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Independent and Dependable Advisors

The adjectives “dependable” and “independent” have more in common than those 6 letters in a row. They also happen to be two of the most important requirements people should insist upon when looking for people to advise them on important issues.

Let’s start with dependable, since it seems more obvious that you would naturally look for that quality in anyone you deal with, especially someone that will be sending you an invoice.

Of course everyone will claim to be dependable, but you will only really know after enough interactions with them. If you have dependable people that you can rely on, hopefully you recognize this quality in them, and appreciate it too, because it seems like it is becoming less common these days.

If you are an advisor, hopefully you recognize how important your dependability is to your clients, because it can take a long time to build up, but with one slip, a whole lot of goodwill can be wiped away very quickly.

Personally, I find it very disappointing when someone upon whom I have relied for many years all of a sudden lets me down. I will usually give anyone a second chance, but eventually you often have to move on. Sometimes I think I might be a little too demanding, but I generally just use the golden rule, I expect others to treat me the way that I would treat them if the roles were reversed.

Let’s move over to the independence question. Why is it important, and what am I getting at? Well I mentioned something about an invoice earlier, and it was not an accident, because it is a big part of what makes an advisor independent.

There are many different business models at play in the world of professional services, and it is easy to become confused or to be misled. I usually prefer to get a bill directly and know what I am paying for, than to eventually learn that the person who gave me the advice got a huge reward that I was not aware of in advance.

Accountants, lawyers, and coaches all work in a relatively straightforward way, we pay them for their time. We might think the bill is too high, but it is usually pretty clear. When financial products are involved, things can get very murky. But we seldom ask the questions that would clarify things for us, because we don’t want to look stupid, or to come across as an a-hole, or make people feel like we don’t trust them.

A good friend of mine who makes his living selling insurance products once told me that he has an advantage over lawyers and accountants in getting to know his clients, because he doesn’t bill them for his time, so they open up more. I had not thought of that, but it makes sense to me.

But I hate to think about those clients and the type of advice they are getting from those advisors who invoice them, if their main criterion is to minimize the size of the bill.

I am not saying that if there is no invoice, they cannot be independent. I am saying that it is important to understand how people are compensated, and to ask questions until you do understand.

Better yet, find a dependable and independent person who understands your situation, and get them to ask the questions for you. They can then help you make sure that you are doing the right things, in the right way, for all the right reasons.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Enough Money? Yes. Enough Time? No

We all know about the trade-offs between time and money. It’s usually about people spending much of their time trying to make enough money, so that they will be able to have whatever they want, and be able to do whatever they like.

But there are other combinations of time and money in sufficient or insufficient quantity that can also cause problems. We mentioned not enough time due to the feeling of not having enough money, but there is also too much money AND too much time, which creates its own set of problems, and those are not the kind that will have anyone feeling sorry for you.

There are also plenty of cases of people who have lots of time available, but not enough money. The simple solution, and please recall that “simple” and “easy” are two very different things, is for these people to get a job, thereby filling up some of their time with productive work, AND increasing the money they have available for necessities and discretionary purchases.

If only it were that easy. It is easy to sit in judgment of others, but it is not helpful. For every apparent lazy person on welfare, there are several others who have suffered through life with so many things working against them that the privileged few would never understand.

Speaking as a member of those privileged few, I can tell you that my outlook changed quickly when I began volunteering at a food bank a few years ago. I wouldn’t want to trade places with them, and I certainly no longer look down upon them, since I have not walked the proverbial mile in their shoes.

But the title of this blog is “enough money, but not enough time”, so let’s go there now. These situations usually come under the heading of “how much is enough?” There are lots of people who appear to have plenty of money (to us, but obviously not to themselves) but who are always so busy, they never seem to have any time to do anything besides work.

Some of them realize it and make changes in time, others only do so once the stress has taken a huge toll, and their health or family relationships have suffered great harm.

In the same way that these people might look at the person picking up a food basket and wonder why the person doesn’t just get a job, that person on welfare might look at the person working an 80-hour week and wonder why they don’t slow down before it kills them.

Not everyone’s ideal work-life balance is the same, of course, but most people would do well to stop and think about it more often.  When looking at business families there are all kinds of scenarios that come up in the areas of time and money, from the founder/father who won’t let go, to two siblings earning the same pay but with hugely different workloads and responsibilities, to the kid who feels compelled to take over a business in which they have no real interest, but sees it as an obligation or the path of least resistance.

This time of year is often used for reflection, as one year ends and another one begins. Thinking about important core issues like your work-life balance, and talking about them with the important people in your life, are probably the best gift you can give yourself.

And then if you are lucky enough to have a sufficient amount of money, and still have some time on your hands, there are plenty of volunteering opportunities available, and some of them will help change your perspectives on life too.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Season’s Bloggings

At this time of year, we get to see a whole bunch of retrospectives of all the events that happened over the past 12 months. These reports are great filler pieces for news organisations at a time of year that is usually slow anyway, so they are the perfect fit.

Personally, I usually find these things pretty lame, and certainly not something to look forward to. The one exception would be “Top 10” highlight reels on sports channels, or maybe some bloopers.

But just because this season isn’t great for TV, doesn’t mean it isn’t a great time for some personal retrospection. (Yes, that IS a word, I just checked).

When I was younger, the Christmas season didn’t really do much for me, and I even went through a kind of “grinch” phase, during which I didn’t buy gifts for anybody. But alas, parenthood changed that.

When my kids were younger and still in the Santa phase, Christmas was lots of fun, and I can still picture the huge mess in our living room after the gifts were opened, since the gifts came not just from Mr. Claus, but from grandparents, aunts, and uncles too.

With teenagers now, (OK, strictly speaking one is still a 12 and a half-year-old) things have shifted once again. Now I enjoy looking back over the year and noting the progress they have made in so many areas of their lives.

The old saying “they grow up so fast” is so true, it’s almost scary. One year is a long time to you when you are a kid, but when you are pushing 50, it goes by in a flash. I still have trouble figuring out how so much can happen AND time can go by so fast. If so much is happening, shouldn’t it be taking longer?

Alright, maybe I am getting too existential here, but ‘tis the season, isn’t it? We look back on the year that just was and marvel at how things have changed, and you almost have to shake your head when you try to look ahead a year and think of where you will be next Christmas.

But as scary as it might be, I believe that everyone really should do it, even if it you only do it once a year. If you wanna do something even more fun, project out 5 years and look at how old everyone in your family will be at the end of 2018. Yikes!

If you work in a family business, it is even more important to undertake this kind of exercise, because there are so many moving parts to begin with, that when you throw in the time element, things can really start to get interesting.

If you don’t have an operating business but are lucky enough to be in the HNW (high net worth) category, look ahead and think about how you want things to go in your future, and what your kids’ roles will be as they age, and as YOU age.

This is the time of year that we usually see family members, some of whom we may not see as often as we would like to. It is a great time to work on improving communication with everyone, and even to talk about the future together.

How many of you are up to it? Good luck to those who do, I believe that you will be glad you did.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Trop tôt? Non. Trop tard? Non plus

Nous connaissons tous des gens qui ont commencé leurs projets un peu trop tard dans la vie. J’ose même suggérer que nous avons tous attendu un peu trop longtemps avant de démarrer quelques-uns de nos propres projets personnels.

Que ce soit épargner de l’argent pour sa retraite, arrêter de fumer, décider de se remettre en forme, ou de planifier la succession de son entreprise familiale, c’est presque jamais trop tard pour commencer.

De l’autre côté de la médaille, il y a la question opposée, est-ce qu’on peut commencer trop tôt? Ça, selon moi, c’est encore plus rare.

Prenons l’exemple des gens qui se pensent trop vieux pour apprendre à utiliser un ordinateur. Je connais personnellement deux octagénaires qui illustrent les deux extrêmes possibles. “Marc” est rendu un expert, qui fait des recherches sur sa région natale, communique avec sa parenté de l’autre côté de l’Atlantique, et il est devenu le lien entre sa famille canadienne et ceux qui demeurent encore en Europe. Il a 86 ans et il demeure dans le même bungalow depuis une cinquantaine d’années.

“Robert”, de son côté, a toujours crû qu’il était trop tard pour lui pour apprendre “à jouer avec ça”. Malgré le fait qu’il est plus jeune que Marc, et qu’il aurait eu plus de budget pour s’équiper et de se faire enseigner comment faire, il n’a jamais embarqué. Impossible pour ses enfants et ses petits-enfants de communiquer avec lui par courriel ou par Skype. Il ne sait pas ce qu’il manque, mais avec la technologie d’aujourd’hui, ça serait toujours une possibilité, s’il décidait qu’il voulait le faire.

Allons voir un exemple opposé, chez les jeunes. Sauvez son argent pour l’avenir, ou même pour la retraite, ça ne semble pas être fait par tout le monde. Certaines personnes embarquent parce qu’ils comprennent qu’en débutant tôt, c’est beaucoup plus facile d’avoir les résultats espérés à long terme. D’autres n’ont pas ce réflexe, et ils vont payer le prix plus tard, litérallement.

Le sujet qui me tient le plus à coeur se trouve entre les deux extêmes, dans les entreprises familiales. Le ou les membres de la première génération (G1) ont souvent de la difficulté à intégrer ceux de la génération qui suit (G2), que ce soit du point de vue de la gestion de la compagnie, ou encore plus, quand on parle de devenir actionnaires.

Ceux qui me connaissent vont déjà me voir venir, mais je vais tout de suite monter sur mon cheval de bataille préféré, la communication.

Si j’ai un secret à partager avec vous, c’est que ce n’est jamais trop tôt pour commencer à bien communiquer avec l’autre génération, et en même temps, ce n’est jamais trop tard non plus!

Je connais une famille où la communication n’a jamais été leur point fort. Le père est maintenant moins stable mentalement qu’il l’était, et les enfants agissent souvent comme si c’était trop tard pour communiquer sur les sujets importants. J’essaye de les convaincre qu’ils ont tort.

De mon côté, mes enfants sont des ados, et il n’y a presque pas de sujet interdit chez nous. Nous écoutons souvent des émissions de télé qui sont destinées aux adultes, mais nous le faisons ensemble, et leurs questions sont toujours les bienvenues. Et c’est souvent moi qui leur pose des questions pour être certain qu’ils ont bien compris. Et je parle évidemment pas seulement du fait d’avoir compris les jokes ou les histoires, mais aussi les questions de moralité (“Right” vs. “Wrong”).

Au bout de la ligne, si ça vaut la peine de le faire, ce n’est jamais trop tôt, ni trop tard.

Et je crois que la communication est parmie les sujets qui sont les plus importants, et donc ce n’est jamais trop tôt, ni trop tard, de commencer à bien communiquer.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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What Kind of Snob Are You?

They are all around us, almost everywhere we look. We see them at breakfast, lunch, supper, and in the evening. I am talking about snobs here, what kind(s) are you, or are you agnostic?

You know whom I am referring to, so let’s start at breakfast. “Oh, you have a Keurig? I have a Nespresso, it brews much better coffee”.

At lunch you offer someone a San Pellegrino with their lunch. “Oh, you don’t have Perrier?” At supper you offer someone some Tabasco with their meal. “Oh, do you have Sriracha?”

In the evening you offer them a beer. “Stella?” “Oh, I prefer Heineken”.

The coffee snob, the carbonated water snob, the hot sauce snob, the beer snob. Ughh. They drive me crazy. Does it really make a f#?&*%@+#ing difference? I could have also added the cola snob, the phone snob, the car snob, and of course everyone’s favourite, the wine snob.

I am usually pretty indifferent to most of these issues, so sometimes I wonder if I am the one missing something. Deep down, I often secretly wish I could conduct a blind taste test with some people, and I feel pretty sure that half the people could not even tell the difference if the labels were missing.

So why did I feel the need to share these thoughts? I find that you can tell a lot about someone by the way they behave. Duh! No kidding. But sometimes these snob issues just jump out at me.

I read the book “The Millionaiire Next Door” almost 20 years ago, but I still remember the story about the guy who only drank two kinds of beer: “Free, and Budweiser”.

What he meant was that if you offered to buy him a beer, he did not care what kind it was, he would drink anything. If, however, he were buying, then he would insist on buying his favourite kind, a Bud.

I thought that was so cool, I must have repeated this story dozens of times over the years. And it remains my best “anti-snob” story.

Thanksgiving is now behind us in both Canada and the US, and the holidays are around the corner. Do we practice too much gratitude or not enough? For most people, it is the latter.

I volunteer at a food bank, and most of the people we serve are gratefully for most of the food we provide them with. But even there, exceptions exist. Some people are always thankful and smiling, others are bitter and complain every time. Guess which ones sometimes get a little extra?

As hard as some snobs are for me to listen too, the worst are the ones who try to convince you that they are right, and that whatever they eat/drink/drive/use is the best, and if you do not agree with them, there MUST be something wrong with you.

I inherited many traits from my father, and I am happy to say that this was one that missed me.

He would cook up some kinds of foods that he grew up with, involving part of animals that North Americans would not dream of eating, and then he would offer to share.

He was a hard person to say “no” to, but my sisters and I usually resisted. But he wouldn’t just be satisfied with “Oh, you don’t know what you are missing”, or “OK, then there will be more for me”.

He always tried to make us feel wrong, and I remember it like it was yesterday.

Oh well, more chicken feet for him!

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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The Long and the Short of It

Most people spend so much time looking at the short term, they end up ignoring the long term. I usually have the opposite problem.

That is often a good thing, though, if only because focussing on the future usually helps guide your shorter term decisions. Let’s look at some examples of this issue.

I am relatively new to the field of family business consulting, and anxious to learn as much as I can from those who have been at it for years. I recently came across the Purposeful Planning Institute, which is a group of like-minded people who help others with their planning (in a purposeful way!).

For the past couple of months I have been listening in on their weekly calls and I have realized that the majority of the speakers seem to be far ahead of where I am, which is not that surprising. But not only that, they also seem to be looking so much further into the future on behalf of their clients.

Maybe I notice this because my typical preferred client is just starting to look more at their family, rather than simply their business. I identify most easily with my own family and that of my in-laws, both of which were lead by founders who focussed a great deal on their businesses, possibly at the expense of their families, despite the best of intentions.

Looking at the long term has many advantages, but can you look too far ahead? Maybe yes, but I find that it is better to look ahead too often, and too far, than the reverse. So many people are so busy putting out day-to-day fires in their business, making the long-term view suffer.

A great example of the long versus short question came from an unexpected source recently. I was considering having laser eye surgery to correct a problem with my vision. I wear glasses for driving and going to sports events, as they help me see clearly at longer distances. I don’t need glasses for reading, although my arms seem to be getting a bit too short when dealing with very fine print.

The woman who tested my eyes suggested I delay any surgery for a few years. I was not too surprised, because my eyesight is generally better than most people’s my age, and I have been told in the past that I was not an ideal candidate for laser surgery.

But then she really explained it to me in a way that I could understand, which I really appreciated, because I pride myself in being able to clarify confusing things for others.

She told me that everyone has a certain range of vision over which they have the ability to focus clearly without glasses or contacts. For some it is on the far end, for others, it is up close. Here is where it got really interesting. If you have surgery to alter the range, in my case to improve my distance viewing, then you will also affect the other end, adversely.

The surgery just moves the range in one direction or the other, it doesn’t make the range any longer. You cannot extend the range, you can just move it closer or farther.

Getting back to my family business analogy, let me attempt to put it in the proverbial nutshell.

If you want to start looking at the long term, you actually MUST stop spending time on the short term. You CANNOT do it all.

You have to make a conscious shift in you thinking. And that is the long and the short of it.

 

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Leading Family Firms at IVEY

This week I attended a two-day program in London Ontario, at the fantastic Ivey Spencer Leadership Centre. The course was put on by the Ivey Business Families Centre, which is run by David Simpson.

David has been running the “Leading Family Firms” program for 6 years, bringing in families who are in business together, and getting them to learn about, and start talking about, some of the important issues that so often get too little attention.

We had an eclectic mix of people in the room, including a couple of brothers who are part of a third-generation company along with some of their cousins; two brothers-in-law who work along with two of their other brothers-in-law; as well as a Mom & Dad, & Son team.

In addition, we had a father with his recently graduated Ivey daughter, who does not work in Dad’s business, but who has been helping guide him in many ways thanks to her Ivey degree, as well as a handful of current Ivey students who come from family businesses to which they will likely eventually return.

I never get tired of hearing people’s stories about working with their families. There are always similarities to other situations, but then there are huge differences too. But because of this, there is always something we can learn from others in this field. Some is “what to do”, and some is “what NOT to do”.

Simpson started off the first day by congratulating everyone who was there. He clearly recognized that making the effort to take two full days away from your business is not a step that everyone is prepared to make, but that he was happy that they had all taken a couple of days to work ON their businesses (and their families!) instead of IN their businesses.

The course itself is based on the Roadmap course put together by the Business Families Foundation, which includes a series of videos about the ficticious Dupont family, and the trials and tribulations they face in running their hotel business. The videos are a bit dated and over-acted, but they do a great job of depicting situations that participants can identify with, and thus are wonderful conversation starters.

And conversations are the single biggest key to most of the issues that business families face. Actually, maybe I should say that conversations that have not happended are often the source of most of the problems that arise in family businesses.

While I was doing the Family Enterprise Advisor program this year, we used many of the same videos, and covered a lot of the same topics. One thing I can attest to is that the people who live in a business family are much faster at learning this stuff than most advisors.

Simpson told me beforehand that he accelerates the material when teaching families because a slower pace just isn’t needed. Having gone through it with him now, I get his point. But he gets it because he has been involved on all sides in family business with his own family and as a teacher in the Entrepreneurship program at Ivey.

On Friday afternoon as we were wrapping up, each person was asked to commit to one or two things that they were going to do in the coming months. There seemed to have been lots of progress made over two short days, as people were committing to some key steps that they were planning on taking very soon, which otherwise might have been left to “someday”.

All in all, it was an interesting, fun, and educational program, and I am certain everyone who was there found it worthwhile.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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How May I Sell You Today? #FAIL (2 of 2)

Last week we looked at selling versus helping, from Zig Ziglar’s viewpoint that you should just stop selling and start helping, to getting paid to help in a field where clients are not accustomed to paying for it.

In addition to all that stuff, something that has thrown me for a bit of a loop recently was a twitter post from a business coach.

I have been following Leanne Hoagland-Smith (a.k.a. Coach Lee) for several months and she posts lots of great stuff. But then a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised that she was telling people to stop pushing the fact that they wanted to help.

She was encouraging people to stop saying that they were there to help, since so many clients, when they hear the word “help”, now actually mentally substitute the word “sell”.

What? Was Zig wrong? Or is his messge now out of date?

So I started thinking about it, and I realize that maybe the word “help” does get overused, and maybe it isn’t much “softer on the ears”. Maybe Coach Lee is right. But then where does that leave us?

Maybe we should no longer emphasize that we want to help, maybe we need to say that we want to “work with” people to achieve certain results.

After all, much of what we offer in business family consulting isn’t content (a product) but much more assistance with process issues, the “how” more than the “what”. We don’t really want to do things FOR clients as much as work through things WITH them, to the point where they can do these things on their own, without our “help”.

So perhaps the real answer is that while we should still start helping (à la Zig) we shouldn’t SAY that we want to help (à la Coach Lee). The key might be to show some help, do some helping, just help, but not use the word, talk about it, or ever say out loud that we are helping.

In the process of receiving our help, clients will soon feel like we have become “indespensible”, to the point where we don’t have to sell them anything, because they will be so ready to buy from us.

Maybe what Zig was really getting at was that we should just start to make things easier for people. This reminds me of the word “facilitator”, as in “facile”, which is the closest translation into French that I can think of for the word “easy”.

But if I am actually making things easier, am I not helping? Well yes, but saying you want to help may be about as poorly received as saying that you want to facilitate. Very few people wake up in the morning and decide that they are going to find themselves a facilitator, even if that may be just what they need.
When speaking to classmates and colleagues in this area, I often make the distinction that while there is a great deal of need for our services, there is not necessarily a lot of demand.

Many potential clients do not know that they could use our services. A large part of the reason stems from the fact that they do not know who we are, what we do, and how we can help, without them feeling like we sold them anything.

As we mature as an industry, we need to do a better job of explaining how much of a diffference we can make with family businesses, and more importantly, with business families.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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How May I Sell You Today? #FAIL (1 of 2)

Today I want to talk about the debate between selling and helping.

There are some important distinctions that I will look at, mostly to help my own understanding of the subject as I wrestle with some of these questions in my mind.

For years one of my favourite speakers was Zig Ziglar, one of the most popular motivational speakers of his time. Ziglar passed away a few months ago, and a few of his fans started sharing some of their most memorable Zig quotes on Twitter.

The quote that struck me and stayed with me was this one: “Stop selling. Start helping.”

What I take out of this, is that if you forget about what you are trying to sell, and instead just focus on the client and how you can help them, then the selling will take care of itself.

My father used to make a similar point, in making the distinction between marketing and selling. “Marketing is solving the customer’s problem. Selling is reducing your inventory”. Thanks Dad.

But that was from the perspective of someone who spent his life solving customers’ problems by providing them (selling) a product. Can it still apply when you are providing a service?

And what if the service that you are providing is actually your help, i.e. your knowledge, experience, ability, time? Help!

As I was going through my recently completed Family Enterprise Advisor Program, we had a very interesting discussion on this subject.

You see, the program is aimed at professionals from a variety of fields, all of which deal with family business (or, as I preer to say, business families). But the variety, in addition to providing the spice of life, is also a source of confusion, especially as it applies to helping and selling, and getting paid to help.

I will just use my project group as an example. I was working with “Robert”, a CPA with an international firm, “Cathy”, a private banker from one of the big five Canadian banks, and “Gary”, a licensed insurance specialist with his own firm.

We worked together on a pro bono basis, on a project for a real business family. Although framed as an “academic exercise”, we treated it as real because it was real. The fact that we were all educated, experienced professionals, averaging around 50 years of age, also added to the seriousness.

But let’s bring this back to the selling vs helping question. If we had provided the exact same help to the family in a real life situation, how would we have been paid, or how would we be compensated for our help?

Robert, as a CPA with an accounting firm, would get paid for the hours he put in on behalf of the client, and most businesses have professional fees to pay for outside accounting services as a matter of course.

Cathy, working as a private banker, would not charge for her services per se, so the hours she put in are paid by her employer, the bank, who make a cut off the client’s wealth in other ways.

Gary, for his part, would get paid if and when the client purchased an insurance product from him.

So to summarize, every one of us would have been paid in a different fashion. But wait, I forgot someone. Me. Uh-oh. How is this gonna work?

The only this that I am actually selling is my help. And I am also going to need some help selling.

Next week, in part 2, we will get into a couple of other issues, like client resistance to people who are just trying to help.

See you then.

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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