Farm Succession Planning

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Family Business Strategies was established in 1985 as a consortium of independent consultants with decades of experience relevant to Main Street business owners.

With a wide range of professional backgrounds the members adopted an enlightened approach combining family and business dynamics.

From the beginning we regularly published original business articles and articles that described the activities of successful business owners.

In 1999 we launched our first web site whose mission was, and is, to take advantage existing and emerging technologies to put the resources – particularly in the form of articles around business issues – you need in front of you, where you can find them and use them to achieve what’s most important to you.

Primary among our founding principles was our mission to write articles that tell the stories of established Main Street companies as they strive to integrate emerging technologies and strategies into their traditional business practices.

Interestingly articles written early on, some by interns have persisted as relevant highly visited popular content from 1999 until this very day. Remarkably the majority of the concepts and strategies as well as the companies they wrote about – are still going strong.

By January 2010 there were over two dozen web sites around issues faced by family business owners and farmers. www.FamilyBusinessConflict.com, www.PassingDownTheFarm.com , and www.FamilyBusinessStrategies.com to name just three.

Naturally we continue to be available via telephone and email. Feel free to contact me directly at cwallace@iBizResources.com anytime.


All the best!





Charles Wallace, Managing Director & Executive Editor
Dawn Manning, Content Coordinator & Managing Editor
Vickie “Vic” Catalano Romano, Community Manager & Managing Editor
Wayne Messick, Editor in Chief, Publisher & Author

Links to Farm Succession System’s Content


What’s Important To You, Your Family, And Your Farm?
Welcome to the first installment, perhaps “session” is a better word, because while the message is being delivered in a step-by-step building block fashion, you will start and stop and revisit ideas and thoughts in many ways over time. Everyone who listens to the audio, reads the comments, and answers the questions posed in this and every other session will be doing so from their unique perspective – their own point of view, perhaps along with the input of their own families.

How You Can Put Someone You Trust In Charge, w/o Losing Control

In the audio and the information on the page you’ll see how important it is to appoint someone, possibly someone in the family, to act as the person who’ll take charge of the planning process. This is the person who will be responsible for making sure each step is taken and that the proper records are kept.

The Process For Prioritizing Your Family’s Wishes For The Future

Successfully passing down the farm is about behavior, your behavior. The question is, “how can you see that your beliefs, based on past experiences, is responsible for your behavior?” I hope you can achieve that clarity from the systematic asking and answering of questions. Questions that uncover feelings and beliefs. Questions that build your capacity to handle these issues yourself – without creating a co-dependent relationship with outside advisors.

Priority One! Address The Issues of The Senior Generation First

By now you’ve had at least one family meeting, hopefully appointed someone willing to act as the “planning coordinator” to help manage the flow of the process, and you now have a better idea how to identify what’s important to each of you. This session could have many titles depending on your point of view as a member if the senior generation, successor generation, a non-farm heir etc. I like to think of it as “Solve Your Parents Concerns First” because that is the bottom line.

Handle The “Fair vs. Equal” Quandary Once And For All

In this session, now that you have laid the foundation, we’ll embark on the process leading to the determination of fair vs. equal. Everything you’ve done up to this point has an impact on the issues discussed in this session. And most importantly I hope, perhaps tentatively at first, decisions will flow from the conversations you’ll have around the important issues presented here.

Are The Successors Ready To Run The Place Today? Will They Be Tomorrow?

Remember, passing down the farm is a process not an event. Therefore it takes time to fully develop and for you and your family to reap 100% of its rewards. If there is any one single reason why people delay getting started it is the senior generation’s fear that their successors are not “ready” to handle it – because they know all too well who trained them. In this session we’ll look at the key elements of getting a handle on how ready the successors really are to handle the risks and responsibilities of management.

Why Can’t We All Just Get Along? How To Successfully Manage Your Differences

A young farmer, one of five members of his generation, complained to me that the stumbling block to the farm’s success was his cousins. They were not all bad people, they just created conflict whenever important decisions had to be made. He knew he would get the blame when things went wrong and they would pounce on every opportunity to take the credit when they worked out. More importantly, his dad and uncles looked to him as the responsible member of the successor generation.

Long Term Success Demands Excellent Leaders. Here’s How To Develop Them.

In good times and bad we accept our leaders because of their persona as someone who understands the farm’s and our objectives and can bring it to us believably – giving us the confidence we need to act. Leaders inspire action. Without action there is no progress. Without progress their can be no leaders. In this session leadership is described in the context of succession, providing what’s needed to get us from this generation to the next and beyond.

Become More Savvy Consumers of Professional Advice. A Better Bang For Your $

When you are able to get your advisors – attorney, accountant, financial planner, life underwriter, and any other professional advisors you have – on board as a team, the results will always be better than if you take the advice of any one of them. If there was an end to the process of passing down the farm I would say you are at the end.

Your Never-Ending Process Is Now On Autopilot!

We all know that better outcomes in business are the result of having made better decisions in the past. We are where we are right now because of those decisions. Historically better decisions come from collaboration – testing our assumptions among a small group of people whose opinions we respect. The most effective process for consistently making better decisions is when a that group of participants meets regularly – over the phone, using a systematic process we call Strategic Conversations.