by Chad Koser (aka Zebra Chad)

Being a father/son team that not only run a business together, but one that has also authored and published a book together, Jeff and I frequently get asked what it’s like to work together.  There are a lot of positives to working together, and there have been many aspects that both of us have enjoyed. Truthfully, there are also a lot of challenges that need to be addressed and solved in order to maintain positive progress.

In that light, I recently found an interesting list of 20 challenges faced by family owned businesses that I thought was quite complete and well-thought.  Together, Jeff and I have faced some of these challenges, and some of them have not been relevant to us.  Either way, I felt this was a unique change of pace for this week’s blog topic — one that will be of interest anyone else involved with, working within, or simply curious about the dynamic of a family business.

Without further ado, here’s the link to a very well-written article on the topic:
20 Challenges Faced by a Family Owned Business

I think this list of challenges would be well-served by adapting it for use as a checklist/scorecard for determining the present status quo within a family business, and then as a guiding roadmap (or GPS to use more modern terms)  for continuously evaluating progress at various intervals, much in the same way that we use our own Zebra to help guide our sales clients through evaluating their prospects at various stages of the Zebra Buying Cycle (also see Zebra U for further reference on these concepts and tools).

Finally, here are two more interesting links for additional reading on the topic of family owned business as it relates to the current economic downturn:

1. “Family businesses have traits to survive,” by Jane Hilburt-Davis and Judy Green, as featured by Providence Business News.

2. “U.S. Family Business in Strong Position to Survive Downturn,” by Barclays Wealth, as featured by Marketwire.

Until next week,
Zebra Chad