As you know we love running what has become a successful family business. We wanted to share some tips with you that we have learned along the way. If you are interested in starting a new family business you may have noticed that there are a lot of considerations that you need to think about. However, you may be thinking which aspects of starting a business are more important than the others and which ones should you spend more time on then the rest? You can only complete so many things in a day.
First things first, it is beneficial for any family business to have a nice functional website that gets the business’s point across quickly and easily without the end user having to work to figure it out. For anyone that is looking to start a new family business I always recommend starting here and spending most of your time to get this set up and working. Your website will represent your brand and often be the first impression since it will help you figure out exactly what your business is, what it will be, and what you want it to be in the short term and long term. Once you have succeeded in making a good, well organized, and optimized website, you will then need to start shifting gears and focusing on setting up some contracts for your customers.
Once you start focusing on contracts, I always recommend investing some time and resources into making a “good” contract. Now, what do I mean by good? By good I am referring to a contract that will attract new customers over time and leave them wanting more so that they keep coming back. It will also clearly define the roles of your business to establish expectations for the customers in a clear-cut fashion. It will also help to resolve future issues such as customers not paying for invoices. If you are having issues with this process I usually recommend asking for assistance from a commercial collection agency like The Collection Law Group that has experience in writing these agreements because as they say, good fences make good neighbors.
Now that you have created both a working website, figured out a game plan, and set up a contract you are ready to get started. It is now time to figure out how you plan to divide your well-earned and precious time between starting your new business and your family. As you may have noticed so far, starting a family business isn’t a walk in the park but if done right it can be a great and profitable learning experience if you divide your time correctly. When deciding to start a new business, it is always a good idea to remember that this will be a full-time job, not a part time job. If you’re only willing to do this part time then odds are you probably won’t make it very far. However if you and your family work together and all put in the same amount of time you will be unstoppable!