A lack of any real succession planning for small businesses is a significant challenge (and opportunity) that I've been loosely following for a while (and recently thrust into first hand). A thread.

We need smart people working on this now before it becomes massively disruptive to the ~60M Americans who are employed by small biz across this country. I don't know the data offhand, but there are an extraordinary number of small business that are owned/operated by Boomers.

Sadly, many (anecdotally, I'd guess MOST) of those older owner operators have put no real time or energy into succession planning and have children who have no interest in stepping into the business. Maybe it's because they don't want to retire, or because it's hard work & scary?

Whatever the case, the time to start working on this is NOT when you're ready to retire, forced to retire, or there's a death. This lack of preparation can put your employees (and their families) at risk, create huge stress for your partners or family...

And greatly diminish the value of your company (or kill it all together). Why would you work so hard to create value, jobs, and a great company, for most of your life, and be OK with the idea of that suddenly going to zero when you're done (or gone)?

I know this is a hard problem and it's a very touchy subject (I know from experience on both sides). I don't know the exact solution, but I believe we need people working on solutions on both ends of the spectrum.

How might we better educate & enable current owners/operators to do this without disrupting the business and before they are ready to be done (many aren't ready!)?

And how might we create options for companies/families that find out "too late" that there is no succession plan?

I gotta believe that technology, some form of private equity, and network (including talent pipeline) all have a role to play here.

And I sure hope that people much smarter than me are already working on this.