Most family businesses that continue to operate within the family past the first generation do so by accident rather than intent. It just happens without much thought or consideration. And it’s their accidental nature that eventually catches up with them and leads to their failure.
Active Knowledge Question:
Do you ever give much thought to what would allow your business to prosper beyond your time?
When you are trying to create, grow and sustain a business, your hands are full, and you are working and thinking 24/7/365. Add into that a growing family and now the fun begins. You are now balancing competing demands from within and without the business and the family. Your head is down, and you are trying to keep everything together and moving forward successfully. Where you draw the lines between business, family and self is an individual choice which will likely vary over your lifetime.
Little thought if any is given to family business succession and what could happen in a couple of generations. That won’t begin until you think about what to do with your business and yourself as you head towards ‘retirement’. And sometimes it never happens.
But you can begin to seed the opportunities from the day you conceive your business which will prove invaluable as the business and family grows without having to even consider family business succession. Moreover, when the time comes for you to make decisions regarding the future of your business, the options will be wider and richer simply because you acted strategically and thoughtfully when it all first started.
Here are three actions that you should (must) take if you are serious about the success of your business:
- Build the capital value of your business, and by this, I don’t mean profit, which is an outcome but the enduring drivers of that profit.
- Don’t hide the business and all its challenges from the family. Share the wins and losses with them and let them be a part of this life as well.
- Seed an entrepreneurial passion in both your business and your family from the moment each is formed.
I will expand on each of these actions over the next few weeks but make these foundations and your business, and life, will never be the same and the future will be so much richer for your generation and future generations.
An entirely new level of performance.
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All the best in the success of your business,
Richard Shrapnel
