What happens to your IM business if you die?

A few years ago a good friend of mine suddenly dropped dead and his nice mid 5 figure empire quickly dwindled away into nothing. His wife didn't know his passwords or anything and it just all fell apart. She finally had to sell the house and get a job, not fun if you are in your sixties.

Good idea, it sounds like pretty grim thinking but it's necessary. Unforantely, I'm still working on building my empire, so if I died tomorrow there wouldn't be much to run unless you already knew what you were doing.

That's a great question. I think you should create a succession plan which includes all your username and passwords, and instructions on how to withdraw the money from your accounts.

While they are pieces of my businesses that would fade away,
many things are in LLC's, corps, etc. where processes are
documented, and they would go on without me.

I even have assets like residual income I've built up in an
MLM planned for being passed to heirs.

I do plan on taking my iPhone with me though :-)

Willie

Funny as I just spoke to my wife about all my online accounts, emails, sites, etc and asked her what she'll do with them as she's not into tech/internet at all... We're clueless at this point.

How about blogs? When you die, can the site be sold even just for the content?

If I die tomorrow, my son inherits the cash and the business dies with me, as simple as that.

It's impossible that someone without any experience in this field could successfully take over. Not a chance in hell. The know-how is very important in this business, and you dont learn that over-night.

nice question, i think we should forward it to a friend or a family member

Right now, my business partner will be able to keep things going obviously and my share of the business will go to my family. If we both kick it together, then that's trouble. Remind me to not go skydiving with him or anything until we document some stuff.

Good idea, you should do it, and don't forget to distribute all the informations you know, you can share a bit with us.

Now i have to renew my domain, hosting and autoresponder for 10 years. And gotta give my paypal login to my family.

If i have IM,befor i die,and my IM have a lots of money, at first I will buy a lot of insurance for 1-3 years.and after i die,our family can take out the money from the insurance account

What a great question. My husband would take over, he is the one who makes our product, it is me who assembles it and ships it. He knows where I keep things, so while it would be hard at first, he could do it. I dont know how to make our product, and yes I need to learn that.

You are right, nobody listens to you when you are living!

Seriously, if I were to die now, my IM business will die a very slow death ...

I've thought about that and have made a record of most of my passwords, but it's so vast that it would be difficult for anybody in my family to understand. I would like to show my daughter the ropes and am planning to build my grandkids a site each once they are old enough to run them. Hopefully one or all of them will take over rather than let it all go.

It comes back to not keeping all of your eggs in one basket. Life insurance, rental property, physical business etc. Along with training someone to take over your IM business.

This is a topic that's been on my mind for quite some time. Although i do keep a hard copy password book, I want to sit down and write a lot more details for my family members in case something happens to me.

It would be good to set up a plan, where someone under you inherits everything if the unthinkable were to happen.

Write a book with step by step instructions, or take a video and outline your entire business plan.

as much as i would want my wife to carry the torch I just don't see how you can. I've been through thousands of hours of training and thousands spent on it too.

no way you can do it. My hope is my little kids can pick up pieces of what I do and grow into it as they get older.

But I've thought of this. if i die my plan is to tell my wife to cut all expenses going out and just ride my insurance payout

Definitely something to think about - I suppose it depends on exactly what you do for a business and what kind of knowledge/training your family members have.

This serves as a good reminder for me though - I have been meaning to write down all the usernames/passwords for my husband. Doing something as simple as that could save a lot of unnecessary hassle if I go...

My wife wouldn't be interested- she still hasnt gathered that IM can be a very legit business.

I think I should draft up a plan on how she can sell assets, but that's about it.

I'd probably just leave a plan telling people what to do, in addition to all of my passwords and stuff.

Yea i am 71 with a wife who talks like a foreigner. She is. Leaving and inventory of assets, passwords, methods and doing things that with a little outsourcing might last a lot longer than me.

Great question. Great food for thought.
Having a Life Insurance is the most sensible think one can do.
A VERY detailed plan on how to sell everything it would be also necessary.
I’m assuming here that family members haven’t a clue about IM ( or just don’t want to be involved with it.)

Good question and something to thing about!

Since my IM "empire" is trading as a Ltd company that would go on without me, however the actual running of it wouldn't.

Therefore I would provide all server/login details in a daily operations manual with every activity that drives sales/traffic/clients.

I would probably write-up an email marketing crash course, a link building crash course and an SEO crash course and provide an outsourcing manual containing the details and information on whatever outsourcers I had at the time along with the tasks they are doing.

Everything else would be covered in the daily operations manual that somebody could take over and learn with a little patience and persistence.

But then, my Wife probably wouldn't be interested in taking over my activites so it might be worth providing her with the information she'd need to sell the assets and close up shop or sell the entire company if anyone would buy it.

~Russ

My girlfriend has just about learnt how to use her iphone after 2 years - whilst she is indeed a shrewd businesswoman in her own arena, my online income would plummet like a dart should she 'take the helm' so to speak...

If you have a business, it will survive without you

Create a lifestyle as a opposed to a workstyle is another message of the book. Rich German gives you in the book very practical advices to do that.
The urge to follow your highest excitement is one of the message you will get from this book.

This is an eye opener to us, since most of us here have this perception that at present, this is how we earn some money online. Probably we are too consumed with the idea that we can really manage and monitor this business by ourselves and without this concept of who would continue if in case, you might not be able to work online anymore. I mean, do you have already your successor in case that kind of thing happens?
I will be training someone to continue what I have been doing since that is basically a better solution that someone will continue the work that I have done.

This is an interesting topic, because it helps us all look at our business models and ask important questions. "Am I important to the daily operation of my business?" Or, in some cases, "Am I my business?" "Is there someone who could take my place in my absence?"
An odd problem with internet marketing is that we're wired a little differently than most people. Anyone who is successful has probably had a time when their family/ friends thought they were crazy for pursuing making money online. (Especially before you started seeing results.) Sure, some spouses become internet marketers, too, but many if not most just don't have any interest in it.
In some cases our business would die with us because it is dependent on us, while others would continue with little change. If you have an IM partner, chances are you have a built in person who could continue everything. If you are the sole leader of your business, but don't have to do much to manage the day to day operations your business will probably continue and might even thrive for a while.
One of the hardest things for us as internet marketers is that many of our businesses are built on our reputations. It is the nature of the beast that you have to be trustworthy. Unfortunately, this means that in our absence, our businesses are vulnerable to failure.
How can we fix this problem? Planned obsolescence. Work your way out of being your business. Many of us are mentors, but we don't think to mentor someone to take over for us. It is tough figuring out who to hand the "keys to the kingdom". It has to be somebody you trust who will be willing to continue your business rather than transfer everything over to their own (unless that's what you want).
If you do things right, your heirs will have an exceptional asset for many years to come. That's my two cents worth.
Thanks Team X for bringing up this topic.

Jim

Since this is a business it seems that the same process one goes through for a brick and mortar business would be appropriate. How is this different from the guy who has his own plumbing business where he works it himself or the vet down the street and his practice? If they die today their spouses face the same challenges. It may seem different because brick and mortar businesses are more familiar and the process of getting rid of them is more familiar but it's still the same set of challenges for the remaining family members. It's insurance, education, honest discussion and your wishes and instructions written out and gone over and over again when everyone is alive whether you are an online or brick and mortar business.