Despite the old axiom, never do business with family, Adam Drexler, founder of furniture retailer and e-tailer Matt Blatt has been able to work successfully with son Joel, who now runs the day-to-day business as general manager.<\/p>\n
Here are their five tips for working successfully with family.<\/p>\n
1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Stay humble and hands-on<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s no such thing as \u2018prescriptive\u2019 job descriptions in a family business. There are plenty of benefits from gaining a hands-on education in every aspect of operations. In Joel\u2019s case that includes packing orders, working on reception, selling on the showroom floor, buying products, customer service and devising creative promotions – especially when it comes to understanding (non-family) staff-related issues.<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Be prepared to make mistakes<\/strong><\/p>\n Taking risks and being adventurous with business decisions has always been at the heart of the Matt Blatt furniture business. Admittedly, not every risk pays off, but if they hadn\u2019t been adventurous and open to fresh ideas, they wouldn\u2019t be here today. As well as being early adopters of online technology, they pioneered the replica furniture game in Australia and continue \u2018testing the waters\u2019 with the types of products they sell. They\u2019d rather be flexible, fun and unpredictable than safe and set in their ways.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Draw a line between work-time and family-time<\/strong><\/p>\n Respecting the difference between work and family time is critical. Adam doesn\u2019t call Joel late at night to discuss work, even if he\u2019s thinking about it and he knows that if he emails him about business on the weekend, he won\u2019t reply until Monday. They\u2019re good at respecting these boundaries, and that makes the relationship work, both personally and professionally.<\/p>\n 4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Move forward with confidence<\/strong><\/p>\n In the early stages of a small family business, sometimes you just have to go with what you think is the \u2018most right\u2019 road forward, even if you don\u2019t have all the answers.<\/p>\n 5)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Don\u2019t put nepotism before capability<\/strong><\/p>\n Even in a family business, it\u2019s essential that all staff are equally accountable. While Adam always hoped family would be involved in the business, he never believed in putting them into positions they were neither ready for nor capable of performing to a certain standard. If Joel hadn\u2019t shown an aptitude for this business, or a willingness to learn, he wouldn\u2019t be working here, and certainly not as general manager.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are no ‘free passes’ when it comes to working with family<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,1,42,45,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career","category-news","category-on-the-job","category-to-stories","category-work-life-balance"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1720,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions\/1720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.careerone.com.au\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}