Sean Hutchinson and Barry Goodman, co-founders and partners with SVA Value Accelerators, do a deep dive continuation of the SVA episode as they talk about the challenges and perils of transition and the issues facing families in business. Sean is an expert in business value acceleration and transition readiness, while Barry is an expert in multigenerational family businesses with an advanced certificate in counseling family-owned businesses.

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The Challenges and Perils Of Transition And The Issues Facing Families In Business with Barry Goodman, President SVA

Creating The Path To Higher Valuation with CEO/Partner Sean Hutchinson and Barry Goodman, President/Partner SVA Value Accelerators

We’re doing a deep dive continuation with Sean Hutchinson and Barry Goodman, Cofounders and Partners with http://buildvaluetoday.com/ (SVA Value Accelerators). This is a continuation of the SVA episode. We’re going to dig deeper into this complex topic. We’re going to talk about the challenges and perils of transition and the issues facing families in business. Sean, let’s recap where this segment fits in.

Here’s the interesting thing about family-owned business in our value accelerator. If you think about our seven value accelerator sprints as vertical columns, family-owned business is the horizontal issue that cuts across all of them. It’s a different animal when you’re in a multigenerational family business. It’s great that we have on our team an expert in this area who is Barry. He’s got advanced certificates in counseling family-owned businesses. This as a resource that when we are working with a family-owned business, Barry’s expertise comes to bear. It cuts across all the sprints in value accelerator not just one but the constant issue when you are dealing with families.

Barry, why are the family-owned businesses so different than perhaps other businesses?

I believe you need to look at a Venn diagram where you have three circles. Family, business ownership and management reside in each of the circles and intersects with each other. This is the family business system. You have one circle and it talks about ownership and another circle is family and the third circle is the management of the business. You can have people that are members of the family that are not involved in the business and members of the family that are involved in the business. You can have members of the family who own shares but have no participation. We’re going to have family and employees that are employed that are not related by blood or marriage. There are all these different conflicts going on, different needs, different objectives of each of these different parties. As generations move from first to second to third and along with the history of the business, you put another circle around that and that’s called the cousin of consortium. It’s no wonder why this is a confusing area and an area where there could be conflict without intending to have a conflict because of the different needs, wants and objectives of each of the individual family members or nonfamily members.

That’s the pool that you’re navigating in.

It’s a big pool and it can get a little tenuous at times.

In looking at the family business space, you were kind enough to provide a bunch of material for me to review. When you walk into a business situation where you’re working on value acceleration, what does that initial meeting or interaction with that business and/or family-owned business look like?

It is to understand what’s going on in the business and what’s going on in the family. It goes to the central theme that we have at SVA. We believe that transition-ready businesses are more valuable.