December means we’re in the height of the holiday season, and that really does go for everyone—the number of religious holidays in December goes well into the double-digits, and this grows even further when factoring in secular celebrations. For business families, the season can be especially taxing, as many workplaces go into overdrive for the holiday rush, making it even harder to maintain a healthy separation of work and family life. In The Soul of the Family Business, Tom Hubler provides advice on managing work and home in order to make family celebrations more relaxed, personal, and meaningful for everyone involved.

Give your most precious gift this holiday season: Yourself

For many, if not most, of us the holiday season is a time to celebrate and express joy by giving gifts and going to family get-togethers. This year the season feels especially poignant in light of all the tragedies and hardships people all over the world are experiencing—record-breaking hurricanes, earthquakes and forest fires, unrest, saber-rattling and war.

Review by Barbara R Hauser, editor of the International Journal of Family Business

"This is a personal review. I first met Tom Hubler when I was a junior lawyer in Minneapolis and Tom was a family therapist working with some of our law firm’s family business clients, especially those whose lawyer was Steve Swartz.

As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches yet again, many of us are driven to reflect on the importance of gratitude in our personal lives, relationships, and businesses. Saying “thank you” is a reflex drilled into us by polite society, but so often carries little-to-no meaning or conscious sincerity, and taking a moment for honest reflection can help foster a healthier personal and professional life. Many of us are guilty of taking the entire concept of gratitude for granted, believing that our friendly actions, unconditional love, or even past statements of thanks will fully articulate our feelings of gratitude in any given moment. This is especially prevalent in businesses, where assertive self-confidence, fast-paced environments, and competitive cultures all work to suppress the emotional “softness” needed to exhibit sincere gratitude (of course, we put “softness” in quotes because the ability to express yourself emotionally actually requires a great deal of inner strength).

Article by AMANDA OSTUNI for Twin Cities Business Magazine
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The family business consultant pours a career’s worth of advice into a new book.

“Sweep it under the rug!” “Don’t rock the boat!” “Take one for the team!” “Let it go!”

These are the words we say to each other when seemingly small problems arise. No friendship, work relationship, or family interaction is perfect, and we all have tiny issues in each and every interpersonal relationship that we often choose not to address, and it’s easy to see why! Nobody wants to be known for being difficult, bratty, or negative, because we risk hurting our relationships over “nothing” (especially if you’re like us and live in the land of “Minnesota Nice!”). But anybody who’s had a friend or loved one blow up over some seemingly trivial annoyance knows that clear and open communication, even about small issues, is important in building strong and trusting relationships.

Releasing on October 8th, Thomas Hubler’s new book The Soul of the Family Business: A practical guide to family business success and a loving family understands that soul, heart, and love are what keeps families together, and expands these important concepts to running a successful family business. While others may offer tips and tricks on keeping a family business afloat, Tom Hubler sees that the philosophical and the practical are one and the same: that purely practical advice about family businesses is meaningless without a deeper understanding of how families share visions, build trust, and communicate.

I’ve been saying for some time that I’m playing the back nine, and as I round the corner to the end game of my career and my life, I’m happy to share what I have learned with others.  It is my hope that what I share will help members of family businesses appreciate their uniqueness and understand what makes them special and utilize it for the benefit of their entire family and company.  

We’ve talked at-length in the past about “leaving a legacy,” and hopefully we’ve been able to help make that slightly nebulous concept more concrete and approachable. We discussed how leaving a legacy involves passing on not just your assets, but also your beliefs, teachings, dreams, and everything else that helps craft a memory of what it means to be uniquely “you” for years to come, and categorized this concept into four “pillars” of inheritance:

We were recently featured in an article by CRaKN.net about helping family-owned funeral businesses thrive for future generations. Read on!

Juggling your work, passion, family, and children is no easy task. Add working in a family business setting, and this can be even more challenging.
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The reality is you know certain stressors will always be there when it comes to working in a family business. That said, it doesn’t mean you can’t take steps to create balance and healthy relationships in your business.

If you start with these 3 tips, you can help “future-proof” your funeral home so it can thrive and continue on for future generations.

​To keep reading & learn about our 3 tips: click here!

In the past, we’ve spent plenty of time talking about the importance of family rituals: structured time and activities that bring family members together and reinforce the emotional bonds between us. These rituals can be incredibly personal and unique to each family, but there is one particular ritual that all business families should make use of: the family meeting. Regular family meetings are incredibly useful for resolving conflicts, strengthening personal connections, and recommitting to your visions for both the business and the family. A family meeting can take on a variety of appearances, but what follows are actions that will help make any family meeting as successful and productive as possible.

Plenty of family businesses don’t start out that way. Every business owner worth their salt knows that the phrase “it’s who you know, not what you know” isn’t necessarily a pejorative: taking trusted recommendations about new hires can be great because a known quantity is often a lower risk than a complete stranger. And even in a business with no familial involvement, bringing on a family member with the skills to help your business can be the endpoint of this mode of thinking. The difficulty with this approach is negotiating the feelings of your current staff who are often predisposed to assume the worst when they hear you’ve hired a member of your family. So how can you navigate these murky waters?

Last month, we took a look at one of the trickiest situations for any family business: addressing low-performing employees who also happen to be your family members. We covered how to identify, discuss, and resolve performance issues, and how to handle the worst-case scenario—firing a family member. One of the key takeaways of this was how to communicate with your family members about their interests, passions, and unique skill sets in the hopes of identifying where inside (or outside) your business they would find the most success. ​

This week, we’ll follow up on this, looking more closely at how to best support a family member whose life and career aspirations lie outside your business. While this topic is mostly about improving your familial relationships, your business acumen can and will come in handy, so keep reading.

If you’re running a business with your family, you know that one of the largest, most overarching difficulties is in balancing the (physical, emotional, spiritual, communal) health of your family unit and family members with the (financial, economic) health of your business. We’ve spoken at length before about how easy it is to fall prey to naïve thinking when it comes to running a family business: you know these people inside and out, you love and care for them, you understand their unique strengths; who better to work with on a day-to-day basis? However, almost every family business has a moment where reality sets in: A family member’s job performance simply isn’t up to standard. Between standard anxieties about reviewing job performance and the added difficulty of unique family dynamics, you have a tough situation that needs to be addressed with compassion, love, honesty, and integrity.

One of the most fundamental human goals is to live a life that won’t be forgotten. From the works of William Shakespeare to modern film like Inception and Coco, humanity has always loved exploring what it means to leave your legacy. For a great many people, the easiest way to create a lasting legacy is through your family. Even the simple act of creating a family unit is a method of preserving your memory, but there can be so much more involved in leaving a concrete, appreciable legacy for yourself through the generations. Insurance company Allianz put out a survey of how Americans are passing their legacies onto younger generations, and formalized four “pillars” of inheritance:
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1) Values and Life Lessons

2) Instructions and Final Wishes

3) Personal Possessions of Emotional Value

4) Financial Assets and Real Estate

For so much of the world, the holiday season is a time of rest: a last chance to take off work, relax, and spend time with family and loved ones before the new year. But for many family businesses, this can be one of the most anxiety-producing times of the year: when a family is constantly pressured to spend both quality time with each other without reprieve from running a successful business, heightened stress levels are almost inevitable. Now that we’re past the holidays, let’s take a deep breath and reflect on the importance of setting up systems that allow you to take refuge and create balance from the family business any time of the year.