For the most part, technology has been a great boon to our lives. It has increased our ability to obtain information, driven improvements in productivity and created advances in business processes beyond anything imaginable in a lot of family businesses.

I love the dynamic of working with family business. Mums and Dads, Sons and Daughters, Cousins, Aunties and Uncles. It’s a different environment where familiarity can sometimes lead to things occurring that you may not otherwise expect.

In July 1995, I attended a four day business development course at The Fairmont Resort at Leura in the Blue Mountains that I can honestly say changed my life. It moved me immediately away from being someone who reported the numbers, in arrears, to being someone who wanted to work with family business owners to create the numbers.

If you default to Seek when you are searching for staff in your family business, you’ve not doubt noticed the serious deterioration in the quality of candidates responding to your advertisement in the past 12 months. Today, I’m challenging you to stop heading for Seek and instead, seek other means of finding staff to solve your labour issues.

Welcome to 2019 and what promises to be an exciting year in family business.

By Friday afternoon this week, I’d guess that most of Australia will be shutting down. For a lot of family businesses, there is little use heading in on Monday the 24th, unless of course your business is providing an essential service.

In my 30 years of working with family businesses, my experience is that most owners and managers care a lot for their staff. There are very few Scrooges that I’ve come across in my career, and very few tyrants. Quite often it’s the opposite. 

One of the most fascinating observations I make in my work with family businesses is the dynamic that is at play between husbands and wives inside those businesses.

In last week’s edition 147 of Growth (It’s Only $1.50), I referenced the financial impact in a family business of undercharging in error – not only from a lost profit perspective, but also from the viewpoint of the impact on business valuation.

I have a client on Sydney’s Northern Beaches that I visit quite regularly. My routine is to hop in the car early to beat the traffic, then stop off at this fabulous patisserie on the lower North Shore, three quarters of the way through my journey. My wife doesn’t know (well, she does now!), however, they do the best small quiche lorraine for breakfast that is magic.