AEC Transition Planning Success Workshop

Register for AEC Transition Planning Success Workshop NOW and build the skills you need to secure your future, your finances, and your legacy. Over two interactive and engaging days with leading experts and fellow firm executives, you learn:  

Why Transition Plans Fail – And How to be Sure Yours Won't

• When to separate “ownership” from “leadership”
• 10 fundamental truths of leadership development
• 7 common mistakes of transition planning (and avoiding them)
• Key traits every successful new leader possesses
• 5 key drivers of any successful AEC transition?

Select Your Best Successors

• The 3 best ways to cultivate and measure future leaders
• How differences between 1st and 2nd generation owners affect strategy
• How to present the ownership opportunity to your future leaders
• Reacting and recovering should your prospect decline
• 5 best ways to resolve partner disputes

Put The Right Price On Ownership

• Avoid serious and costly valuation mistakes
• Right and wrong approaches to valuation
• Factors that drive a valuation up or down
• How to assign value to intangible assets
• How to address a difference in valuation expectations

Document The Deal And Stay Out Of Court

• Why non-competes don’t really work (and what works better)
• 59 Buy/Sell Agreement mistakes that can cost you millions
• How to indemnify former owners without killing the company
• The 35 terms you need to implement right away

It Isn’t A Plan If Nobody Can Afford It

• How to structure transactions so that buyers can afford it
• The best way to mitigate the tax impact
• Is gifting stock a viable option or setting the firm up to fail?

Is A Non-Traditional Option Best For Your Firm?

• The best way to structure stock option plans to benefit everyone
• Structuring a successful shareholder agreements
• Retaining majority control of the firm while distributing stock

Moving From Plan To Execution

• Who should be involved in transition planning and when?
• When and how to bring in legal and accounting advisors
• When is an outside advisor needed to facilitate the process?

Damaging transition planning mistakes made by ill-prepared AEC firm owners: 

1. Relied on a poorly-written buy/sell agreement and ended up financing three competitors launched by former Principals.
   
2. Failed to correctly plan for stock redemption liabilities and created a “bubble” that nearly bankrupt the company.
   
3. Used an ESOP as a place to “dump stock” and the result was that owner worked ten years longer than she wanted to.
   
4. Sold the company to an ill-prepared next generation and ended up having to re-join firm to stand any chance of getting his note paid.
   
5. Created poorly-structured transactions that created huge unexpected tax liabilities for incoming owners.
   
6. Used equity-based incentive compensation to finance transition and inadvertently created a major capitalization problem.
   
7. Relied on general legal counsel to draft elaborate transition plan that ended up being of zero interest to any incoming owners.

Many AEC owners and principals struggle to identify who will own and run the firm after they retire. But, instead of taking action to develop and implement a proven transition plan, they focus on near-term client demands, keeping backlog high, and day-to-day problem-solving. This puts the firm's capitalization, clients, and employees in great jeopardy...to say nothing of evaporating shareholder value.  

For more than 40 years, PSMJ's experts have successfully helped AEC firm leaders avoid transition planning land mines and capitalize on opportunities to manage affordability, develop leaders, craft buy/sell agreements, and more. We have distilled everything we've learned into a tested and proven 2-day event.