When the company and the family are the same set of relationships.

What this seat actually looks like

You hold a role that nobody applied for. Maybe you built the enterprise and are deciding what it becomes without you. Maybe you inherited a seat at a table where the people across from you were at your childhood birthdays. Either way, decisions that would be ordinary in another company carry a second meaning here, and everyone in the room knows it.

Some version of the following is probably on your plate:

• A succession conversation that everyone agrees is overdue and nobody wants to start.
• A sibling, a parent or a child in an operating role, and no way to give feedback that lands as feedback rather than as family.
• Advisors and trustees who each hold a piece of the picture, while you are the only one holding all of it.
• A liquidity event that changed what you spend your days on faster than it changed what you want.
• The next generation, watching how you do this and learning from it whether you mean them to or not.

What the work looks like with us

We work on the person, and the company follows. We say that to every founder. It is truer here, because in a family enterprise the person's relationships are the enterprise's structure. How you and your brother handle a disagreement is a governance question. How you tell your daughter she is not ready yet is a succession plan.

So the work is the same work we do with any senior operator, with the family in the room as a fact rather than an exception. A room to think in that is not the board and not the dinner table. Someone who will tell you what they see in how you hold the role, and stay long enough for you to do something with it. Preparation for the specific conversations you have been putting off, and a read afterward on what actually happened in them.

When more than one member of the family wants coaching, each can have their own coach. What you bring to your coach stays with your coach. That line matters more here than anywhere else we work, and we hold it.

Who's likely to match

Principals and operating founders of family-held enterprises. Next-generation members stepping into a real role, or deciding whether to. The people who run the family office itself, whose job is the family's relationships as much as its capital.

We are not the right fit if what you want is a family governance consultant, an estate plan, or someone to mediate a dispute for you. We will tell you what we see in how you are handling it. The decisions stay yours.

The engagement

An open-ended engagement billed quarterly, matched to a coach based on fit. We share the rate during the discovery call. Full shape on the FAQ page. A family office executive or an advisor can make the first call on a principal's behalf. We don't need the principal's name until they are ready to be in the conversation.

Field guides for this seat

Free, no signup, written from the client work.

• After the exit. What changes when the company is sold, and what the people around you expect you to feel.
• Firing an executive. Most of it still applies when the executive is family.
• Choosing an executive coach. How to vet a coach, what the market charges, and the questions worth asking.