Wattie Advisory works with founder families on the relational side of business succession and legacy. Founded by Grant and Christine Wattie, it’s built on a simple observation: most succession planning focuses on the structure, the trusts, the shareholder agreements, the tax position, while the relationships that have to carry that structure forward go unexamined. Wattie Advisory is the part of the work that looks at the relationships.

Keep your family. Keep your legacy.

That’s the line Wattie Advisory works from. A technical plan can be perfect on paper and still fail, because the people it depends on don’t trust each other enough to carry it out. Wattie Advisory calls this relational due diligence: surfacing where trust, communication, shared vision, and succession readiness actually stand inside a family, before those gaps become the reason an otherwise sound plan falls apart.

Where it started

Before this work, Grant and Christine were photographers, moving in rooms with people who had built significant things, from family businesses to national institutions. What they saw, again and again, was the gap between what a family looked like from the outside and what was actually happening inside it. That gap is what Wattie Advisory now helps founder families close, before a transition forces the issue.

What the work looks like

Entry is usually through the Legacy book or the Family Legacy Readiness Report, a short assessment that surfaces where the relational fault lines are across trust, communication, shared vision, and succession readiness. Some families take the report and address what they find themselves. Many find it’s the conversation they didn’t know how to start, and that becomes the opening for working with Grant and Christine directly.

From there, the work often includes Christine’s visual clarity work, where a family is asked to show what’s happening now and what they want, frequently producing a moment of “isn’t it obvious, how come I didn’t see that before?” The aim throughout is the same one Grant and Christine bring to every family: turn vague expectations into agreements that are specific, measurable, and owned by the people who made them.

Couples in business

Wattie Advisory also works with couples who co-own a business together, where the business and the marriage have become so intertwined that strain in one shows up as strain in the other. This is the territory of the Trust to Profit Method, which treats the relationship between business partners who are also life partners as a measurable part of the business itself.

If you’d like to talk with Grant and Christine about your family’s situation, a free 15-minute call is the place to start.

Book a free call at grantwattie.com/contact

With Aroha, Grant and Christine Wattie, Wattie Advisory

  • What does Wattie Advisory do?
  • What is relational due diligence?
  • How is Wattie Advisory different from a financial or legal advisor?
  • Who founded Wattie Advisory?