How to Lead Your Family Business: Excelling Through Unexpected Crises, Choices, and Challenges

As the fourth-generation leader of her family’s industry-leading business, Julie Charlestein has developed a unique set of strategies for navigating the distinctive challenges and choices facing family businesses.

How to Lead Your Family Business is a master class in working with and for family, reshaping generations-old company cultures, earning your colleagues’ respect, and more.

Family businesses—from massive corporations like Walmart to the mom-and-pop store on your local street—have always been a vital part of the American life and economy.

But as these family-owned companies evolve and grow, so too do their unique difficulties and the need for dynamic leadership. And as more women rise into leadership roles within commonly male-dominated organizations, challenges abound in already tense environments, where family members also happen to be one’s coworkers—and superiors.

Julie Charlestein, the president and CEO of Premier Dental Products Company, is the fourth-generation leader of an incredibly successful family-owned enterprise, and she’s seen it all firsthand, including family drama in the workplace and the office politics that come with any corporation.

In How to Lead Your Family Business, Julie gets vulnerable about her experience as an emerging leader and ultimately CEO, who has worked to earn her colleagues’ respect while navigating the succession to her father’s company. Through stories full of candor, honesty, and humor, Julie shares her leadership adventure, offering actionable strategies for those leading and working within their own family businesses.