Family Business Succession Planning
Guiding Family-Owned Manufacturers Through Generational Succession
The Manufacturers' Collective advises family owners and leaders of family-owned American manufacturing companies through the generational succession process.
We help prepare leaders, families, and organizations to preserve the business, strengthen family relationships, and carry the family legacy forward. We work alongside — not in place of — the company's legal, tax, financial, and operational advisors.
Both are free and no-obligation. Reflecting first gives Davis useful context, but it isn't required.
That old saying captures a brutal reality: most family companies don't survive to the third generation — not because the next generation lacks talent, but because no one planned the handover. Generational succession without preparation doesn't just risk the business. It risks the family. That is the problem TMC was built to solve.
Family-owned manufacturing companies are the backbone of the American economy.
They employ millions, anchor supply chains, and sustain entire communities — often for decades, sometimes for generations. They exist because someone took a risk, built something real, and kept it going through downturns, disruptions, and decades of change.
Most of them will face a generational succession moment at some point. Some will have been planning for that moment. Many won't. And when family-owned manufacturing companies reach that moment without one, the consequences ripple far beyond the balance sheet.
TMC exists to help family-owned manufacturing companies preserve what generations before them built while preparing the next generation to carry it forward.
~35%
of family businesses survive through the second generation
~12%
make it through the third — the "overalls to overalls" threshold
70%
of U.S. manufacturing businesses are family-owned
Two ways to begin, one path forward
Reflect first with the Self-Assessment, or talk first by booking a Discovery Call directly. Here's where either path can lead.
Discovery Call
Whether you reflect first with the Self-Assessment or talk first by booking directly, every family's journey converges here — a straightforward conversation with Davis, no pitch involved.
Review Meeting
Davis shares what he's observed and the two of you talk through the highest-priority opportunities for your family and your business.
Succession Strategy Assessment
A deeper look at the business, the family dynamics, and the succession landscape — identifying the decisions that matter most and in what order.
Advisory Partnership
TMC works alongside your leadership over time, navigating the strategic, organizational, and deeply human decisions involved in passing on what you've built.
Continual Generational Succession
Succession isn't a single event. The relationship evolves to support each new generation as the family business continues to grow and change.
“We cannot guarantee that succession will be easy. We cannot guarantee every family decision will be unanimous. We cannot eliminate difficult conversations. We can promise you that you will not navigate those challenges alone.”
Meet Davis Given Anderson
Davis isn't a lawyer, a financial advisor, or a generalist management consultant. He's a third-generation family manufacturing leader who spent more than forty years inside the business — and then wrote the book on keeping it in the family.
Sustaining a Family Jewel draws on that lived experience to give other family manufacturing leaders a clear framework for generational succession. TMC is the advisory practice Davis built around those same principles.
When Davis works with a family, he brings one thing most advisors can't: the perspective of someone who has stood exactly where you're standing.
Trusted by Advisors to Family Businesses
“As an investor and advisor to family businesses, I rely on Davis's hard-earned lessons to help me better understand the challenges—and opportunities—in ensuring a business can be kept within the family.”
The Book
Sustaining a Family Jewel
By Davis Given Anderson
The practical, plain-spoken guide to generational succession for family manufacturing leaders — written by someone who has lived every chapter.
Reader Response
What Readers Say About Sustaining a Family Jewel
Davis writes with warmth, wisdom, and professionalism — the kind of guide you wish every family business had access to before the hard conversations start.
What comes through most is humility, compassion, and passion. This isn't a textbook on succession — it's a companion for the people living it.
Questions families ask before they call
Honest answers to the questions that come up most often.
Generational succession planning is the deliberate process of preparing a family-owned company for leadership and ownership transfer from one generation to the next. It covers far more than legal documents or financial arrangements — it includes identifying and developing next-generation leaders, aligning the family on a shared vision, addressing ownership structure, and managing the interpersonal dynamics that make family business succession uniquely complex. Done well, it protects both the business and the family relationships that sustain it.
The most common reason is that there is not sufficient early planning. Successors aren't identified or prepared early enough. Founders hold on too long or let go too quickly. Family members disagree on direction, ownership, or who should lead — and no one has a structured way to work through those disagreements. Add the operational complexity of a manufacturing business, and succession becomes even harder to get right without someone who has navigated it before.
A generalist consultant typically delivers a plan and exits. A succession advisor works alongside the family over time — through the decisions, the difficult conversations, and the inevitable surprises. Davis Anderson's approach at TMC is explicitly advisory: he's not selling a framework or a proprietary process. He brings 30+ years of lived experience inside a family manufacturing business and stays engaged as a trusted partner through the full arc of generational succession.
The right answer depends entirely on the complexity of the business, the family dynamics involved, and the scope of work required. TMC doesn't publish fees because no two families and no two businesses are in the same place. Pricing is discussed personally with Davis once he has reviewed your Self-Assessment and connected with you directly — there is no obligation involved.
Take the Free Self-Assessment →
The right time to start planning was several years ago. The second-best time is now.
Reflect first with the free Self-Assessment, or talk first by booking a Discovery Call directly. Neither requires the other.
Both are free and no-obligation.