Happy New Year. I hope 2019 will be a good year for us all. How about making one of your resolutions to make a start on your succession plan!

I will be working on my succession plan in 2019. I trained four people over a year ago and I plan to make sure they are confident to take on some areas of the UK for me. I won’t be retiring for a good while yet but I need to make better use of my time by travelling less miles. So my associates Jo Speed, Laura Teasdale. Neil Adams and Becky Miles will be able to take on meetings too.

I facilitated a fascinating meeting near the end of last year with a young couple. They were both in their early 30s with 3 children under 5 and they wanted to start on their succession plan. It was brilliant because they have given themselves so much time to prepare for the future and therefore have lots of options.

Some of the areas we discussed were –

• Building up the size of the business to accommodate all children if they wish to farm.
• Savings plans for education
• Thinking of the qualifications and experiences that the younger generation will need to run a farm business in the future.
• Building up skills to have the business performing at a high level.
• Finding mentors to learn from great people.
• How to build a good reputation that will open doors to opportunities.
• Deciding that they wanted their children to be independent to run their own businesses at an early age. Therefore as parents they needed to ensure they would not be financially dependant on the younger generation.
• Maintaining hobbies and interests.
• Making sure they spent time with the children when young to make memories.

This has to be the generation that ensures that succession is not the taboo subject it is today.

I will be running 6 Succession Workshops for Farming Connect in Wales later this month. The good news for Welsh farmers is that there is funding to cover Facilitated Family Meetings with me. We’re not sure how long the funding will be there so take advantage of this great support.

And finally, talking about succession, my first grandchild was born on 25th November. Charlie John Summons is absolutely gorgeous and I’m besotted!!