Meet Kim & Rick. This is their Merge to RetireTM story.
When we first met Kim and Rick, they’d not given too much thought to their Succession Planning.
Like many busy accounting practitioners, they were consumed with the day to day grind and the ‘noise’ associated with running a client focused practice. There was not a lot of time to work on their own business needs.
Victims of their own success, they found themselves in a growing practice, with many clients requiring specialist consulting services over and above the usual demands of providing quality tax and accounting advice.
On the personal front, their friends were beginning to retire, a balance was needed between work and leisure was missing and quality family time, at either end of the life scale— grandchildren and elderly parents—was not being prioritised. It was important to both Kim and Rick to be able to enjoy time with the grandchildren whilst they had the health, fitness and energy to spend that time, plus be readily available to support elderly parents.
“At the time when we were looking to scale back, the opposite was happening. We just kept getting busier and busier. We were working really long hours and most weekends just to keep up.”
A Merge to RetireTM agreement saw a considerable lump sum payment, an earn out arrangement to maximise the exit and a role for Rick as long as he wants it.
Because we’d taken the time required to fully understand not only where Kim & Rick were at, the problems they needed to solve and the kind of transaction that would tick all the boxes, introducing Nicholas Zoch of Progression Group was an easy choice.
Business wise, we knew Progression Group was a transaction partner that could firstly bring the practice up to speed and implement systems processes people to not only gain the efficiencies required but to stay on top of the workflow. Progression Group also supported Kim & Rick’s team members and of course provides surety around service continuity to the clients.
Personally, Nicholas and his team understood the need to support Kim & Rick in their transition.
“The Merge to RetireTM option was perfect for us as we could see that we had no viable internal succession options. Plus, solving the challenges of driving the required changes to modernise the practice was simply going to be too much for us. ”
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