Run a Family Business
The Resource Guide is created by Grace Liu and Gabriella Velazquez
Updated on Janurary 8, 2022
A family-owned business may be defined as any business in which two or more family members are involved and the majority of ownership or control lies within a family. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, about 90% of American businesses are family-owned or controlled. This Guide introduces resources for student entrepreneurs who are running a family business.
Table of Contents
Self-guided Tutorials and Courses
The courses selected can be audited for free and you can find the audit instructions for Coursera and Edx courses.
Leading a Family Business Specialization (Tecnológico de Monterrey)
Through this course, you will cover the strategies and tools that entrepreneurs and startups use to develop business ideas and launch innovations that will prepare you to orchestrate the family business and Identify and apply the characteristics that will allow you to be a good business leader and an expert in making decisions about your own business, including courses:
Family Businesses: Entrepreneurship and Leadership to Transcend (Tecnológico de Monterrey)
Understand and know best practices for developing next-generation millennials as good entrepreneurial business owners and help them to become young entrepreneurs. Establish family business governance bodies (family board, board of directors and family office) and understand family business sustainability and succession models.
Leadership in the family business (Tecnológico de Monterrey)
Learn the dynamics of family businesses, in order to apply the skills, tools and instruments that involve leading and orchestrating a successful family business.
Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship in the Family Business (Tecnológico de Monterrey)
Learn best practices, entrepreneurship and innovation models and how to take advantage of the strengths of the family business in order to achieve success. During this course you will carry out a transgenerational entrepreneurship project.
EQ for Family Business (University of British Columbia)
An introduction to the importance of cultivating emotional intelligence in family business. Listen to stories from family business members, and learn ways to develop your own traits to help you build rapport and strengthen relationships. Learn how cultivating emotional intelligence can help your company achieve a competitive advantage.
Executive Education
Executive Program: Family Business (Harvard Business School)
Family Enterprise Suite (Northwestern University Kellogg School)
Podcast and Webinars
Branding for Family Business
In this one-hour webinar, Rani Wise from Rani Wise Consulting will show you how to focus your time and energy to successfully launch or relaunch your organization’s brand, learn how to prioritize your team’s resources to see results on a shorter timeline, and implement strategies to be recognized by the people who will help you achieve your goals. Suitable for all industries and experience levels, Wise will help you learn to identify and communicate your brand and family.
"The Role of Family Business Directors," (Davis Wright Tremaine LLP)
Establishing a board of directors in a family-owned enterprise—particularly including outside directors—can be intimidating. The family may worry about loss of family control and direction. At the same time, many family business owners have found that an effective board of directors is critical to the business's ability to survive and prosper.
Cambridge Family Enterprise Group Webinars
Features talks including:
Family Business Success Today: Beyond Operations, To Ownership
This is a new era for family businesses. To succeed in this turbulent period, family businesses must adopt new practices at not only the operations level, but also at the ownership level.
The Family Business Consulting Group Webinars
Taught by our consultants, our one-hour webinars address the unique needs and timely topics facing family businesses, with recommended resources and tools. Including webinars:
Drawing from real-life cases in his work with families around the world, Dana explains how to construct and maintain a strong foundation with the following building blocks: Aligned ownership; Effective board of advisors/directors; Strategic planning; Merit-based leadership; Engaged family governance.
This webinar untangles that complexity by sharing practical tools and case studies on how to align your family with an effective decision-making process. We’ll help you define who and how decisions are made and to make the process crystal clear.
Changing Disagreement into Dialogue: How to Manage Conflicts and Enhance
During this interactive webinar, the presenter shares effective methods for handling difficult conversations and family dynamics. Topics include how to: Separate issues from emotion; Improve active listening skills; Approach difficult subjects with a five-step process; Move forward from an emotional disagreement; Deal with difficult people
Family Business Magazine Webinar List
An archive of webinars organized by the Family Business Magazine. Including webinars:
Whether you’re considering your career beyond the family business or adding philanthropy into the current mix, join us for a compelling discussion with Court and Robin Lorenzini, co-founders of The Lorenzini Family Foundation, along with Foundation Source’s National Director of Philanthropic Advisory Services, Elizabeth Wong and Family Business Magazine’s Publishing Director, David Shaw, for insights on what happens when you successfully transition beyond the business and channel that business energy to positively impact the community and your children.
In our November/December 2021 edition, Family Business Magazine recognizes a diverse group of family business CEOs for their exceptional leadership. To complement this special feature, we asked three of the CEOs to join us for a webinar discussion on the unique challenges and opportunities of leading a family-owned business.
Family Business Center Webinar List
Featuring talks including:
Jude Rake, founding principal of JDR Growth Partners, discusses how to align strategic business planning with strategic family development, all while under the pressures of rapid change.
Featuring Debra Horberg, Mediator and Collaborative Attorney at Horberg Collaborative Law and Mediation Group.
Andrew Keyt discusses how family businesses can find strength during times of crisis and uncertainty.
Avoid Dysfunction in Your Family Business (Harvard Business Review)
In this Harvard Business Review webinar, INSEAD professor Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries—author of “Saving a Family Business from Emotional Dysfunction”—provides a framework and practical advice that family businesses can use to avoid business-killing conflicts.
Managing the Trickiest Parts of a Family Business (Harvard Business Review)
Featuring Jennifer Pendergast and German Herrera, coauthors of the recent HBR article, “Managing the Trickiest Parts of a Family Business.”
The Family Business Podcast is your virtual ‘Chief Learning Officer’, bringing you insights and expertise to help you and your family business to thrive.
Why does working together in a family business have to be so darn difficult? Get answers to this and other relevant questions when host, Greg Lewis, interviews prominent local and national family leaders about the challenges of working together in a family business.
In each episode of GENeration EXcellence I talk with other leaders of unique generational family businesses - about their past/future/present.
Online Resource Centers
Cambridge Family Enterprise Group Insights
Finding a wealth of articles, books, case studies, index, news, webinars in CEFG’s insights Library.
Online Articles
You can search Harvard Business Review to learn more articles on this topic. You can also check if your university library has a subscription to the Business Source Complete database, which provides full-text access to Harvard Business Review articles, or use the library’s interlibrary loan service to access the article.
Case Studies
FamilyINBusiness podcasts (Northwestern University)
capture stories that distill the essence of leadership required to weather industry changes, major economic upheaval and family evolution. Enjoy this series hosted by Kellogg alumna and leadership storytelling expert, Esther Choy.
Canlis - Innovation, Change, and Making the Business Their Own," Family Business Legacy Series, Davis Wright Tremaine Webinar
An entrepreneur's son questions whether to follow in his father's footsteps after his sudden death.
The Inspiring Story of a Family Business
Growing up in a household where business and family were one, Cal Turner Jr. learned a lot from his dad. Turner served for 37 years as CEO of Dollar General, the company founded by his father and grandfather. His book, My Father's Business (Center Street, 2018), co-written with Rob Simbeck, shares how the small-town values with which he was raised helped him guide Dollar General from a family business to a professionally managed public corporation with more than 14,000 stores today.
Books
Click the link to find a Worldcat book record; enter a zipcode to check which library nearby has the book you can borrow. When the record is not available, a link to Amazon is provided.
Baron, Joshua, and Robert Lachenauer. The Harvard Business Review Family Business Handbook: How to Build and Sustain a Successful, Enduring Enterprise. 2021. Print.
Gust, Gerard. Secrets to Succession: The Pie Method to Transitioning Your Family Business. 2019. Print.
Hutcheson, Henry. Dirty Little Secrets of Family Business: Ensuring Success from One Generation to the Next. 2019. Print.
Isaac, George A. Your Business, Your Family, Your Legacy: Building a Multigenerational Family Business That Lasts. 2019. Print.
Ward, John L. Perpetuating the Family Business: 50 Lessons Learned from Long-Lasting, Successful Families in Business. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Print.
Read More Books on This Topic
Mentors
SCORE mentors offer family business-related consultation via video, email, phone, or in-person.