When succession planning is neglected, the cost shows up fast — stalled growth, shaken team confidence, fractured culture, and a sharp decline in enterprise value. Too often, founders and executive teams delay transition planning until it’s urgent, treating it as a legal checkbox instead of a strategic growth initiative. The result is leadership gaps, unclear decision rights, and operational instability at the exact moment the business needs clarity and strength. Succession done poorly doesn’t just disrupt continuity — it can quietly erode decades of hard-earned momentum.
In this episode, we sit down with Lisa Levy, Founder and CEO of LCubed Consulting Inc., to break down the real financial and cultural risks of reactive planning — and how to build a proactive framework that protects value and empowers the next generation of leaders. Lisa shares practical strategies for aligning people, process, and strategy so leadership transitions strengthen the organization instead of destabilizing it. If you want your mission and enterprise value to outlast any single leader, this conversation is essential listening.
Episode Highlights Here:
Brett
Before we jump into this episode, I want to invite you to join our community to help you become a better steward scale to billions and ultimately give more or all of it away. All I want you to do is to click the subscribe button right now. I love your support. It’s incredible to see your comments, and we’re just getting started. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me. Hello everybody. Welcome to the builders billions podcast where we got successful entrepreneurs and investors on the journey from millions to billions. We believe the key to scaling and compounding your wealth and life starts every single day with the mindset and practice of stewardship over ownership and applying billionaire biblical principles. Our ultimate goal is to be scale and compound your wealth and life, so you give more all the way to help MVPs, the most vulnerable people. My name is Brett Swarts, and each and every episode, we’re joined by some of the world’s top entrepreneurs, millionaires and billionaires, they share their insights, secrets, wisdom with us so we can all scale, make a bigger impact, innovate all of the really neat things that you’re all trying to do out there and that we’re trying to do as we’re on this journey with you. I’m excited about our next guest. She’s out of the state of Arizona, and she is the founder and CEO of Lcube consulting. She’s a go to expert for founders who want to excite the date of the operations without their companies falling apart. She helps 15 million plus founders transform from reactive firefighters into strategic leaders by building self-reliant executive teams and so much more. She’s the number one, bestselling, author of future proofing cubed. Please welcome to the show with me. Lisa Leedy, Lisa, how we doing?
Lisa
Brett, I’m great. I’m so excited to be here today. Let’s do this.
Brett
I’m grateful for you to be here as well, and for our listeners. Get tonight for the first time, would you give us just a little bit more about your story and your current focus?
Lisa
Absolutely, my story began as a director inside of a growing and emerging company that was supposed to be my dream job. I was building a project management practice. I was doing all of the things I ever wanted to do, and I hated every single minute of it, and in a moment that I would love to call inspiration but is more accurately described as a full-on adult temper tantrum. I said, I am out of here. I cannot do this. I will not do this. And I said, on the path to create L cubed. I had no idea I was going to become an entrepreneur. In fact, I thought I was so incredibly risk averse that this would be the dumbest thing any human being could ever want to do. That was 16 years ago, and I’m here making the impact that I wanted to make, because I believe that founders and people who are building businesses need support from outsiders with a perspective that challenges their thinking so that they can build the best thing that they want it to be, and whether that’s the business their future, the impact that they’re making with that business for their clients, customers and people they serve. I don’t really care what that is, as long as they’re passionate about it.
Brett
Amazing, by the way. If you want to learn more about Lisa, you can go to L cube consulting.com Lcube consulting.com align your people, processes and technology. I love the origin story. Let’s dive into the topic today, which is cost, the poor succession plan. So, Lisa, what’s the number one insight or mistake people make when it comes to poor succession planning?
Lisa
Well, they simply don’t do it. It’s one of those things that everybody sort of has on a list of things to do some day. And every business school will teach you that it is a requirement for you to build a business and be able to exit, you need to have a succession plan, and yet we never get around to getting it done. And the challenge with that, for a founder and owner or somebody who may want to exit is if you don’t have a good succession plan, you are leaving money on the table that can be up to 4x the valuation of your business if you want to sell it, if the buyer can’t figure out how you are exiting, especially if you’re a visible front person, you’re screwed.
Brett
Got it so that’s really clear. It’s almost like not having a living trust in place. I’m always shockedwhen I will hurt you with those that are exiting, these big businesses, real estate, millions ofdollars, net worth, and they’re like, Yeah, I don’t have a living trust yet. I’m like, well, thenwhere’s all your stuff gonna go? Something happens to you, you know, I’m like, before you doany of our planning, why don’t you go with that attorney like tomorrow to get that in place? Youknow, because all the different things with that get your living trust in place. Okay, so numberone mistake is people just don’t do it. They know it’s important, but it’s not urgent for them, and so they just, they just put it off. Okay, that makes sense. What’s the number two mistake when it comes to poor succession planning?
Lisa
The second mistake in that is that they assume that the people around them are necessarily the ones who are going to be their immediate successor. And the challenge with that, let’s think about it for a minute. I started my business with three people, and we were all incredibly invigorated. We built this business. We are in it together. We are five years in the journey, 10 years in the journey.
Brett
So, if you like this little, short clip of the interview I just did, click over here to watch the full interview, and please don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much, everybody.
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About Lisa Levy
Lisa Levy, Founder and CEO of Loubel Consulting, is a trusted advisor to growth-stage founders ready to step out of the daily grind without watching their companies unravel. She partners with $15M+ founders to evolve from reactive problem-solvers into forward-thinking leaders by building executive teams that can run the business with confidence.
Her work is intentional and structured—designed to remove founders from the center of operations on purpose, not by chance.
Where many consultants create dependency, Lisa builds capability. Her Adaptive Transformation™ approach equips leadership teams with the tools, clarity, and ownership they need to operate independently. Her mission is simple: transfer her expertise directly to the team so the business can scale and thrive—without requiring the founder’s constant involvement.
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