The 'Ole Family Business: Opportunity or Feud-starter?

Discussing family businesses was great for me this week. My parents own their own business and I worked for them for a couple of years. I also managed a restaurant which was family owned which showed me a different side of the family-owned business equation. From the experiences I have had and from the readings this week, I have learned that having a family owned business is great and provides a lot of awesome opportunities to the entrepreneur as well as his or her family members.

Along with these benefits of having a family business comes the increased challenges of combining family members and business operations. I really appreciated the insight that StartupNation brought this week and their 12 Steps to Family Business Success. In the end though, what became apparent to me is that most people probably see family businesses as more difficult to run because they are harder to run like a business. Whether its family owned or not, it's still a business and needs to be run like one. The challenge comes from having to fire your cousin or reduce your mother's pay.

This week I'm walking away with a new appreciation for family business. Honestly, I was one of those people that said I would never hire a family member; it complicates things too much. From the assignments I have gained the tools and knowledge to better prepare to own a family business if the opportunity presents itself. At least now I won't run from it.

As for the $100 challenge, it all rests on a phone call this evening. We had a call scheduled for Thursday night but it got bumped back to tonight because my contact was caught in meetings. I am learning some very important lessons from this experience, namely no matter how great you think your idea is it can be hard to sell, at least initially. If I really were relying on this income to support my family I would be completely stressed. But on the other hand, if I was relying on this as my income I would be doing it full-time which I currently can't do so I would have been able to dedicate a lot more time to customer acquisition. But no matter what, I certainly have felt at least a tiny portion of the stress that comes from being personally responsible for the success of a company.