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.” ​
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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.

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. ​

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.

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.

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:

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. 

“What is forgiveness?” Yes, this sounds like a silly question, doesn’t it? Many of us would immediately respond, “jeez, the answer is so obvious,” but before you write off the question, really think about it. Is it as obvious as it seems, or is forgiveness a concept that is more than a bit tricky to put into words? For our purposes, we like Dr. Frederic Luskin’s definition from his book Forgive for Good.
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Forgiveness is the feeling of peace that emerges as you take your hurt less personally, take responsibility for how you feel, and become a hero instead of a victim in the story you tell. Forgiveness is the experience of peacefulness in the present moment. Forgiveness does not change the past, but it changes the present. Forgiveness means that even though you are wounded, you choose to hurt and suffer less. Forgiveness means you become part of the solution. Forgiveness is the understanding that hurt is a normal part of life. Forgiveness is for you and for no one else. You can forgive and rejoin a relationship, or forgive and never speak to the person again.

Thank you to Nancy Meyer with WeMentor for inviting me to discuss family business ownership,  building a family legacy, the Top 10 Obstacles in Succession Planning, and of course, The Soul of Family Business on her "WeMentor Mondays with Nancy" podcast.

I am honored to have been featured in two episodes of WeMentor Mondays and hope our discussions help the family business owners or members  who listen.

​“Forgiveness can seed a new beginning in our relationship with a betrayer. Forgiveness allows us to understand that “to be wrong is nothing, unless you remember it,” as was so wisely stated by Confucius. Forgiveness helps clean the slate for you and others. Because family members love one another, forgiveness is essential so that relationships can be renewed after a betrayal.” –Tom Hubler, The Soul of the Family Business

​Last week we broached the sticky subject of betrayal within family businesses. We covered how the overlapping circles, interconnected responsibilities, and sometimes unclear expectations that come with working alongside family can make family businesses a landmine of potential betrayal, both intention and accidental. But while the best medicine for betrayal is avoiding it in the first place, today we’ll discuss how to overcome betrayal once it’s already happened, which means jumping into the process of forgiveness and Family Forgiveness Rituals™.

The Soul of Family Business by Tom Hubler is being promoted in Brazil's Revista Empreendedor. 

​Founded in 1994, Revista Empreendedor is based in Florianópolis, Brazil. The business magazine aims to promote entrepreneurship and to support Brazilian entrepreneurs by presenting business opportunities and best management practices for innovation and sustainability. ​