Business Transitions
Someone has to hold all of it.
The moment when everything is changing at once
Moving to a new location. Opening a second one. Bringing on a partner. Buying someone out, or stepping back from the business yourself.
These don't happen often, which is exactly the problem. You've never done it before, or you did it once a decade ago, so there's no playbook and no muscle memory. Meanwhile the business still has to run.
And a lot of it has to happen in a specific order. The lease before the build-out. The build-out before the hiring. The systems before the opening. Get the sequence wrong and you're paying for something you can't use yet, or opening without something you needed.
Most of it isn't hard. There's just a lot of it, and it lands on the person who already has the least time.
Two Things At once
A transition is really two jobs running in parallel, and the second one is the one that gets forgotten.
The Moving Parts
Getting everything into one place: what has to happen, in what order, by when, and who owns it. Most of that currently lives in your head, a notebook, and three email threads. Then I run it, tracking what's due, chasing what's late, and talking to the vendors and contractors so you're not fielding all of it.
The PeOple
Your team is going through this too, usually with less information than you have. Who's telling them what, and when. What's actually changing about their day. Whether anyone's role is different now and whether that's been said out loud. What customers and vendors need to hear, and from whom. Most of the anxiety in a transition comes from people filling in gaps you didn't know you'd left.
What I'm not is your lawyer, your accountant, your broker, or your HR department. Transitions come with real professional advice attached and you should get it from people qualified to give it. What I do is make sure the work around all that happens, and that nothing falls between the people you've hired.
What this Usually Includes
A master timeline with everything sequenced
Vendor and contractor coordination
Tracking what's due and chasing what's late
Working alongside your attorney, accountant, or broker
Move logistics and build-out coordination
Transferring systems, accounts, and access
Communication planning for staff, customers, and vendors
Clarifying what's changing about people's roles
Documenting how things work in the new setup
Why me
I spent three and a half years at a marketing and PR agency, finishing as Director of Traffic and Operations, where the job was knowing what had to move next across every project in the building. Sequencing work that depends on other work is the whole skill.
I was also there through a period when the agency nearly tripled in size, which is its own kind of transition. What I learned is that the logistics are the easy half. The hard part is that people can tell something is changing before anyone tells them what, and the gap between those two things is where the worry lives.
The thing I'd want you to hire me for is the holding. Transitions fail in the gaps between people, and the gaps are where I work.
What Comes Next
Writing It Down
You're rebuilding anyway, which makes it a good moment to document how things actually work now.
Who Owns What
If the work keeps landing on whoever's free, the underlying question is who's responsible for each piece. Worth answering on paper.
Something big changing?
Tell me what's happening and when. Even if it's months out, the sequencing conversation is worth having early.