Running a Successful Family Business
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Running a Successful Family Business
Over 80 percent of all businesses are family businesses. If you own or work in a family business, you’ll want to hear local business consultants and authors Janis Raye and Neil Raphel of Raphel Marketing discuss their brand new book, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to a Successful Family Business.” The authors are part of a family business themselves. Raphel Marketing was started by Neil and his father, Murray Raphel, over 20 years ago. Murray and his wife Ruth are still involved with the business in New Jersey, while Neil and Janis,who are husband and wife, lead the firm here in Vermont.
Neil Raphel, co-authorFamily businesses can be a small as the mom-and pop grocery store down the street, but some of the world’s largest businesses are family businesses, including the behemoth Wal-Mart, as well as Ford Motor Company and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. No matter their size, family businesses have much in common.
“Family businesses have a number of issues that non-family businesses never encounter,” says Raphel. “The chief issue for most family businesses is succession – who in the next generation will take over the business when each generation is ready to retire.”
Raphel and Raye note that the most successful family businesses often
Janis Raye, Co-authortry to operate without regard to the family relationships. “When a business is compelled to take in an 
unproductive family member, the business will suffer,” says Raye. “The best-run family businesses use the same hiring standards for everyone, no matter what their position is in or out of the family.”
But being a family business can have some distinct advantages for the business. For example, Raphel notes that there can be a shared value system among family members that drives forward the purpose of the company. A family business, particularly one that maintains a majority ownership of the business, can operate the company based on long-term business goals instead of requiring short-term profits. And customers often prefer to do business with a family as opposed to a more impersonal corporation. “Vermont has more than its share of family businesses,” says Raye. “It’s seen as a positive by many people here.”
Raphel and Raye’s new book will help anyone with a family business operate the company more smoothly and more profitably. Besides the advice offered throughout the book, it also includes an appendix of resources for family businesses and a number of anecdotes about family businesses across the U.S. that illustrate the concepts in the book.
