Growing a Family Business

Estee Lauder, BMW, and Ford Motor Company are all examples of wildly successful family businesses. How did they do it? Did they ever have an awkward Thanksgiving, or were they able to keep good business/family boundaries?

Fifty percent of our team at The Cape House Properties are blood relatives, and much of the time, those folks are working in the same office, which happens to be in my house. There are pros and cons to this: Pro: We know each other really well. Con: We know each other really well.

Nobody wants to see you succeed more than your family, and nobody is more loyal. That is probably why 5.5 million small businesses, which account for 57% of America’s gross domestic product (GDP) and 63% of our workforce, are family businesses. 

There are also challenges to running a family business. Sometimes familiarity can breed contempt. Feedback and conversations about compensation can be awkward, not to mention hiring and firing. If you don’t do it right, you can permanently damage both the business and the relationships. 

At The Cape House, we have the added challenge of sharing the same office space, which happens to be in my home. Does that make my kitchen the break room? Do we have to sit in front of desks all day, or can we move at will with our laptops to the living room or the backyard? At what point in the day do we switch from being coworkers to being family?

These are all important questions to answer and take some intestinal fortitude to deal with, but if the Lauders, the Quandt's (BMW), and the Fords could figure it out, I think the Clancys can too.