A former boat builder and engineer turned business leader, I've spent most of my career inside companies owned by founders and families. I've sat in the owner's chair in my own venture, and side by side with owners as their right hand — listening, advising, and helping them figure out what comes next.

How I got here

I grew up around a family business. My parents bought a marina in Ft. Myers Beach when I was 11, and I spent every non-school hour there, absorbing more than I realized at the time. I went to the University of Michigan to study Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, built boats with my parents after college, and later worked in product development at Bertram Yachts. In the early 1990s I launched my own product development company. It didn't survive the era's luxury tax. Painful, expensive, and an education no classroom could have provided.

For the next 35 years, I served founders and families in senior leadership roles, including two presidencies. In both companies, I worked closely with owners through successful sales to private equity, start to finish, through due diligence and closing. After the most recent sale, I stayed on for 2½ years to run the company under its new PE ownership, and I’ve watched how a transaction lands for the owners long after the wire transfer clears.

What I’ve learned

Across all of it, I learned how owners actually think. I see what keeps them in the weeds, what makes it hard to truly delegate, and what they wish someone had told them before a sale process began. I learned why you can't hand someone responsibility and then keep making their decisions for them. I learned that buyers see a company very differently from the owner who built it. And I learned that the difference between a good outcome and a great one is rarely about price alone.

Now I work with business owners on the two transitions that matter most: getting out of the day-to-day so the business runs without consuming them, and preparing for an eventual sale that maximizes value, terms, and the right next owner.

Outside of work, I'm spending more time with my family and at our cottage. Both of these are good reminders of why it matters to help others figure out their own version of what's next.