"You're not the Boss of Me" is the title of our next Marigold Forum on December 17th. I know this topic well, having been raised, both personally and professionally, in family run operations.First I worked for my dad's business, temporary executive housing. That means he owned upscale furnished townhouses which he rented to the Big 3 auto companies for their European and German designers and engineers brought to Detroit for 6-12 month assignments. It also meant that I was shoveling snow, cleaning bathrooms, doing laundry and posting the company checkbook by the time I was 13.
In my spare time, I worked for my mom's first business, a tour company, filing travel brochures. Occasionally, I was working for my grandmother's importing business affixing mailing labels on direct mail pieces and helping her with inventory of place mats and women's' slippers from the Philippines.
The first "real job" was at 14 working for a Greek family's Coney Island restaurant. Then for a married hippie couple at their vintage clothing store.
So I suppose it was no big leap for me to team up with my mom and launch a full-service travel agency right after high school. I was to be a sweat equity partner, poised to inherit the business when my mom retired. Essentially, what this meant is that I worked 70+ hour weeks for a whopping $12,000 a year. I also got to manage a staff of 8 travel professionals, many of them old enough to be my mother, who universally resented my position and I'm quite certain assumed I was making a ridiculously large salary. I was not very popular in the employee break room.
This is so common in family-owned businesses. The kids actually get a pretty raw deal (upon retirement, mom & dad inevitably find that they need the money from the business and offer the kids first right of refusal to the purchase but the sweat equity just disappears) , the non-family employees feel unappreciated, and spouses end up without a "safe place to hide from work".
Big sigh. I bailed on the biz. I'm sure that others have figured out a way to make it work and I can't wait to hear the ideas flow at our Forum. I hope you will share your experiences, help out newbies to family businesses or gain some support from those who know your pain!
As frosting on the cake... how about having friends work for you!!!! Don't get me started.
For more information on this event, Click Here.
1 comment:
I can't wait to hear your story on having friends work for you. My worst managerial experience was when my boss assigned a women with whom I was friendly to be my subordinate. It was a disaster. I would never hire a friend -- heck I don't even ask friends to help me out on projects, I was so put off by this experience.
And yes, there are many reasons most family businesses don't survive the first generation of ownership. It's not necessarily what it looks like from the outside.
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