Family Business

The following is an excerpt from a recent Nation's Business magazine article. Nation's Business serves as a resource to the owners and top managers of small businesses by providing practical, how-to information about running and expanding a business. To subscribe to Nation's Business, call 1-800-210-8149.

FAMILY BUSINESS

If I Only Knew Then What I Know Now

By Sharon Nelton

When you're a family-business owner of a certain age, it's not unusual to look back and think about what a difference it would have made if you had only known then what you know now. Mistakes could have been avoided, relationships saved, surer paths followed. Maybe.

Curious about the thoughts of more-experienced business leaders, Nation's Business asked 10 family-business owners and former owners around the country what they wish they had known 25 years or so ago that they know now.

Here are the lessons they wish they had learned earlier in life:

• Separate your business life from your personal life.
• Professionalize your business as it grows.
• Make communication the key.
• Have the right advisers.
• Get outside experience.
• Understand the business side of your business.
• Learn all you can about family-business dynamics.
• Take time to smell the roses.

If you ask family-business owners what they wish they had known when they were younger, don't expect them to agree with one another. For example, one business owner takes enormous pride in having treated his sons in the business equally, down to the square footage of their offices.

But another says it was his father's decision to leave the business to his two sons 50-50 that led to the decline of the business and the deterioration of the sons' relationship. In some instances, there seem to be lessons hidden behind the lessons actually expressed. Behind the lesson about the 50-50 inheritance, for example, lies the message that as family-business leaders make major decisions---such as who will inherit what someday---they need to use their imagination to see what the consequences of their decisions will be in the next generation and beyond.

The inclination to look back and say "what if?" runs deep in the heart of any thoughtful business owner. But if you're still young and you're smart, you can listen to what the older family-business leaders around you have to say and benefit from their experience.

Nation's Business covers hot topics every month. Below are a few selections from the September 1996 issue:

• Capital Ideas for Financing (Cover story)
• Improving Worker Performance (Managing)
• Small Business Financial Adviser (Finance)
• When a Customer Goes Bankrupt (Managing)
• Steering Through a Crisis (Managing)
• Health Coverage Overseas (Travel/Insurance)
• The Latest Tools for the Job (Technology)
• Selling by the Book (Marketing)

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