Hey there.
Welcome to the 21 Clear Podcast.
I'm your host, Adam Hatcher, the founder of 21 Clear, and
on the podcast we talk about.
Anything to help you chaos proof your family company today.
Today we go there.
I want to share an excerpt with you from a webinar that
I was invited to be a part of.
Uh, Kennesaw State University has a family enterprise center.
I was invited to be part of a virtual panel to talk about the experience
of leaving your family company.
I was on there with Jacqueline Jensen and Leslie ub, both of whom
left their family's com, their family's company, mid-career, to go
pursue other things in the same way.
I did 13 years in my family company and then started 21 Clear, a family
business consulting firm, and we answer.
Three questions in this excerpt and several others in the longer version.
Uh, but what you're gonna hear on the podcast, Stephanie Davis from the Family
Enterprise Center, asks me was the process of leaving acute or gradual.
So that's where we're gonna pick up where Stephanie's asked me that.
And then you're gonna get to listen through all three of us, me, Jacqueline,
and Leslie being asked, what was the emotional impact of leaving.
Then if you could do it over again, what would you change or what would
you tell yourself or somebody else?
That's what you're gonna get in this podcast, the three of us talking
about those three things, gradual or acute emotional impact and do over.
I hope you enjoy this.
I had a lot of fun in the conversation and not a lot of people go here.
So I hope it is helpful to you in your family company journey.
it's gradual.
It's interesting.
Stephanie.
Um, hey, I, for everybody who's logged in, uh, on behalf of, uh, Leslie,
me and Jacqueline, thank y'all.
Um, I have, see I.
I joined the family company in 2010.
I've been doing family business consulting about two, three years now.
This is the first time I've seen people openly willing to log into something like
this and talk and also to participate.
And if y'all have read the chat along the way, we have people
that are onboarding family.
We have people who are thinking of leaving.
We have people who are thinking of leaving because their life has to change
or they need to go start something else.
I bet you somebody has someone they need to off.
I think someone had someone they need to offboard.
Um, here's the thing, Stephanie, I wish someone had told
me when I started in 2010.
Alright, so 13 years in my own family's company, three generations.
Y'all know that when you work in a family business, you
get this when magical ticket.
And that magical ticket lets you talk to any other person who
works with their family, no matter their revenue compared to yours.
And you get to have really honest conversations.
I've gotten to sit with people who are doing a few million top line to
people valued at $30 billion plus, and like me, Leslie, and Jacqueline,
it's across industries as well.
Stephanie, I wish the day I had started, somebody said to me, you will
meet families from all over one day.
Adam, you will end up doing this work and you will work with families and you will
study families of all different spectrums.
And there's one thing guaranteed when you work with your family, if one day
you choose to work with your family, I promise you in all my experience,
research and knowledge, one day you're not going to like, you're going to leave.
It's gonna be over one day.
And Jacqueline and Leslie, I was listening to y'all and it's interesting that we can
get lost in that because it's your family.
I mean, I grew up around the business and you start to think that it's, you
can start to think it's inevitable or there are no options outside of it.
I still remember sitting with a second gen.
Who they were trying to earn their way to the top job and they felt that their
mother was just never gonna retire.
And I remember they said to me, yeah, but Adam, I'm trapped.
I can't go anywhere.
And, and two things happened at once for me.
One, I knew what they meant.
I know it can feel inevitable.
When it is your family's company, depe, particularly, depending on
how much you've invested in it.
But also I had to say to him, no you're not.
Mm-hmm.
It's a job, like it's way heavier than that.
Right.
But it is a job.
And what's interesting, what was interesting for me,
my, when I was in law school, uh, and as happens in family companies.
This happened out of nowhere.
My father sent a letter to me, my brother who was in college, and my sister who was
in high school, and it said, I don't know if the Lord's ever gonna call you to come
to the family company, if you're ever gonna feel it's a calling on your life.
But if so, these five things need to be true before you can join the company.
For him.
Now, this won't be everybody else's list, and hopefully this is helpful as, um,
somebody said that they were onboarding a family member, and this is specific.
To the company and where it was at the time, and the type
of clients in the industry.
But he said, you need to graduate from high school, college, graduate degree,
degree, work somewhere else, get a promotion, and your personal beliefs
have to be aligned with Christian values.
'cause a lot of the core values of our family's company line
up with Judeo-Christian values.
And so what he was trying to do was make sure that you
were on an upward trajectory.
And you aligned with the core values of the business.
That's got nothing to do with, are you a good lawyer qualified to
analyze a corporate risk profile?
Right?
So it was family hiring criteria before joining.
But what was Stephanie, what was important about that to leaving is it
made, joining a gradual process and thus it did two things and I didn't realize
the wisdom in it when it happened.
I always knew I and he, I talked about this when I was there.
He said, Adam, I graduated from the University of Georgia on Friday
and I went to work on Monday.
The only person who ever gave me a raise was my dad, and sometimes
I had to buy my raise from him.
He said, I want, he said, I want you, I want your siblings.
I want any other family members to know that you have value beyond my eyes and
you have options outside of this company.
And when I was leaving, I actually went back ahead of this and I looked over,
I still have my script from the call with, we had about 20 senior leaders on
a Zoom call, uh, when we announced it.
And I still have my script from it.
Something I would recommend to anybody leaving write it down.
And I told them something.
I don't think I'd ever told them that because it was never guaranteed
I would join every single year.
I asked myself and my wife and I asked ourselves, is this
where we're supposed to be?
It helped to differentiate from the company.
It is.
So you're gonna ask us later about identity.
Stephanie, any smart thing?
It sounds like I say I promise it just made it a little less hard.
Like you can do everything you can to keep your identity separate from
the company and you're still gonna over identify it in the ways other
people struggle to understand.
Um, but because it was not inevitable to join, I also always was refreshing
the decision, is this the right thing?
My father and I were actually really open about that in annual reviews.
I shared that with the senior leaders on the way out.
It may seem like it's inevitable for a third gen to keep going, but it was a
gradual process and we, one thing for y'all that helped it to unfold in a chaos
proof fashion, that's, I wrote a book called The Chaos Proof Family Business
is These conversations evolve through family meetings and Leslie Jacqueline,
I don't know if y'all had those.
But I've probably got 20 years of family meetings, so not company meetings, not
you know, family vacation meetings, but amongst those of us who worked in
the business and the family members who own the business, we did 'em
manually and then we did 'EM quarterly.
And then there are times where we've done 'em more often.
Like this question, Stephanie, is something we were forced to answer
to each other in those meetings.
As family member.
I think that's wonderful.
That's, yeah, I think that's great.
It was, yeah.
So that is, it was a gradual process and that's part of how it unfolded.
Yeah.
That's a great segue into our next little bit of a topic here, because
leaving a job is one thing, right?
But leaving a family business is something else altogether.
So Adam, I'll keep it on you.
What was the hardest part for you emotionally?
Oh, so you brought the easy question to me.
Okay.
All right.
Thanks.
Okay, so for those of you who are, if you're hiring family, um, I.
Ultimately you may have, they are going to move on.
You're gonna move on, or you may have to help them move on.
Um, if you have not done this yet, if you have not left yet, or if you have not been
responsible for a family member leaving, I wanna put this on a continuum for you.
I had, before I joined the family company, I think 11 different jobs.
For free pay or school credit.
So that means 11, 12, 13 times I have left a job.
So if you think about, if, if you can see me on the video here, I'm
kind of splitting my fingers apart.
Like on this side, on the right side.
Is that you're right.
Or, I don't know what that is.
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's just say on the left side, on the, on the left side of this line
or this continuum, it's just like.
The normal emotional impact of moving from one job to another.
I mean, sometimes it's great.
You move, it's easy.
You're getting a promotion, you're getting the job you wanted.
You were in a temporary placeholder job, and now you're in a more permanent
position and there's a little bit of grief that can go with that.
You may miss your coworkers.
You may wish you had done it earlier, but it doesn't carry
a lot of emotional weight.
Then I want you to go to the far.
The far right side.
So that was the left side.
Go to the far right side with me, and that's the emotional
impact of a profound family loss.
This can be death, disability, estrangement.
Okay, so on one end you've got the emotional impact of a loss,
but it's kind of transactional.
And, and depending, and depending on how long you were in the job, it may move
you more toward the middle, depending on how much you were invested, how much
of your lifestyle is caught up in it.
Leaving and moving or losing a job does carry an impact, whether
it was your decision or not.
But when you decide when you work with family, what we've done is we have mixed
the unconditional nature of business with the conditional nature of family.
Which is what creates this emotional impact.
And when you exit a family company, it's probably going to be on the
right side, even if you do it the right way at the right time.
Stephanie, I met a guy.
He had a successful career as a third gener, second generation, CEO.
He was second gen, CEO.
He saw his succession as a process, so he had his board involved.
He had a consultant involved and his son was next in line, but they were
responsible for evaluating it and.
It was, you would think he's kind of toward the left side, right?
This is sounding intellectual and cerebral, and he's gonna do it easily.
Y'all, his consultant came back to him and said, uh, good news, bad news.
Your son is qualified to take over for you, and the board agrees with me.
However, we also agree that you're a steamroller.
And if you are still in place when your son becomes CEO, you will
bulldoze your son, injuring the company and your relationship.
So as of today, you are no longer CEO.
Congratulations on your retirement.
And just like that, he was outta the business.
And we were talking about two years after that happened.
He's like, Adam, it took me a year to get my head around it.
Like all of a sudden he went from thinking this and it was over here.
Your experience or your family member's experience?
It's gonna depend.
Jacqueline, you were sharing some earlier, like what did you, how
much were you involved, how much it was part of your identity?
How long have you been there?
It's on a continuum and.
Yeah, it, it, it's on it.
And none of us hit the same place.
It can even be what you gave up.
And so if you have one family, like when my cousin left, my cousin left,
and she's now CHRO of a Fortune 200 company, that's one exit When somebody
else leaves in any family company, it may be a totally different circumstance
with a totally different impact.
So I think it's important.
Stephanie, please, if you haven't done this before, it's
not just a cerebral decision.
For sure.
Yeah.
Jacqueline, you wanna touch a little bit on the emotional impact
that it had on you when you left?
Yeah.
You don't want to, it's okay.
No, absolutely.
I'm happy to share it and I'll try and touch.
I do wanna piggyback off of, um, what Adam said a little bit.
'cause we really connected over this and, and just reiterate, because I saw it
several times in the chat to reiterate the importance of, um, clear communication.
And anytime you're in a family business, um, Adam states it very
well, I'm not gonna state it the exact same way Adam does, 'cause I can't.
Um, but, um, the way I typically state it is when you're working in
a family business, you're wearing three hats generally, right?
You're a family member,
you're an owner if you have any equity.
So even though I was not primary owner, I had an equity in the business.
Um, and then I would, you're an employee.
You wear a seat or maybe two or three depending on your family
business in the organization.
And so to have appropriate communication and, and meeting cadence, um, with
each of those hats individually and being incredibly clear about what hat
you're wearing in the conversation.
Right.
Is this a family conversation?
I'm a family member and the dynamics of the family come into
play with that conversation.
Right?
Or are we having conversations as owners about the business and
what the future of the business is and how to operate this business?
Or are we having conversations as employees wearing our specific hat
or hats sometimes in family business.
Being really, really clear about what hat you're wearing when, uh, saying
I, it is been said many times, but I say, right to be clear, is to be kind.
And so put on that hat, have the clear conversation, be open
and honest, whether it's in the business or in the family circle.
Um, so that expectations align and that individuals.
Can make decisions that are best for themselves and their families.
And that's not necessarily tied to family itself, right?
Um, it's our own identity because it's so common in family business,
um, to have your, as Adam said, to have your identity tied to it.
Especially when you come into a family business as a next gen or sec, you
know, second gen, next gen, whatever that generation is, you grew up in it.
Then you come into it so early, oftentimes, I, I also love what
Adam, um, has researched and shares of like the importance of setting
those boundaries of what's required before coming into a family business.
Um, and the idea of like, go work somewhere else.
Have them go work somewhere else for five years and learn what it's
like to work without a safety net.
And work for a boss who doesn't have the same love and admiration
for you as your parents do, right?
Like, go experience that.
And then if you still wanna come into the family business, let's talk
about what other, um, boxes need to be checked in order to do that.
I think that that's a phenomenal, um, way to approach it, but every
family's going to be different.
Um, but tying back to identity, like for me specifically, I
grew up in that family business.
There was no clear lines between family, employee, or owners.
Um, everything was just business for us.
And then I was essentially felt obligated to come work for the family business
and that just became who I was, right?
Every day.
Um, how can we, how can I make my parents proud?
How can I lead this business well?
Um, how can I learn new skills and how can I go home and take care of my family?
Um, and.
It just became so much of who I was.
So when that decision came, um, where I ultimately decided to leave, I had
so much peace because I pondered on at what expense is this worth it for
so long, and when the outcome wasn't what had been promised, the decision
to leave was so clear and so I had a lot of peace in the decision, but
I had so much work to do personally.
To kind of emotionally recover from that decision and figure out who I
was and what I wanted to do and how I wanted to still serve people and
um, and take care of entrepreneurs, which I've now landed on my feet.
But, um, that is, it's a, I was so tied to who I was in that family business,
and I still catch myself some days thinking like, oh, I can, I can do
this, or I can go do, and I'm like, no.
My stepfather's not my boss.
Um, or no, I don't need to respond that way.
I don't have to protect anyone.
Right.
I'm not still be kind, but, right.
Um, so it's, I mean, it is, it's, it's a big adjustment.
So I just go back to anyone in the chat who is at any point in this process
of thinking about working for the business, working in the business.
Or you know, thinking of bringing the next gen in or exiting the business.
Like just the importance of clear communication and beginning to
work through what that will be like emotionally, um, for all parties involved.
'cause there's the other dynamic of the leading generation too.
Yeah, that's a, that's really good advice.
Um, Leslie, I'm gonna pop it over to you.
If you wanna touch on the emotional aspect and then also how kind of
pig tailing, pigtail, dovetailing off of what Jacqueline just said.
Um, how did you approach that conversation, both at home and
um, in the family business?
Sure.
Um, the hardest part emotionally for me was first admitting to myself that
I was never going to succeed in taking over that family business and being
able to detach from that identity.
That was by far the hardest part, and I needed some tools to help me with that.
Um, I.
Found a great resource in Emily P.
Freeman, who teaches discernment and decision making.
She wrote a book called How to Walk Into a Room, and it is a guide for
knowing when to stay and when to go.
The art of knowing when to stay and when to go.
And there's just some very practical, applicable,
um, discernment and decision making tools that kind of guide you through knowing.
How to walk into a room, and when you walk out of the room you're in, you're
oftentimes not walking into like a proverbial or metaphorical new room.
Sometimes you're walking into a hallway, a transition time, and how to live well
through these sorts of transitions of life where a series of rooms or a house.
So I highly recommend that to, uh, help you get a handle on being clear
with yourself because you can't have those conversations if you can't
have that clarity in your own mind.
You don't have any language.
And, um, you've got to be able to, as Jacqueline said, be clear so
that you can be kind to everyone.
And so when I started to approach those conversations.
It was, it had to be for me, just a, um, a statement of fact.
I am feeling, uh, pulled towards landscape architecture again, and
I am feeling the need for my own health insurance plan and 401k.
And I don't think that these things are available to me here.
So I am going to update my portfolio, one tiny thing, and I just said I'm,
I'm going to update my portfolio.
And that's all I did.
And then the next conversation was I got some good feedback on my portfolio.
Um, I've noticed that in the job listings, there are a few things
that would be a fit for me.
I'm going to apply for these jobs.
It was step by step very clear.
I did not justify the my reason for leaving other than to say, I need this
thing, but before I could have any of these tiny step conversations or be
clear with, I need this thing, so I'm gonna take this tiny action, I had
to be clear with myself, and that's how I approached the conversation.
I had to have the conversation inside before I could have any
of the conversations outside.
All right, we are coming up on time, but I did wanna ask just,
um, a couple more quick ones.
Um, maybe Leslie, you could take this one.
If you could go back.
Would you handle anything differently or you feel, you feel pretty
good about how it all went down?
I like the way I left.
I'm proud of the way that I left.
Um, it's important however anyone decides to make any change in their life that
you, uh, do it from your own integrity that you can go to sleep at night.
Look yourself in the mirror the next day and know that you handled it the best way
you could handle it, and you're proud of yourself for the way you did handle it.
Yeah, I am actually terrible at transparency.
I would much rather manipulate the situation in a kind and, um,
you know, ethical way, of course.
Uh, but I would much rather convince you that what I need is also what
you need and not have to ask for it.
So, um, I'm really, really grateful for, um.
I don't know.
I, I, I can't take credit for it.
I, I honestly feel like it was divine, the preparation that was
available to me, to one, get ready to leave and then recover after I left.
Um, another resource that I could throw out there, if someone's
looking for some tools in this is called the Next Right Thing.
And it is, uh, also by Emily P.
Freeman.
That's what she does.
She's in the discernment and decision making process.
These, um, the next right thing is a tool that I would recommend to anyone who is
looking for how to, um, be proud of the way that they move about in the world.
Because if you have that level of integrity, then I feel like you, no
matter what happens or how difficult it is, you'll have that solid core
of who I am at my deepest values and that I moved out from there.
I think if I can grab, thank you.
Yes, definitely.
Yeah, please go ahead.
I was just gonna say, I appreciated Leslie sharing those with me before we went on
so that we can a great, a great takeaway.
But yeah, Adam, go ahead.
Yeah, so Leslie I, something you said and then that Jacqueline said that I loved,
like I was talking to a family recently and this was something that somebody gave
to me when I was stepping away as well.
They said, I want you to imagine, and I told somebody this last week
who was really struggling with their aunt and was thinking about leaving.
I said, I want you to imagine there's a video camera behind you.
I want you to imagine it's gonna film you for the next eight months, and then in
six years we're gonna show it to your sons and they're gonna see everything you said,
everything you texted, everything you emailed, every family meeting y'all had.
Are you gonna be proud of how you showed up?
Are you gonna be proud of how you, because it's really hard depending
on the situation, but will you be proud of how you showed up?
I'm not talking about anybody else.
Right?
And one of the things that helps people do that, Jacqueline, is what you said.
Why start planning for family exits now?
'cause it's going to happen.
The timing is not necessarily yours.
Even if you hired a board consultant, but Jacqueline, your
story about an off ramp family.
I, I talked to a family recently 'cause their lawyer called me and
said, I need you to talk to my client.
They, they called me for a severance agreement for a
family member and it was cheap.
I'm just gonna be honest.
I said, and the first thing I said to 'em was, listen, you're gonna give this family
member you want to as best you can with the revenue and margin of your business.
Give them a, give them the chance to breathe.
Don't upend their life.
Give them a reason to call a financial manager versus an attorney.
I've been called in that situation too, and that's the chaotic situation.
So one, a camera following you around is a great visual for people
when you start thinking about exiting a family member or exiting.
But, and it's interesting, Jacqueline, I talked to, it was a brother and sister
and they had just bought their mother out.
And so you would think that they wanted to work on, hey, let's put
some governance around how we hire family, how we compensate each other.
Do we run family meetings?
One of 'em actually said.
I wanna create an off ramp.
'cause I don't know, with mom gone, if we're gonna like each other and y'all, it
felt so early to plan for exiting, but you don't know when it's coming and you don't
want to have those conversations live.
So you, if you don't have family meetings, I would say do it.
Bring a facilitator with you to get the ball rolling and things like off
ramp camera following you around.
Like those are really helpful ideas to start getting in front of your family.
The Family Enterprise Center at Kennesaw State does an incredible job of
providing resources for family companies, whether you own a family company, work
together, or like on this episode, are a former member of a family company.
It's always still around, and so Kennesaw State does a great
job of providing resources.
This webinar was just one example.
If you go to the show notes, we will link to the full episode.
It's about an hour long.
We got into three questions here.
There are several more.
There's some longer explanations, some really interesting stories that get
shared, so I encourage you to go watch the whole webinar when you have time,
and I hope this was helpful to you.
The 21 Clear Podcast every time you listen to it.
My hope is it helps you take just a few minutes to think about how your family
works in and owns the company together.
That unique dynamic is your inner family business that sits inside your
family company and the health of it directly impacts the results that
you're able to produce out of the company and the strength of your family.
I hope this has helped you build some clarity.
Maybe even if you share it with a family member, some alignment, some
communication, some trust, some understanding with other family, employees
and owners so that you all can build a chaos proof family business as well.
Again, hope you enjoyed this episode.
Click on the webinar from Kennesaw State in the show notes.
We will see you again in the next episode, as my grandfather would've said.
Thank you so very, very much for listening.