MARK KOHLERMain Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, LLC · Owner at Main Street Professionals, LLC

Picking One of Your Kids to LEAD Your Business

22 Oct 2025 · 1 min

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This content was created by MARK KOHLER. This content was uploaded by MARK KOHLER. This is a YouTube video titled "Picking One of Your Kids to LEAD Your Business" (created 2025-10-22) featuring MARK KOHLER speaking in a solo, instructional monologue about family business succession planning. Kohler advises against committee leadership, recommends selecting a single family member as the next-generation leader while possibly sharing ownership with siblings, and emphasizes developing that person through training, outside work experience, and earning respect from vendors, customers, and employees.

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You cannot let a committee run your business. It didn't work for you to go that route, and it's not going to work for the next generation either. You've got to choose the family member that's going to be the leader into the next generation. Now, it doesn't mean you can't share the wealth of the business pro rata, meaning equal distribution of ownership or getting multiple family members involved and we're being part owners. But someone's got to be the leader. That one child that you're like, all right, they can run this business, they get it, and they'll be fair with the other children. If you don't have this person, this is not going to happen. Now, just choosing this person is half of the battle. Now it's developing them. Maybe it's sending them off to a work for a competitor or a different business or going off to college or additional training. They've got to know what they're doing. They just can't walk into this business and you think they're just going to know how to run it. You, you've learned how to run this business for years and years. You know how valuable it is. You've got the relationships with vendors, customers, even employees. And your kids have to earn that same respect. So what I'm talking about here is development, developing that family member that they all have the skills, the determination, the fortitude and the wherewithal, mentally even or financially, to run that business into the future.