John Mill

I did not intend to be a lawyer, I intended to be in business. I read dozens of books on business. One of them was J. Paul Getty’s How to be a Successful Executive. Getty said that being in business was about solving problems and that your business would go as far as your ability to solve those problems. Today we describe this as change and the need for innovation.

This meant that training for business should be about learning to solve problems – every kind of problem. To learn to solve every kind of problem you needed to learn about everything (or at least try). Getty recommended law school rather than business school because he said law school was about everything, whereas business school was too narrowly focused.

In writing this book I researched and wrote a story about how badly J. Paul treated his own sons in business, driving one of them to suicide. I didn’t know this story when I read his book and set the path for my life. It is interesting to consider whether I might have done things differently had I known. But in his defense, J. Paul lived before the social consciousness movement of the 1960s – in his time, abstract ideals like “the business is the priority” still reigned. Fortunately, we have learned better ways. We can manage loving relationships and build a business at the same time.

After graduation, I started my own law practice. I was attracted to corporate/tax litigation because of its complexity and the deep, intimate knowledge you have to gain about your clients and their situations. Complex corporate/tax litigation also involves teams of professionals: accountants, valuators, brokers and more. One aspect I enjoyed was the uniquely deep and respectful relationships that can form among those fighting together in the battle for justice.

Over time I migrated to tax law and in 2002 I obtained a Master of Laws degree in international tax. More than 30 years after finishing Getty’s book and with 25 years of tax planning, business law and litigation problem-solving under my belt, I turned my attention to business succession planning. Why succession planning? Because it’s about everything, so it’s well suited to my skill set. Moreover, effective succession planning involves a similar deep knowledge of each client, as well as the assembling of professional teams driven by the satisfaction of a job well done.

Please feel free to contact me at (519) 973-1223 or john@johnmilltax.com if you have questions or if you want to share a success story about working with your own buyers.