Why You Should Become A Disruptive Successor

The following is adapted from Disruptive Successor by Jonathan Goldhill.

At twenty-six years old, Justin White was an estimator, project manager, and tractor operator at K&D Landscaping, his parents’ commercial landscape construction and maintenance company. Justin and his younger brother, Shane, kind of grew up in the business. As youngsters, they would ride along to jobs with their dad, sitting in the back of the truck. When he was eighteen, Justin started working more steadily at K&D, learning the business, and moving slowly toward leading it alongside the founders — his parents. At that time, his mother and father had built up the small mom-and-pop operation for over twenty years, up to ten employees. By 2008, just before the financial crisis, they peaked at close to $2M in revenues. Then business shrunk back to closer to $1M per year, with inconsistent profitability.

That’s when I met Justin. He was eager to become the CEO of the business and had a vague vision to grow the business while improving its stability, people (by hiring better employees and upgrading current employees’ skills and capacity), and profitability. His parents were proud of the company they’d built, satisfied with the success they had attained, and not yet ready to turn the reins over to him. So they weren’t all that sold on Justin’s plans. They didn’t feel any need to make significant changes. With one big exception: as Justin was about to learn when I first met him, his parents were going to divorce.

With that, the company was changing — starting with the company buying out his mother’s stock, a big deal for any small company, with extra layers of complication when it’s a family company — and Justin was in the thick of it. And, honestly, he was in uncharted territory. Really honestly, so were all the family members running K&D. They were adept at running a small landscape business, but that did not mean they were prepared for what was to come.

It’s not easy to navigate the process of becoming a next-generation leader by taking over the management of a business from your parents. And it’s not much easier to hand over the reins to your children. Any kind of change is difficult. Humans just don’t love it. It feels risky. So much the more so when your goal is to take the company away from the status quo by aiming for more growth or a different way of doing things: when you are a disruptive successor.

The challenges can be psychological, dealing with family dynamics, but they are also almost always based on fundamental business practices. And that’s good news. All the pieces about optimizing the way the business runs are coachable! There are tools; there are methods and strategies. You can learn to use them! No matter where you are now, with the right support, you can not only weather any transition but also take the company — your company — to new heights.

Following concrete steps to unlock the full potential of your business comes with a valuable bonus: you can transcend the kind of rivalry that plagues many family businesses. I know all this is possible because I’ve seen it done time and time again. It’s why I wrote this book: I want everyone to be able to do the same for their family’s business.

If you are looking to grow your family business and successfully guide that growth for years to come, this book will give you the strategies, tools, and techniques you need. And if what you’re aiming for is to build a better business that is more valuable and more sellable or more ready to pass along to the next generation, then this book is for you, too. And this book is for you if you are determined to grow personally and professionally along with the business so that you can learn more, earn more, work less, and enjoy the climb to success.

For more advice on becoming a great leader, you can find Disruptive Successor on Amazon.

Jonathan Goldhill is a master coach and business strategist who specializes in guiding entrepreneurs and family business owners to scale up or exit their business. Jonathan left New York for California at age 20 after his family’s large, privately-held men’s apparel manufacturing company — started by his great-grandfather — sold to a conglomerate in its third generation of family ownership. Within ten years, Jonathan had established himself as the go-to expert for entrepreneurs looking to find their version of freedom. Today, Jonathan brings thirty years of experience to his work coaching, consulting, training, financing, and guiding entrepreneurial and family businesses.