How engaging your family leads to business success

In this article, I want to show you ‘How Engaging Your Family will Lead To Business Success’.

So I simply ask you this:

Are you engaging the people who have an interest in your success?

Pause for a moment and just reflect on that question…… Engaging the people who have an interest in us being successful in business is a deceptively easy thing to say but exceptionally difficult to do in practice! Especially in the context of family.

Let’s think about this for a second, the question of: What would it be like if we engaged our family – as the people who have an interest in our business success – to help us create the success that we are looking to achieve?

During my time, working with business owners, I’ve established 6 common objections to that very question:

But my partner doesn’t know what I do
What if they make suggestions that don’t make any sense?
I just don’t have the time
They don’t know anything about business
But I’m doing this for my family
But what if they don’t agree with me?

It’s this last one – in my experience – that business owners find the most challenging and causes them the most angst!

Let’s address each one in turn and give you some strategies to take action on!

But my partner doesn’t know what I do

We need to keep the conversation at a very high level. Too often we go into the detail far too quickly! I believe we need to just keep it on the level that the person we are talking to can relate to.

That can be “you know what, I teach kids to swim” or “I’m a life coach and enable change, for people to able to do different things with their lives.” It’s about keeping it high level, engaging in a way that makes sense for the person you’re with and explaining it in real-life terms.

What if they make suggestions that don’t make any sense?

Well, that’s a great thing! Why? Because for every 10 ideas that they come up with, 8 of them probably won’t fly, one may fly, BUT there will be a gem in there!

A good way to illustrate this is if you look on the website http://bit.ly/2Kw5Wlw and see my logo. There are a few emojis! They came from my teenage son. And it’s plenty of ideas like that, for me – as a business owner, husband and dad – it’s just been brilliant!

I just don’t have the time

Are we actually saying that we are too busy for our families?

Would we create the space, to have time with our families around things that are very important to us?

The answer to that is yes!

The business is a part of our life, a part of their lives and a part of our lives together. So, therefore, making time for important things – we’re already doing that. We just need to make sure that we do it with the business in mind too.

They don’t know anything about business

And that might be true! There’s a good chance that many of our families and our partners may not be business orientated. But, they know and understand something and someone far more important than the business – they understand us!

They understand us and they care about us and they want us to be successful.

So how important is it that they don’t know anything about the business when they know the person who’s building that business?

But I’m doing this for my family

Yes – don’t change that! We don’t want to change that because we are we’re doing it for us – to have the life that we want, that we aspire to have!

How great would it be to be able to do it with them?
To celebrate the successes?
To be there, to support each other through challenging times?
Yet, at the same time, having a load of fun along the way and engaging each other in a way that works for each of us?
How to have freedom?

It would be awesome!

But what if they don’t agree with me?

What if they don’t agree with what I think and what I want to do in the business?

This is, potentially, the most challenging because it goes to the heart of what we believe we want to achieve. The key point here is when we think about our families and we have those conversations about the important things, such as:

What schools are the kids go on to go to?
Where are we going to go on holiday?
Do we want the extension on the house or not?

Do we always agree? No.

Do we find a way to resolve those differences? Yes!

And how do we do that? We each put our point of view across to the other – We listen to each other – We understand.

So what’s different about the business? Apart from, as the business owner, it feels very much ours. What we need is to share that and to invite open conversation and open support. To turn out great ideas into brilliant, awesome ideas! So that we as a family, as a business – and as business owners – and parents, can have that life of fulfilment that we look for.

Over to you! Start engaging your family for business success

Here’s where you can take a simple and purposeful action step.

Go ask your partner, share this with them or have them watch this YouTube video https://bit.ly/BusinessSuccess2021 that goes with this article. See what they say and see how they would love to be involved with you. To help you create the business that gives you, them and your family – all of you – the life you want to. To discuss what the outcome can look like. What response did you have when you shared it?

What is the first action step that you’re going to take?

Remember, the more we engage our partners in our business, the more they understand. And the more we understand what’s relevant for them, the more we can create something special for all of us. After all, it matters to us to have success in business – it’s part of our DNA as business owners – and engaging our family is key to this!

I truly hope you’ve found this helpful.

Please put your experiences and your first action steps, in the comments of the linked video to this article – it’d be great to hear from you.

https://bit.ly/BusinessSuccess2021