Here's to family

This week we have been studying starting or being a part of a family business.  There are many successful family businesses but only one in three family businesses survives past to the next generation according to Startup Nation.  That is a rather sad statistic but you can see how true it is by just looking around you.  Many times there is not a child who wants to take over the business his parent started and so the business has to be sold.  There can also be a lot of discord in a family business that can lead to the business being sold or dissolved.  That is sad to see.  A family business can be a great thing with deep roots and people who want the company to succeed.  There are many things you can do to keep a good balance when starting a family business.  They are from Startup Nation.

1.  Set some boundaries
2.  Establish clear and regular methods of communication
3.  Divide roles and responsibilities
4.  Treat it like a business
5.  Recognize the advantages of family ownership
6.  Treat family members fairly
7.  Put business relationships in writing
8.  Don't provide "sympathy" jobs for family members
9.  Draw clear management lines
10. Seek outside advice
11. Develop a succession plan
12. Require outside experience first

As a business owner who sometimes gets tired of listening to her husband complain about her son who works in the business I think these are great ideas and I have shown them to Jerry and I am going to work on implementing many of them.  We have hired family members before and they have worked well for us.  Greg, my son, works hard for the business but he there are many of these areas that need to be improved so that the business can function better and everyone can be happier.  While Greg was in China Jerry realized that there were many things he had turned over to Greg that he should still do himself.  This has helped the business.  We use to have weekly meetings and we are going to start that again and work on setting boundaries and making sure each person knows what their job is.  I think these ideas are good and will help our company run better.

I think family owned business are good and that they can have sound family values and be good for our country.  I know that there has been a couple of times that my son has gone down to work on Sunday and I have always told him that our values are not to work on Sunday and that he can wait or go in on Saturday.  I think if a family works to keep communications lines open and to treat everyone fairly then they can work well.  

Action Hero:  Erick Slaubaugh

Erick Slaubaugh’s father asked him if he was planning to go back to college and he said yes.  His father said that they would sell the house so that he could attend school.  Slaubaugh’s father had lost a major client in his business and there was not enough money for him to go to college.  At nineteen he joined the family business and worked his way up to CEO of ABSCO alarms.  He said that at first it was hard because he knew his friends were making more than him and had reasonable paychecks and that they were having fun on the weekends.  But he worked hard and bought out a major client of twenty-five percent of the business.  He then worked hard and bought out more equity over a number of years.  Slaubaugh said that when it was time for his father to stop coming to work because of health problems that it was very difficult for him but he said that if you use your values you will be able to make tough decisions. 

Slaubaugh said that he thinks anybody can start their own business but that you need to have a lot of courage to do it.  He said that he wished he would have asked more questions and talked to more people when he was younger.  He said that now at forty-one he has many mentors that he asks for advice and mentorship.

$100. Challenge

Nathan and I went over and cleaned the office again on Thursday.  We cleaned the bathroom, dusted, vacuumed, wiped the outside of the door, swept the front, cleaned the brake room and got the hard water spots out of the bottom of the sink. The water in the break room sprays out towards you but the business owner has not asked the owner of the building to fix it yet.  I will probably go and fix it for Nathan so he doesn't get sprayed in the future.  

I sold the business to Nathan for $10.00 and he is not going to be responsible to keep it clean.  Nathan can- not stand being alone in places so I will probably go along with him so he will not be there alone while he cleans.  The business owner has had problems with some of the neighbors over there.  

Franchising

This has been a busy week.  We have learning about buying a franchise.  There are many franchises out there for you to choose from and each offers something different and each has different fees and requirements.  The nice thing about owning a franchise is the opportunity to have to have a well-known name or trademark for your business.  This helps you get customers faster and takes some of the risk out of starting a business.  Franchises offer you training, site selection, product supply, marketing plans and even assistance in obtaining financing.  

I was quite surprised to find a couple of franchises that I wouldn’t mind looking at.  One was helping the elderly and the other was caring for children.  These would be businesses that I would be somewhat familiar with and have some experience in.  If I decided to start a franchise I would need a good lawyer to look over the contracts and give me advice.  

This week I also learned how important it is to work for your business not just in your business.  If we get caught up in the day to day operations and don’t stop and strategize and put good processes and strategies into place we will never be able to grow our business and we will get tired of it and leave it to our employees to run.  It is important to find a balance in our business just as we work to find a balance in the rest of our life.  I was looking at articles on line and there was one titled, “How To Run Your Home Like a Business”.  I didn’t have time to read it but I find so many times that what I learn in class can be used in my home.  Because of the lessons I learn in class my husband is getting interested and excited in trying new things in our business and finding new opportunities. 

This week at Kl33n we worked to do the upkeep on what we have already done and also we did some outside work to clean the front of the door and sweep so that as you came to the business it looked cleaner and tidier.  The business is staying clean and the employees and others are commenting on how nice it looks.  We try each week to clean something that we have not cleaned and to make a list of what needs to be done and when it needs to be done so that it will be easier when Nathan takes it over.  I have been trying to talk my son into hiring his brother to help but he is determined to do it on his own.  He may have to hire me on occasion.  I am not sure how he will get the bathroom clean.  It will be interesting.  I have tried to show him how to do things so he can do it on his own.  I even go a hard water ring out of the sink this week with a pumice stone.  I know it is not much but I felt I had accomplished something.  

Action Hero for this week: Nicole Donnelly

Nicole Donnelly lived life on the edge for quite some time.  She spent seven years snowboarding and pretty much nothing else.  There were times when she would sleep in her car.  After her baby was born she found that the homemade leg warmers that she used on her baby helped her baby’s diaper rash go away and they were stylish too.  Now they have become a diaper bag essential and are sold in fifty countries worldwide. 

Donnelly says that you need to embrace you fear and be committed.  She said that if you are doing a snowboarding trick you can’t stop in the middle and say you are quitting because you can be hurt. You need to commit to what you are doing and not stop half way into the project.  Donnelly said it was hard for her to be a good team player and leader and she has had to work at it so that she can keep everyone together and happy.  It is also important to learn how to work with others so that you can get the desired outcome. 

Donnelly said it is also important to give back to others and has donated thousands to children’s hospitals to help others have a better life. 

 

The Process of a Lifetime

This week was interesting.  We learned about Roxanne Quimby who started Burt's Bees a company that makes lip gloss and other products using beeswax.  Roxanne Quimby is an interesting person.  She ran Burt's Bees by bootstrapping and using the money they made to invest more in the business.  They started out very small in Maine and as their company grew they would employ women who needed jobs.  No one at the company knew how to use a forklift and so they had to work harder to carry items and do things that needed to be done.  Quimby knew that is she wanted the business to grow it would need to be moved and so she took the business and and moved to North Carolina where it thrived.  Quimby never believed in going into debt because she wanted to be able to leave the company at a moment's notice if it did not work out.

We learned about the importance of looking at the processes of our company and seeing which ones need improvement and then working to improve it.  We need to constantly be checking the processes we use to see if they are wasting time, money or resources.  We need to see if our processes need to be easier.  If we find many processes that need improvement we can make a process selection matrix.  You put the processes down the left and then judge them on different criteria to see which one should be started first.  Having good processes can help your bottom line and increase your income.

This week in Cl333n we worked again on cleaning the office of the client we have.  It has been easier to clean and taken so much time since the initial cleaning.  We are doing better at doing the jobs we have decided to take on and so it is becoming faster to do them and having good results.  This week we will clean the windows and sweep up outside.  Many of the cleaning products we are using are still full since it usually does not take a lot of product to clean well.  The office is looking good and people visiting the business are noticing the improvement. 

CATHERINE ROHR:

Catherine Rohr was a Wall-Street financial mogul who like many had a hard heart towards criminals.  After a friend told her that she did volunteer work at the prison and Rohr visited the prison she realized that the people there were not criminals but human beings behind bars.  She realized what potential the prisoners had and founded the Prison Entrepreneurship Program. Most of her family and friends told her that she was foolish and that she should abandon the idea but she persevered.  She said, “If I could make it through that time of opposition, I’d be onto something really good”.  Rohr never doubted that she was doing the right thing and even after they closed her program down for a time she never gave up hope.  Rohr had guest speakers come and talk to her classes and she says that it is important to seek out the best people and involve them in the strategic decision making and in seeking counsel.  I admire Rohr and what she is doing.  It can’t be easy to take such a path and it is great that she is committed to helping others.

COREY BELL:

Corey Bell has had an interesting life.  At age 29 after losing both of his parents, he and his wife took on the responsibility to raise Bell’s nine younger siblings.  At the time he had worked for a variety of companies and then he sat down and wrote down where he wanted his life to go.  He decided that he could not get there on the course he was presently on and so he decided it was time to change and he started TriFusion.  Corey Bell says that his business is like “pimping your ride” in the IT world.  He goes in and sees what his customers challenges are and then he works to make them better.  Bell feels that it is important to touch people’s lives and he is inspired by people he meets along the way.  Bell says that his employees are people of character, passion and intelligence.  He says that he works hard to make an impact.  I especially liked his quote “Everything is possible if you want it”.  Bell has four TriFusion companies in the United States and is thinking about going global.  Bell enjoys working for himself and giving to others.  He seems to embody his values of having character, passion and intelligence.  

Taking the First Step

This week we learned about how to hire individuals that would work well in your business.  We learned how to conduct an interview and how to look at a resume.  We learned that we should be strive to find good employees but if they did not work out we should not keep them on but fire them quickly. 

In the interview with Matt Stewart he said that he had started many businesses but that whenever he tried to make money at a business it failed but if he tried to stick to the focus of the business and not loose track of what he was doing he always made money.  It is basically the same thing with Jet Blue.  David Neeleman decided he wanted to start an airline that was for the customer.  He put technology to work on his planes and he put the customer first.  Neeleman believes that people should be able to fly for a great price and if Neeleman needed more money he didn't raise the price of a ticket, he offered more flights.  Both of these men found ways to serve their customers by finding good individuals to work for them.

In the E-Myth Revisited, Gerber outlines ways to have good processes and systems in a business.  These processes should be considered for all business, even if you only have one employee, yourself.  As my son and I were working this week I decided that it would be good for us to sit down and decide the process of work that we were doing.  Who is going to vacuum, clean the bathroom, dust, empty the trash cans, etc.  We need to make sure we know who is doing each job and what process they need to go through to accomplish the job and do it well. 

Cleaning supplies are quite pricey if you want good quality but they do last a long time.  I had to donate some of my cleaning tools and supplies to accomplish everything that needs to be done.  The few cleaning materials we purchased were from a local supply company that has good products that work well.  The first time we cleaned the office we have now we asked for a larger fee because the office had not been cleaned for quite a while and it would take longer than normal.  After the initial cleaning the maintenance cleaning price will be smaller.  There are also jobs that need to be done as the weather gets warmer, like cleaning the windows and sweeping the front stoop.

Henry Stein said that part of a great organization is one that helps you feel good about yourself, makes you feel you can do more than you thought you could and makes you feel you are living a fulfilled life.  That is what I hope to find in a business that I work for or start.  It is also something I hope to teach my son as I work with him to help him get started.

MATT STEWART: 

Matt Stewart was on his way to becoming a lawyer when the company he worked for went out of business and he could not make money.  He and his friends decided to open up a painting company like the one they had worked for.  He now owns National Service Group which provides recent college graduates with tools and capital to run their own local painting business.  He feels it is important to train entrepreneurs to have a good core value system so that they can run successful companies.  He said that he had started thirteen companies and fifty two corporations in six different industries and the ones he made money at where not the ones where he tried to make money but the ones where he focused on the mission of the business.  When he focused on anything but the profit, the company would make money.  He said that we should not lose our focus and we should stick to it and find new ways to do what you or doing or ways to improve the business.  He said that you should focus on your core competency and leverage who you are and drive personal values into your employees. 

HENRY STEIN:

Henry Stein started his career in the Marines.  He said that the Marines made him a better person than he could have been alone. Stein has worked to turn companies around for H. Ross Perot and he has worked at restructuring, acquiring and growing firms from New Orleans to China.  Stein said that being a part of a great organization that helps you feel good about yourself, makes you feel you can do things you never thought possible and helps you feel you are living a very fulfilled life is a great thing.  He said it is important to find people who want to be good or great and hire them.  Find people who want to be measured, who feel work is like a sport and each day they want to improve and be better than the day before. They also like to try new things and learn new things.  Stein also said that if you find a person like this then you should hire them and treat them well.