owner transition profile CASE STUDY
Client / Joe Smith
Industry / Specialty Packaging
Annual Revenue / $17.2M
Employees / 28
Ownership / Joe is the founder and majority owner
Family in Business / One sibling and one son working in the business
Transition Goal / Sale
Referred by / Investment Banker
Presenting Challenge
After being referred by his Investment Banker, Joe reached out indicating that he wanted to sell his business as he felt emotionally and physically exhausted. Family succession was not viable.
Assessment
After completing the Owner Transition Profile and exploring his vision for management, ownership, and money (MOM), it became clear that selling the business was more of a fantasy to relieve stress than a true desire. The challenges Joe faced stemmed from reaching a point in the business that required him to be and do differently to conquer the obstacles draining his resilience. If these issues could not be resolved, he claimed he would sell regardless of valuation.
During the assessment debrief Joe recognized that the psychological attributes that helped him achieve success were now limiting his ability to scale and they would make completing a transaction difficult, if not impossible. The Investment Banker recognized attempting to move Joe to transaction would be unwise until some of the underlying leadership issues were addressed.
Interventions
Joe pushed pause on the transaction and brought his management team in on the process. They developed a plan to build the necessary organizational capacity and Joe engaged in executive coaching to help him develop his leadership capacity. The team recognized gaps in organizational capacity (staff, skills, structure, systems, strategy, and culture) and finances. While their “home grown” talent had served them well in the past, the demands of leadership and technical competency at scale were beyond their current capability.
Joe gained insights about his psychological needs and how they drove business decision-making. He courageously shifted to embracing the value of management systems, hiring top talent, empowering staff to own their area of the business, and freed himself to focus on aspects that demanded his unique strengths. Over a 3-year period he developed a highly skilled and competent leadership team, realigned staff, built systems, shifted culture, secured growth capital, and grew annual revenue to $51.8M with significantly improve profit margins.
