Starting Point & Challenges
In July 2023, Elaine Froese came to us for, “Barb's expertise to craft a clear exit strategy and timelines. Froese stated her desire to stop 1:1 coaching by 2025, and shift her main income focus to two main streams, a membership program (not yet developed) & speaking. At 66 she knew, at her current capacity, that to continue coaching would not be sustainable with the addition of her membership program and speaking.
Each year, FFC helps hundreds of farmers and their families, create a stable, reliable relationships within their business teams and their families. The coaching practice reaches directly to over 100 families a year, via discovery calls, one to one coaching and the FFC membership site. The bi-monthly newsletter video/blog reaches over 6800 folks , which includes many advisors and 1500 farm families. The Farm Family Harmony podcast has had 27K downloads since inception.
Healthy family relationships in a family business ensure that their businesses not only survive, year after year, but provide the income needed for continued growth, management, and wages. The loss of this support would be a hardship on this industry, which, as a wife, mother and grandmother in a family farm business, Froese could not allow to happen.
For Froese, the vision and strategy of exiting her business was something she could not conceive on her own, and, in addition, creating the implementation process for her and her team seemed impossible.
She has a valuable business for herself, with no way to transition that value to the next owner.
Key Points
- The farming industry is a unique and challenging industry to be in.
- Running a family business relies on healthy, stable relationships.
- Froese ‘s business provides coaching and transition resources to hundreds of farm family members and partners over many years.
2 Game-Changing Results from over 10 measurable outcomes
- Froese now had a clear desired outcome and a clear process to get to that outcome, with the support of her team to implement.
- Froese was able to identify her possible successor from within the company, promoting them to Operations Manager and creating an understanding of what that relationship would look like, before Froese exits, and after. Froese and her successor have signed a Unanimous Shareholder Agreement (USA) and are now equal business partners.
There was an unexpected bonus to doing this work. You'll want to know what this is. Download the complete case study to discover how this business owner transitioned her business and scaled successfully.
