Three weeks ago, in Omaha, Nebraska, something quite extraordinary happened. For the first time in decades, Warren Buffett — the most celebrated investor of our era — sat in the arena as a spectator while someone else ran the show.

Greg Abel, Berkshire Hathaway’s new CEO, took the stage at the company’s annual shareholder meeting. The folksy wisdom, the jokes, the magnetic presence that had drawn more than 40,000 people to what shareholders lovingly call the “Woodstock for Capitalists” — that was gone. The arena was barely half full.^[1] Buffett, 95, sat on the floor with the other directors and offered just a few brief comments from the audience.

It was, in many ways, the most important business story of the year. Not because of Berkshire’s financials (profits doubled, for what it’s worth).^[2] But because of what it demonstrated about the hardest thing any successful business owner must eventually do: let go.

The Crowd Wasn’t Mourning Berkshire. They Were Mourning Buffett.

Here’s what struck me about the coverage. The company itself is in fine shape. Berkshire Hathaway’s profits doubled in the most recent quarter.^[2] Abel is competent, prepared, and by all accounts doing everything right. Buffett himself said from the floor: “Greg is doing everything I did and then some.”^[3]

And yet — half-empty arena.

The crowd wasn’t responding to the health of the business. They were responding to the absence of the person. That is a profound lesson for every business owner I speak with, and I speak with hundreds of them every year.

When your business and your identity are inseparable, the business suffers the moment you step back.

Berkshire Hathaway is a $1 trillion enterprise with 400,000 employees.^[4] It can absorb the transition. Most SMEs cannot.

The Succession Problem is Closer to Home Than You Think

At Oasis Partners, roughly half the transactions we work on involve shareholders selling for age-related reasons — retirement, health, or simply wanting to move on after decades of hard work.^[5] The other half are driven by strategy, opportunity, or a desire to capture value before market conditions change.

In both cases, the single biggest destroyer of business value I see is owner dependence and a lack of preparedness around what comes next.  

When I sit across from a potential acquirer and the business relies on the owner for key relationships, technical knowledge, sales, or culture — the discount is immediate and significant. The most important question for an potential new owner, whether articulated or otherwise is, who will run this when I own it?    

Buffett understood this. He spent years preparing Berkshire for his absence. Greg Abel has been on stage beside him at these annual meetings for several years. The board voted unanimously. The transition was announced in May 2025 and executed on January 1, 2026 — an eight-month handover.^[6] And still, the crowd thinned.

Imagine if he’d done nothing.

Four Things Buffett Got Right (That Most Owners Don’t)

1. He named his successor publicly, years in advance. Not a vague “we have a plan.” A name. A face. A person who sat beside him and learned the role in full view of shareholders, staff, and the market. When you make succession visible, you make it real — and you make the transition far less disruptive.
2. He separated his identity from the company’s identity over time. This is hard. For many founders, the business is their identity. But Berkshire has spent years communicating its culture, its principles, and its decision-making framework as institutional — not personal. The Berkshire Way is documented, debated, and embedded. It doesn’t live only in Buffett’s head.
3. He stayed involved without staying in control. Buffett remains as Chairman. He made a few comments. He was present but not dominant. This isn’t just gracious — it’s strategic. It gives the new CEO legitimacy while offering continuity to nervous stakeholders. It’s a bridge, not a cliff.
4. He planned early. The announcement came at the 2025 annual meeting. The transition took effect eight months later. That kind of runway is rare. Most owners I meet come to us when the decision is already urgent — driven by health, a family crisis, or a market opportunity that demands a fast response. Planning early is almost always better than planning late.

What This Means for You

If you’re running a successful SME in Australia right now, here’s the uncomfortable question: If you stepped away tomorrow, what would happen to the value of your business?

Not to the business itself, necessarily — but to its value in the eyes of a buyer, a partner, or a successor.

The businesses where the owner and shareholders exit successfully — and I’ve seen hundreds of transactions — are often the ones where the owner has done the work to make themselves replaceable. Where systems, relationships, and knowledge are embedded in the organisation, not carried around in one person’s head.

That work takes time. Typically, two to five years of structured preparation to do properly. And it starts not with a conversation about selling, but with a conversation about how the business actually runs — and what it would take for it to run just as well without you.

The empty seats in Omaha are a reminder that even the world’s greatest investor could not fully separate his personal gravity from the institution he built. For a $1 trillion business, that’s manageable. For a $10 million business, it can be the difference between a great exit and a disappointing one, or no exit at all!

I am regularly involved, through our advisory practice, in strategy and one of the key pillars of good strategy and planning is organisational design – the smaller the business the more difficult and complex it can be. Nevertheless, we find that if we wrestle with the issues for long enough there is always an elegant, right sized solution, so don’t give up.     

Good Luck and Stay Safe

If you’re thinking about succession, exit, or simply want to understand what your business might be worth — and what might be holding that value back — feel free to reach out. These conversations are always confidential and usually illuminating.

The Oracle of Omaha had 60 years to prepare his exit. Most of us have rather less time than that.