This month, we welcome back long-time Roofing Contractor contributor Kevin Kennedy to share his expertise on building the proper exit strategy and succession plan for your roofing company. Kennedy, president of Beacon Exit Planning LLC, has written extensively and spoken authoritatively across the country about this critically important topic for roofing contractors. The team at RC is excited to bring him back after a lengthy hiatus to help roofing contractors learn from his practical experience.

Kennedy, a long-standing member of RC’s Editorial Advisory Board, said he’s back with a renewed sense of duty and urgency to help contractors facing some of the most critical decisions in both their business and personal lives. In his Exit Planning column, Kennedy will touch on his personal experience of buying and selling a 200-employee roofing-contractor business in the late 1990s, and the transfer to the company’s fourth-generation team. The process was so painful — huge tax overpayments and roughly $250,000 spent over a six-year period — that he has since dedicated his time to help companies do it right.

Touring the country speaking to roofers, trade groups and other contractor associations, Kennedy also consults with business leaders that heed his cautionary tale of how to unlock one’s wealth when it’s time to go.

“The owner’s challenge is how they are going to capture this money without being clobbered by taxes, retire and not outlive their money. This is exit planning,” he said.

You’ll find the writing style informational, yet conversational, and lacking technical jargon that can confuse or take people off point.

In his first piece, to be published in September, Kennedy explores the difference between exit and succession planning, and the options available to meet a specific company’s needs.  

“My goal is to communicate with owners as a teacher and not talk down to you with adviser jargon,” he writes. “You do not have to learn how to build a watch, but just how to tell time.”                                                                               

Kevin is open to questions and comments from readers at any time by visiting www.beaconexitplanning.com or emailing KJKennedy@BeaconExitPlanning.com.