It occurred to me that the best way to help you understand the vital importance of role you can play in the lives of the millions of successful people who make up our country - was to describe some recent interactions.
These real-life success stories will clearly demonstrate my value proposition to my clients and, as I have said many times - that if I can do it, anybody can.
At a recent trade association annual meeting, I was asked to do an afternoon "breakout" session with a group of fifty business owners and their spouses.
The subject matter, "Creating Shared Goals" among the owners of a family business, with a particular emphasis on "how do nice people like us get in a situation like this?"
Afterwards Ed, one of the business owners who had been in the session, approached me. I remembered him because he had been sitting in the front of the room, and I noted him because he seemed very interested in everything I was saying.
During the session, I saw that he would look at me and then look at his wife.
Over and over again, looking at me, looking at his wife. He asked for my card, which wasn't unusual in this type of environment, but most people ask out of a sense of obligation or good manners, and have absolutely no intention of ever calling.
A few weeks went by after the meeting and Ed called me. He said that if I was ever going to be in their part of the country, I should let him know because he would like to meet with me.
It seemed to me as though he was really frustrated and that there was something on his mind, but he didn't want to set up a consultation with me outright. A while after that, when I realized that I was going to be in his area for a couple of days between some other meetings, I called him for an appointment.
Ed and Betty live in a small town about 25 miles outside a major metropolitan area, where they own a large wholesale distributorship .
He gave me directions to his place, telling me to get off the interstate, drive through town, and turn down the street that bore his family's name. (This was an clue how important the family and the company are to this town). What he told me next really got my attention:
"Go a couple miles and you'll see a two-track (private road)leading off to your left, and you can follow it back to the warehouse and the offices. Right there at the intersection, you'll also see a new ranch style brick house. Whatever you do, don't look toward the house."
"Just come on back, park where you see the sign for the office, tell someone who you are and they´ll come get me."
Needless to say I was a little confused about why I was supposed to avoid looking at the house, but I didn't ask him to explain. And when I arrived for the appointment, I did exactly as he told me - I turned up the two-track and drove toward the office.
Although I desperately wanted to, I didn't look toward the house.
Ed came out to greet me and introduced me to his two sons. We spent a fair amount of time talking about the business, where it came from and where they are headed. One son had been there for fifteen years, the other for ten. They also have a daughter, Connie, who was not on hand.
When we went into his office, he pointed to a picture of Connie atop a dusty file cabinet. She looked like an attractive, intelligent young woman, and to get a better sense of the family, I asked if she was married.
"No," he said, "And she probably never will be. She´s got it too good as it is."
Connie was away at graduate school, working on her second Master´s degree. Though she had worked in the business during summers in high school and college, she now spent the break between semesters traveling Europe with her mother or spending time in the city where she attended school and enjoying the perks of being a young woman with disposable income.
We talked a bit more, but I still wasn´t sure why he wanted me to meet with him. I asked him point-blank what was on his mind. Why had he wanted to see me enough to pay for my time? What did he think I could help them accomplish?
He pulled open the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet stuffed to overflowing with all sorts of legal documents: wills, trusts, buy-sell agreements, and life insurance proposals.
He told me that over the previous several years he had gone to seminars, he had attended trade association events, he had taken his wife to this lawyer and that lawyer in an attempt to set up an estate and business transition planning, all to no avail.
"When I go, I want the business to be divided between my sons - after all they are the ones most responsible for its growth. Plus their kids want to get involved in the business and keep it growing into yet another generation.
But my wife refuses to do any planning. She always says "When my parents died, I didn't get anything. My brothers got it all. That is NOT going to happen to my daughter! My daughter is not going to suffer just because she's a girl. It's a third, a third, and a third, or I'm not signing anything."
Needless to say, this was a problem.
Both of the boys, during the time they had been with the company, had grown the business dramatically. They were, in fact, the reason Ed was still fired up and pushing the company forward. To expect them to buy back from their sister that which they had helped create was not only unfair to them, it could potentially ruin the business.
In addition, they had sons and daughters, some approaching college age. To put this kind of financial burden on the boys just didn't make sense, particularly when Connie was living the high life (as described by her brothers) far away from the daily operation of the company. They had reached an impasse.
Ed invited me up to the house to meet Betty and a piece of homemade apple pie. This was the very same house I had been forbidden to look at on my way in, but now Ed was ushering me in the front door, where his wife was waiting for us with dessert.
Betty showed me with great pride the pictures of all of her grandchildren, of her house, of her trips with Connie, all of those things we would all be proud to display. She was such a warm, friendly person that it seemed impossible that she could be so insistent on something that was clearly neither fair nor in the best interests of anyone.
After we ate, everyone else left, and Betty and I sat down and talked. And we talked, and we talked, and we talked. And it was true that when her parents died, her brothers ended up with the business.
Remember, this is a small town, and her family's business was a big one carrying even more name recognition than her husband's. What she was giving up when she lost out on the inheritance was not only a share of the business, but the family name as well.
What's important?
Since Betty and Ed are relatively young, the company is likely to get bigger and bigger with every passing year, and the potential for financial disaster should the boys need to buy out there sister seemed unavoidable.
Because they, like virtually all business owners, had over 80% of their total worth tied up directly or indirectly in the business - anything that impacts the company effects them directly. Their lifestyle, their financial security, their status within the community are directly at risk.
The boys and their growing families are inextricably linked to the fortunes of the company as well. The mixed messages they were receiving were stressful to everyone.
During the conversations among and between us all, individually and in small groups each person was able to articulate what was important to them. They were not really very far off. In fact it was Connie who held the key to the lock that had been confounding them all alone. No one had ever asked her for her opinion.
I stopped by Ed's office one more time to say goodbye. I now understood why he didn't want me to look at the house before I spoke with him. He didn't want Betty to talk to me before he had a chance to explain things from his perspective.
Was there a logical, leverageable next step?
The next step was obvious to me - I had been down this road before. Yet it was not my call. If Ed and Betty agreed and were willing to continue the engagement beyond that first meeting, I should speak with Connie.
In my experience unless everyone concerned is part of the conversation loop - the process will be flawed and it was either never be executed (as in this case) or people will be just as dissatisfied afterwards as they were before, just for different reasons.
They agreed and I called her a few days later. I laid everything out on the table for her, and explained the problems that I saw ahead for her brothers and for the company based on this "a third, a third, and a third" inheritance scheme her mother was promoting.
After I had said my piece, Connie had some very interesting comments.
"First of all," she said, "I do not want to do anything that will make it difficult for my brothers to continue to run the business. It isn't fair to them, and it isn't fair to my parents, because as they grow older, they'll need my brothers there more and more.
I have a boyfriend, and I will be getting married in a year or two, and I have no intention of going back and living there. It is really important to me that my brothers are there, and that they can help out if my parents ever need them.
I would never want to stand in the way of something that works for everyone."
"Ever since my grandparents died, my mother has become more and more bitter. She's bitter about the loss of status, about the fact that her family name was everywhere and she's not part of that anymore. I know she's just trying to protect my feelings - so I won't go through what she did. But that status is not important to me.
But as far as inheritance is concerned, please don't feel too bad for her. My mother got more money, in cash, than she'll ever know what to do with. She feels slighted, but it's not about money. It's about status and all that goes with it."
Connie also told me that she and her mother had never talked about the "a third, a third, and a third" plan. She knew her parents had seen estate planners and lawyers, and she assumed that the deal was done, never knowing that she was the reason no action had been officially taken. This upset her a lot.
I suggested to her that she send her mother a letter, telling her everything she had told me, and explaining how she felt. And she did.
A few days after I spoke to Connie, her letter had arrived at their home. Betty read it, and left it on the kitchen table for Ed to read, and after he read it, he turned to her and said "Well?" And she replied "Go call the lawyers."
Literally years of tension were gone, instantly. But more than that, Connie's letter illustrates that it's not just about planning techniques, it's not just about fancy ideas or clever tax strategies, it's about having, at a very basic level, an agreement that comes from talking to each other.
A little bit of communication made all the difference.
The power of asking the right questions and letting people figure their own way out of the woods can not be over stated. A simple bit of communication had allowed them to finally move toward an equitable solution that allowed everyone to feel secure. I was just the side show, the one who asked the questions and recognized the importance of their answers.
The hard part, the missing link if you will - is doing what must be done in order be in a situation where Ed and Betty could find me. I had to get in front of the association where he was a member. I had to tell the stories that resonated with them.
And when the conversation got started I had to get out of the way.
In my Effectiveness Strategies, process you will learn everything I know from a quarter of a Century successfully working with people like Ed and Betty.
