A Fortune piece stopped Matt this week: only 12% of family businesses stay in the family by the third generation. The Goldman Sachs chairman quoted in it argues the culprit usually isn’t a missing legal document — it’s optimism, founders who keep deferring the hard conversations about who leads, what control actually means, and what the next generation truly wants, until entitlement and assumption harden into a problem no contract can fix. Matt knows this one from the inside. In his past life helping teams navigate difficult conversations, he was once a finalist to come into a Midwest family manufacturer wrestling with a bitter succession handoff between two branches of the family. He could see it at the bidding stage: they were far too late. The cake was already baked.
So he pushes the lesson way upstream, to founders in growth mode who can’t yet imagine an exit. Plan for succession from day one — and he means it broadly: selling, handing off, or something else entirely. The tool that makes it possible is the thing he’s been circling all along: your story and your meaning, developed early and harvested fully. Why did you start this? What’s the meaning underneath the business? The products and services will change; the underlying why, if you hold to it, won’t. That meaning becomes the foundation of your brand, reputation, and culture — it raises up the people who vibe with it and naturally repels those who don’t, which is exactly what you need aligned over the years and especially at the moment you hand it off. His question for the weekend: have you fully uncovered and written down the meaning behind your business — your North Star, your compass — clearly enough that if you passed it to someone tomorrow, you’d know whether they were in alignment with it? (He also teases what’s ahead: a new offering, fall and December events, a possible live podcast, and a roundtable episode with PR and marketing partners — insiders first.)
