How to Take Over a Business That's Been Around 30 Years

Geoff Farinha joined USI HVAC in 2011. His father was one of two founders. The company had been around since 1992.

But here's the thing—Geoff didn't just walk in and take over. He joined in a temporary capacity while waiting for a tech job out west that wouldn't be available for two years. Fourteen years later, he's still there, now running the company alongside their CFO.

Taking over a family business—or any established business—is different from starting one. The systems exist. The culture exists. The employees have been there longer than you have. And your job is to modernize without destroying what works.

The Slow Drip Approach

Geoff didn't come in swinging. He started in sales, creating a new position for service sales. But while he did that, he worked to slowly modernize things.

"When I first started, technicians all had Nextel phones. They would mail in their time slips with a stamp every week and hope it gets to the office for Monday so they get paid accordingly. Everything was done over the phone."

His approach was gradual: electronic timekeeping instead of paper forms, giving technicians a way to email their closeouts, small improvements that added up over time.

"It's been a gradual drip for me," he said. By the time he and the CFO formally took over in 2018, they'd already been with the company five, six, seven years. "That's where it allowed us that slow ramp up to that point."

This is the opposite of how most people imagine a leadership transition. They picture the new boss coming in on day one with a mandate for change. But Geoff earned credibility before he had authority. When he finally did take over, everyone had already seen his ideas work.

The Things That Don't Change

Not everything at USI got modernized. Some things stayed exactly the same—on purpose.

Their website is still us-hvac.com with a hyphen in the middle. "That's going back to that 1992 inception. Not the best website, but we've stuck with it because why change it now?"

The servant leadership culture his father built? Unchanged. "Your job is to make it so that their job is as easy as possible and they can do their best work. That's our mantra. It always has been. And it will never change."

The union relationships, the focus on commercial over residential, the maintenance contract strategy—these were working before Geoff arrived. His job wasn't to reinvent them. It was to preserve what worked while upgrading the infrastructure that supported it.

This is the balance that kills a lot of second-generation businesses. Either the new leader changes too much and destroys the culture, or they change too little and the company becomes obsolete. Geoff threaded the needle.

Employee Ownership as a Transition Strategy

One detail from the interview caught my attention: USI is employee-owned. Geoff clarified right away that he's not technically the only owner.

Employee ownership changes the dynamics of a leadership transition. You're not just taking over from your father—you're taking over a company that belongs to the people who work there. That creates accountability in both directions.

It also creates alignment. When employees own a piece of the business, their interests and the company's interests overlap. They're not just working for a paycheck. They're building something they have a stake in.

I don't know the specifics of how USI structured their employee ownership, but the principle applies broadly: the more your team has skin in the game, the more they'll care about the transition succeeding.

What to Preserve vs. What to Upgrade

If you're taking over an established business—whether it's family, an acquisition, or a promotion into leadership—here's the framework I took from Geoff's story:

Preserve:

Culture and values (if they're working)
Key relationships (customers, vendors, unions)
Core business model and positioning
Institutional knowledge from long-tenured employees

Upgrade:

Technology and systems
Processes that rely on paper or manual work
Communication and reporting infrastructure
Anything that prevents people from working remotely or efficiently

The stuff that touches people directly? Be very careful changing that. The stuff that's infrastructure underneath? Modernize aggressively.

The Credibility Problem

Geoff had an advantage: he'd been around the company his whole life, working summers, driving materials, doing the grunt work. People knew him.

But he also had a disadvantage: he was the founder's son. That can breed resentment. "Who's this kid to come in and change things? He only got this job because of his dad."

The way Geoff handled it was to not act like the boss's son. He came in at a junior position. He built credibility by doing work that helped people. He didn't demand changes—he implemented them gradually and let results speak.

By the time he formally took over, the question wasn't "does this guy deserve to be here?" It was "this guy has been making things better for seven years—of course he should be running things."

That's a lesson for anyone stepping into an established organization. You don't get credibility from your title. You get it from your track record. And if you don't have a track record yet, you need to build one before you start swinging.

The Tech Job That Never Happened

I love that Geoff joined USI temporarily. He had a tech job lined up. He just needed something to do for two years while he waited.

Fourteen years later, he's still there.

That's not a failure to follow through on his original plan. That's recognizing when something better was right in front of him. The family business wasn't a backup option—it was an opportunity he almost missed.

If you're weighing a role in a family business or an established company against something shinier and newer, consider this: the established company has customers, revenue, systems, people. The shiny new thing has potential and risk. There's no wrong answer, but don't dismiss the established option just because it's less glamorous.

Sometimes the best opportunity is the one you didn't plan for.