Ask Fred > Family > Family and business
Select a Category:
Dear Fred
I was wondering what advice you might have about working in a family business. My dad is moving towards retirement and has a small food brokerage business. I have worked for him twice in the past and left over disagreements about how to conduct business and how to treat employees. The same thing has happened to my brother (two times) as well. Their is currently no family working in the business as my brother and I have both moved on. I lost my job about a year ago and have been struggling in a straight commission job. I have put a proposal together to buy him out of the business...which is something I did not do previously(that is put the agreement in writing). We seem to have more mutual respect for each other than we have in the past. I want to get your input on how this sounds to an outsider. Am I being naive to think it can work or do you think people can change and that having this agreement in writing will make a difference?
Fred's Response
6. Unless both genuinely agree to the spirit of the contract it will probably be a continual argument. I suspect that you and your father lack genuine love and respect. When I owned a business I offered our son the presidency but he turned it down because he felt he had been better on his own rather then in a family situation. I was asked by a owner of a rather large business of what I thought about bringing his son into the business. I told him bringing him would not be the problem. How to get him out if it did not work out would be the problem. How much are you influence by your need for a job? What facts have changed since you last failed to make it in the business? Has your father changed or have you changed enough to make it work? I don’t think the contract would change the fact but simply become the basis for a possible bitter argument possibly involving lawyers. Then you and your father would be adversaries rather then family.
