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Episode 33: Planning Strategies for Mature Business Owners Thumbnail

Episode 33: Planning Strategies for Mature Business Owners

Beneficiaries Business Owner Planning Coasting in Retirement Estate Tax Executive Benefits Financial Planning Inheritance Investment Management Investments Pre-Retirees Retirees Retirement Funding Tax Strategies Wealth Management

Segment 1 (Show Open): 

Good afternoon, everyone! Welcome in. Welcome to Coasting in Retirement! Wherever you may be listening, however you may be listening, thank you for joining us. We have another great show for you today, we have another great guest host, and I think, we have a great topic that you mature business owners listening will want to pay close attention to. Regular co-host Michelle is playing hooky this week, and in her chair, let me introduce Mr. Will Steih.

Listeners: Will and I are here today to discuss financial topics relevant to those of you in or near retirement, living your best life along our part of the gulf coast. Here’s what we’ve got in store for you today: First segment – deep dive on our topic of the day. 2nd segment - at about 20 minutes past the hour - “News of the Week”. Then at roughly 40 minutes past the hour, stick around for our 3rd segment, we call it ” Josh’s Crystal Ball and Big Mouth”. Of course this time will see if Will’s big mouth has any predictions of his own. So buckle up, we’ve got a lot to get to!

Quick background on me for those new to the show. Again, my name is Josh Null, I am a fee-based financial advisor, I hold my FINRA Series 65 securities license, and I am the owner of Gulf Coast Financial Advisors, we are an independent investment management and financial planning firm with offices in Fairhope, Orange Beach, and Mobile! You can find more information on me and Gulf Coast Financial Advisors by visiting our website gulfcoastfa.com, or feel free to give us a call at 251-327-2124. If you missed that contact info, don’t worry, we will repeat our contact info several times throughout the show! 

So, Will let’s do a quick disclaimer and help the listeners understand your role with Gulf Coast Financial Advisors. Will Steih has the unique credentials of being a securities licensed Financial Advisor while also being licensed as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). Will serves as a Tax Planning Consultant to my firm GCFA, meaning that he is not employed directly by or for GCFA, nor is he involved in any securities transactions. Will’s advisory services are offered through Prime Capital Investment Advisors, LLC. (“PCIA”), a federally Registered Investment Adviser. PCIA does business as Prime Capital Wealth Management (“PCWM”) & Qualified Plan Advisors, (“QPA”). PCIA, PCWM and QPA are NOT affiliated with GCFA in any way.

Alright, back to the show. Will you and I go back several years now, and anyone that has either followed Gulf Coast Financial Advisor’s journey, or for some of you listening, done business with us, then you will be very familiar with Will and the unique expertise he brings to GCFA, particularly around helping mature business owner’s keep more of their hard-earned dollars in their pocket. I asked Will to come on the show today because I wanted to talk about some of the things that we had done to help Gulf Coast area business owners with tax planning and succession planning. Now, Will and I can talk about a whole lot of topics related to helping business owners, but we decided to narrow it down to three related topics for this episode. I’m going to list them then we will dive into each individually: 

  • First up: Private Equity deals for small and medium size business owners
  • Number 2 on our list: Deferred Sales Trust
  • And finally number 3: Succession Planning and Exit Strategies for business owners 

We’re going to continue our discussion around our topics in our next segment, but if you heard something that caught your attention, then please feel free to reach out to us, we are easy to get ahold of. You can set up an appointment by calling 251-327-2124, or you can reach us through our website gulfcoastfa.com. One our site, you can choose to send us a direct message, or you can click on the blue button in the upper right-hand corner to set up a 15-minute introductory phone call. Or do all 3!

Alright folks, coming up next - There’s always a lot going on in the world! Particularly the world of finance, investments and money. Every week we scour the interwebs for helpful financial articles related to our topic of the day, especially articles that pertain to those in or near retirement. So join us after the break to hear Will and I discuss this week’s relevant headlines in our “News of the Week” segment. Stay tuned!

Segment 2 - News of the Week:

Josh: “Welcome back to Coasting in Retirement, your host Josh Null here! As we discussed before the break, every week we scour the interwebs for helpful financial articles related to our topic of the day, especially articles that pertain to those of you in or near retirement. Our job is to help you all understand how these headlines impact you, especially when it comes to your money! Note – if you want to read our referenced articles yourself, we also include the links on our show transcript, which you can find on our website gulfcoastfa.com under the podcast tab. We upload our episodes every Monday after the show airs on Sunday. So Will, Michelle usually reads the headlines, but I’ll take her place this week. So without further ado, here’s the “News of the Week” 

1. Josh: First up Will,  a recent article from M&A Magazine, which is short for Mergers & Acquisitions, titled “PE Firms are Betting Big on Small Businesses”. This article contains quite a bit of surprising statistics around private equities involvement into what the article refers to as “middle market”, “pre-middle market”, and “micro market”. One statistic I found surprising is that the this article states that there about 33 million small businesses in the United States, ok, that tracks, but it goes on to claim that an estimated 62% of these small businesses have some form of private equity investment, which I would not have guessed. Will, what’s your opinion, or maybe even your experience, with private equity increasing interest in small businesses? 

https://www.themiddlemarket.com/news-analysis/pe-firms-are-betting-big-on-small-businesses

2. Josh: Alright Will our next article is Business News Daily and it’s titled “5 Crucial Steps to Sell Your Business”. This article kicks off by stressing the importance of accurate financials for your business, and how important it is to get an accurate estimate of your business’ worth. So Will, you and I have worked with business owners looking to sell, or successfully selling, their business. Let’s discuss 2 things: are there any crucial steps you would add to this article, and what is our role as financial advisors and tax planners in helping our clients that want to sell their business? 

https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/how-to-sell-your-business  

3. Josh: Ok, so we discussed deferred sales trust, or DSTs for short, in our opening segment, and while I want to make it perfectly clear that neither Will or I set up DSTs, that’s a job for an attorney, nor are we blindly recommending them to every single business owner looking to sell their business, it’s a specific use cases, even with all that said I thought it would be good to give our listeners a link directly to the horse’s mouth. So for our next headline we’re going to pivot to the Estate Planning Team, they are directly tied to the origination of the DST concept, and specifically their page simply titled “Deferred Sales Trust”. To be fair Will you have quite a bit more experience with DSTs than I do, and with the Estate Planning Team, so please guide our listeners as to what they can learn on this site:

https://www.myept.com/Deferred-Sales-Trust 

4. Josh: So, Will, one of the great things about hosting your own show is that I get decide what websites and news publications get referenced, so I’m going to be a self-serving with this next news source, and go straight to our very own Gulf Coast Financial Advisor’s site. But I have a good reason to do so. The particular page I am referencing on my site is called the “Business Owner Center” and I believe it contains a ton of great information around business owner planning. On this page you’ll find resources directly tied to our stop of the day of exit and succession planning, such as our buy/sell agreement funding landing page, but Will I wanted to bring up one page in particular that is jammed packed with useful information, even though it doesn’t directly tie with a business owner selling his business. I’m referring to our “Cash Balance” page, and I bring it up because it’s a concept that we’ve helped many mature business owners implement as they worked on moving assets from their business balance sheet to their personal balance sheet and keeping more of their hard earned dollars in their pocket. There’s even a downloadable cash balance presentation on this page. So Will, as the person that introduced me to cash balance plans, can you give us a quick synopsis of what they are and how they work?  

https://gulfcoastfa.com/business-owner-center/business-services-overview 

Josh: Will, great job discussing these headlines, I think these are all great resources for you mature business owners tuning in today. Listeners – if you have questions around the topics in our headlines of the week, or questions related to your investment strategy, your financial plan, maybe even around tax planning, then why don’t you give us a call at 251-327-2124 to have a conversation or to set up an appointment, or you can reach out to use via our contact page on our website gulfcoastfa.com.

Alright folks, coming up next: Josh’s Crystal Ball and Big Mouth. What have been some of my predictions? Have I been right? Was I ever wrong? How wrong? What do I think is going to affect investors in the near future? We talk about all of these things and poke a little fun at my big mouth, and maybe we get to pick on Will a little too. Stay tuned! 

Segment 3 – Josh’s Crystal Ball and Big Mouth: 

Welcome back! Your host Josh Null here, along side guest co-host Will Steih. So, Will, I am opinionated, I have strong opinions at times, I would say a radio show host that isn’t probably wouldn’t be very interesting to listen to. And I am, we both are, paid in our professions to offer professional guidance and opinions to my clients, otherwise what use would we be? Sometimes I feel so strongly about something that I talk about it publicly, sometimes I’ll even make predictions, and while I usually proved right because I tend to be skeptical of my own industry, there are times I swing and I miss. Want to hear me eat a little crow? Then let’s get at with Josh’s Crystal Ball and Big Mouth. Will, I’ll start off. 

1. Josh: Will, as a parent of a son attending college on a football scholarship, and provided that we are chin deep in SEC country down here on the Gulf Coast, I’m curious as to your opinion about all of the reletily recent changes hitting college football. For example, I’m curious to get your opinion on Name, Image and Likeness, otherwise known as the NIL, what’s your opinion on major conferences like the Pac 12 basically imploding, the transfer portal, college athletes as potential employees, etc. Plus I would like to hear your prediction to where college football is going to be 5 years from now: 

Well listeners, I hoped you enjoyed a peak behind the curtain on how I form my opinions and predictions, and more importantly, that I’m willing to admit when I am wrong. Which isn’t very often, but still. Listeners, if you’ve liked what you’ve heard today, or maybe you just want to have a conversation, we invite you to reach out to us. Call us anytime at 251-327-2124 to make an appointment, or shoot us a message our website at gulfcoastfa.com. Remember, you can always put a 15 minute conversation on my calendar, just click the blue link in the upper right corner. 

Folks, that is a wrap for this week on Coasting in Retirement! I want to give a huge thank you to my guest co-host, Will Steih, a thank you to our awesome radio station FM Talk 106.5, a thank you to our awesome show producer, Mr. Chaesare Gray, many thanks to the provider of our show music, local band Sloth Racer, and as always my sincere appreciation for all of your out there that have been listening and joining us on this journey. We would love to be a part of your journey as well. Until we talk again next Sunday, have a wonderful and productive week. This has been Coasting in Retirement with Josh Null! 

Disclosure:

Gulf Coast Financial Advisors, LLC ("GCFA”) is a registered investment adviser offering advisory services in the State of Alabama and in such other jurisdictions where it is registered, filed the required notices, or is otherwise excluded or exempted from such registration and/or notice filing requirements. Registration does not indicate or imply that GCFA has attained a particular level of skill or ability, nor does it constitute an endorsement of the firm by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or any state securities regulator.

The Coasting in Retirement radio program serves mainly to disseminate general information including those pertaining to GCFA’s advisory services, together with access to additional investment-related information, publications, materials and links. The publication of this radio show should not be construed by any client and/or prospective client as GCFA’s solicitation to effect, or attempt to effect transactions in securities, nor should it be interpreted as GCFA providing personalized investment advice, or any type of professional advice, for compensation, wherever this program is broadcast. Any subsequent, direct communication by GCFA with a prospective client will be conducted by a representative that is either registered or qualifies for an exemption or exclusion from registration in the state where the prospective client resides.

Certain information, news stories, headlines, data, charts, graphs, figures or statistics presented on this radio program may have been obtained from third-party sources that are believed to be generally reliable but which GCFA may not have independently verified. GCFA does not and cannot guarantee the timeliness, accuracy, or reliability of any such third-party information and undertakes no obligation to update or correct any information that may become obsolete, unreliable, or inaccurate. The radio program also contains the opinions, views, and perspectives expressed by Josh Null and any other GCFA representatives which are solely their own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, or perspectives of GCFA as a firm. Such personal views and opinions should not be construed as endorsements or professional advice from GCFA. GCFA makes no representation or warranty regarding the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information on this radio program, and disclaims any liability for any direct or indirect loss or damage incurred from using or relying on such information.

GCFA and Providence Partners are not affiliated, nor are any of their respective representatives.