Six Crucial Ingredients of a Successful Family Business Transition

Elizabeth Ledoux is the founder and CEO of The Transition Strategists, an international consulting firm that creates business succession plans for family and private businesses. One hundred percent of the owners who have used her company’s proprietary Transition Roadmap Developer™ to choose and mentor capable successors have positioned their companies for ongoing success and moved forward to live happy and meaningful lives.
With a career spanning over 30 years, Elizabeth has helped hundreds of business owners navigate the complex dynamics that come with business shifts. She works with individuals and families who share her belief that a business transition is only successful if it protects and supports an owner’s most important relationships.

Elizabeth is an entrepreneur who has founded several businesses, a thought leader and sought-after speaker, addressing the topics of business succession planning, challenges and opportunities in private and family business transition, business and individual growth, and the business succession journey. The Harvard Business School has recognized Elizabeth for her work linking the growth and development of the entrepreneur to company success.
She is the host of the podcast Business Transition Roadmap and co-author of three books, including the award-winning It’s A Journey, The MUST-HAVE Roadmap to Successful Succession Planning, (Sky to Sea Publishing, 2021).

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John A. Warnick, who family, friends, and clients know as “John A,” describes himself as a “recovering tax attorney.” After practicing for thirty years as a tax and legal advisor to wealthy families, he left the large law firm he was a partner in to pursue his passion of assisting clients transition their wealth more purposefully. He works with clients and their team of advisors to ensure that the impact of their technical planning will be a positive force in the lives of the rising generations of their family. His blog, Seedlings, provides suggestions on powerful but easy ways in which we can create non-financial legacies for our families and communities.

John A has been on what he describes as the path to Purposeful Planning Mastery for almost twenty years. There are many technical and professional mentors he is indebted to. But he is quick to point out, “My greatest teachers have been my clients. It is through them I discovered the secrets for producing not just tax-wise plans but plans that promote family harmony, individual growth and long-term preservation of family wealth.”

John A is a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel. He has served as the Philanthropic Editor of the Journal of Practical Estate Planning and serves on the Carter Center Philanthropy Council and the Multidisciplinary Teaming and Professional Collaboration Committee of the National Association of Estate Planners and Councils. His publications include “Generative Trusts & Trustees: A New Paradigm for Design and Administration,” “Innovate or Die,” and “Selecting a Trust Situs in the 21st Century.” He graduated magna cum laude from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Arts and received his JD from George Washington University, graduating with honors.