Podcast: Disruptive Successor Show
The Disruptive Successor Show is a podcast for next-generation leaders in family businesses and entrepreneurs who want to disrupt the status quo to grow their business and take it to the next level.
We all know that what got us here isn’t going to get us there.
If you are taking control over your family’s business or trying to get your business to the next level, you will need inspiration, advice and resources to help you create a massive impact.
Listeners of my show include not only the millennial or Gen Z but also the Baby Boomer and Gen Y. My listeners tend to be involved in these industries: business services, construction, design-build-maintain landscape contracting, food manufacturing, property management, real estate, and technology.
And are interested in issues like business coaching, branding, communication, difficult conversations, disruption, employee ownership, exit planning, financial management, leadership, innovation, intergenerational transfer, marketing, multi-generational family businesses, business operations, process documentation, security, selling, storytelling, succession, visioning, wealth management,
My guests are entrepreneurs, family business advisors, multi-generational and Gen 2 family business leaders, heads of university family business programs, consultants, coaches and firms that serve those who are growth businesses.
Clients of my show typically are running businesses with 10 to 200 employees and $1M to $20M in revenues.
Their concerns include: scaling up, exit planning, succession, leadership development, disruption, business planning, finances, growth planning, transferring generational wealth, transferring control, ownership issues, and more.
The benefits listeners receive are introductions to experts and advisors around the issues of growing and exiting a business, whether it’s a family business or entrepreneurial venture. They get a feel for the challenges other business owners and leaders face and how they overcame them. They will hear stories from people and how they came to do their work and why.
My shows feature handpicked guests who engage with me in casual conversations lasting between 30 to 40 minutes. You can expect to be entertained, engaged and may even get takeaways like business tools or ideas for implementation in your business.
I’ve led entrepreneurial adventures in art, clothing, a holistic health lifestyle magazine and trade show, shoe manufacturing. I’ve also led several non-profit organizations. I earned an MBA from the University of Southern California in Entrepreneurship.
I’ve been advising, coaching and consulting family-owned, family-run and entrepreneur-led businesses since 1989. My love for entrepreneurship follows the closure of my family’s sizeable multi-generational clothing manufacturing company after eight decades of operation because there were no successors.
After uncovering the code to scale up a family-run business – a playbook and a disruptive successor – I wrote a book called Disruptive Successor: A Guide To Driving Growth in Your Family Business.
My podcast is my effort to bring interested people into the conversation to benefit disruptive successors.
In this episode of The Disruptive Successor Show, Jonathan speaks with Brooke Birtcher Gustafson, Managing Director of 5th generation business Birtcher Development. She shares how business was always part of her conversations growing up and how this ingrained mindset gives her a competitive advantage.
Brooke also talks about business today as Birtcher 5.0 and comments on how it is to be a woman in real estate, both as a positive and negative thing. She also tells the story of how she and her father revived their development business, surviving COVID, and what the future looks like for industrial real estate.
She gives her nuggets of wisdom to disruptive successors out there and what it means to be a leader of a family business and know your why and what really drives you.
HIGHLIGHT QUOTES
BROOKE: Taking over the business with her father as a business partner
“I think I had learned quite a bit and was ready to take on the responsibility of it all. And alongside my dad, we never had that opportunity to work in that capacity together and that’s really cool. He’s a great mentor and he’s learned a lot in all his ventures so we really got to structure it right.”
“He’d done family business before with many cousins and uncles and his dad and granddad involved so he also kind of knew his ideal structure so we just kind of put our minds together and took it as an opportunity to really just draw up the right plan for us.”
BROOKE: Define what success looks like for you to find fulfillment
“I think just how you define fulfillment and being content is a challenge in this generation of leadership because it is easy to look over your shoulder and feel like maybe you’re not doing enough. I think being a family business owner, there’s a different sense of responsibility that kind of falls on your shoulders and it’s… a humble sense of pride that you get to carry.”
Â
Connect with Brooke through the following links:
If you enjoyed today’s episode, please subscribe, review, and share with a friend who would benefit from the message. If you’re interested in picking up a copy of Jonathan Goldhill’s book, Disruptive Successor, go to the website at www.DisruptiveSuccessor.com
