My family and I spent a few weeks over the Christmas break holidaying in the USA. We spent our last four days in Southern California right at the time of the horrific mudslides that, at the time of writing, had claimed 18 lives in and around the central coast city of Santa Barbara.

Whilst we were some 200km south of the devastation, we nonetheless experienced an emergency warning text message on the Tuesday afternoon to alert us to the fact that the weather was deteriorating and there was a potential danger.

I was driving into the Sydney CBD a few weeks back on the M5. As per usual, the somewhat smooth flow of progress came to a grinding halt at the King Georges Road on-ramp. From there, all the way through the M5 East tunnel, along Southern Cross Drive and into the Eastern Distributor, it was a painful crawl.

I was doing this once. I’m sure there were people around me that do it every day. They don’t think about alternate routes, alternate times to travel or different modes of transport. I’m certain that there were people in that conga line of traffic that don’t stop and ask themselves why they’re doing it.

Happy New Year! May 2018 bring you great opportunity, good health, an invigorated sense of purpose and more time with your family.

The beauty that I have in working with family businesses, across all industries, is that I have the ability to see what works, what doesn’t and why. What many owners and managers of family businesses can’t see, I hold up the mirror and let people know what things look like from the outside. That is a unique perspective as I then have the opportunity to go inside and help people introduce change that sometimes they never thought was possible – and for others, never realised was necessary.

Welcome to the 100th issue of Growth. It has been almost two years of putting together a weekly newsletter on family business and I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

I’m asked by many people why l like to work with family business. Here are my reasons:

In last week’s edition of Growth, I relayed to you the poor attitude of big business in response to my phone and internet woes.

This week, let me tell you about a great family business that I’m proud to be associated with and that helped us get back on our feet.

Let me share with you what has been happening with my own business this past four weeks and why I truly believe big business really doesn’t give a damn about their customers.

When we set up our business to work from home, we set up a business internet service with a separate provider to our home internet service. It was to ensure we had the right amount of internet oomph coming in when we needed it. It was also a good insurance policy in the event of something going pear shaped down the track with the provider.

I’ve worked with family businesses for 30 years now and I’m always amazed at how one person’s opportunity is another person’s disaster – or tragedy – or monotony. Let me explain.

How often have you assumed something in a business relationship that later proved to be a wrong call?

I’ve been working intensively with one of my great family business clients of late and we recently came across a fascinating example of how assuming their client had all they needed has cost this family business a considerable amount of money.

Almost every family business I’ve worked with has more than one member of the family working inside of it. Sons working with their fathers. Husbands and wives working alongside each other. Sons and daughters in law working with their spouse’s parents, daily. They are wonderful dynamics to observe and I never tire of helping each of them figure out what works in their business, so that it can help their families.

Let’s be blunt. The current Federal Government in Australia, right now, are a massive disappointment. For a party that was swept into power in 2013 with such a significant majority, and for a newly minted Prime Minister to offer so much in 2015 when he took the top job, so much more was expected than we have ever received.