Legacy by Design: AEC Ownership and Succession Strategies Workshop

PSMJ's 2-day Legacy by Design: AEC Ownership and Succession Strategies Workshop distills, into one immersive executive education event, lessons we've learned over decades of helping AEC leaders overcome obstacles and achieve better outcomes. When you attend, you see how your program compares to the best plans, where you can make the greatest strides, and what a clear plan of action can do.

This workshop is NOT going to give you a cookie-cutter exit plan that ignores your firm's culture or vision. Instead, it brings you the full spectrum of insight...from financial mechanics to strategic decisions to solving the leadership development dilemma. You get the right program structure for your firm's unique circumstances.

Get valuable data, hard lessons learned, and connections with AEC peers tackling the same challenges as you, PLUS:  

How to Ensure Your Plan Isn't Built to Fail

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

How to 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

How to 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

How to 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

How to Solve the Affordability Challenge

• 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?

How to Consider Non-Traditional Options

• 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

How to Move From Plan To Execution

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

7 ACTUAL COSTLY AEC SUCCESSION PLANNING MISTAKES WE TEACH YOU HOW TO AVOID!

For 50 years, PSMJ has advised AEC owners on establishing and executing succession plans that deliver as designed. Along the way, we've heard more than a few horror stories about plans that went awry, and teach you how to sidestep easily-made yet catastrophic errors. You get insider details on the firm leaders who:

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 succession and inadvertently created a major capitalization problem.
   
7. Relied on general legal counsel to draft elaborate succession 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 succession 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 50 years, PSMJ's experts have successfully helped AEC firm leaders avoid succession 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.