Open communication is key to succession planning

RCS Influencer Trent Cotney says to have some open and honest communications about what that transition looks like.

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Trent Cotney. partner of Adams and Reese LLP and Alex Tolle, with RoofersCoffeeShop. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Alex Tolle: Hello, I'm Alex Tolle with RoofersCoffeeShop and I'm back for another influencer response. Trent, how are you today?

Trent Cotney: Good, it's great to see you again.

Alex Tolle: Good to see you as well. So for November 2025, what are the best practices for creating an effective succession plan for a roofing business?

Trent Cotney: Yeah. So succession plans are always complex. And the reason why they're complex is not necessarily from a legal perspective, but because usually you're dealing with family a lot of times, know, roofing contractors and construction generally is generational. So with that, there comes a lot of issues, right? So the best advice I can give is to have some open and honest communications about what that transition looks like. I know, oftentimes current ownership doesn't want to relinquish control or wants to relinquish it for too great of an amount. But in order to keep that generational aspect or that succession planning, regardless of whether it's going to a family member or maybe a key employee, you want to have that person that it's going to stay invested. You don't want them leaving because they don't think that they're ever going to have a chance to run the company. So what I recommend is having maybe semi-annually or annually conversations about what does this look like? And not just from a standpoint of, you know, on retiring, generally, I always try to contemplate the three D's, death, disability, divorce. What happens if one of these three things happen? We always contemplate that in the governing documents, you know, as far as ownership. And I think having those discussions with your key people, the people that you see as leaders and, know, if you walk outside and get hit by a bus tomorrow, who's going to pick up? I like having those discussions and then those discussions lead to, you know, documenting and taking next steps to protect yourself.

Alex Tolle: Yeah, absolutely. having an idea. It's like having an emergency plan. Like, where's the, what's the evacuation route? Like anything like that. Just knowing ahead of time, like what, what you're going to do in case something happens or when it's time to step back and maybe retire.

Trent Cotney: Yeah, absolutely. I'm still waiting for my son to get old enough so I can do the same thing.

Alex Tolle: I'm sure you already are having those conversations with him. Well, thank you so much, Trent. As always, appreciate your insights.

Trent Cotney: Thank you.