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Building Emotional Equity in a Family Business

6/18/2021

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.

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The Unique Challenges of Returning to Normal 2: Bringing Back Employees

5/18/2021

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Last month we went into detail about the difficulties small businesses--and family businesses in particular--face as the world fitfully returns to a pre-pandemic state of semi-normalcy. We covered how to re-adjust to the costs of doing business, how to maintain healthy work-home-family boundaries, and how to prepare yourself for aspects of the professional world that may be changed permanently.

This month, let’s talk about one of the struggles of returning to normal that has truly unique impacts on family businesses: the stresses of deciding which employees to bring back to work and when. While some family businesses--particularly very small ones--are entirely family-run, many have mixed employment: it may be owned or managed by a group of relatives, but hire outside the family for many roles. This setup always contains inherent risks: displays of favoritism (or the perception thereof), accusations of nepotism, and the very real worries of striking the right balance between being a great employer and taking care of your own family.

The Question of Hiring Family
Business owners and managers are in a truly unique position in our society as they get to decide who does and doesn’t get any particular job. That seems like an obvious statement, but it’s a huge power with implications that aren’t always fully recognized. This hiring power not only directly affects the people being hired, but it also guides the way the business grows and the way its culture develops.

In particular, the decision to hire family members can dramatically alter a business’s identity as well as expectations going forward. When hiring a stranger, there’s not much thought given to the purpose of hiring; it’s relatively simple: you have a job that needs doing, and this person is the best person you’ve found for the role. While it’s certainly possible to hire family because they’re the right fit for the role (often because the family connection gives you unique insight into their skills and abilities), you’re also left with other questions: are you hiring this person because they’re the absolute best, or because they’re qualified enough but your desire to work alongside them pushes them up in the rankings? Are you explicitly hoping to hire a family member as a way of supporting them financially, or providing them with a career trajectory? Are you hiring someone in the hopes that they’ll take your place when you retire? Are you hiring them because you want “family business” to be part of your company’s identity?

Even if the answer to every single question is “no” and your family member is simply the most qualified individual for the position, you need to reflect on these questions, because even if you don’t ask them of yourself, your non-family staff will almost certainly be asking them amongst each other. Employees have a keen nose for nepotism, and even if you’re completely above-the-board, you’ll need extra transparency to make sure your staff knows you’re treating everyone fairly and equitably.

Negotiating Nepotism (Again): How COVID Can Reignite Old Issues
This transparency is especially important during difficult economic times, like we’re experiencing right now as the world returns from the covid pandemic. Non-family employees that were more-or-less content with the family part of the family business pre-pandemic may be more willing to question the fairness of the arrangement if they’ve been laid off but family members haven’t, or if family members are the first to return. It’s important for you to reflect inwards to see if they have a point--your love for your family during a uniquely challenging year may lead you to favor taking care of them without realizing it.

This is, of course, entirely your decision. Many family business owners may make a conscious decision that as the business returns to normal, priority will be given to members of the business family. If this is your choice, just understand the extra work you may need to do to maintain the trust and loyalty of your non-family staff members.

All businesses are facing never-before-encountered challenges right now, and this goes double for family businesses trying to ensure they do right by both the business family and any non-family members they may employ. For more advice on taking care of both your family and your business 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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The Unique Challenges of Returning to Normal

4/7/2021

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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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A Note About Female Entrepreneurs

3/29/2021

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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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“I Now Pronounce You Business Partners” - Spouses in Family Businesses

2/12/2021

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We often think of “work couples” as people who met in the office and formed a deep, romantic connection. But this isn’t always the case; sometimes it’s the couple that comes first, and the work follows. When two people date or marry, it’s only natural that sometimes the couple will end up in business together. While occasionally couples will find themselves inspired to start a business together, most often one half of a couple will either own or start a business and the other spouse will join in, whether it be because of a passion for the business itself, an extra set of hands to get a small startup off the ground, a unique talent that satisfies an unfulfilled business need, or just a desire to help the person they love.

While this can be an exciting part of the relationship at first, it comes with the same challenges and pitfalls as any family business, only potentially more extreme. That frustration two brothers in business together may feel when every family get-together devolves into shop-talk? Imagine that issue, but seven days a week! Upset at your adult son for a management decision they made that you didn’t agree with? Now imagine that this decision was made by your husband, and you have to sleep beside him that night. And of course, if one spouse joined the business to help the other, then often the couple will need to navigate that unique power dynamic.

Business-running couples need to pay special attention to maintaining their work-life balance in order to not only keep their relationship healthy, but keep the business afloat as well. We like to give couples the same basic advice we give most business families, but knowing that they’ll have a stronger need to practice, but also have more opportunities to practice as well.

Create a communication plan. It’s important to set emotional boundaries and rules for communicating about work before the need arises. If you have a conflict at work, how will you agree to address it so it doesn’t come home with you? If one of you is stressed about work, do you have other people than each other to whom you can vent? Business couples that feel comfortable discussing work casually are often the ones who can benefit the most from more rigid structure.

Set Physical Boundaries. Often, business families (and especially business couples) can find great benefit in setting physical boundaries as well. A “no work talk at home; save it for the office” rule is common, but takes practice to maintain. This is especially tough during the time of COVID, with so many people working from home. It may sound like a TV-sitcom solution, but we’ve seen couples find great success by setting a (metaphorical) “do not cross” line for work talk between their home office and the rest of their house.

Make Time (Intentionally). This one is easier said than done, as lots of couples say “yeah, of course we spend time with each other” without fully reflecting on the quality or amount of that time. It’s worth sitting down and planning date nights, dinner times, or other moments where you can carve out time to intentionally spend time focused purely on the relationship, and not the business. This also comes with the added benefit of keeping the office open for just work--with regular, high-quality “couples time” outside of work then you aren’t using your time at the office to maintain the relationship.

When Your Spouse Isn’t Involved
As much time is spent focusing on business couples, we must also recognize the challenges that come from being a spouse married to a family business that doesn’t involve them. When someone’s spouse and seemingly their entire family are part of a business and the spouse isn’t, it’s incredibly easy for them to feel left out, separated, and like they can’t connect. All the same rules outlined above (communicating effectively, setting boundaries, and planning intentional family time) will help prevent these feelings of exclusion and help maintain a happy, healthy dynamic for both those involved in the family business and the family members outside of it.

Family businesses can be incredibly successful, incredibly fulfilling, and a huge part of the personal identities of everyone involved. But this same deep commitment and involvement can make for more stressful family or spousal dynamics than those who can simply leave work at the office. For more advice on managing these unique challenges, 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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Managing Stress in a Family Business

1/29/2021

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As we enter a new year that’s already shaping up to be as strange and potentially stressful as the last, it seems fitting to keep our focus on how stress can disrupt family businesses and--more importantly--what steps we can take to manage and mitigate the impacts of our inevitable (and often innumerable) stressors. While the holidays carry their own unique challenges, they often provide a time for rest; recuperation; and togetherness, and returning to our routines means many of us sink mindlessly back into our old habits and thought patterns. We return to stressing about work deadlines, professional obligations, frictious family dynamics, world issues, and much more.

Mayo Clinic professor Amit Sood defines two primary modes in which our brain operates. The first, “focused mode,” is when our brain is immediately present of the world around us--focused mode is experience-oriented, and allows us to stay attuned to a particular task or allow our brains to react naturally to external situations. The second state, “default mode,” is more internally oriented--our brain thinks actively about, processes, and reflects upon the external events. While self-reflection is hugely important to an effective and happy life, spending too much time over-analyzing our world in default mode can lead to additional stress and struggle as we fall into what Dr. Sood refers to as “attention black holes.”

Stress Management and Resiliency Training
Stress may be an inevitable part of life, but we can learn tools and skills to help us better manage these stressors and reduce the negative impact they have on our happiness and success. One toolset we can use is called SMART, short for Stress Management and Resiliency Training. Practicing SMART is functionally a state of mindfulness, where we put forward active efforts to pay attention to our lives in a way that allows us to see positives, put our stressors into perspective, and improve our mental energy. Here are 5 actions that can help us live the SMART mindset day-to-day:

Gratitude: This first skill involves practicing gratitude not only on a daily basis, but making it your first priority each day. As you wake up each morning, make an effort to list the people about whom you care most deeply, and express gratitude for their existence and their place within your life. Hold this gratitude with you throughout the day, and if you leave them to go to work, invest those feelings of gratitude into a feeling of joy when you finally return home.
Compassion: This second skill is simply practicing caring and kindness to those around you, whether they be family, friends, coworkers, or complete strangers--we realize that during stressful times this can be truly difficult, but the more you practice when your life is fairly stress-free, the more you can call upon these skills during stressful situations. We recommend practicing by simply acknowledging others around you--treat the first 20-30 people you come across in a day with proactive kindness and caring, whether it be a caring action or even just a kind look.
Acceptance: This is the true mindfulness skill, and involves practicing intentional self-reflection about and self-acceptance of your thought patterns. Look inward and consciously identify your responses to various external events, situations, and stimuli, and recognize how they’re shaped by the familial, cultural, and moral lenses through which we view the world. When you identify lenses or thought patterns that are creating stress, prejudice, or restriction, work to instead see the world through the three most significant lenses: forgiveness, compassion, and gratitude.
Acknowledging a Higher Power: While many think of this skill in spiritual terms (acknowledging god or another deity that influences your life in this world), it need not be a religious action. Acknowledging a higher power is more broadly an admission to one’s self that we exist in a world we cannot fully comprehend or control--whether it be due to the forces of a god, nature, fate, the universe, or wherever we place our beliefs in what shapes the world around us. Accepting this allows us to relieve much of the stress we place on ourselves as individuals and start to see our position within a broader world.
Forgiveness: The world is not perfect, and neither is anybody who lives in it. While it’s unwise to repress legitimate grievances, unyielding rumination, grudge-holding, and resentment of past faults only serve to add to our stress and anxiety. Consciously and intentionally practicing forgiveness allows us to resolve past issues and move forward with building our family and our community.

A SMART mindset and mindfulness in general are often tools that can trip up otherwise intelligent, effective people--we all like to think of ourselves as rational, clear-headed, and self-aware, but we all have plenty of moments of mindlessness where we make automatic judgments, assumptions, and responses that may increase our stress and unhappiness. For more advice on managing stress within a business 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.

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The Hardest Holidays--Staying Together During COVID

12/3/2020

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The numbers don’t lie: it looks like COVID-19 is here for the holidays. We all hoped it wouldn’t last this long, but the unfortunate reality is that in order to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe this year, the holidays will probably look much different than usual. We likely won’t be able to have 20 people crowding the dining room for a special ham dinner, or have the full extended family gathered around the Christmas tree. And for business families, limited hours and even outright closures can mean that we don’t even get to see our families during the workday as much as we otherwise would.

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Hubler Institute Intensive Postgraduate Training Program in Family Business Coaching 2021

12/2/2020

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Legal, financial, business, and psychological advisors are all called upon to understand and help with the challenges facing a family moving through generations with a family business, or other forms of shared assets, family offices, trusts, family foundations, and other non-profit organizations. To succeed as a business and as a family, such families need special help to understand and work effectively. While each professional discipline works in its own way, an advisor must understand the broad nature of this complex family/business/financial enterprise, and work with some special challenges arising from the combination of family and business systems and the difference between a family and a business. Many advisors find they cannot be helpful, or that their suggestions fall flat to the consequences of family dynamics that undermine their work.

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Should I Pass My Business On To My Children?

10/1/2020

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There’s an undeniable emotional appeal to the idea of a multi-generational business. For many people, even just hearing the phrase “family business” implies parents, children, and even grandchildren working together, with younger generations taking over control of the business and continuing its success after the founders retire, die, or otherwise pass the torch. While this business setup can be beautiful and intensely meaningful, it can also be dangerous if assumed as a default and not given proper, intentional consideration.

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Finding Your Legacy

8/20/2020

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It’s been two years since we last wrote about the concept of defining and leaving your legacy. With so many independent and family run businesses undergoing significant changes, restructurings, or even closings during this economic crisis, it seems important to revisit this idea, which is one of the most vital and personal lessons all entrepreneurs must learn as they age and begin thinking about retirement. Coming to terms with your life as you’ve lived it and how it relates to your identity, your business, your personal values, and even your personal belongings is no small feat, and it’s impossible to even begin quantifying how many people have retired and even passed on without feeling comfortable with the legacy they left behind. Fortunately for entrepreneurs and those who run family businesses, Tom Hubler has put together his own model for how to map out the legacy you want to share with your family and with the world.

Hubler’s Legacy Model™:

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):

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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Intellectual Property: A Succession-Planning Minefield

6/25/2020

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We’ve covered at-length the difficulties that come with succession planning: how to navigate retirement, how to responsibly pick and support new ownership, how business families can create succession plans that feel fair and just to the entire family, and much more. But as hard as all that is, intellectual property issues can often be the real wrench that brings succession planning to a grinding halt faster than anything else.

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George Floyd

6/3/2020

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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.

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How to Keep Your Family (Business) Healthy During Shelter-In-Place

4/29/2020

Hubler’s Legacy Model™:

The Last Challenge of Entrepreneurship

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