Reacting to Family Business Horror Stories

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/7c06a2cdecde8815

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I know firsthand how incredibly rewarding
it can be to run a family business. And some of the strongest companies in America are built by families
Working together.
But when family business goes bad
It usually gets really ugly.
We've spent decades coaching business owners through this.
I've seen siblings stop speaking.
Parents and kids end up in lawsuits and companies worth millions implode because no one was willing to have the hard conversations.
So today Entree Leadership's head coach John Falcons is reacting to real
Family business horror stories to show you
How to keep these mistakes from happening in your own business.
If you think your family's dysfunctional
Why do you hear these stories?
Let's get to it.
Well, if you're looking for
Family business horror stories look no further than Reddit because
It is full of them, and I've got one here to read for you.
It starts
My father is a highly successful бізнесмен.
After college.
He invited me into the fold asking me to get into the business with him.
This was the first time I noticed a fundamental difference between
How my father and I кондути бізнес.
My father and I now regularly fight about operations and money.
Some conversations have become
Very heated.

Always
undermines me.
Sometimes publicly.
Resulting in our employees no longer taking me seriously.
Additionally, he does not want to compensate me appropriately for the work I'm undertaking.
It's simply a giant.
Exhausting
Power struggle.
My father has threatened to kick me out of the fold on more than one occasion.
I feel our relationship deteriorating.
A beer that
There may be a breaking point in the future that
We couldn't come back from
My father has always told me growing up that he hates having business partners.
And now
I see why.
Hmm.
is an absolute
Nightmare.
To work with.
Wow.
There is a lot in here.
First of all, let me just say this.
Your relationship with your father
is more important than you working in the business.
So if you need to walk away right now to
Save that relationship, do it.
It's not worth it.
Now if you wanna figure it out.
I've got some ideas that you should consider.
But don't
Trash your relationship with your dad
Just so that you can work together.
You'll look back and regret that if you do.
Secondly.
It doesn't really feel to me like your roles are clear. Like who's supposed to do what in the business.
If it's a power struggle all the time.
That's probably because
You haven't gotten clear
about the roles
What's he supposed to do?
And what are you supposed to do? That will each give you a lane to run in.
Now
If you do that
And he keeps diving into your lane reactively.
You need to talk about that.
But you need to get ahead of this. You need to stop just reacting to it all the time. And that clarity will do a lot for you.
You might have to push him a little bit on
Exactly w what you're allowed to do or what your area of responsibility is.
And if you can't get clear on that
I don't think there's a reason to continue.
There isn't a reason to continue the pain.
So make sure that you get clear.
And then you can't just have authority sometimes and then have it taken away.
That's something that you need to talk about separate from when you're actually in the problem.
And that probably brings something else up that we need to address.
None of this
is really about the business.
None of this is about
Uh your role or his role.
Or
Who gets to make which decisions?
That's what it is on the surface.
But what it's about is
Your dad has built this thing through blood, свет, тирс.
Ене пробли скарь а холод.
To start to let go of it.
So every time you do something, whether the decision is good or not.
That probably scares him.
Because
He gets these whispers of what it would be like.
If he wasn't there.
And he probably hasn't addressed that.
So my advice is
You've gotta address that.
Burst, that underlying issue.
Yeah, he needs a successor.
But
You've gotta be careful about getting the cart before the horse.
You've got to resolve the emotional issues that are really driving all of these reactions and and all of this behavior that's so counterproductive.
There's no easy way of doing that. If he's not ready to do it, he's not going to do it.
There is one question that I have seen over the years of coaching a whole lot of people in a whole lot of family businesses that has the best odds of helping him with this. It's not a magic wand, it's not a silver bullet.
But it works more often than anything else.
And that is to ask your dad the question.
Dad.
Twenty years.
Thirty years.
Fifty years from now.
Вот дознес.
And then just sit back and let him talk.
What you're doing is you're eliciting
A visual image of the business far in the future.
And that can take the emotion out of it.
That's what you need to do in all of these conversations.
Yes, I understand that you're trying to work with him and he does have to hand the business off, a successor, like I said.
But if he's not emotionally ready to do that
It doesn't matter what you do, it's going to be wrong.
So start there.
Get clear on what he really wants to do.
And then tackle these issues one at a time after that.
I hope it works out.
And I think you can probably do a good job, but you both need to decide
What you wanna do.
Before you try to execute
on how you're going to do it.
Okay, let's get on to the next one.
Here it is.
I have been working for a family business that my dad started back in nineteen ninety five.
I've been working here since twenty fiftin.
I also have two brothers that are working here as well.
We have twenty employees and typically gross around
Three million dollars per year.
Good job.
My issue I'm having is that my two brothers have zero motivation.
Or care when it comes
To the business.
Aka
They're doofuses.
What I mean is
They do absolutely nothing.
Th
To be unclear is to be unkind. That's pretty clear. They do nothing.
They are the last ones to show up.
And the first ones to leave every day. They sound like a stellar pair.
They stay on their phones all day long.
My dad stays so busy and involved with the business that he doesn't want to deal with them. I don't want to deal with them.
I've had multiple conversations with him to try and fix this problem.
But he refuses to get involved because he's so busy.
If something were to happen to my dad
And the business was left to me and my brothers
There would be major issues. News flash.
There's major issues now.
Mm.
I have an opportunity to go to work.
For another company that has potential for me to make two hundred thousand dollars or more.
But it's hard for me to leave the family business because I am the last chance the business has to survive.
Wow.
There's a lot here.
And I think
You need to have a heart to heart conversation with your father.
Because
You're right.
It's only going to get worse in the future.
It's bad now. What the picture you've painted now
Is bad.
I understand that you want to help the family business live on.
That's very noble of you.
And as uncomfortable as it's going to be.
You have to get your dad to pause just long enough.
To have a conversation with you.
And you know what?
It's okay if in some regard he doesn't want to have to deal with your brothers.
But he has to back you to deal with them.
You have to get on the same page at a minimum.
Somти has to be done.
So you've gotta sit down with your dad.
And I wouldn't want you to threaten him
That you're going to leave
But you need to be honest with him.
You can say to him, Dad, I have an opportunity to go make
Really good money some place else.
And that has its appeal.
But I don't wanna do that because you have poured so much into this.
But Dad
If we don't do something about this problem
If we
Don't do something about this problem.
The business isn't going to last after you're gone.
Me and Tweedledum and Tweedled are gonna blow up after you're gone.
Because it's not working now.
It's not gonna work then.
You have to get him to stop and have
That conversation.
What you have really is a a vacuum of leadership.
Mm.
If if you lack leadership today
Now, I'm not saying you necessarily say this to your dad. I'm saying this is what's going on, right? You have a lack of leadership. He's not stepping up.
I don't even think it's because he's too busy.
He's avoiding a hard conversation with his sons. That's what's going on. And he's using busyness to hide from it.
So you've gotta get him to stop.
But his
Unwillingness.
To lead right now.
Will in fact be the crisis of tomorrow. And you've got to tell him you've got to step up and lead.
Doesn't matter that he's your dad.
And and you know, he founded the company. I mean it does matter because you need to be respectful.
But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter because
You've gotta prioritize what's good for the business and what's good for your family, too.
So you have to lead.
When your dad isn't willing to do so.
So get him to slow down and have this conversation.
Being family doesn't exempt you from being accountable.
Your brothers have got to do something to earn a paycheck.
Ask your dad, hey
If somebody that wasn't family did what they did, would you want to pay them? I'm pretty sure the answer is no.
You don't have to make your first step running them off.
You don't have to make the first step just firing them.
What you need to do is get on the same page with your dad.
And then make the first action.
that you take is accountability and get aligned around what expectations are.
Giving family special treatment
Versus paying them what's fair.
Those two things create a lot of resentment. You understand? I'm saying just
Paying them because they're family.
When it's not fair.
That creates resentment not only for you
But for everybody in the company because
You're sanctioning incompetent.
You're sanctioning mediocrity. You're telling everybody on the team it's okay.
To be a doofus. It's okay to show up late, steal time when you're there, and then leave early. Is that the message that you want to communicate to the entire team? I don't think so. You said you built a three million dollar a year company. That's not what builds three million dollar a year companies.
Ex clear expectations, accountability.
Having goals and hitting them.
That's what builds a successful company, but your dad doesn't want
To address the issues with his sons.
I know that that's tough.
But that is what you've got to get him to do.
Okay, let's get to another one.
It reads
I'm the oldest son in our family business.
We run a successful construction company.
That my dad built
From nothing thirty five years ago.
I'm thirty two now.
And even though I've been working here since I was eighteen.
My dad still micromanages
Everything.
Isn't that fun?
Every decision needs his approval.
The worst part is he's starting to forget things.
And make costly mistakes.
But he won't admit it.
It's not just about the business anymore.
It's destroying our family dinners.
and holiday gatherings.
Honestly, at this point
I might even just step aside and let someone else.
Take over.
My dad is an old school Italian guy.
And love him.
And respect everything he's built.
But I'm at my breaking point.
I get that that's tough. You love your dad.
But it's putting you under a lot of strain to be working like this.
Here's the thing about micromanagement.
It's fear driven.
It's not a technique that anybody says, you know what?
How we are going to win in this business is I'm gonna micromanage everybody.
No.
What's going on is
Your dad is scared.
Your dad is scared.
That something won't work, that the business will fall apart.
That
There'll be hard times again.
And here's the thing.
He's been at this thirty five years.
He's been through a lot of scary times.
I don't even know him, and I know there's been weeks where he's thought
I don't know if I can make payroll.
I don't know if I know where the next job is coming. I don't know if we're going to make it.
So he's still white knuckling the business.
He doesn't want to let go.
Because all he's ever known is
If I hang on tight, if I keep everything underneath my thumb.
We'll survive.
And it does work to a certain extent.
The problem is
Your dad will leave the business one day.
We don't know how.
But he won't be there one day.
And if he doesn't teach everybody around him
Вот мэд-бізнес сунтє практи.
The things that made the business successful.
It won't stay successful after he's gone.
So again, one of my favorite questions to ask somebody in this scenario is
Hey Dad.
What do you want to be true of the business twenty years from now?
And here's the thing that I I need to remind you of.
Don't ask him this when you're in the middle of a fight.
Do this when things are
Chill.
Take him out to coffee one morning when
Something's not going on. When there isn't a fire.
And just sit down and have a
Casual
Friendly conversation with him.
It's probably gonna be the first.
Of a whole series of conversations that you have with your dad, you're probably not gonna see a lot of movement the very first time that you bring this up.
But what we're doing is is we're decoupling the emotion
With the plan.
He needs to think logically and rationally.
Not emotionally, not fear driven.
About what he wants to be true of the business.
Far in the future.
That's how you can help him lift his eyes up.
And look out into the future and start to talk about that.
And if he asks why you're asking
Just say to him.
Because I want to make sure we do those things.
I wanna make sure, Dad, that twenty, thirty, fifty years from now
This business.
Is still no
For what you want it to be known for.
This business is still known.
As the business that you built.
And has the values and the characters that you wired into it.
Over all these years.
Of the blood, sweat, and tears that you poured into it. You're honoring your father. You're honoring the effort that it took to build this business.
He's going to want to hear that. Not in the heat of battle when you've made a mistake or he thinks you've made a mistake. Don't bring this up then. It won't work.
Here's the truth.
If he's still having to do everything after thirty five years.
He doesn't own a business.
Hі owns a job.
And that's not sustainable.
He's got to build into the organization into the people.
The values
The decision making, the behaviors that will carry the business on. And that's what you're trying to get at.
Success isn't an event.
It's a process.
We'll get right back to our episode, but first, a lot of business owners I talk to have a vision.
What they don't have is capacity.
You're spending your days buried in
Hundreds of administrative tasks like email and scheduling and travel arrangements.
Those don't require your leadership.
You should be spending your time on things.
Only you can do.
That's why I recommend bele.
I've gotten to know the Belay team over the years and they understand leadership.
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When you're not tied up with a bunch of little tasks, what could you do?
If you've never thought about it, check out Belay's free resource called
15 big moves you can make this quarter if you had the capacity.
You can download it for free by texting entre55123.
That's E N T R E.
Two five five.
One, two, three.
Now let's get back to the episode.
Okay.
Let's get to the next one.
I own a company that employs my siblings and seasonal help.
As long as the work is accomplished.
They can have freedom to do what they want.
My brother loves the arrangement.
I bet he does.
He has worked with me for four years now.
But my sister resents me for it.
She has worked with me for two years.
She apparently told my dad the other day that I make her work.
All hours of the day.
Which
Simply is not true.
If she takes the morning off, then her work needs to be completed.
Later in the day.
That's all.
My dad exploded.
In anger at me the other day.
When he stopped by.
He wanted to know why I was
Hurting my sister's health.
He said it was my job to read between the lines.
And that my brother is probably overworked too.
I've been told by my parents
That I am
Never allowed to let either my brother
Or my sister go.
That's not gonna work out well.
Unless they want to leave by their own choice.
The arguments and the anger I am getting from my parents
is weighing on me.
Let me start out by saying this.
Your family business?
Will never be
Healthier
Than your family.
You have got to get
Clear
With the members of your family.
What expectations are
And then you have to decide if you want to be a part of that.
There's a little bit of crazy running around in this story.
And it's up to you to decide do I want to be a part of this.
Because the fact is
You probably not going to get your family to act differently than they have.
For so many years.
Maybe you can make things better by getting clear on expectations and getting clear on
You know, whose role is what and when people are working and all those kind of things.
And you should you should give it a shot.
But I'm just telling you.
Your family business will be no healthier.
Then your family is itself.
If you set up a system that allows people to be lazy
Then laziness is what you're going to get.
When you set up a system where your dad can just swoop in and change things.
That's what you're going to get.
If you can.
Set up a system where your sister can go run to daddy and complain about you as the leader without dealing with you?
What do you expect?
You can't let
Family members float in and out of the business.
And speak into the decision making.
That just
Won't
Work.
So again.
Get healthy as a family.
Or at least
Get as healthy as you can about how the family relates to the business.
But if you're losing hope that that can actually happen
Then maybe you need to look someplace else to work.
Okay, let's dive into the next one.
My father in law has owned a local business.
since naintin eighty five
About ten years ago, my sister in law.
And brother in law began working for him at the business.
And eventually.
Him them minority koнеers.
In the business.
Two years ago, he decided he wanted to start working towards retirement and decided to make all of his children.
Minority koers in this biznis.
I've paid taxes on profits that our family has never benefited from.
For several years now.
And I've told her I think
Her daddy
Used her and her sisters as a tax shelter for himself.
А в'єт то с лего паперворк.
Making her
A shareholder either.
Fast forward to today.
My father in law and mother in law are having marital issues.
And a separation is very possible.
My father in law starts acting fishy.
He starts showing up at the business he's mostly retired from.
And raiding the safe
And asking for financial information.
My іmediate thought is that he's looking at selling the business.
Or at the very least, figuring out how he can hide money in the business.
Or do something else shady to minimize the pain.
Of a divorce.
Whether by negligence or by malice, I believe my father in law is about to financially
Screw over his children.
Wow.
Well I can only take this story
At base value.
Just as you have written it.
But if it is like you have written it.
I'm gonna tell you right now.
You need to run for the hills.
You need to get out of this.
Because it's on fire and it isn't going any place good.
You're not gonna fix this.
It seems like your father in law is looking for a way to use this business.
In his divorce, it's just a wreck.
You need to ask your wife what she wants to do.
Does she want to continue to work there?
Or
To pull out of the business.
А все это біфо, ю фамилии бизнес.
Will be no healthier than your family.
And I'm sorry to say this
What you already know.
Your family's not healthy.
So you need to really get clear with your
Your wife.
I'd start there.
And decide what you want to do.
As a family, the two of you. And if you've got kids
Прою.
And your family.
Figure out what you want to do first.
You know, you might ask yourself a question.
Hey.
If we knew everything that we know about this business, about some other business, would we buy that other business?
Would we buy into that other business? I suspect that you wouldn't.
You'd look at that and you'd say
That's a hot mess.
I want no part of it.
The same applies for you.
So
Decide what you want for your business.
There's a whole lot that needs to happen in your father in law's business to fix it.
Systems need to be in place so there's no room to hide anything.
You need to get everything in writing.
Everything needs to be
Talked about in the open.
You need to get clear on everything.
Everybody needs to be on the same page.
But again.
If I take this story at base value.
I doubt you're gonna be able to pull that off. So the first thing I want you to do
Is decide
What you and your wife want to do.
For your family.
Well
After hearing those stories, you might be saying
You know what?
Maybe my family business situation
Isn't so bad after all.
The good news is
Most family business problems
are preventable.
They just take clear boundaries, define roles.
And the willingness to have the hard conversations before they become expensive conversations.
So
If you want to learn more, we've got an article covering the most common family business problems and how to solve them.
We'll leave a link for you down in the description.
Don't let these stories scare you away from running a family business.
Every family has problems, every business has problems.
But it comes down to whether you lead through the drama or let the drama lead you.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, share, and subscribe for more great leadership content.
I'm your host Dave Ramsey and this is Entree Leadership.