“If you don’t have a succession plan in place, you don’t know how your family is going to get value out of the firm, and you don’t know what will happen to your clients and to your employees,” Connelly says.
“At the start of the business, Kathie and I had life insurance and disability insurance, but that was not enough,” Stephen says. “Clients would ask what would happen to them if something happened to both Kathie and I. When I was lying awake in the hospital, I was very grateful we had a plan in place.”
Kathie says, “Every year for 10 years we had an annual meeting in July between Versant and Barnes to go over the agreement. Eventually, as Versant grew, they did not need us anymore but we still needed them.”
As a result, the agreement was changed. “When we had to enact it, we retained 90% of our clients,” she adds.
“We had the plan in place, and when it came time to use it, we did not have to reinvent the wheel,” Shabaker says. “We beefed up our team and we are integrating the clients into the firm. We already have met with 60% of them.”
“The agreement was critical to our continuing and was very reassuring to our clients,” Kathie says. “Why did we have a plan? Because we are excellent planners, and, in this case, the planners had a plan for themselves.”