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Management
(day to day decisions)
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Leadership
(strategic decisions)
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Asset transfer
(ownership)
In
a family farming business, your relationships
are on the line – nothing is more important
than your emotional wellbeing and staying
friends with your brothers, sisters, parents and
other family members in the future. The number
of times family members have fought it out in a
family dispute, just to win, without considering
the consequences. One of the most common sayings
we hear around the ridges is, “Never mix money
and friendship” But if you’re in a family
partnership or company, you have no choice.
It’s how you handle it that counts.
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The
Alexander Family
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By
Handle it, I mean, if a family business operates
on written and agreed to ground rules and uses
process to make decisions and implement actions,
then succession planning will be a breeze. The
majority of family operated businesses, both
grazing and cropping enterprises in central
Queensland
are now multi-million dollar entities. For
example 600 ha (1,500 acres) of brigalow country
maybe worth one to two million dollars or more.
Many properties are worth in excess of five
million dollars. That is pretty darn
significant, and should be operated and managed
as a business. If you had a business with assets
of that size in town, it would have a board of
management. It would have a strategic plan and
be reviewed quarterly.
We
no longer have a farm with the cattle or sheep
being the highest value asset. As an example, in
the year 2001, if 2,000 acre brigalow property
was worth $600,000, the steers being grown on it
may have been worth $300,000.Today, the same
country is worth $2-3 million and the cattle are
still worth $300,000.We have two separate
businesses, the land business and the cattle or
production business. Both are significant and
need to be planned for long term. Succession
planning requires a starting point.
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