Close to three-quarters of privately held business owners expect to transition or exit their companies within the next decade. The Ritz Herald, citing industry estimates, puts the potential wealth tied to those exits at $10 trillion to $14 trillion. Yet many owners remain unprepared.
Michael Gold, founder and CEO of Gold Family Wealth in Westport, Connecticut, says a lack of communication among advisors is a major reason why.
Where Exit Plans Break Down
Owners preparing to sell typically rely on several professionals at once: an estate attorney, a CPA, an investment manager, and sometimes a philanthropic advisor. Michael Gold Westport has seen during his 25-year career how often these experts work without consulting one another. An investment strategy may ignore the timeline of a business sale. Estate documents may be drafted without the accountant’s input.
Those gaps can be costly. Gold points to cases where owners had to push back a sale by a full year to re-characterize assets and avoid excessive tax drag. Such delays, the article notes, usually trace back to planning done in isolated silos.
“People do not think about the end in mind early enough,” Gold says.
Starting Years Before the Sale
The Westport firm’s answer is a coordination model that brings a family’s existing advisors into one unified plan. Under that approach, structural issues that could derail an exit are identified years in advance. Tax outcomes are stress-tested across different liquidity scenarios, and charitable vehicles are integrated with succession plans.
Gold summarizes his philosophy as “orchestration, not accumulation.” Families do not necessarily need more specialists; they need the ones they have to work together.
For owners counting down to a sale, the lesson from Michael Gold of Westport is to bring every advisor to the same table well before a buyer appears. A plan reviewed from every angle early on is far less likely to stall at the closing stage. See related link for more information.
Check out for more about Michael Gold Westport on https://cascadebusnews.com/michael-gold-says-wealth-management-for-ultra-high-net-worth-requires-anticipatory-judgment-and-strategic-leadership/