 35% to 40% is almost assured to pass without gift tax to your heirs.

So that’s an overview of the grant structure. I would caution people that I really feel — I’ve seen a lot of seller’s remorse about not the grant itself but about the trust that the grant became after the grant term, which is usually two years — sometimes it might be set up for three years or five years, but it’s most likely to be two years — that at the end of that two-year term, there’s a trust and whatever value has been unlocked through the liquidity event is left in that trust. And I’ve had a lot of a remorse over that trust was too rigid or that trust didn’t contemplate all of the things that I would like a trust.

So this is one area that I think our purposeful planning concepts are of extreme interest and value, and the exercise that we use at the Purposeful Planning Institute that we call Why Trust is almost an absolute must, I think, for any business owner who’s contemplating a grant.


Noah Rosenfarb: And any business owner that’s considering a trust probably has some of the same concerns about how is this money going to pass and what will it be used for, and I think the framework that you’ve designed is real helpful. And maybe we’ll be able to get into that a little bit later in the call because it’s real valuable for business owners to start contemplating.


John A. Warnick: Thank you, Noah.


Noah Rosenfarb: So let’s move on to a different area and maybe your experience of how people get prepared emotionally and financially to go from earning money for now spending money. You know, through this transition, oftentimes people have great cash flow and their wealth is tied up in a small business, medium-size business, large business and then all of a sudden, they convert that to liquidity through some transaction and they’ve got to start utilizing their wealth. And it’s an emotionally challenging process for people. So what are the ways you would encourage owners to get prepared?


John A. Warnick: It really is — and Noah, I’d like to suggest here that — let me just share what I’ve done to become a better consultant in this area. I was privileged about a year and a half ago to meet a gentleman by the name of Jack Beauregard in Boston, who is the Founder of the Successful Transition Planning Institute. And through STPI, I became certified as a successful Transition Planning Consultant.

The two things that I have learned from working with Jack Beauregard and Paul Cronin, the two owners of that Institute, is the value of what’s called the Owner Clarification Report. This is an online assessment tool, takes about 45 minutes for the owner to do, and you then get about a 20-page report that really is a roadmap to help the owner get clarity around the what they need to do to find that new owner and to be prepared emotionally for this transition. So that’s — the cost of the report itself is not that expensive.

The consulting work, the strategic work that can be done guided by the roadmap that clarification report is invaluable. It’s going to be expensive but I think it’s well worth the investment. And so I would — that, from my experience, I’ve not found anything better to prepare an owner for the emotional transition in the new world that he or she is stepping into when they move from being an entrepreneur and executive business owner to this new world of family wealth that the they’ll find themselves in — then this process that the Successful Transition Planning Institute has shared with their consultants.


Noah Rosenfarb: And kind of in line with that, some of the strategies you talked about for the pre-sale estate planning opportunities, do you find clients are open to minimizing their taxes post transition? And what do you find are the most useful tools there?


John A. Warnick: Yes. I think truthfully, STPI, its strength is in the decision to sell — not — there are great sources and Noah, I think you’re one of them frankly, they’re great sources for the value maximization advice. STPI is not necessarily going to add anything to that. But it’s going to add tremendous clarity around the transition itself, how to prepare for it as you said emotionally. And there are three kind of modules to the process that STPI has. One is called Live, which is the modules that really help you get the vision around what that new owner, you, is going to be doing a year, 5, 15 years from now. There’s Decide, which are the modules for the owner who’s really trying to decide how do I sell and in a sense, when do I sell. And then there’s Drive, which is also tied into how are we going to really get the maximum value, not out of just the sale but out of what I do with the capital that I’ve harvested through the liquidity event.


Noah Rosenfarb: Well, let’s move onto little bit of a different topic in maintaining family harmony. And maybe based on your experience, you could describe some of the most important families can do to maintain their family harmony after transition.


John A. Warnick: Well, I think in terms of strategies that clients use to minimize their taxes, this may — this is very simple, but where do you live? You know, many business owners, because of the location of their business, are tied to a jurisdiction that may have what they might consider an oppressive state income tax rate. Federal rates are going to follow us wherever we live. But one of the things that I see happen extremely often with the sale of the business is relocation of income tax situs for the owner to a jurisdiction. Typically it’s a tax-favored jurisdiction with a warmer climate than where I’ve lived while I was building my business. So that’s certainly a huge saver in terms of either avoiding or minimizing state income tax.

And then beyond that, I think the strategies are there’s going to be a combination of strategies that are going to be employed here but broadly, we could speak about the opportunities with tax exempt investments, maximizing exposure to capital gains rather than ordinary income, and under our current tax law — but this of course is something that’s very much in question, is the tax favorability of dividend income. So those are very broad descriptions of strategies, but there’s a lot of opportunities here for clients to minimize the tax bite after the sale of the business.


Noah Rosenfarb: So let’s move on to a different topic about maintaining family harmony. And maybe you could share with the listeners some of the most important things that they can do with their family to try and maintain harmony.


John A. Warnick: Well, I really want to say how much I appreciate the thoughtfulness of this question. I think that family too often gets to be something that’s in the wake of the sale, the liquidity event, rather than something that’s in the forefront. So I did, as I contemplated this question, Noah, I came up with a few suggestions here. It’s hard to say whether these are the most important things because there’s lots of opportunities for family leadership that will contribute significantly to enhancing family harmony. But the first thing I would say is don’t make the mistake of starting to do this work now.

If anybody’s listening to this call that still has children at home, make sure that you are building relationships with those children while they’re kids and teenagers. And I’ve had a lot of sad experiences with business owners who turned 55 and decide to sell the business and then say, “Hey, kids. Come join me. I’m now going to be really excited about how we’re going to make the world a better place with our family foundation, and I want the three of you to join me in this quest,” and I’ve had more than one occassion where that business owner, who’s enjoyed the harvesting of success through a liquidity event, experienced huge disappointment because he cannot get his children to join with him.

And I’ve helped them to understand that too often, the children are caught in a pattern that he, the owner, initiated when they were very young. And it was they had another sibling that they competed with for his attention and his time, and that other sibling was called the business. And now that he sold the business, they see his new family foundation as the sibling that they’re competing with and they’re not, as adults, interested in playing that game. So I do think it’s very important that we start early, but there’re many things that you can do. Do not give up hope here.

If you haven’t had the greatest relationship with your children, don’t expect this to change overnight. This is — you’re not going to be able to be as nimble about causing a new direction in your relationship with your children like you would be turning an F-15. This is more like a 747. It’s going to be slow and deliberate. You’ll get there but it’s going to take you a lot longer to turn and make that turn than what you could do with if you were in an F-15.

But here’s three things, Noah, that I think are very important. On boarding. That is — what I mean by on boarding is how do we bring the new daughter-in-law, son-in-law or significant other into our family circle?

If you do on boarding well, that goes a long way to creating the type of family harmony and family culture that you want. And I think there’s an art to on boarding, and you need to be careful, it’s a very sensitive area because if you don’t do this right, there are wounds inflicted that take years and years to heal and overcome.

The second thing that I think is very important is to really work on shared values and shared mission as a family. And this leads naturally to family meetings and quality family experiences. I think that a formula for success in terms of building relationships, building family culture, are family meetings and what I call quality family experiences. Those can be trips together, they can be Sunday dinners when the family gathers if you’re blessed to be in a geographic proximity to each other. It’s a combination of the communication and the structure of family meetings with these quality family experiences.


Noah Rosenfarb: Those are great ideas. In kind of keeping with that theme, you mentioned that some owners fail to encourage their children to see the sibling of the business as either equal sibling or a sibling they should love, so when do you think these owners should be talking about their exit plans with their family?


John A. Warnick: Sooner rather than later. I think that it is one of the most common mistakes that business owners make, the veiled secrecy around my plans for the business. And if you do not have these conversations, there is a huge opportunity for disappointment because the children may have had expectations that you were totally unaware of. So this is a sensitive topic. It’s an extremely important topic. Even discussing this not just with the children but with the spouse, you know, this is sometimes difficult for owners to do. They may need some help. This is where a consultant of — a communications facilitator or a consultant with great communication skills and experience can be of great help in helping with these difficult conversations. But they’re absolutely crucial and they need to happen sooner rather than later.


Noah Rosenfarb: In conjunction with that, a lot of families that I talked to were concerned that this new liquidity that might come into the owner’s lap, can become a negative asset you know, that it might harm their children, their children’s expectations, their children’s values. So what advice do you have for families that share this concern and maybe how owners might connect that with discussing their exit plan with their family?


John A. Warnick: Well, the first item I would offer here is money isn’t a negative thing. It’s our relationship with money and our attitude towards money which can be problematic.

I was struck – I did watch a great deal of Republican National Convention last night, and there was a video that was shown that exposed the family side of Mitt Romney. This is a pretty incredible success story. Whether you agree with Gov. Romney’s politics and his political philosophy or his plans for the country, I think the story is rather inspiring, that you can have the level of business success that he had and to create a family as healthy as his family is. And it was pretty obvious from watching that video and then seeing on the stage the children and the grandchildren. This is a very successful — this is a poster family that every business owner in America could learn from and model after what they’ve done. And I think what I saw from very early in his days at Bain Capital when he was putting extremely long hours in, there was a commitment for him to try to be there for dinners with the family and for activities at night with the kids. So while his wife had the primary responsibility, he was still involved. It is a team effort that takes both a husband and a wife. It’s not to say that single parents can’t have tremendous influence on their children, but it really is — it starts with the roots of the relationships. And then it really boils down to sharing the values that — or the core values that are ingredients for success and teaching those to our children at early ages.

There were some stories, very touching stories last night of him, as one person put it, tagging along his children with him as he was engaged in these acts of service that were really incredibly inspiring. He was taking his kids with him so know what? I would just say I know it’s troublesome. You worry that the money is going to disincent your kids. But I don’t think that while it’s a good worry to have, you should not lose hope and there are ways in which you can really try to help your family develop healthy attitudes towards values into model and teach the values that will lead them to be successful in their relationships with wealth.


Noah Rosenfarb: Yes, good advice. So one of the other areas that I think is important for owners to consider in sharing their family values and developing, as you described earlier, a shared vision and a shared mission is through the use of family meetings and in identifying what type of family governance structure should be put in place. So maybe let’s start off with different family governance structures and how families should go about choosing something that might fit for their family.


John A. Warnick: Well, I’m a little bit — I have a little bit of a caution here that I think the governance structure for families really needs to reflect the family itself. But I will speak to a couple of things that I think are fundamentally important beyond this.

The form that you choose will be much more guided by the circumstances of your family, and you shouldn’t necessarily — I mean, while I said we could learn something from the Romney’s, I’m not going to suggest that the Romney patterns are going to be what will be most successful for every family. But here’s a couple of things that I think are very important. If you look at governance structures, I see two general patterns, Noah, that you could describe these governance structures.

One is top down, very generational hierarchical in orientation with the senior generation family members up here at the top and the younger generations down below. This is a common pattern. However, it’s not a pattern that works well in terms of empowering and preparing the next generations of your family or the transition of the wealth and the responsibility that comes with that wealth.

So I prefer those models that are what are based on what I call the empowered from within. I prefer models the really create appropriate opportunities and over time, this will develop, mature as the skills capacities and the time and interest of the children and grandchildren permit. But very much, I’m very much an advocate of a lead from behind.

And I caution my clients that the words that we use are important here. Too many business owners refer to their kids as kids and fail to realize these are my former children. They’re now adults. They’re former children. And just using the descriptor former children when you’re talking about your children validates their roles as adults. Beyond that, I’ve been involved, just finished an 18-month consulting project with a Fortune 500 family. We did a marvelous job of bringing all three generations of that family together to envision a governance structure that will work for them in the next 3 to 5 years and that will allow eventually the emergence of the third generation in a very meaningful way.

So that structure involved, in addition to a family council, an executive committee. And then it involved serious committees and what we called the G3 Council, a council devoted to the needs and interests of the third generation and a support system within that G3 Council of mentoring the younger G3’s as they approach and enter the family governance. So it’s a topic that we can spend a lot more time, but I do think this concept of forget about using the word kids, respect them and treat them and call them your former children and then look for governance structures that are going to be empowered from within rather than top-down.


Noah Rosenfarb: And in conjunction with that, are you seeing families run family meetings and having those experiences kind of simultaneously with developing their family governance structure and you can describe how a family would go about having a gathering that might be different than the way it used to be?


John A. Warnick: Well, it’s very interesting, this project that I just was referencing. We used — that family meets three times a year. The family meetings usually consist of a half-day of what I call the quality family experience. That could be a recreational experience. They maybe come together for golfing, boating, something fun. And then the next day is a serious day of business, usually somewhere in the neighborhood of six hours. It may have committee meetings that are taking place in between these meetings, but yes, Noah, the answer is, is that you can use the family meeting to create the family council and then from that, as you get the family involved in the family council, it may be that if the family is large enough and the wealth is sufficiently great, that you need more structure than just the family council.

You may adopt a formal or informal committee structure that runs underneath that family council. But in terms of how you kind of get started with this, I go back, people will say this is too simplistic, but I do think this starts with having very meaningful conversations over dinner before the kids leave the nest. But beyond that, if you don’t have it or a pattern of family meetings with some structure, I would suggest — there aren’t a lot of books that are written about this.

I think this is an area where a consultant, who has experience in facilitating these family meetings and working with someone who wants to really invest in their family governance could be helpful. And I would say that sometimes, there are issues that need to be dealt with in terms of family dynamics before you can really get to successful family meetings. And I might just put a plug in here for the work of Dr. Dean Fowler. There is another assessment tool that’s called Family Wealth Comprehensive Roadmap or Family Business Comprehensive Roadmap. Its a 306 — online 68 questions that delve into 12 critical factors for success in the transition of a business or the transition of wealth. It’s a tool that I used with the consulting project that I just describing.

It was immensely helpful because it helped us see that this family, largely because of a concerted effort over the last 25 years, was in a great position to be able to move to a very elaborate family governance structure. But other families may, through this comprehensive roadmap, see that we’ve got to spend some time working on just basic communication before we even get to the family meeting stage. So don’t run too fast. Don’t think that the family meeting is going to be a panacea. I think this is where a very holistic assessment like Dr. Fowlers’ could be of extreme value to a family that wants to start this journey.


Noah Rosenfarb: I think all of the advice that you’re giving is designed to help owners that are thoughtful and proactive in their objective is to make sure that their legacy is long lasting and positive. And in line with that thinking and making sure that people lead a memorable life, what suggestions would you have aside from the family meetings, aside from the family governance and the things that we’ve discussed already, are there any other suggestions that you would recommend the owners start thinking about or implementing?


John A. Warnick: Well, I wish I had my book finished, Noah. I’m working on a book that describes the seven keys of purposeful gifts and trust because I think that really is a — it really is a powerful recipe for how someone can go about creating this sustainable and positive legacy that you’re referencing. But let me give you an example of a chapter that I’m working on right now in the book. And this is revolutionary. It traces back to George Washington. George Washington hand wrote his will, 30 pages of handwritten directions. And I’m going to share with you at our listeners about 50 words from George Washington’s will. He said, “I give to each of my nephews one of my swords. Each to choose in the order in which they are named” — and then he had the five names of the nephews, “And to hold the sword with the following solemn injunction, that they will never raise it except in the case of self-defense or in defense of the Republic and its liberties and in the latter case, that they would prefer falling with this sword in their hands to the relinquishment thereof.”

Now what George Washington did in approximately 50, 60 words, is he took a metal object, a sword, and he somehow imbued that sword with purpose and meaning. Four of those five swords today are at Mt. Vernon. Those four swords stayed in the Washington nephews’ bloodlines for six and seven generations before those swords were transferred to Mt. Vernon to be held by the Martha Washington Foundation and exhibited. With this fifth sword, there’s an interesting story about how it got lost. It was sold in an estate of a young grandson who died with a widow and two young children. The sword was the most valuable asset and had to be sold. But the other four swords were treasured heirlooms that represented Washington’s values.

And I think the Washington story is a powerful one to help us understand that it isn’t just about talking about our values that will create a lasting legacy. But there is a magic, an alchemy so to speak, around how we can capture our purpose, our deepest meaning for the gifts that we want to create in to — through the written word or the recorded word preserve the purpose and meaning of these gifts in a very powerful way.

That’s one of the keys, one of the seven keys of the key of meaning and purpose. And I think these are ways in which clients who are interested in discovering what are – whats their formula or the recipe for a long lasting and positive legacy. I can’t suggest anything better than the seven keys of purposeful trusts and gifts and the kind of supporting what I call six paradigms of purposeful planning.


Noah Rosenfarb: Great. Well, I know we’re almost running out of time, John, so maybe before we go, you could share a story with our listeners about an owner that had the courage and vision to make difficult decisions because they knew it was going to be best for them in the long run. I think we want to encourage all of our listeners to take action and maybe through the sharing of another story, they can see value.


John A. Warnick: I appreciate this invitation, and I thought about what I would share here. And the best story that came to mind, I think, is I had a client that was contemplating a huge liquidity event. He had built a business from scratch. In less than 20 years, this business had gone from zero to a value in the neighborhood of $250 million. And in the earliest days of the business at the advise of his tax attorneys, he had placed 60% of the business in three trusts, 20% each, a trust for each of his children. And he had never told the kids about this. In fact, when the children, he would call the children to come over to his home just before taxes were due, and he would have them sign, put a paper over the top, he’d have them sign the tax returns.

And so these kids were in the mid-20s to early 30s when this event happened. But it was the marriage, prospective marriage of the oldest child that led to this. And we had a conversation with a client, and he wanted a prenuptial agreement. And he asked me to prepare a prenuptial for his son and he with the son. And as I did that, one of the things that I had to do was – there’s a disclosure required for prenups, financial exhibits. And we had to disclose this.

So I took the prenup out to a business lunch with the clients and I handed him the prenup, and we were going through it. And he kind of started thumbing ahead and he got to the exhibits and he interrupted me in midsentence as I was explaining one of the key provisions to say, “Mr. Warnick, there’s something terribly wrong,” and I said, “What’s wrong?” He said, “You’ve given me my father’s financial statement.” And I was worried because this was a case where the father and son shared the name and it’s quite possible that we had done that. I had not assembled the financial statement. I had left that to the legal assistant to do. And so I quickly pulled it back and looked and looked at it and there was a big sigh of relief on my part because it was indeed the correct financial statement.

And I handed it back to him and I said, “No, that is your financial statement.” And his mouth dropped and he asked this question, he says, “Where is it? This significant balance sheet that showed a personal net worth in the eight digits, where was it?” And that’s when I explained to him that when he was really just a teenager, his father had made a gift and created a trust. And this wealth was in this trust. He had – he knew nothing about the trust. He knew nothing about the fact that he was worth — he was a multimillionaire at his young age. And I reported back to the client the experience and this is where his courage came in.

He realized that he had really done a disservice to his children, and he didn’t want to repeat that experience with the other kids. He realized that he needed to begin pulling the curtain back, introducing them to the world that he had created for them, and he needed to prepare them for that world. And that led to a marvelous 5-year experience of three family meetings a year working around that.

We created a marvelous team of affinity that helped him with that project and I’m happy to report today that he would probably say the commitment that he made to that process is the best decision that he ever had the courage to make and it’s paid huge dividends for him and his family.


Noah Rosenfarb: That’s great. Well, I appreciate your sharing and share your time today, John A. Warnick, the leader of Family Wealth Transitions and Solutions and the Founder of Purposeful Planning Institute. John, if a listeners wanted to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to reach you?


John A. Warnick: I think it’d be through our website, and that’s www.PurposefulPlanningInstitute.com, and our phone number is 303-256-6300.


Noah Rosenfarb: Great. Thanks, again, for joining us today. And to our listeners, if you have any questions for John A, I’m sure he’d welcome your call. Everybody, take care. This is Noah Rosenfarb, I hope to have you listen to us again soon.

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Written by Noah Rosenfarb

Noah Rosenfarb
Noah Rosenfarb, CPA/ABV/PFS has devoted his career to advising business owners on all things related to money. He is a Personal CFO and Holistic Wealth Coach at Freedom Business Advisors, which provides middle market business owners guidance on how to successfully transition out of the management and or ownership of their company. Mr. Rosenfarb is the author of EXIT: Healthy, Wealthy and Wise.


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