Transforming Your Practice into a Business

The first step in building an enduring business to support a succession plan is to assess what you've built so far and where your starting point for an enduring business actually is. This chapter specifically defines four levels of independent ownership—owning a job, a practice, a business, or a firm—and the identifiable attributes of each level. For most advisors, the prequel to the succession planning process is the building of a solid foundation that can accommodate multiple generations of talent as owners of a single, strong enterprise. Accordingly, this chapter begins the process of understanding how to build the foundations necessary to transform a one‐generational practice into a multigenerational business, including selecting the right entity structure, balancing revenue strength and enterprise strength, and rethinking ownership‐level compensation.