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Nicholas Mukhtar’s advice to business owners nearing retirement starts with their children. Speaking with The American Reporter for an August 2026 story, the Tera Strategies founder described how owners who transfer a company well prepare the next generation years in advance.
Start With a Lemonade Stand
Some of Mukhtar’s clients open small investment accounts for children around age 10 or 11 and let them choose stocks. The accounts are used to teach saving, time in the market and dividing money among purposes. One family put the lesson in terms a child could follow: “If I have a lemonade stand, put 30% here, 30% here, 30% there.”
A child raised that way grows into an heir who can read a balance sheet and weigh a decision, according to the Reporter.
Bring the Whole Household In
“Getting your kids involved, getting your spouse involved, having a true partnership where the right hand knows what the left hand is doing,” Mukhtar said in an interview, describing what he considers the fundamentals.
Owners who keep the family close throughout, in his account, turn succession into a continuation of the business. Owners who wait leave heirs to sort it out after a death or an accident.
Why the Calendar Matters
A third of owners surveyed by Gallup in fall 2024 said they had no long-term plan or were unsure about their company’s future.
Exit Planning Institute data cited by the Reporter shows that only 20% to 30% of businesses that go to market actually sell. The same source estimates that about 51% of the U.S. business market sits in baby boomer hands, with the demographic peak running through 2027.
A crowded market for sellers tends to mean soft prices, rushed deals or no buyer at all, the Reporter warns, and owners who arrive unprepared take whatever terms they’re offered. Planning also forces owners to confront retirement, mortality and the loss of an identity built over decades, so the task often slides from one quarter to the next.
Awareness of exit paths, from a sale to a competitor to a transfer of ownership to employees, has climbed sharply over the past decade, the Reporter notes, while action has lagged.
A Workable Plan
The Reporter’s account of Mukhtar’s counsel reduces to three tasks: name a successor, write down how the business actually operates and give heirs or key employees real exposure years ahead of the handoff. He places that work in the decade before retirement.
Mukhtar has made a similar case to family offices facing the wealth transfer now underway, which he has called a critical governance test.
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