For accountants and CPAswho advise family businesses.

An accountant to a family business is often the advisor who meets the company most regularly. Year-end, the budget, the tax planning for the transfer, the valuation. You also see who is in the room for those meetings, and who speaks.

What do you see from the accountant’s chair?

When a successor is not yet ready to lead, the signs often appear in routine work.

• The successor knows the numbers and still defers. They prepared the analysis. In the meeting, the founder presents it, or the long-serving CFO does.
• The CFO still reports to the founder in practice. The organisation chart says otherwise. The phone calls still go to the founder. When the CFO resists the successor describes how that tends to unfold.
• The ownership transfer is planned, the leadership transfer is not. Gifting, valuation and timing are in hand. Nobody has a plan for the first board meeting the successor chairs.
• Questions arrive that are not accounting questions. “Do you think they can handle the bank?” “Will the managers stay?” The founder asks you because you are the advisor they trust.

That last kind of question deserves a good answer. Often the honest answer is that the gap is not knowledge. It is authority in the room. Why the successor who knows the numbers still loses the room explains why.

Where does Second Chair™ fit, and where does it not?

Second Chair™ is a private, six-month, one-to-one program for one successor. It works on how they lead the board, the senior team and the family, practised on their real calendar: budget presentations, board updates, the conversation with the bank, the family meeting about the handover.

What it does not do:

• No tax or accounting advice. Transfer planning, business valuation, dividend policy and the tax treatment of anything, including the program itself, are questions for you.
• No legal, investment or governance advice.
• No succession planning, and no view on whether the successor should take the role.

If a family asks whether the company can pay for the program and how that is treated, the honest answer is that it is a question for their accountant. Can the company pay for successor coaching? sets out the governance questions to settle first and leaves the tax treatment with you.

When is a referral a good fit?

It fits when:

• There is one successor, roughly 25 to 45, who has decided to take the role.
• They will step into leadership or a board seat within one to three years.
• The successor’s grasp of the business is not the issue; how they are followed is.
• The family wants a change in how the successor leads, not an assessment.

It does not fit when:

• The successor is undecided, or the founder has not chosen.
• What the family needs is tax, legal or financial help.
• The concern is a gap in technical knowledge, where training or outside experience may be a better first step.

What advisors should recommend when the successor is not ready lays out the alternatives, from a longer timeline to an interim leader.

How does a referral work?

1. Wait for the founder to raise it, then mention coaching as one option, not a verdict on the successor.
2. Let the family make contact if they prefer. Giving them the site is enough.
3. If you introduce them, agree it first. Agree with the client what you will share before naming them, and follow your professional confidentiality rules and firm policies.
4. Use the request form. It has an option for “an advisor to the family”. Only name and email are required.

Nikola Jovanović reads every request personally. Where there is a fit, he replies within three business days with a personal email and a one-time link to arrange a private conversation. How advisors refer a family to a coach covers the steps in more detail.

How is discretion handled?

• Every engagement begins under a mutual NDA.
• No case studies are published, and no families are named.
• The parent receives a monthly briefing on progress and priorities. Sessions themselves stay between coach and successor.
• Requests sent through the site are held in confidence and never shared.

Engagements begin at $50,000, paid in full by the family or the company. There is no guarantee and no refund.

To discuss a client or the approach, request a private conversation. The successor readiness checklist and the board presentation outline are simple tools to pass to a founder or successor.