Wealth Vision for Business Owners

What is your vision for your business,
life and legacy?

01

Wealth Vision for Business Owners

Your Wealth Vision

Following our client discovery process, our first priority is to set clear goals. We develop a Wealth Vision that clarifies the goals and priorities we’ve discussed, which, for business owners, often includes building and securing wealth through the success of the business, working towards retirement and building a family legacy.

This process helps us establish a clear picture of where you are today and where you want to be. Before we make any recommendations or strategies, we ensure you have clarity with respect to your most essential priorities, such as the retirement transition, the legacy you want to build and the network of professionals whom we will coordinate in order to make your vision a reality.

Get in touch with us to set up a complimentary discovery session to create your own Wealth Vision.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Your Retirement Lifestyle

As a business owner, how do you move toward a retirement lifestyle?

02

Lifestyle Planning

When you’ve held a primary role in your business for many years, eventually you want to know how you can evolve that role to incorporate new interests outside of the business. If you had more time, what would you spend it on and how would you change your daily routine? Can you slow down without creating risk for the company? How do you begin shifting responsibility to the next generation or other members of the organization? What are the financial implications?

Our lifestyle planning approach helps you uncover and define these goals, prioritize them, and create a plan to achieve them. We help you work towards decreasing your role in the business and adjusting your cash flow management plan accordingly, so that you can enjoy the benefits of your success while living the lifestyle you want.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Succession or Transition Planning

Helping business owners plan and execute transitions is an area of specialty for us. There are a multitude of moving parts involved in reducing your involvement in your business, and our purpose is to plan and manage the financial component of the transition.

Our aim is to arrange your affairs in such a way that you can use the success of your business to create the retirement or semi-retirement lifestyle that you envision. Our ongoing guidance also helps ensure that you achieve and maintain a sense of financial clarity throughout the process.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Tax Mitigation Strategies and Tax-Efficient Investing

There are certain tax advantages and considerations for business owners, and we help you take advantage of these while you run your business and move toward a new work/life balance. This includes optimizing your retirement savings accounts, sheltering assets from tax through corporate and financial structures, and allocating funds for specific goals such as 529 plans for your children’s education.

These tactics can significantly reduce your overall tax burden and help you work toward goals efficiently, maximizing growth while you have strong cash flow and tax-saving opportunities during your business' peak operational years.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Cash Flow Planning

When you’re accustomed to the cash flow and income generated through your business, it’s important to map out an income plan for your lifestyle once you’ve reduced your role in the company. We consider your current and future lifestyle needs, as well as long-term projections for health care and other potential changes, while designing a plan that includes all current and future sources of income.

By clarifying the details of your current and future sources of income, you can also clarify the lifestyle goals you can work towards and identify any gaps that need to be addressed. We want to ensure you can enjoy your lifestyle with reliable income that doesn’t compromise your long-term objectives.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Spending vs. Saving

We work to maintain a clear picture of what’s coming in and what’s going out. This means balancing your cash flow requirements with the long-term preservation that you need to stay on track to lifestyle and legacy objectives. On an ongoing basis, we continuously monitor your current spending in relation to your short-term cash flow needs, mid-term lifestyle goals and long-term estate preservation objectives.

Knowing what you can safely spend can provide additional peace of mind, so that you can enjoy your lifestyle comfortably whether you’re focusing on your business or pursuing new interests.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Business Value Maximization

For those working toward a family business succession, sale or other transition, we help ensure that your assets are structured strategically, and we advise on tactics to help maximize the value of the business. As a central component of your professional network, we can also coordinate with your other professional partners to ensure all strategies are working together.

With the right financial strategies, you can see greater monetary value from your business as a source of income and an important facet of your net worth.

Get a copy of our Values Questionnaire, our exercise to help uncover the interests you may want to cultivate outside of your business.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Building and Managing Wealth

What is the
best way to grow your assets?

03

Asset Allocation 

Your asset allocation is one of the biggest factors contributing to the overall success of your investment strategy. Our portfolio design process begins with a strategic allocation of assets according to your needs and objectives.

By planning and optimizing how your capital is allocated within various investment vehicles, sectors and markets, we help business owners diversify their wealth so that their financial security is less reliant on the capital in their businesses. Whether you’re actively running the business or transitioning out of it, we also adjust this allocation as your life, business and goals evolve.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Tailored Investment Approach

We design a tailored investment portfolio that aligns with your core objectives, time frames, risk tolerance and other considerations pertaining to your wealth. We work toward striking the right balance of growth, income and preservation for your specific needs.

As fiduciaries on an independent platform, we provide investment advice with complete objectivity. This means that when designing your portfolio and investment strategy, we are free from the limitations, incentives and conflicts of interest that can influence those in a an institutional environment. We continuously monitor your investments, track progress and discuss  your portfolio at our annual review to consider possible adjustments.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Capital Accumulation

We design and implement goal-oriented growth strategies that help support your priorities for lifestyle as well as estate growth and preservation.  Our aim is to help generate capital growth and accumulation that aligns with your objectives as well as your risk parameters.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Income Generation

For business owners, especially those moving toward a retirement lifestyle, investment income plays an important part within overall cash flow. We design your portfolio to contribute to the steady influx of capital needed to support your lifestyle while staying on track to long-term objectives.

With a strong income generation strategy, you can plan and maintain your lifestyle with greater confidence. We take a broad view of your overall cash flow and identify your various sources of income to help ensure that, together with your investment income, you can sustainably reach lifestyle goals.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Risk Management and Wealth Preservation

Our investment approach is predicated on a strong risk  management strategy, which begins with an audit of how your investment accounts are set up from a risk standpoint and how debt is being managed. For business owners, we are also focused on diversifying assets that are often heavily concentrated in a business. We also consider factors like inflation, tax and other forms of risk that could impact your assets over time.

It’s about using risk strategically, not excessively. Our approach helps you to mitigate known and unknown risks, optimize debt and work toward your goals with the minimal amount of risk needed to achieve them. This also helps to prevent the erosion of wealth over time.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Tax Mitigation (Investing)

We are conscious of the impact of tax with respect to each investment portfolio we create. In collaboration with tax specialists in our network and your personal accountant, we take a comprehensive approach to help minimize tax while ensuring your have the liquidity you need.

Our tax-efficient investment vehicles and capital gains strategies can help reduce the impact of tax on the growth generated through your portfolio, so that you keep more of what you earn.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

eMoney Platform

What We Provide

Key Benefit

As a Southern Oak Wealth client, you have access to your own personalized financial planning app on the eMoney platform, which provides real-time information on your finances.

This easy-to-use app provides you with 24/7 access to all your financial data. eMoney also allows our team to operate with greater efficiency so that we can dedicate more time to personal guidance and wealth management.

Reach out to us to view our team’s latest market analysis report.

Building a Legacy and Transferring Capital

How do you protect and transfer family wealth?

04

Estate Plan

For many business owners who have reached a level of success and are reducing their role in the business, building a family legacy and philanthropic strategy becomes a more immediate priority. Through specialized trusts, clear and up-to-date documentation, and a process of restructuring your assets,
we help build wealth that can be carried down through multiple generations. Simultaneously, we work with your accountant and estate attorney to develop and maintain a multi-faceted plan around the estate goals you share with us.

By defining your goals and implementing the right strategies at the right time, we can help balance your legacy goals with your current lifestyle needs and other financial objectives. Our aim is to instill confidence that, while you enjoy your lifestyle, the estate you want to leave to your children is growing and protected.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Estate Documentation

We work with your estate attorney to review and update your wills, Powers of Attorney and healthcare directives. This also includes auditing and correcting inconsistencies in titling, beneficiary information, trusts and life insurance documentation. This is a central component of your estate plan and it’s something we see as an ongoing priority, so we also review periodically to ensure all paperwork reflects your latest requirements and family goals.

Often important intentions and goals are left out of wills because of a lack of process for estate documentation. Our approach helps ensure that your paperwork is up to date and in line with your vision for your family wealth and legacy.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Living Legacy

In addition to building an estate, many business owners also want to transfer a portion of their assets to children or other family members during their lifetime. With reference to the current regulatory and tax considerations around gifting money, we coordinate a number of strategies based on the recipients and purpose of the transfers.

These strategies include 529 plans for education funding, capital to help children achieve financial independence or purchase property, and funding to support parents or aging relatives. This means that you can enjoy and participate in the application of certain aspects of your legacy plan, and you can do so in a way that is strategic and tax-efficient.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Trusts

We often recommended trusts as a wealth transfer vehicle that can serve as a tax-sheltered method of distributing assets to children. There are various types of trusts that can be leveraged as part of an estate or living legacy plan, each with its own benefits and considerations.

A well-planned and well-executed trust can help your children and other beneficiaries avoid certain estate taxes. Through the legacy planning process, we also help provide the rising generation with the educational and financial tools to steward family wealth responsibly.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Insurance

Working with third parties, we complete an audit of your insurance policies to determine whether you are under-insured or over-insured. We then work with our insurance partners to design a strategy that suits your risk management needs.

We often find that business owners are the sole or primary breadwinners in the family, and require not only specialized policies like key person or liability insurance, but also a strong life insurance strategy to ensure their family will be taken care of should circumstances change. The strategies we implement often have additional benefits with respect to tax-efficiency and increasing the value of your estate.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Dependent Support Plan

We also look at your estate and legacy goals from the perspective of your children and other beneficiaries, so that we can identify their needs and ensure your estate strategies align with them. We align trusts, wealth transfers and living legacy strategies into a clear dependent support plan to help ensure your children’s priorities are supported along with your own.

This can provide multiple generations of a family greater clarity with respect to common goals, and help keep all facets of the family legacy plan on track.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Philanthropy

In designing your estate plan, we also consider any goals you have regarding charitable giving. There are many options available that enable you to attribute portions of your estate to foundations, endowments or charities, so we outline a giving plan focused around the causes that are important to you.

With a custom giving plan, you can provide significant support to important causes while capturing opportunities to save tax. These are goals we help clients achieve in the short term, through their businesses, as well as through their estate plans.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Reach out to schedule an estate planning audit, to identify potential gaps and opportunities for strategic improvements.

Additional Value-Adds

What value-adds do clients of Southern Oak Wealth receive?

05

It often happens that the most valuable aspects of our service are difficult to quantify. In this section we wanted to highlight a few, to help communicate the more intangible ways that we help business owners reach their objectives.

Written Plans with Clear Steps

When you’re facing complexity, your first goal is clarity. That’s why we work to provide more than just words. This begins with our first Wealth Vision meeting and continues through the process of designing and implementing clear plans and strategies.

Providing clear written plans can help you stay on track through countless incremental steps toward lifestyle changes, family wealth objectives and legacy building.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Consistent Follow-Through of Plans

Through our diverse internal team, our external network, and our thorough process, we have the capability to manage, integrate and simplify complex needs for business owners, as the ones we’ve outlined in this document.

Since our initial action plan, we have focused on the timely, prioritized implementation of strategic financial steps, from actively leveraging our network of professionals to following up on key actions.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Proactively Identifying Opportunities and Risks

We work to identify new risks and potential opportunities proactively, in order to correct costly inefficiencies, manage complexity, and help ensure that the individual facets of your financial life are properly connected.

Our commitment to proactive guidance allows us to guide business owners through the challenges and transitions they face, while staying on track to long-term objectives.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Regular Communication

Our communication mandate is our link to each client and their ever-evolving needs. Members of our team are in regular contact by email, phone and in person. In both client meetings and social settings, we take a personal approach and our conversations always vary between personal and financial topics.

This has been instrumental in helping our clients maintain clarity with respect to their finances, and has helped us to stay up to date with respect to changing needs and lifestyles.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Objective Advice

Southern Oak Wealth is an independent firm, which means that we are not held to the corporate restrictions or product incentives that are present in many large institutions. As fiduciaries our only obligation is to act in the best interest of our clients.

Our experienced team acts as fiduciaries, so that our clients can benefit from objectively valuable advice relevant to their personal financial affairs.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Total Financial Integration

When your time is limited and your finances are complex, ‘set it and forget it’ isn’t enough – your financial life needs to be actively managed and organized in order to help ensure that your wealth will continuously support your personal and family priorities.

When your financial life is integrated in this way, daunting tasks like transitioning a business or building a legacy become focused, goal-oriented and attainable through a practical strategy.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Client Education

Through our everyday communication style, the educational resources we provide and the  in-depth reviews we host, we work to keep our clients informed and to support overall financial literacy.

This is an ongoing priority, because it empowers you to make confident decisions, maintain clarity and remain comfortable with the strategies we’ve implemented.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Cost-Efficiency

Keeping costs down, while maintaining complete transparency, is important for the success of each investment strategy, and it’s also central to our overall approach to wealth advice.

Our service is fee-based, which means cost for service is transparent and efficient. We’ve also prioritized cost-efficient and tax-efficient investment strategies to help meet our clients’ goals with minimal cost.

What We Provide

Key Benefit

Network of Specialists

What resources are available through our network?

06

While we have focused on a number of select services for business owners we have a wide range of capabilities at Southern Oak Wealth that are always expanding. That’s why we find it’s helpful to provide a broad outline of all that’s available.

Research and Analysis

Southern Oak Wealth has deep research and analysis resources and we also draw from external resources to stay up to date. 

Sanctuary Tax &

Family Office

Through Partnered Independence℠, we have access to Sanctuary Wealth and entities like Sanctuary Tax and Family Office, which help us provide a family-office style of comprehensive financial advice.

Storage of
Financial Documents 

Our system allows for important documents to be stored electronically, with strict cybersecurity protocols.

Private Banking Resources

Should you have inquiries or needs with respect to banking, borrowing or financing, we can refer you to the appropriate professionals.

Insurance Providers

We have access to professionals providing specialized advice, as well as a range of insurance companies to help our clients meet their insurance needs. 

Investment Resources

Our in-house team is made up of a dynamic group of professionals with a rare combination of expertise. Within the process of designing portfolios, we often look to resources including capital markets, private equity and alternative investment providers. 

Network of Specialists

Private Trust Officers

We work with Private Trust Officers so that we can integrate family trusts into our clients’ estate plans, if and when they will help support the client’s legacy goals.

High Net Worth Planners

For those with significant wealth, basic financial planning does not address the complexity or the unique challenges you may face. That’s why we work with High Net Worth Planners.

Risk Management Specialists

Many of our clients have established their financial independence and their priority is managing risk to preserve wealth. Risk Management Specialists enable us to implement comprehensive protection strategies for our clients.

Asset Managers

Southern Oak Wealth is the primary investment manager for our clients, but we can also enlist external specialized asset managers, through a process of disciplined selection and due diligence.

Estate Planners

Estate specialists in our network help us implement legacy-building strategies, define tax-efficient distribution plan for the rising generation, and to ensure our clients’ intentions are fulfilled.

Legal Specialists

We often work with our clients’ lawyers as an important part of the wealth management and estate planning process. We also have access to tax and estate attorneys through Sanctuary Tax & Family Office.

“We act as the central component of your network of advisors. With an all-encompassing and consultative process, we strive to be a part of every aspect of your financial life, and to it keep it all running efficiently.”

J. Patrick Poling, CFP®, CRPC®, CPFA

Managing Director, Senior Portfolio Manager