Exit plans

Retired entrepreneur Martin Newby, 75, who founded what's now a 200-employee niche property management company, has a stock line when people ask him about succession planning: “If you don't have a succession plan,” says Newby, “your widow and her lawyer will have a plan a week later.”

Newby, like many other business owners, came by his succession wisdom the hard way — through mistakes. The company he founded in 1975, Ellenton-based Newby Management, which oversees RV home parks and manufactured home communities, is now run by a nephew, Tim Newby, 58. A second nephew, Todd Newby, 51, is president and being groomed to run the company. “You need to start thinking about succession a week after you start the company,” Martin Newby says. “It should be a part of the business plan.”

Despite the early missteps, the Newbys succession strategy went so well overall they've embarked on a speaking tour about it. One stop last year included Orlando, at an annual meeting of C12, an executive roundtable group that uses Christian principles to guide decisions. “The worst thing we can do is go to the bank and say here's our business,” says Tim Newby. “We have to look at this as a legacy.”