Are there any fundamental differences when the family is looking at a liquidity event to an outside party, like they're being taken up by a competitor or they're doing an IPO or something like that, versus when they're doing a transition within the family?

Yeah, that's great comment.

And I think there's two frameworks around that.

And that is, is this a Gen 1 or Gen 2 transaction? If it is the founder and they are doing a sale to a third party, I hate to say this, but from an advisor standpoint, that may sometimes be easier than an internal transaction because of the control mechanism.

You have this illusion of control, and if you have a sale by a founder entrepreneur, to a third party, you kind of have a hard stop.

Now, they may still be involved on the backside of the transaction if there's earnouts or if they are continuing in some type of chairman of the board or consulting role.

But when you have a Gen 1 transition internal to the family, their ability to change their mindset about how much control they want to continue to exercise by Gen 2 or Gen 3 is a little bit more difficult to get them to phase down, phase back, not phase out.

How the heck do you start chipping away at something this big?