Adam Hatcher: Hey there.
Welcome to the 21 Clear Podcast where we talk about anything to help you
chaos proof your family business.
I'm your host, Adam Hatcher, the founder of 21 Clear, and today
we're going to start a two.
Episode string where I am joined by Melissa Mitchell Blitch.
Melissa wrote a great book called In The Company of Family, how to
Thrive When Business Is Personal.
Um, we met through a mutual friend.
I read the book and we've talked about it and their concept.
In this book that the day I joined my family company, I wish I had known.
I wish, in September of 2010, someone had had this book and
explained the ideas in it.
And what Melissa's gonna talk through is the concept of boundaries.
I'm gonna let her explain it in the.
In the podcast, but this is an idea that when you work with your family
for it to be chaos proof, it is an important foundational concept.
So.
I'm gonna talk with Melissa to introduce the idea, and then we're going to
explain it and unpack it a bit more.
And then in the second episode, we're actually gonna take one.
We're just gonna do a little popcorn and give you three things you
need to know in a family business.
I'll explain that more later.
Let me get to the first part of our podcast with Melissa Mitchell Blitch.
Melissa, it is so fun to be on the 21 Clear Podcast with you.
How are you today?
Melissa Mitchell Blitch: Good morning.
I am well and grateful for it.
How about yourself?
Adam Hatcher: We, I am well, and when we open this podcast, I do a little bumper
and I talk about the guest a little bit.
But what I found fascinating when you and I met, and I have not told this story
well for the listeners yet, is how you came to working with family businesses
and really focusing on their dynamics with each other, your career history.
Do you mind talking about that for a minute?
It's fascinating to me.
Melissa Mitchell Blitch: Glad to.
It is why I do what I do.
I had a window into the lives of enterprising families.
Families who had had tremendous financial success, always as
a result of a family business.
They were at a stage where they may or may not own it, work in it together, but their
lives were very financially interdependent and I saw the challenge that combining
family and wealth and enterprise.
Created and I was in the chair of a, a wealth advisor.
I worked for a big five firm and their family wealth planning group, we did
what may be called estate planning.
That was my window into their lives.
And I saw how challenging wealth is inherently, how challenging, you know,
that financial interdependence was.
And I wanted somebody to be able to help our families navigate that, explore that
thrive in the midst of that challenge.
And this was the late nineties.
Went to the worldwide web quite a few times, looking for who knows what because,
what do you call that sort of person?
Couldn't find it, couldn't find that person.
And eventually in 2003, just realized, you know, there's a true need here.
I hope someone on on the planet is doing something about it.
But if they are, I'm not finding them.
This is a true need.
It's not going away.
I'm increasingly interested in it.
I believe this is my calling.
So I left finance in 2003, got a master's in psychology because I
needed to understand family dynamics and motivation and emotional wellbeing
and all those sort of things that I didn't understand as a CPA.
And that is what inspired me to do this work today, was just seeing a
need and felt feeling compelled for someone to help families with it.
And if I couldn't find someone else, it was gonna be me.
Adam Hatcher: I remember being at a conference of wealth managers
and somebody said something that reminds me of what you just said.
Uh, we were in a break and he said, Adam, he was a wealth advisor and an independent
advisor versus with one of the big firms.
And he said, Adam, there's something different about working on the
dynamics between family members.
He said, I have a client and his only goal is to make more money.
That is his legacy, and I've realized that in helping him make more money,
I am actually hurting his marriage and his sons and his daughter.
I assume you saw something similar.
Melissa Mitchell Blitch: Ooh, yes, I can.
While there were many clients who inspired me, I could.
There I only needed one.
I call him Jack, not his real name, but he hired us when he'd been given three to
six months to live, to create a plan for him to have what we call professionally
as controlled from the grave.
So that could.
The company would continue to go the the way that he wanted it to, and his
son wanted it to, but his daughter partnered with the uncle wanting the
company to go into another direction.
He wanted control from the grave, and yay we were able to create legal
structures to help him do that.
It was, ugh, devastating is not too big of a word.
It was devastating to me to see that we could get our job right as the
technical advisors to help protect, grow, transfer assets according
to the desires of our client and cause harm to their family members.
It wrecked me.
That was all the inspiration that I needed, and neither
had to be a better way.
There had to be a better way.
Adam Hatcher: What did you find then as you stepped into, you said you
stepped into the internet and you said, well, what do I even call this?
And then you stepped into psychology.
When you started looking for a better way, what did you find?
And dif, can you differentiate Melissa now from Melissa and Melissa then?
Melissa Mitchell Blitch: Oh, Adam, that is a big question that we could have
hours and hours of conversation on.
Um,
but what comes to mind is a, you know, thread as a part of that is, you know,
what motivations are we gonna act on?
Are we gonna act on, you know, his des desire was to control that has a root
in fear or, you know, to protect against a future that he was afraid of, didn't
want, you know, or are we going to act on hope, faith, love, you know, freedom h.
Um, choosing the motivation, being aware of the motivation that's driving
our preferences, our values, and really being honest with ourself of what
motivations we want to live out of.
That's a, a nutshell for a big all answer.
Adam Hatcher: Yeah.
Melissa Mitchell Blitch: Just just one, one part, but an important part
Adam Hatcher: And as, so that's a, something that you would have not
leaned into as a wealth advisor.
Like that conversation
would not have naturally come up with Jack
Melissa Mitchell Blitch: To, yeah.
To challenge Jack for his good, you know, around that, to invite him to,
you know, pressure test it himself.
Yes, within that role as the financial advisor, it's what do you want?
Alright.
Our job is to help you accomplish that.
And that's been one of the ways that I've grown tremendously is,
you know, to get the right answers, you have to ask the right questions.
And being willing to ask those questions that invite someone to consider something
from a different perspective, to open up, you know, we all have blind spots.
What might I not have considered here?
What might be another opportunity here?
We didn't have that skillset as, you know, the technical advisors to ask
those insight provoking questions.
Not to say that no technical advisors do.
I didn't, I didn't, and I didn't see that in our, in our team either.
There wasn't the ability there or there wasn't any willingness.
Or maybe it was somewhere in, in the middle, but we weren't.
Typically asking those sort of questions to be sure that our client had considered
some things, to be sure that our client actually knew what they did want
Adam Hatcher: I, I shared with
Melissa Mitchell Blitch: the future that they were hoping for, not just protecting
against the future they were afraid of.
Adam Hatcher: right in, in a future that is not just financial but
has other components around it.
I mean, I told somebody once, don't put, don't expect of, for example, a
wills and estates attorney for them to ask you about your interaction
between you and your daughter.
That's not how they're paid.
Or let me look at a wealth manager.
They're paid generally to steward assets under management and to help you execute
a plan to expect them to understand and to focus on the dynamics between family.
Particularly if you have a family company involved that's just
outside of both their pay structure.
They might.
But having someone that can help you focus in a dedicated way on some of the
critical issues and dynamics between family, particularly when you have a
company, it's important and it's distinct, which is, when I read your book, did not
read like a wealth manager's book at all.
So you wrote a book called In the Company of Family How to
Thrive When Business is Personal.
If people are watching on YouTube, I'm looking 'cause I keep a
copy of it right next to me.
So you go, you begin to take this turn into psychology and working on dynamics
and then you anchor this book in some key concepts or even a key concept.
Share that with us.
Melissa Mitchell Blitch: I will, and with your permission, I wanna
backtrack for just a minute to say, you know, technical advisors that we
were speaking of, they may not get paid to have those conversations.
They may know their lane and their lane is not to have those
conversations and they may be.
Like, I was just kind of oblivious to how, how to, to have those conversations.
Comfort, confidence, competence, capability.
You know, the way that I grew the most, I learned a ton going back to
psychology, having a, a career as a counselor to get some experience
and applying what I had learned.
I learned and grew a lot as a professional.
I also learned and grew a lot as a person.
So my professional development, I can, I can remember me in my CPA
days and I can remember me now and gratefully, I'm a very different person.
I needed to grow a lot, so I need for it.
I wanted to do it, but I needed to grow as a person to be able to show
up in a professional capacity to have those sort of conversations.
Um, and one of the, one of the areas that I learned about in my
transition process, that growth process was learning about boundaries.
Woo.
And I can imagine your listeners, some of them are lighting up some of those, some
of them are cringing, understandably.
But I really, I discovered, I saw in the lives of my clients and myself,
the power of healthy boundaries, and that is the focus of the book.
Adam Hatcher: I wish.
So I started in my family company in 2010.
I wish in my onboarding someone had sat me down and.
about this concept with me.
I didn't find it until I was at a family conference in maybe 2016 was the
first time I heard it, and it took me about three or four years and different
mentors and coaches to figure out what this meant, this idea was, and then
how it applied when you work together or own a company with your family.
Can you explain the concept?
Imagine Adam Hatcher is 28 years old.
He is not, he had no reaction to you saying boundaries
'cause he has no idea what
it means.
Like, talk to me then and say, Adam, welcome to your family company.
Let me explain an idea to you.
Melissa Mitchell Blitch: Yes.
Well, I love that we're starting here for a number of reasons, including,
you know, like words matter, you know, they carry weight, they carry
interpretation, they carry experience.
And so if we're gonna talk about boundaries in our conversation,
let's, let's get clear about what we're talking about.
The working definition that I like to use of a boundary is
that a boundary is anything that differentiates one thing from another.
And its purpose is to promote the good and protect against the bad.
That's a boundary.
And so boundaries really just show up.
It's not a matter of do we do boundaries or do we not do boundaries.
Boundaries naturally result from our, from our choices.
We can do that intentionally or we can do that accidentally, but
boundaries just are, and in a family business, there are a lot of ways
that, there are a lot of boundaries in a family business that don't have
flashing lights of this is a boundary.
They just show up in daily decisions and processes.
Like who?
Who gets to be involved in decision making?
Who gets the voice?
Who gets the vote?
How, what are the criteria for hiring, promotion, and leadership?
That's a boundary.
Are they applied consistently?
Mm-hmm.
Is, that's a boundary, how feedback is given from what role, where
decisions or where conversations are had when there's poor performance.
How is feedback given?
And where do the consequences of that lie?
All those things.
Those are boundaries.
And so in the book I talk about principles of boundaries.
You know, a lot of those, some of those are pretty straightforward.
Some of those may be complex, um, choices for enterprising families to make.
So in the book, I talk about principles that can help bring simplicity to
that complexity, giving you different angles, different principles of
healthy boundaries to consider.
So they're meant to promote the good, protect against the bad.
Can someone practice boundaries in a way that feels manipulative,
controlling against me?
Absolutely.
But boundaries as a whole, you know, that's, that's just an
application and use of boundaries.
It's not the boundaries themself.
Boundaries are meant to promote wellbeing for the individuals,
the family, the enterprise.
They're meant to promote good and protect against the bad.
What are some things that we might consider to discern what
healthy boundaries look like?
Adam Hatcher: Let me ask you about a simple boundary, then just a, a physical
world boundary, and then I wanna ask you about one of the principles in the
book that the way you expressed it, I just really enjoyed, okay, so simple.
Let me try to give you an example and see how you react.
All right.
Very simple.
Non-family business.
Uh, I have a neighbor.
I like my neighbor a lot actually.
I like all my neighbors a lot.
However, we have an eight foot fence between our yards.
Is a property line that is very clearly.
There's, very clearly here and there.
Likewise, in my house are different bedrooms.
There's a room where my wife
and I are, and there's rooms where my sons are, and I don't necessarily
like it when they, when they cross
in at two in the morning and wake me up.
Like those are, those are examples of just practical, real world boundaries.
Melissa Mitchell Blitch: They are.
Anything that differentiates one thing from another, that property line of
responsibility reminds me of a couple months ago, my husband and I were walking
around the backyard and you're like, oh, that tree died, and what do we do?
The first place we looked, it was like, oh, whose line is that on?
Oh, it's on this side of the fence.
So it was behind some bushes.
It's on this side of the fence.
It's our responsibility.
We need to take care of that.
So boundaries, healthy boundaries, awareness of boundaries, can provide
clarity and can, again, just protect what's, what's good, you and your wife,
like having a quiet, you know, kid free bedroom when you were sleeping.
And so it's like, all right.
Here, kiddos, you know, this is our space.
It's meant to protect our sleep and, and that sort of thing.
It's meant to protect, promote good, and protect against the bad, and to
provide clarity so that we know instead of being like an invisible, oops,
I, I violated your boundary, oops.
You know, like, oh, I'm gonna get shocked or zapped like a
dog with an invisible fence.
Adam Hatcher: Well, there's a freedom in it too.
As you were saying that I was thinking about the fence in my backyard.
So it's not just saying no, like that's his yard and this is mine.
When we cut the grass in my backyard, I get to stop at the fence.
Like I'm not responsible
for his plants.
I'm not responsible for the, like you said, your neighbor's, the
tree on your neighbor's property.
Like there is also a freedom that comes
with this because I only have.
A limited responsibility within the fence
line.
Alright, so in family companies, you gave a couple of examples
of how this can come up.
There's a principle that you write about in the book that
I wanted to ask you about.
It's boundary laden and I found it really fun and instructive.
Alright, so you have, uh, an idea where you say things.
Are they fair, firm, and friendly as a trial lawyer or former trial lawyer?
I love alliteration, so I appreciated that.
So one of your principles of boundaries is fair, firm, and friendly.
Explain that.
Melissa Mitchell Blitch: Healthy boundaries are fair.
They are firm, they're friendly, and there's another chapter that you haven't
alluded to, but they're also flexible.
Um, again, this is, this is a big subject, but I wanna, if I, with your permission, I
want to zoom in on actually that contrast.
Fairness is a hot topic in family businesses, understandably.
Um, you know, like friendly when I, you know, when I communicate a, a boundary
or in the decision making about a, a boundary, you know, like someone's
gonna be prob maybe be disappointed, let's say leadership selection.
You know, someone may be disappointed that they weren't selected for the leader.
I can be friendly in letting them know, here's, here's what kept you
from being ready yet for a promotion.
I can do it in a friendly way that says, I'm for you and I'm gonna
actually support you and continue.
I'm here to help you continue to grow, to, to move, to have greater opportunities
for that advancement that you want.
But healthy boundaries are also both firm and flex.
There are times where it is wise to do what we said we would do, and there's
times when it's wise to actually flex that, you know, it's kinda like a, a
rubber band, you know, being able to just stretch it without breaking it.
Adam Hatcher: when you wrote that, uh, that's the cover of your book, how
to Thrive when Business is Personal.
I thought if you haven't worked with your own family, that might not hit
you in the heart when you read it.
But if you have, you know that like it's one thing I've had before
I joined the family company, 10 different jobs for free pay or credit.
I was a good fit in some of them and not a good fit in other ones.
So I know what the ups and downs of employment are, but
man, none of 'em felt personal.
None of them, not even like that.
Melissa Mitchell Blitch: And, and even if it has felt personal, you know, it being
someone that you love takes personal to a whole nother level because there are
people who are like, I care about my team members, I care about my employees.
It's hard to let 'em go, or hard to, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
So even for your listeners who have felt the personal nature of
some of these decisions, imagine it being with a family member.
Imagining it being with someone you deeply love, who you are likely to know
for the rest of your life and interact with for the rest of your life, you know,
not just until they take another job.
Just that history and that longevity and that depth of relationship
takes the personal nature of it just to a whole nother level.
Adam Hatcher: And I love as you, as you just played that out, and
I hope for people listening, they feel how different that is than
talking about what percentage of your portfolio is in cash versus equities.
Those are important conversations, but those don't naturally turn
into fair firm, flexible it.
It's focused.
Different and it's important work.
So what we did here for about, I think this has been about just short
of 25 minutes, is we wanted to, Melissa and I wanted to set these
ideas, okay, what are boundaries?
How do they relate to a family company?
What are some ways that they show up in the family company?
What we're gonna do in the next episode is we're going to unpack one word.
Melissa said that when I read her book, which is also on audio book.
Uh, so no matter how you take your book, it's there.
Uh, this idea of flexible in doing work with families in having been in my own
family company, this idea of flexibility, there's a lot to unpack there.
And what Melissa and I are gonna do is just give you three things to think about.
In the next podcast about flexibility in family companies.
So Melissa, thank you so much for joining this episode.
Uh, in the show notes, there is going to be a link.
You write a newsletter, right?
Melissa Mitchell Blitch: Occasionally
Adam Hatcher: Okay.
Some
Melissa Mitchell Blitch: flexible.
It doesn't let a flexible schedule.
Adam Hatcher: but Melissa's website is in the show notes and also her book in
the Company of Family, how to Thrive When Business Is Personal is there as well.
I enjoyed it so much.
We spent this time together and we're gonna do it again.
So Melissa, thank you so much.
Melissa Mitchell Blitch: My pleasure, Adam.
Look forward to part two.