Congratulations! If you’ve read all the preceding pages and made it to this point, you’ve graduated from practice ownership and you understand how to build something that will be greater than any one person, something that can outlive you and take care of your trusting clients for generations to come. You hold in your hand the keys to your own business.

You’ve also learned that the process of creating and implementing a succession plan is all about building for the future. It has almost nothing to do with ending your usefulness to your clients or staff—in fact, just the opposite. Succession planning is about growth and collaboration and cooperation and trust; those are the stepping-stones that create a path into the future envisioned by the contributors to this book. But we fully recognize that you’re more than a business, and your future is about more than just making money.

In these many pages, we’ve provided the steps and the strategies and the tools to help you build a valuable business, but ultimately a business is not about these things any more than your home is about its wooden frame and concrete foundation. In the end, it is about you. Your work and what you leave behind are a reflection of you and your values and priorities. Whatever it is you choose to build, picture that day in the future when you do stop, look back, and take inventory of your accomplishments, your successes, and your failures. What is it that will make you most proud? We trust that the steps you take today to better care for your clients, your staff, and your family through the work that you do will be important pieces in your own mosaic.

The independent financial services industry is a special place. In terms of number of advisors and annual revenue growth rates, this model just plain works. One of the reasons the independent sector has grown as fast as it has is through competition, and to be certain, entrepreneurs are great competitors. But there is a key component that is missing, and that is history. As an independent advisor, it is hard to plan successfully for the future when you have little history to look back on and learn from, but that is exactly what you must do. As an independent advisor, you’re in charge of what happens next, and you’re in charge of creating the history that next-generation advisors will learn from. It is up to you, and us, with help and support from your broker-dealer, custodian, insurance company, and business coach. We have to figure this out together and we have to get started immediately.

Value what you do, literally. You already know what your cash flow is, so take step one and submit to the process of a formal valuation, and put equity to work for you immediately. Share the results of your formal valuation with your spouse, significant other, your business coach, your kids, and your staff; show them your history, and then get busy building an even better future. Equity in the right organizational and entity structure, with a good plan, will lead next-generation talent into your business and, maybe, into your circle of ownership. From there, anything is possible and everything starts to move forward and under your control.

You wanted to own something of your own. You’ve done that. Now that your future belongs to you and you know what is possible, what will you do with it?