Entitlement as the enemy of business families

Listen to Harry Martin, a Family Business Advisor and Family Office Expert, share his views about entitlement as one of the main enemies of the survival of family businesses. For long-term success of a family business, it is essential to treat family members similar to non-family employees.

The two main enemies of the survival of family businesses are the controlling patriarch and entitlement. Those two factors are working against, and that is why the percentages are so small. Only ten or twelve percent get to the third generation. Only one or two get to the fifth or sixth. My one piece of advice would be treat family members coming into the business like you would treat other employees. Be sure they have to live to the same standards of work and performance. If everybody building a business out there who is going to be successful realizes that he or she or that family should spend more time on being good parents, helping kids learn to work, to do what they are supposed to do in school, to be fair to their fellow kids, to achieve something, then we will have families creating wealth whose children have the right values. Because, otherwise, if you get a child in their late twenties or thirties, or forties and try to teach them this stuff, it is too late. So it all goes back to parenting. If we can communicate with people building businesses or in second generations about the fact that it is really more important to help your children be solid, decent, responsible people, because, otherwise, you will not live forever, and what is going to happen to the money? It is going to be wasted. It is going to ruin your grandchildren. So if we can communicate that it is as important to do something about how the children use the wealth in future generations, as it is to make the wealth.