The people who make a business valuable are the ones a larger competitor can most easily hire away. Equity is one answer. It is rarely the best one.
Your best people are visible. Their names are on the proposals, the accounts and the LinkedIn updates, and somebody bigger is reading them. When the offer comes it will carry a signing bonus, a title and a retirement package your 401(k) cannot match, because the 401(k) has to treat the CFO the same as everyone.
Owners often answer with equity, then spend the next decade regretting the shareholder they created. Or they answer with a cash bonus that is taxed the year it is paid and forgotten the year after. Neither builds the thing that actually keeps people: a reason to stay that grows the longer they do.
Qualified plans are capped and non‑discriminatory by law. The people you most want to reward hit the limit first and get nothing extra.
A minority owner has rights, a vote in some decisions, and a claim on the exit. Given to keep an employee, it outlives the reason it was given.
A retention bonus paid in cash is taxed in full immediately and creates no reason to be there next year.
Without a vesting schedule, the benefit rewards the past instead of the future. The person can leave the day after the check clears.
The company pays the premium on a policy the executive owns. Deductible to the business, selective by design, and the cash value builds for the person it is meant to keep.
A promise to pay later, on terms you set, with vesting that rewards staying. Informally funded so the promise is backed by an asset rather than by hope.
Retirement income for key people above what qualified plans allow, designed around the years you need them most.
These plans work because they are selective. We help you decide which people, which structure and which vesting schedule fits the company you are building.
Every one of these runs through the CORE Process™ — with your CPA, your attorney and your other advisors building from the same plan.
The people who matter have a retirement benefit that only the company provides, that grows every year they remain, and that they forfeit by leaving early. You have kept control of the equity, deducted most of what it cost, and turned a retention problem into a plan.
An arrangement under Section 162 of the tax code in which a company pays the premium on a life insurance policy owned by a selected employee, treating the premium as a bonus. The business generally deducts it, the employee owns the policy and its cash value, and the company chooses who participates.
A 401(k) is a qualified plan: contributions are capped and the plan must cover employees broadly. Non‑qualified deferred compensation is a contract between the company and a chosen executive with no statutory cap, and it can carry vesting and forfeiture terms that reward staying.
Yes. These plans are used by companies with a handful of employees as often as by large ones. What matters is having one or more people whose departure would hurt, and the cash flow to fund a benefit for them.
A short, private conversation to understand the whole picture — and whether our expertise can help.
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