​When businesses talk about equity and value, they talk almost exclusively in financial terms: How much is the company worth in dollars. This, of course, makes perfect sense--the purpose of a business is to make money, in order to grow itself or sustain its owners and employees. However, for family businesses, financial equity is not the only form of equity that must be discussed. When a company is run primarily by relatives, the emotional health and strength of the family is of utmost importance and must be tended to consistently in order to grow and flourish. We call this process “building emotional equity,” and while some parts of building emotional equity are common sense, other parts may not be quite so intuitive. 

Strengthening Your Family Is Just Good Business 
Few people would say that maintaining strong relationships with their relatives is something they don’t want to do, and plenty of business families talk (rightfully so) about how to make sure that they keep a strong family life outside of just business. Just think about how many families have a “no shop talk at the dinner table” rule, just to ensure that some time can be intentionally left for just maintaining these relationships. 
However, building emotional equity isn’t just about setting aside work talk (which is something even non-business families often do); it’s about accepting as a business family that strengthening the family bonds is an integral part of strengthening the business as a whole. In his book The Soul of the Family Business, Tom Hubler talks about how building these relationships is equally important for creating not only a strong family legacy, but a strong business future as well. By strengthening intergenerational family relationships, we create dynamics that make for healthy, happy families and long-lived, profitable businesses: 
Building the shareholder legacy of family harmony is a gift to the future, and not only for the family — research indicates it is a significant gift, one that shows up in the profits of the business. At your next family meeting, include a discussion of the ways to strengthen your family’s emotional equity. I know you will not regret it. -Tom Hubler, The Soul of the Family Business 

​How to Build Emotional Equity within Your Family Business 
Like most strengthening practices, the key to building emotional equity is intentionality: identifying and naming the desire to build emotional equity in your family is an important first step, but hopes and wishes alone are rarely enough to make meaningful change. Another common pitfall is assuming that the business will inherently bring everyone together. It makes sense on the surface--after all, you’re all in business together and all (presumably) have some level of passion for or interest in the work you do, so why wouldn’t your work dynamics strengthen the family? But as important as this can be for your business, building real, lasting, intergenerational emotional equity requires focusing on the family as a unit that exists independent of the business. 

This is why we’ve seen families find great success when business families intentionally set aside time to spend together, especially by including extended family who may not all live in the same household outside of work. We’ve discussed at-length the importance of family meetings, and these are a great time to build emotional equity: rather than having a meeting be all serious discussion, split that time up between important family meeting topics and fun family activities, or even integrate family meetings and family vacations in a way that allows for fun, stress-free bonding and constructive dialogue. 

Alternatively, not all activities need to be divorced from business to build emotional equity. We’ve already covered how emotional equity should be considered a core component in building a strong family business, and the two can be combined in unique ways. We’ve seen families put together family business retreats, where kids, older generations, and extended family are offered unique and memorable activities to bond with each other while adults immediately involved in the business can meet to discuss necessary business topics. If you’re imagining a typical business retreat combined with a family reunion, you’re not far off! As with everything else, intentionality here is the major component: these activities within the retreat should be planned to encourage this emotional equity building, rather than everyone left purely to their own devices. 

​It can be difficult to pay attention to building emotional equity in your business family when it’s so easy for everyone to get bogged down in the daily stressors of keeping a business running smoothly. For more advice on building equity in both your business and your family pick up The Soul of the Family Business by Tom Hubler. Through personal anecdotes, real-world case studies, useful tools and frameworks, and more, Hubler offers an in-depth look at the challenges faced, strategies employed, and successes achieved by all sorts of family businesses. You can pick up The Soul of the Family Business, available in hardcover form on Amazon.com, directly through Itasca Books, or at a bookstore near you. And of course, if you’re ready to take the next steps, you can always contact Hubler for Business Families today.

Nobody needs a reminder of how challenging the past year has been on us and our world--just about every business owner has been swamped in the difficulties that come with running a business during a pandemic. With vaccine rollouts speeding up and restrictions across the nation starting to loosen up, it seems like there’s finally a light at the end of the tunnel. That renewed sense of hope can make it easy to feel like we’ll just slip right back into the normal swing of things, but we also can’t be caught flat-footed by the unique challenges that will come with returning to any sense of normalcy. 

Businesses Have Undergone Trauma--How to Adapt and Survive 
For many businesses, the past year has been little more than triage--small, often family-run businesses like salons, restaurants, and independent shops in particular have faced special difficulties in the face of suppressed business. Staff cuts, changes to hours of operation, and full closures for months at a time have forced many to adapt to this survival mode, and this trauma thinking can cloud judgment as businesses begin to return to normal. Business operators will need to step back and question their own questions: If you’re constantly worrying about if you can afford to bring back an employee, reframe it as “will this employee help generate more income?” If you’re trying to justify a previous business expense that was put on pause during the past year to save money, remind yourself why you invested in it in the first place and if it will be useful as business picks back up. The answer may not be “yes” every time, but it’s helpful to be reminded that austerity measures won’t always be the best way to jump-start business growth after a difficult year. Conversely, some industries have seen massive growth during the past year, and those business operators need to be realistic that “going back to normal” may require planning for a loss in business and subsequent cuts in spending. 

Bringing the Business Back to Business Families 
The pandemic has not only affected the bottom line; it’s also dramatically altered workplace norms and cultures. After a year of working from home, many people will find difficulty in things they once found second-nature--working from an office, dressing professionally every day, dealing with common workplace frictions, etc. While there’s no single piece of advice that can help make this transition smooth, simply being aware of the stress and anxiety it may cause can help people better prepare. 
For business families, this return to a normal business culture can be especially difficult: Families that have worked hard over the years to build healthy work-home boundaries, maintain professional standards with family members they work alongside, and create institutional structure in the workplace may find that those have fallen by the wayside as everyone focused on survival. As businesses regain a sense of normalcy, it’s more important now than ever before to refocus on healthy family business practices: regular family meetings, organized succession plans, and a commitment to a Common Family
Vision™. If you’re a business family that’s spent significant time and effort building a functional work environment, don’t let that falter as the world changes around you. 

​What is the “New Normal?” 
Of course, we’ve spoken at length about a return to normalcy, but we also need to stress that there may never be a full “return” to the way things were. Over the past year, many businesses have successfully adapted and seen their teams work tremendously well using technology, work settings, and organizational structures they never thought possible, and may be in no hurry to give up the changes they’ve found positive. This is fine, and no business should feel pressured to revert away from workplace changes that are clearly beneficial. But every employee has their own preferences and priorities, and even maintaining these new practices may create friction, turnover, and management difficulty; any business doing so needs to be aware and prepare their team for this new reality. 
As the world slowly lurches out of a year-long stasis, any business lucky & smart enough to have survived now needs to set sights on the future, including a return to old challenges and the emergence of new, unforeseen difficulties. For more advice on moving forward after this difficult year, pick up The Soul of the Family Business by Tom Hubler. Through personal anecdotes, real-world case studies, useful tools and frameworks, and more, Hubler offers an in-depth look at the challenges faced, strategies employed, and successes achieved by all sorts of family businesses. You can pick up The Soul of the Family Business, available in hardcover form on Amazon.com, directly through Itasca Books, or at a bookstore near you. And of course, if you’re ready to take the next steps, you can always contact Hubler for Business Families today.

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March is Women’s History Month, and we hope it goes without saying that people are completely capable of building and running their own business, regardless of gender. We live in a world that typically undervalues the hard work women do and often positions entrepreneurship as a career path primarily for men. We have nothing but applause and support for women who start their own businesses and build them to success, but we also want to celebrate women in another common scenario: those who take over running an existing business as a successor to a man who started the business. This could take the form of a daughter named successor by her retiring father, a wife taking over a business after the passing of her husband, or even simply a higher-up executive who happens to be a woman taking over the company. While we all like to think we live in a world where gender is no longer a factor in business success, the truth is that while we’ve come a long way, there are still challenges that uniquely affect women business leaders or women looking to move into leadership positions.

Gender and Succession Planning
While we’ve largely moved past a culture where the only roles for women in the workplace are administrative assistants and nurses, many women still end up directed into roles that emphasize “soft skills” and people-facing roles such as customer service. These roles are valuable and necessary for the function of any business, but it can cause issues when it comes to succession planning, as the roles often considered for advancement (think the “hard-nosed salesperson” or the “genius engineer”) are the roles men tend to be pushed into more than women. However, by paying attention to talents without making any assumptions based on gender, we can avoid inadvertently setting up these “glass ceilings.” Just consider this excerpt from the story of Betty Novak as told in Tom Hubler’s book, The Soul of the Family Business:

As a female entrepreneur, Betty had no formal training in business, but she grew with the business primarily because of her exceptional people and relationship skills with customers and employees. She was effective in sales and marketing, and because of her impressive technical, mathematical, and analytical skills, she was the primary estimator for the company and bid on projects quite successfully.
Betty is the perfect example of someone who’s people skills helped her get started in the professional world, but who also had the combination of “hard” and “soft” talents to successfully build and run the whole business.

Additionally, Betty and her family are a great example of navigating another common expectation that can cause friction when it comes to succession planning: women being put in the role of caretaker by default.
As Betty and her husband Ken (the primary engineer behind their company) aged, Ken was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. While Betty initially served the role of Ken’s primary caretaker while still maintaining her role at the head of the company, the family developed a succession plan to help both her and Ken lead their best lives as they aged. Betty and Ken’s children helped take care of Ken alongside their mother so Betty could continue working, and Betty mentored her son and son-in-law (along with a non-family manager) to maintain the business after her eventual retirement. While many women entrepreneurs in that position would have either been forced to work essentially two jobs (leading the company and being obligated to take care of their husband) or give up the work they loved, Betty and her family all collaborated to allow this incredible entrepreneur to continue living a truly fulfilling life.

​Celebrating Women Entrepreneurs Everywhere
Every woman has her own experience with gender dynamics and her own way of approaching potential issues, but we hope that for those of us supporting, working for, and working with female entrepreneurs, this can help at least share a few of the unique challenges associated with the position. For more help navigating succession planning, family dynamics, and the challenges associated with it all, pick up The Soul of the Family Business by Tom Hubler. Through personal anecdotes, real-world case studies, useful tools and frameworks, and more, Hubler offers an in-depth look at how transitions can go smoothly and effectively, regardless of who’s in charge.You can pick up The Soul of the Family Business, available in hardcover form on Amazon.com, directly through Itasca Books, or at a bookstore near you. And of course, if you’re ready to take the next steps, you can always contact Hubler for Business Families today. 

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Tom Hubler says he has “come to look at Legacy as your gift to the future to help others find their own success.” In other words, if you feel you’ve lived a life well-lived, your legacy is the roadmap that others can use to discover their own lives worth living. Hubler’s Legacy Model™ is made up of five different areas and aspects of life--both financial and non-financial--that should be considered when defining the legacy you want to pass on as a business owner and entrepreneur. The five areas are as follows, in no particular order (as they all interrelate): 

1. Wealth Care (Money/Property): This is the primary financial aspect of legacy, defining how you want to transfer wealth, financial inheritance, valuable personal property, and more. Things to consider in the Wealth Care area are wills (who gets what?), taxes (how will my beneficiaries avoid large tax penalties?), trusts (how and when will my wealth be distributed?), investments, and more. A dedicated financial consultant can help you work out all the details about your wealth care wishes, but it’s important to more broadly view it as only one related aspect of many when it comes to building your legacy.
2. Heritage (History/Ancestry): Many people see themselves as one link in the chain of a family history, and place huge importance on passing the family history and ancestry onto future generations. So when working on defining your legacy, begin to think about what you value in the legacies of generations before you--are there unique stories you wish to tell your children and grandchildren? Meaningful heirlooms you want to see stay within the family? Lessons, values, work ethics, and traditions that were taught to you by family that came before and you’d like to see continued? These are all considerations you must take into account.
3. Family & Self (Loving/Caring): While Heritage is all about passing on the gifts given to you by generations before, the area of Family & Self is all about how you connect with yourself and your individual family unit. How do you want to inspire your children to succeed in their own lives? What life meaning have you discovered and wish to share? Have you lived your life with purpose and found fulfillment? These questions and many more help define your personal legacy.
4. Business Legacy (Succession Plan): As entrepreneurs, our businesses are significant parts of our identities. We hope that when we retire, we leave a successful business, run with the values that helped build it, to continue for years to come. When it comes time to pass the business on to others and take our hard-earned retirement, to whom are we passing ownership? Will it stay in the family? Will we create a board of directors? Who will lead the business to continued success? With our business a key part of our personal legacies, a well-considered succession plan is vital to making sure it doesn’t fall apart during a time of transition.
5. Community (Service-Philanthropy): For even the most dedicated entrepreneur, business success will risk ringing hollow if it’s the only lasting part of their legacy. The vast majority of people care deeply about building community and helping those around them, and many people want to leave a legacy of philanthropic endeavors, whether they involve volunteering, charitable giving, or whatever an individual feels called to do. So look inward and outward simultaneously--who do you want to help? What organizations could use your support? Are you in a place to give time, to give money, to give expertise? Find something you care deeply about (if you don’t already know), and commit to living out your values to assist that cause.

According to Tom Hubler in his book The Soul of the Family Business, “Fine-tuning a legacy system requires implementing all five aspects of the model. It’s important to capture stories that relate to family and history, and to consciously voice life and family values.” For a lot of us, these aspects of our legacies are things we understand intuitively--but the difficulty comes in bringing them to the forefront and considering them with mindfulness and intentionality. Doing so enables us to truly build and define our legacies, rather than leave them as nebulous hopes and dreams.

For stories of successful legacy planning, pick up The Soul of the Family Business by Tom Hubler. Through personal anecdotes, real-world case studies, useful tools and frameworks, and more, Hubler offers an in-depth look at how entrepreneurs can leave a lasting impact on the world around them. You can pick up The Soul of the Family Business, available in hardcover form on Amazon.com, directly through Itasca Books, or at a bookstore near you. And of course, if you’re ready to take the next steps, you can always contact Hubler for Business Families today.

In watching all the news this past week, I can’t believe how hard I’ve been hit emotionally by the events of George Floyd’s death. I’ve been brought to tears on multiple occasions as I’ve discussed my response with family and friends. The emotional pain of the Black community is devastating and palpable.  What’s shocking is the racism that’s being protested has been there for years, and for the most part, nothing has been done about it. In my own family, my children who are Black (now adults) and grandchildren have been hurt by this racism and hatred.

As Nelson Mandela says:
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” ​
​
In this time of trial, may the peace of the Lord fill our hearts with love.  May the solace that’s created give us all the courage, each in our own way, to act, speak out and eradicate systemic racism from our culture.

If multiple members of your family business live together (whether it be a spousal team, a multi-generational household, or some other living arrangement), things can become even more complicated. The obvious benefit is that by sheltering-in-place together, it can be much easier to stay connected and stave off the aggressive loneliness that permeates us during these difficult times. However, the already-blurred boundaries between work and home life can become completely shattered when all parties have to work from home, and this takes serious special consideration. Below are a few tips for helping keep your hard-built structures from falling apart completely under such odd circumstances:

• Designate a home office (if you don’t have one already). If you have one room in your house that you can set aside as a home office, do it. The more you can use it exclusively as a home office (not doubling as a tv room/exercise room/etc), the better. What you want is to have a dedicated space for work where if you enter it, you know that you’re working. Taking this a step further, set up a family rule where work talk happens in the office--if you leave the office, you leave the business discussions there just like you would if you were still leaving the house to go to work. If you don’t have the space for a dedicated home office, find a way to set aside part of your house for work during work hours, even if it’s just the dining room table.
  
• Hold yourself to work hours. Set a work schedule for yourself, and stick to it. One benefit of working from home is that you don’t necessarily need to hold a typical 9-5 schedule, but whatever hours you set for your workday, you need to do your best to honor. If the whole family can decide on similar hours, this will help tremendously with keeping work and family time separate and keeping your boundaries intact and functional.

• Communicate, Communicate, and (over) Communicate. Now is not the time to let minor annoyances fester into unspoken resentment. While you don’t want to fall into the trap of nit-picking as a way of venting your frustration, if you have concerns about the way others are behaving, you don’t want to let that slide in a time when removing yourself from a situation simply isn’t realistic. Nor is it the time to hold unvoiced expectations of others: If you don’t let them know where they stand and how you’re expecting them to behave, the people you work/live/eat/breathe with will only disappoint you, which is not healthy for maintaining these relationships.

Some of these suggestions are seriously difficult to maintain even during “normal” life circumstances as people who own and work in family businesses. We know how hard it can be to leave work talk at the office, or to not be always available via email or phone, or to work 15 hour days. But this unprecedented situation forces us all to examine how we live and how we work, and we need to accept that maintaining family health is a high-priority business goal. We all need to push and/or restrain our behaviors in certain ways to meet this goal, whether it means reminding your business partner that we don’t “talk shop” at the dinner table, reminding a client that you aren’t available to chat after 6 pm, or respecting that your employees need weekends, even if they’re working from home. For advice on building and maintaining boundaries as a business family, consider reading The Soul of the Family Business by Tom Hubler. Through personal anecdotes, real-world case studies, useful tools and frameworks, and more, Hubler offers an in-depth look at how the most successful business families operate their businesses and build their personal relationships in healthy, productive ways. You can pick up The Soul of the Family Business, available in hardcover form on Amazon.com, directly through Itasca Books, or at a bookstore near you. And of course, if you’re ready to take the next steps, you can always contact Hubler for Business Families today.

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I’m not sure about you, but I’m emotionally raw when it comes to dealing with the impact of the COVID-19 Virus.  Each evening when I watch the Evening News, I see first responders and family members who are suffering from losses of one kind or another involving loved ones.  At the same time, there are these wonderful stories of courageous people who are continuing to do their jobs on a daily basis without protective gear, like the bus driver who risks his health to continue to drive the bus to take people to the hospital. There was one particular story that really touched me.  A hospital employee who was caring for patients had now contracted the virus and was now at the point of having to be ventilated.  The hospital employee who was attending to him said to him before he was about to insert the ventilator:  “I love you Ray” and Ray responded:  “I love you too.”  I was really taken with this exchange, but the emotional swings are for me what is so heart wrenching. ​

The sequence goes from endurance to resilience in just the flash of a second.  As a result, the question for all of us becomes, how can I maintain a state of resilience in this chaotic and loss-filled environment? 
​
A few weeks ago, I participated in a seminar on resilience where the facilitator suggested that in order to identify what we are grateful for, we must understand what we are fearful of.  The idea is that gratitude is what creates resilience.  The activity was to identify your fears and then reverse them by converting them into gratitude.  Here’s a partial list of my own to give you the idea:

1. I am going to run out of money and lose everything.
   Converted:  I am blessed and grateful for adequate financial resources.
2. I’ll die before I complete my legacy.
   Converted:  I am blessed with colleagues who will assist me in completing my legacy.
3. My grandchildren will catch the virus and die.
   Converted:  I am blessed and grateful for healthy grandchildren who are sheltering in place.

I think you get the idea.  So as this pandemic continues, may you be able to convert all of your fears into gratitude and blessings so that you will continue to be able to ask:  How can I be helpful to you?  How can I be there for you in this time of trial?

Remember we are all in this together.

A source in inspiration for me is Amit Sood, the founder of the Stress Reduction and Resiliency program at the Mayo Clinic.  He has a formula for managing stress that can be helpful to all of us.  His program centers around the promotion of Joyful Attention and Kind Attention.
 
With Joyful Attention you start the day before you get out of bed with the expression of love and gratitude for the special people in your life.  Kind Attention is doing your best to connect, either directly or indirectly with the first 10 to 15 people you meet.  It could be as simple as a warm greeting or connecting with positive eye contact with someone you meet on the street.
 
Sood then proposes you live your life through the lenses of compassion, acceptance, acknowledging a Higher Power, forgiveness, and gratitude.  Compassion is acknowledging the suffering of another. Acceptance is acknowledging that I’m not in control.  Acknowledging a Higher Power is the realization that there is a Spirit greater than ourselves.  Forgiveness is the ability to forgive someone who hurt you and create a new beginning in your relationship.  Lastly, gratitude is recognizing our blessings in how we live our lives and serve others.
 
Remember the questions of service you are encouraged to ask.  How can I be helpful to you?  How can I support you in this time of trial?
 
Remember we are all in this together.

It’s a story about an English Literature Professor who inherits a Bauxite Mine in Crete.  As the professor waits at the Athens port to catch a boat to Crete, he meets Zorba. Zorba is a “roustabout” and cons the professor into hiring him to run the mine.  As they sail over to Crete and get to know each other, the Professor asks Zorba: are you married?  Zorba’s answer is:  “Am I not a man, I have the wife, the kids, the house, the full catastrophe.” 
 
Upon arriving in Crete, Zorba takes over running the mine and it becomes one disaster after another.  Zorba’s response, quite to the consternation of the Professor, is to dance and celebrate their misfortune.  The very last line of the film is: “Zorba will you teach me how to dance?”  He is essentially saying, will you teach me how to embrace life with all of its twists and turns.
 
The challenge with the COVID-19 Virus is to embrace life with all of its twists, turns, uncertainty and “live in the moment.”   For me this is a challenge, especially when I allow my fears to take over.  When I overlook or forget that the past and future don’t really exist except in my mind and understand that it’s only the current moment that really exists.  If I can only realize that when I’m in the moment I’m just fine.  The more I get out of myself and connect with you, my family, my friends and colleagues, the more secure I will be.  I encourage you to live in the moment, embrace life, trust your higher power and reach out and connect with your family, friends and colleagues.  Remember we are all in this together.

With all of the uncertainties and confusion of Covid-19 Virus, we are all clamoring, in one way or another, to get back to “normal” and create certainty in our lives. The pundits, politicians, and physicians are all offering advice on what to do. They say: “social distance, wash your hands, stay at home and stay safe.” The people on the front lines, in all aspects of our culture, are giving courageously and generously to perform daily miracles to save our lives and many times at the risk of their own.

While it’s normal to think narrowly about our own lives, we are all being called to make a generous and courageous contribution to the “common good.” What the pundits and others fail to mention is that our salvation and redemption is a function of our connection to others. The energy for this contribution comes out of the gratitude we have for the blessings we have for “weathering past storms.” In one way or another, we’ve all experienced tragedies in our lives and it’s been the resources of our families, our communities, and our friends that have enabled us to survive.

Essentially our survival has always come from “getting out of ourselves” and helping other people, and so it is with the Covid-19 pandemic. In order to survive this pandemic, we must all connect with our higher values, our altruistic intentions, and our faith in a “higher power”. We must reach out to those around us to bring hope and an understanding that we are all in this together.  It will be “love of your neighbor” connecting with your communities, connecting with your families, and generously donating your “personal gifts” to your world that will allow you to survive. The questions you must ask to others are: How can I be helpful to you? How can I support you in this time of trial? We are all in this together.
​

Review by Luca, Italy on Amazon.

Families are complicated. Farming is complicated. Family businesses are complicated. So family farm businesses? One might say they’re the most complicated.

Tom Hubler is a well-known expert in family businesses: he's appeared on television and has been quoted in places like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. He lives in St. Paul, MN, and we were fortunate to have him present at our 2020 Customer Summit.

10. Poor expression of feelings and wants
“Feelings and wants are what drive the emotional systems of everyone's family. When people are unable to express their feelings and wants, that's when communication breaks down,” Tom said. He emphasized that though these communications skills of expressing what we really feel and need are some of the most important skills we can acquire, it’s an area where we have the least education. “Most of us have never had a class about how to talk about different things using our feelings,” he said.
Poor expression of feelings is the foundation of many problems. Learning how to listen, not get tangled up in others’ feelings but stay separate, and have a discussion that’s emotionally involved are all skills we desperately need but don’t tend to have. “It’s really, really important, and people generally don’t do it,” he said.

9. Differences seen as a liability rather than an asset
Everyone is different, so it’s normal that people have varied ideas and approaches. That’s actually an asset, in both life and business, as it expands possibilities and helps create well thought-out plans and processes. But It’s often seen as a liability instead. “When we have different ideas about what to do with the farm or how to do things, that's seen as a negative sometimes,” said Tom. Differences can easily be interpreted personally ("you don't love me" or "you don't care"). Tom uses the Myers-Briggs personality inventory to help people understand differences in how they operate and promote compassion and understanding.

8. Indirect communication
Everyone in the room laughed as Tom demonstrated this very common dynamic in families. “If I'm upset with Sherman about something, I don't talk with him about it. I go to someone else in the family,” he said. “I call up Jeff and say ‘Listen, what the hell is going on with Sherman?’ Jeff says, ‘Why don’t you talk to him?’ ‘Well you know we can’t talk with that stubborn….’ and on and on,” said Tom.
After the chuckling died down, Tom got serious. “Indirect communication runs rampant within families, generally where people talk behind people's backs, and it’s a poison for families,” he said. “The idea is to have a direct discussion. So when I call Jeff up again, he might say, "Well I've got a great relationship with him, I'd be happy to sit down with the two of you to make sure you talk this thing through."

7. Entitlement
Tom explained that when he first started doing this work thirty-some years ago, people would often say to him, "I bet you meet a lot of the younger generation with silver spoons in their mouths." He told the group that in fact, entitlement in family businesses isn’t what you might expect.
“The truth of the matter is that's not the case. I mean, I can name a few over the course of my career,” he said. “But guess who does have a sense of entitlement when it comes to businesses? Who in the family, do you think, would have that entitlement?” A grower chimed in: “Dad?” “Yes!” said Tom. “They say, ‘Listen, I own this thing, I'll do whatever the hell I want to do. And you guys take care of it after I'm gone.’” This is often at the expense of younger-generation adult children, who can be in their forties and fifties and still waiting for leadership opportunities in the business.

6. Scarcity
Scarcity is the concept that there isn’t enough to go around, so you have to fight others to get your share. This is often an issue related to money and resources, but Tom explained that it can also relate to emotional needs. He asked the group: “When you think about sibling rivalry, what do you think they're rivaling about? What are they looking for? What do they want?”
Many in the audience took a stab at the answer as Tom guided them. Finally, someone got it.
“Attention?”
“Yes, from whom?”
“The parents.”
“Which one?”
“The dad.”
“That's right, it's the dads," Tom explained. "Because the dads are generally busy doing the business, doing the farm. And what are the kids looking for? They're looking for recognition from their dads. And it doesn't make any difference if it's boys or girls, it's the same epidemic,” Tom explained.

5. Family history
“History is a big deal in all of our families," Tom said. "Yet we tend to overlook things. There's a tendency to exclude not only the difficult stuff, but the positive stuff."
Tom mentioned the book The Way We Never Were, which talks about how we mythologize our family history, going out of the way to talk only about good things. Families also tend to take the positive aspects of their histories for granted and not celebrate them as they should. Families function best when their sense of family history includes both difficult parts and acknowledges what makes the family unique.

4. Other-oriented regarding change
Tom described this as our tendency to think about change as someone else’s domain, instead of taking responsibility for what we can do to facilitate it. It’s thinking, yes, things need to change, but no, it isn’t me that needs to do any changing.
Using the indirect communication example, he explained, “It’d be thinking, ‘If things are going to get better between Sherman and I, he's the one that needs to change.’” One of the major challenges to succession planning in family-owned businesses is every member of the family taking full responsibility for what they're contributing to the business, both good and bad.

3. Control
“Control is a big deal,” Tom said. He went on to describe Minnesota’s most famous entrepreneur, Curt Carlson of the Carlson Company. “The reason he was so successful, and the reason most entrepreneurs are so successful, whether they're farmers or not, is because they're in control,” he explained. “But that's also their Achilles' heel.”
Succession planning in a family business requires other people to be involved. You can’t do it by yourself - there are multiple types of professions that need to be involved to help make the transition. Tom explained, "For many successful business owners, it can feel like people are trying to change them and take away what they've worked for. It feels like letting go of control.”

2. Lack of forgiveness
This is a deep problem in relationships, especially among families. “It's impossible to live with the family you love and not inadvertently step on anyone's toes,” said Tom.
Tom helps his clients draw on religious backgrounds to help them learn and practice forgiveness, but it isn't easy. “What I've learned over the years is that families that are able to forgive each other when they've stepped on each other's toes are more successful," he said. "But the ones that pull things back, keep things bottled up, create all kinds of problems.”

1. Lack of appreciation and recognition
We finally got to the number one issue Tom has identified in family business success, and no one in the room seemed too surprised. “The number one issue is the lack of expression, appreciation, recognition, and love,” he said. Not feeling recognized and appreciated underlies many of the problems in family businesses, not just transitioning for the future.
He went on to describe how he sees this play out. “The senior generation is desperately, desperately looking for validation for what they've done for the past 30 or 40 years. And their kids, the adult children, they don't tell mom and dad, ‘Listen we really appreciate what you've done for us,’” he said. It goes the other way too. “The parents do the same thing. They love their kids, but they take them for granted and don't tell them, for example, how important it is that they made this commitment to come back and work on the farm.”

Read the full article HERE (via Conservis).

Welcome to 2020! To celebrate the new decade, we’re pulling a meaty tidbit straight out of the heart of The Soul of the Family Business by Tom Hubler and learning Hubler’s five secrets of highly successful family-owned businesses. While obviously these are not the be-all-end-all of success (these tips occupy merely a few pages of a lengthy and insightful book), they are fundamental lessons that can be taken alongside more detailed explanations and strategies found within the rest of the book and this website. For more information, consider picking up The Soul of the Family Business, but without further adieu, here are five secrets of highly successful family-owned businesses:

It may be a cliche, but this common coach’s saying bears the truth. To quote Hubler, “It’s always easier to prevent a problem than to try to fix one,” and the common component of all of these secrets is that they are proactive, not merely reactive. Successful family businesses attain success not by constantly quashing problems, but by taking intentional steps to minimize potential conflicts before they even arise. Through personal anecdotes, real-world case studies, useful tools and frameworks, and more, Hubler offers an in-depth look at how the most successful business families create structures to prevent conflict and turn the potential pitfalls of working with loved ones into exceptional, unique strengths. For all of this, pick up The Soul of the Family Business, available in hardcover form on Amazon.com, directly through Itasca Books, or at a bookstore near you. And of course, if you’re ready to take the next steps, you can always contact Hubler for Business Families today to set up a free orientation meeting with Thomas Hubler, the expert on family business planning.

Tom recently presented Creating A Common Vision for a Family Enterprise at the Restaurant Finance & Development Conference in Las Vegas, NV. To listen to the audio session, please click play below.
​For the accompanying slides, click here. 

​I would like to suggest that as the entrepreneur reaches the end of his or her career, you can be invaluable to them in managing what I refer to as the Last Challenge of Entrepreneurship. This is where entrepreneurs understand they don’t have to leave the companies they founded but must change their job description and become the architects and designers of the new ownership, management, and leadership system, and collaborate with their advisors and their family to design the new systems. It also requires the entrepreneur to select something in the company they like to do that continues to give them heart and meaning so that they can continue to come to the company as they wish, but not have all the responsibility of day-to-day operations.

Another item that can be invaluable to the entrepreneur is assisting them in creating a leadership plan for the company. Many entrepreneurs are loath to do this because they fear that they will have to leave the company. As we say in the Last Challenge, that is not the case. In addition to creating a plan for themselves, entrepreneurs must prepare the next generation for their roles in leading. Competency and commitment are the criteria for selecting which job the next generations will have. Also, encouraging entrepreneurs to use an industrial psychologist can be very helpful in making the right leadership choice which can be very difficult when choosing among siblings or cousins. The assessment process also becomes the basis for creating a coaching / leadership development plan.

As you can imagine, this can be an enormous challenge for the entrepreneur, as they change their job description and become the leader with their family and advisors of the plan for the future of the company. Traditionally as the closest advisor to entrepreneurs, accountants can be very supportive to entrepreneurs in their new role.

Since entrepreneurs are driven by their dreams, it’s critically important that they develop a new dream about their role in the company, as well as the family leisure time and service and philanthropy. I refer to this process of developing a new dream as the Life Career Planning Process. The idea is to develop a new dream with your spouse regarding the above monitored items. (For details about the process you can request assistance by contacting Tom Hubler at: tomh@thehublergroup.com.

The Last Challenge also includes the more traditional tasks like developing a financial exit strategy, an estate plan, and a leadership plan for the company.

Below is the Last Challenge’s Checklist which details all the items necessary for completion of the Last Challenge. You can use this checklist to guide you in your work with your clients. As you can see, it includes many non-financial items which Allianz referred to in their 2005 study Baby Boomers and Their Adult Children, which are ten times more important than the money.

 1. Economic Security – share with spouse
2. Ownership Plan – transfer ownership and control
3. Estate Plan that is communicated to the family
4. Create and train the leadership team
5. Create Life Career Plan with spouse
6. Create an active board
7. Codify the family heritage and stories
8. Provide leadership to celebrate family rituals
9. Support family meetings
10. Create a Common Family Vision
11. Create a leadership plan for the adult children working in the company
12. Identify and celebrate the family values
13. Create a Family Philanthropy and Services Plan for the family
14. Create a Family Participation Plan and Family Code of Conduct
15. Create an emergency leadership plan
16. Create an Ethical Will

One of the items that is most important that provides leadership to the family is the celebration of family rituals. Family Rituals are the glue that hold a family together and their continual practice is integral to the family and the success of the family business. The goal is to be intentional about rituals. It’s important to keep them current and revise them as necessary.

Related to this are family meetings, which help the family manage the boundary between their business and family. Family meetings are also a means of building the emotional equity of the family while you’re building the equity of the company. It’s important to have family meetings so that the family can formulate their expectations for the performance of the company and communicate those expectations to the shareholder, who will elect the board of directors as management to implement the family expectations.

As a part of the entrepreneur’s legacy, it’s most important to encourage them to codify the family history, particularly family stories and the events good, bad, or indifferent that have shaped the family.

This is where an ethical will comes in because it allows the entrepreneur to memorialize the most important things in their lives. It allows them to pass on to future generations the things that were most important to them. Things like memories, values, people, and events that have shaped their lives.

​Memorializing your legacy will be one of the greatest gifts you will ever make to your family. When it comes to the Last Challenge of Entrepreneurship, there is a lot to be done for the entrepreneur. Your encouragement, support, and assistance can be invaluable in assisting your clients. They will be forever grateful for your support.

View the article in Better Business Focus: click here.

While talking business during your holiday dinner may not ruin the day, many business families have found that not being able to “turn off” can negatively impact their family relationships in a variety of ways. Constant business discussion can alienate members of the family not associated with the business (this is especially true during the holidays when we see many extended family members), dredge up unnecessary work-related stress or drama, and inhibit how much family members can learn about each others’ personal (non-work-related) lives. For these reasons and many others, it’s incredibly common for business families to agree to leave work at the door during these special occasions, and even everyday family meals.​

Of course, sometimes a blanket “no business talk during family get-togethers” rule can be less-than-realistic, especially if many of your family members all work together. So it’s important for each family to come up with a level of work/home separation that works for them and their prerogatives. The following are a few different compromises that have worked for families in the past to help them ensure quality family togetherness time when a blanket ban on “shop talk” proved unfeasible:

1. Set a Timer: The Johnsons had a mother and sister who each lead their own branch of the business, and with so little time to see each other, family dinners were often one of the only opportunities they had to meet face-to-face. When meals eventually turned into work meetings at the expense of other family members, the mother came up with a solution: they would be allowed 15 minutes of business discussion at the start of dinner, and then they had to drop it. The mom knew that when her partner asked “so how about the MN Twins?” she knew it was time to turn away from her daughter and engage others in non-work-related conversation.
2. “No company talk at the table”: The Harriet family all worked in different parts their business, and to be honest, they didn’t mind talking shop. With so many different areas covered, getting together gave them a chance to all see how the other parts of the company were doing, catch up on each others’ projects, and learn more about the business. But they also knew that this couldn’t be the only topic of discussion, so they banned it from the dinner table. The business was fair game when they were noshing before dinner or finishing the night with a round of cocktails, but they all knew that the minute they sat down to eat, this was the time to catch up about their lives outside the office. 
3. Talk to someone “new”: The McGregors had a family with only a few members in the business, and this often led to them cloistering and ignoring other family members during family get-togethers. Like a teacher breaking up a middle school clique, they adopted a “sit at different tables” approach, making a conscious effort to spend time talking with family members unrelated to the business so they could integrate with the entire group.

There are, of course, many other ways to help keep work talk away from family gatherings. Whether it’s proactively asking others about their lives, breaking out board games as a distraction, or even getting really into making a new recipe, all business families can and should find ways to strive to find moments of family bonding completely outside the business. For more about family rituals, look into The Soul of the Family Business by Tom Hubler. Through personal anecdotes, real-world case studies, useful tools and frameworks, and more, Hubler offers an in-depth look at how business families work to maintain healthy personal relationships. For all of this, pick up The Soul of the Family Business, available in hardcover form on Amazon.com, directly through Itasca Books, or at a bookstore near you. And of course, you can always contact Hubler for Business Families today to set up a free orientation meeting with Thomas Hubler, the expert on family business planning.