This book is going to challenge you and everything you think you know about succession planning.
For independent advisors, succession planning is quickly becoming the cornerstone to a strategic growth strategy designed to perpetuate their business and their income streams beyond their own lifetime, while providing a multi-generational service platform that attracts and rewards younger advisors. This makes succession planning one of the most, if not the most, important practice management tools in this industry today.
As an independent financial advisor, now is the time to address the question of what will happen to your practice and your clients after you “exit the building.” In most cases, the answers are right in front of you. Thankfully, Succession Planning for Financial Advisors: Building an Enduring Business has arrived to transform today’s practices into businesses designed to endure and prosper and serve generations of clients.
- Learn how to create a “Lifestyle Succession Plan” that can provide a lifetime of income and benefits to the founder even as he/she gradually retires on the job
- Unlock the power of equity management – the best planning and building tool an independent advisor owns
- Learn how to attract and retain the best of the next generation to help you build a great business and to support your succession plans and care for your clients and their families
- Determine precisely when to start a formal succession plan and related continuity plan so that your business can work for you when you need it most
- Understand why succession planning and selling your business are completely different strategies, but how they can complement each other when used correctly
95% of independent financial service professionals are one owner practices. To the positive, these practices are among the most valuable professional service models in America. But almost all advisors are assembling their practices using the wrong tools – tools borrowed from historically successful, but vastly different models including wirehouses, broker-dealers, and even OSJ’s and branch managers. Revenue sharing, commission splitting and other eat-what-you-kill compensation methods dominate the independent sector and virtually ensure that today’s independent practices, if left unchanged, will not survive the end of their founder’s career. It is time to change course and this book provides the map and the details to help you do just that.
For independent practice owners and staff members, advisors who want to transition to independence, as well as accountants, attorneys, coaches and others involved in the financial services space, there are invaluable lessons to be learned from Succession Planning for Financial Advisors. Written by the leading succession planning expert in the financial services industry, former securities regulator, M&A specialist, and founder of the nationally recognized consulting and equity management firm, FP Transitions, David Grau Sr., JD, has created an unmatched resource that will have an enduring and resounding impact on an entire industry.
David Grau Sr., JD, is an award winning author and a global advocate for small business stewardship. His three most recent books (The Stewardship Advantage, Building With the End in Mind, and Acquiring Your Future Through a Succession Plan) form a cohesive trilogy on stewardship, succession, and small business transformation—each written to help today's owners build businesses that are profitable, durable, and deeply impactful.
Before becoming a full-time writer, David spent decades doing exactly what he now writes about: building, scaling, and successfully transitioning a professional services firm from the ground up. Trained in law, securities regulation, business taxation, and entity structuring, he started his career as a sole proprietor—wearing every hat and learning firsthand the daily realities of small business ownership. He went on to found and lead a nationally respected consulting firm, where he guided thousands of entrepreneurs and business owners through the complex work of long-term value creation, succession and sustainability.
Now semi-retired and devoted to his writing, David draws from this lived experience to offer books that are practical, inspiring, and grounded in the realities of small business ownership. Whether you're just starting out or preparing to pass the torch, David's current books offer a clear roadmap for building a business that matters—one that makes a difference for every person it touches, and for generations to come.
