Empowering Family Businesses: Insights from 'The Family Business Manifesto'

Empowering Family Businesses: Insights from 'The Family Business Manifesto'

In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, host Jeremy Julian is joined by business coach and author Mike to discuss his new book, 'The Family Business Manifesto.' The conversation delves into the unique challenges and dynamics of family-run businesses, sharing key lessons from the book that aim to help such enterprises thrive. Mike highlights the importance of establishing clear roles, responsibilities, and communication, while also maintaining family harmony. The episode is packed with valuable insights for anyone involved in or associated with family businesses.

00:00 Family Business Manifesto
00:51 Introduction and Welcome
01:00 Guest Introduction: Meet Mike
01:41 Mike's Background and New Book
03:10 The Prevalence of Family Businesses
04:40 Challenges and Dynamics in Family Businesses
08:24 Key Principles for Family Business Success
15:32 The Importance of Clear Roles and Responsibilities
24:36 Establishing Core Values and Behaviors
34:10 Effective Communication Strategies
36:13 Conclusion and How to Learn More

Transcript

0:02

This is the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Helping you run your restaurant better.

Jeremy: 0:10

In today's episode, we are joined by a friend and a mentor who wrote book about family business with all of the restaurants out there that are family businesses. I recognize that a lot of you, these messages are going to resonate. Mike wrote the family business manifesto as a way to help family businesses to thrive in today's day and age. He's got a lot of lessons that he shares throughout the podcast episode. If you are a family business, know somebody in the family business or have ever worked within a family business. Lots of the messages that he shares will resonate with all of you. If you don't know me, my name is Jeremy Julian. I am the chief revenue officer for custom business solutions. We sell the north star on a sales solution for multi-unit restaurants. Check us www.Cbsnorthstar.com. And now onto the episode. Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us. As I say each and every time, I know you guys got lots of choices. So thank you for joining us today. I am joined by a friend and somebody that I respect highly. I'm gonna let Mike tell you a little bit about Why we're talking today after he goes in and gloats a little bit about himself, knowing Mike on the outside of the podcast, I'm sure it's going to be a little bit tougher for him to, to do But Mike, again, you're one of those people that I look up to in business and in life. I love what you get to do and have gained so much insight over the last few years that we've gotten to know each other. But, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about who you are before we jump into your new book and kind of what it is that you've been doing lately.

Michael Mirau: 1:43

good. first of all, Jeremy, thank you for having me on today. always consider it an honor to get to share some thoughts with folks. I am a business coach. I have a business coaching organization. we've been around, almost 24 years and we've worked with, over a thousand different businesses and over 107 different industries. And through all that, we've seen a lot of what works and what a lot of what doesn't work. And so the, what kind of generated our conversation today was the fact that, in September we released a new book, The Family Business Manifesto. And that was built on my personal experience growing up in a family business, also working a lot of my corporate Years in a family business. And then at least 80 percent of the clients I've had over the last 24 years have been some form of family business. And so I think it gives me a unique perspective on some of the things that work and some of the things that don't work. And we tried to capture that in a book and, we're real happy with it. We hit, it was an Amazon bestseller in two days. So we're pretty happy about that.

Jeremy: 3:01

Very cool. And again, for those that are long time listeners, everybody that's listened to me for more than 10 minutes knows that I'm in a family business. I know you might, you and I've talked quite a bit about my own family, good and bad. And it's funny as I've been digging into the book, it's been fun to dig through a little bit of that. Talk to me, I was struck as I picked up the book and started reading and I know you've shared this with me. What percentage of businesses are family businesses? Again, our audience a lot of times is these restaurants. Many of them are started by a first generation and they move through that journey. talk to me a little bit about as you've been doing the research for the book, I was blown away with what a large percentage of the U. S. GDP, as well as just overall how many businesses by count in the U. S. are based there. around families and around first, second, third generations and such.

Michael Mirau: 3:46

what we found we did, we actually started researching the book about five years ago and we started having, one on one conversations with owners of family businesses and in doing the research to really give, an understanding of the scope. A family business in the United States. What we discovered that, according to the small business administration, which kind of is the hub of data, all data business, 70 percent of all businesses in the United States are some form of family business. And that goes everything from the folks you just described, the solopreneur with a family member working in the business could be a husband running a business with the wife doing the bookkeeping or things like that. Or it could be a company as large as Walmart. Which is a family business and a lot of people go, Walmart, really? That's publicly traded. Yeah, but it's still a family business and there are others out there. And, when we started looking at it and doing the research, we said, Oh my gosh, this is a big deal. And so that was part of the impetus on us, moving forward in writing the book, because we really think that there's Some lessons that can be learned that help people be successful in the business. And then there are how to overcome some of the challenges that come with being in a family business.

Jeremy: 5:06

Yeah, I was definitely blown away with, I guess the depiction of a family business, because I think a lot of people's perception is, it's a, father, son, it's a, mother, daughter, it's a father, daughter, kind of thing where they're small, they're, 10 people versus you, in early in the book, you talked about some examples, Walmart being a family business. Obviously it started, by the Walton family. But I was also blown away with how big those things have gotten. Because I think really, as we dig into this conversation, Mike, I want to let our audience understand a little bit about what does it take to get there. And so before we jump into that, talk to me a little bit about why you called it a manifesto, because I also thought that was an interesting idea versus just a, best practices or some other means because that word really means something number one and number two, I think it depicts why the book is structured the way it is. And really, we can dig into kind of some of those chapters and what you learned.

Michael Mirau: 6:00

Yeah. A manifesto by definition is a statement of beliefs about a circumstance or situation. And a lot of times the word manifesto kind of has some negative connotations about, this organization, their manifestos to, Eliminate this group of people or take over the, this country or territory or city or whatever. And it's more of a vigilant. Approach, but our purpose in using the word manifesto was to say, this is what we believe about family business, and if you read the very first of the book, it lists 10 things that is really our family business manifesto. Things that, all businesses are really impacted by family, either in the business, running the business, or the business supports families. So you have people on your team that have families and those families are impacted either directly or indirectly by what goes on in your business. And what we've learned is that the wall between business and family is almost non existent. that the family drama bleeds into the business and the business drama bleeds into the family. and one of the challenges is getting away from it. I have a daughter, we talk about this in the book, my daughter, we actually own a family business, a printing company. And my daughter and son in law run that company. And one of the things we try to do when we're together is not talk about business because it's so easy to be the default conversation about a customer or a member of our team or some situation or challenge. and you just want to leave that alone for a while and let's just be family. let's just enjoy each other's company and things like that. And that's part of what we're after with the book is to show people how they can do that. Give them some tools. That will empower them to create that wall. So to speak, not that the family and the business don't inter intercede, they don't connect, but giving you some ways to be able to have that separation so that, you can deal with family stuff. As a family, rather than, leveraging the business into that. And the other side of it is, focusing on the business stuff to help the business be successful.

Jeremy: 8:26

Yeah. And I want to get into that in just a little bit about some of the pain and suffering that you experienced and saw, as well as some of the people that did it well. And Walk me through you talk about your 10 principles that are part of the manifesto. Probably the one that stuck out to me is just how important family above business even is as it relates to that. Can you expound on that and why you think that's such a critical based on your worldview and even what you experienced in the research and writing of the book?

Michael Mirau: 8:53

Absolutely. one of the, one of the tenants of the manifesto is that family is more important than business. Now, if you sit and interview and we've discovered this when we did our interviews, when you talk to some of these business owners, that line gets blurred because I can't support my family if I don't have a successful business. Okay. But I can't have a successful business if my family isn't involved. And so you've got these dynamics that come into play. But one of the things we really believe is that family trumps business. Okay. So if you're going, if you've got a situation, family takes position one in the priorities over the business. And what we found in our research was those organizations that are able to do that, that they put the family first as a, instead of the business, they tend to be more successful. So it's those that kind of get those priorities out of whack where the business is more important than the family that we start seeing, tension in the family about focus and, how much are you dealing with some of the family stuff? Or the other thing that we see, Jeremy, is that sometimes the business leader will use the business as an excuse, not to deal with a family issue. I can't do this because I've got to be here because of my customers. If I don't take care of this and it could be missing a kid's ball game, or it could be missing a recital or. is simple as having a date night with your wife. I can't do that because I have to work late on Fridays. and, those types of things come into play. And so when you get those priorities, we tend to see those businesses that get that squared up, be more successful.

Jeremy: 10:46

Yeah. So walk me through some of the things that you guys found through the book and I don't want to give away all of it because I think, many of our listeners, Are in family businesses, work for family businesses. I want them to dig through this stuff because there's so much gold in what you guys have found, but walk me through, two or three principles, Mike, that you have found, get places, get people to a better place. you talk about boundaries, you talk about numbers, you talk about some of these things. So talk about the top two or three things that come to mind and let's expound on those things so that our listeners can walk away with. If I don't have this, how do I get there? They grab the book, they figure those things out.

Michael Mirau: 11:20

So in the book, And it's toward the back beginning of the back third of the book, we talk about what we call the five keys. And these are the things that we have found work. These are not just hope that it works when you're able to do these things inside your family business. It does make the relationships less tenuous, a little more conducive to business as opposed to family. And these five keys are proven. I use them with the businesses that I work with. And so the first one, in my opinion, is the most important. and that key is to check the relationship at the door. See, the problem you run into is if we don't have clarity walking into the business, then we begin to see favoritism to the family that causes issues with the other people in the business. the son can come in late and leave early and makes a whole lot of money or gets a promotion without the same level of contribution as the other team members. And that has all kinds of issues that come with that. So when the person, you got to define who's in charge. Who has the final say? Okay. This is not a democracy where everybody has a vote. This is a way at work. Somebody has to make the final decisions. And you want to get clarity around that. But in order to do that, you have to check the relationship at the door and treat the people who are in the positions of authority with the level of respect that they are due because of that position. And that's one of the things that we found is And then the other, the flip side of that is the people that are in that position of authority must treat the family members the same as everybody else. When they start showing favoritism, you create all kinds of jealousy, resentment, Backbiting and gossip and things like that. And they, it really makes it difficult for the family member working in the business to have the level of success they need and the level of cooperation with everybody else. And they put too much emphasis on the last name. he's only doing that because his last name is so and it, so the first key we talk about is checking the relationship at the door. That and

Jeremy: 13:49

can I give you a quick story, or give our listeners a quick story about that, Mike? I actually got a little bit of the opposite treatment when I started. and I'll just give our listeners, because some of them have known me the majority of my life, and others have not. I started working in the family business and I would use, my dad's name as dad. I would say, Oh, Hey, did you talk to my dad about these things? So now in my brain and people find it baffling. I, and again, you've experienced this even in some of our conversations. If I'm talking about work, I talk about art. I'm talking about business. if I'm talking about personal, I talk about my dad. For me, I had to learn at a very young age to do that. I actually think I got reverse favoritism, I think because I didn't report to my dad, I had a few people that would beat me down to make sure that I could make it the opposite way. And so they would be, they would tease me about it. It's Hey, we're going to make sure that you're going to make it. and I guess I would just love to hear, have you, did you guys experience any of that in your research or any of the companies that you work with that it's the opposite where they're getting pushed in ways harder than they're Then maybe just a run of the mill, family member might,

Michael Mirau: 14:52

we did encounter that and we did see that. And that was one of the things that we saw that really contributed was not having family members directly report to other family members, having somebody in between, and that really helps when you've got somebody that is, is a member of the team, but not related. It's a whole lot easier for them to, they're going to treat that family member just like another member of the team, as opposed to, Oh, they're the son. So they get the easy assignments. They get the easy stuff to do

Jeremy: 15:26

or show up late and

Michael Mirau: 15:28

yeah, yeah. all those perceived perks that come from being a member of the family. Yeah, we did see that. But predominantly we saw the other where there was no clarity around roles and responsibilities, which is key. Number two is you got to have clear roles and responsibilities, and because without that you're doing a disservice to the company and you're doing a disservice to the family member because they're trying to figure out where they fit. In the organization, they have goals and aspirations and desires and, but they've got to have a chair and you've got to define the chair. And we go back to some of the tenants of Jim Collins in his book, good to great. Talks about, creating the seats on the bus, and then you put people in the seats on the bus, but you don't create seats for family members. And because when you do, you're. You're actually doing some damage to the organization because you're trying to make something that really doesn't need to be there. And we saw that a lot. so and so's out of work. We need to give him a job and so we'll create an opportunity for him. He can come work for us until he finds something else. And he never goes find something else.

Jeremy: 16:43

leaves well. And I think all businesses need to have, Jim Collins, says it and good to great. Everybody needs to have a seat on the bus. Everybody needs to know about that clarity. I guess it sounds like you guys found, I don't want to say predominantly, but many of the family businesses will employ somebody, but they don't create clarity around who they are, what they're doing, because they have the last name that might be on the outside of the building, and they can come and go, and so nobody knows what to expect from them, and thus the team and or the leadership can't hold them accountable. Is that fair?

Michael Mirau: 17:13

That's very fair. And that's one of the challenges is if you've got one of the family members working for you, how hard can you push them

Jeremy: 17:21

Yeah.

Michael Mirau: 17:21

before they run to daddy and say, Hey man, this guy's giving me a hard time, you there's going to be some hesitancy on the part of that in between person on how hard they can, they can.

Jeremy: 17:34

Hold them accountable.

Michael Mirau: 17:35

Hold them accountable or challenge them. that's the other side of it. it creates some dynamics that come into play. I was on a call yesterday with a lady that has a family business and we were talking about some of the challenges with the family member and she goes, I just finished reading your book. We've got to go back and create those clear roles and responsibilities so that we don't have this problem. And so that's, that's one of the, this, the other keys. And then we get to the third key, which is just as important as the first two is you've got to treat everybody the same. When you're at work, you don't get privilege because you're Of your family. And I'll give you an example. we had a, a refrigerator at our office that people would bring their lunch and bring food and beverages and stuff like that. And one guy was a diet Coke fiend. this guy drank more diet Coke than anybody I think ever on the planet. And so he was like every other day, bringing a 12 pack of diet Coke in and putting it in the refrigerator. No problem with that. That's what it's there for. what happened was one of our family members was getting some of that diet Coke and drinking about half of it. And the guy one day comes running in just upset. He goes, somebody's stealing my diet Coke. the family member just assumed that it was for everybody and was drinking it and giving it to their kids and so on and so forth. And it was, they felt like they had privilege. When it wasn't their stuff. And so the, in treating everybody the same, they should have, one of the things we're really big on is people have clear roles and responsibilities. We create what we call a role scorecard. And on that role scorecard, we talk about alignment with the values and also the key result areas. Those have to be clearly defined. And if we are not holding our family members to the same level of expectation of performance that we do the rest of our team, I really believe you're doing a disservice to the team and also to the family member, because they're not accountable at the same level. And again, it creates that, dissension within the ranks, for those people, because they're not being held to the same level of accountability.

Jeremy: 20:06

Yeah. I'm going to ask one, one quick question before you jump on to point number four, which is it takes a level of maturity to be able to do that in a family business. and I know, at least as I've been reading through your book, as well as just talking with you, I know Jeremy at 22 is very different than Jeremy at 45 at 22. I thought I knew it all. I was, my last name happened to be on the, on the paychecks was I wasn't the one signing the, the front of the paychecks, but I felt like I had some level of entitlement. And as I've grown and matured, and I would say that my father, having worked in a family business, I guess I'd just love for you to expound upon that because it's hard when you go over for a Sunday night dinner to not talk about it to, the blinds get blurred constantly as it relates to that. And, I know, especially when we'll talk about it here in just a couple of minutes. The more family members that are in the business, the worse it gets,

Michael Mirau: 20:56

it does.

Jeremy: 20:57

in, in my world, it's two people that are working in the business and everybody else is outside of the business and they have their perceptions here and there, and family dinners and those kinds of things are different. But when you have, when I was working at times in the past with my siblings, there was, it was even harder that way. So I'd love for you to just share a little bit of your thoughts

Michael Mirau: 21:13

you're absolutely right. And that maturity is something that develops over time. we were all dumb and stupid at 18 and 20 years old. I was there too. And I was like, Oh my gosh. And I grew up in a family business. I started working in the family business when I was 12 years old. We, we ran a service station in a small town in Texas. I was changing oil and busting tires and pumping gas and doing all the things we did at a service station in the seventies. And and my dad had very clear expectations about what we did. And he was very good about holding us accountable because we were taking care of customers and we were doing work on their cars and how we treated their, his mantra was treat the cars like they belong to you. And we always did. and so he was really clear about that, but my younger brother worked in the business also. And there were many times we'd have a really tough job. we had the, contract for school bus tires every year. So every year, all the school buses would come to our station and we'd have to put new tires on the school bus. And most school buses had. approximately six tires, each school bus. And these weren't tires that you broke with a machine. You had to bust them down by hand. And it was hard. It was hot. It was during the summer. And it's some of the hardest work I ever had to do. So my brother and I would. Compete to see who didn't have to do the school bus contract. And so finally my dad said, that's over. You're going to do this one. You do the next one. And he took charge of that thing. But the issue of maturity came up a lot in our research is, and here's what we found, Jeremy, those people that come into the business at a young age, struggle more with that as opposed to those that go work somewhere else and come back. And so it's like you learn over here, how to be a good team member working outside the family. Then you come back and you can actually bring that maturity in that level. We saw that to work much better than those that were legacy family members that grew up in the business and stayed in the business because it does, it creates that entitlement

Jeremy: 23:34

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Michael Mirau: 24:47

number four is to establish clear and committable values and behaviors for all. So this is a cornerstone of the culture that you create for your business. And without these core values, this defined behavior that we're looking for, then you leave everything open to interpretation in terms of how we treat our customers, how we treat our team members, how we treat our vendors, all of those things come into play. And what we found was when those things are not clear inside of the organization, it's, you're left for people to interpret the way you want things done, as opposed to being clear, this is the way we handle these situations. And so having that clarified, then you have a level of standard of behavior that you can hold everybody accountable to. And without that in place, then. What happens is people do what they think as opposed to what they really should do. And that depends on their conditioning, their belief system, and all this other stuff. And what happens is if you get people that are not aligned with those values, they create problems inside the organization. And it's 2x the issue if it's a family member.

Jeremy: 26:07

yeah,

Michael Mirau: 26:07

So this is what we found was you've got to get those clear and committable values and behaviors for everybody in the organization. And that's just, that's not just family business. That's all businesses. That is, is

Jeremy: 26:20

a principle I would recommend for everybody. And I think all too often family businesses either don't define it because it's small and they don't want to do that, or they've got a problem with their family member, not upholding those family values. And so it's hard to go tell the rest of the organization, Hey, go act this way. While my son or daughter is not acting that way in, in accordance with some of those values. Is that fair to say?

Michael Mirau: 26:45

That's very fair to say. And what happens as a leader, you lose credibility when you say, this is what we're going to do, but then you don't enforce it on the family side. And again, that's where we start getting the jealousy and the other conflicts that, that arise from that. And so it's a, it's an exercise that is worth every minute of work to figure that out. And making sure that you have a mechanism within the organization to celebrate it when it's being done right to correct it when it's not being done right and to address it as quickly as possible. We have a criteria for core values that we like to use in the organizations we work with is number one. It's not really a core value unless number one, you're willing to, take a financial hit. If it gets violated, number two, you're willing to fire an offender. In other words, somebody does violates this value. You're willing to let them go. And third, they're alive inside the organization today. Core values are not aspirational. It's not what we want to be. It's what we are. and those are established by the CEO. The CEO is the person that owns the culture inside the business. And so what, getting that clarified, it actually helps with some of these issues that come up because now we know the standard of behavior we're trying to live up to. And when we have that in place, now you've got that measurement, that line that says, we don't cross this line. We don't go here. I'll give you an

Jeremy: 28:22

I think even in that regard, Mike, if a family member is not upholding those values, nobody is going to go to the CEO and say. Hey, Mike's not doing this because they fear that they'll lose their job. I shouldn't say nobody, but very few people are willing to combat that. And oftentimes one of two things happens. They stay and you've just got a lack of continuity as to who you are and what you believe or they leave. Is that something

Michael Mirau: 28:46

That's totally right. and you use the right word there. It's fear. one of the things that comes up a lot is that, people are afraid to confront, they're afraid to address, they're afraid to treat. Family members, the same as everybody else. And again, that creates a problem both for the team and the family member, because they're wondering why nobody ever asked them to go have lunch. They're wondering because there, there's this hidden fear that they deal with. And a lot of times that's perpetuated by the founder, by the part, the leader and getting this stuff clarified really helps. Smooth some of that out. And so you want it, you want to take time, figure it out, and then you consistently communicate it. That's the other thing that we see is core values are not a one time shot. Oh, we got them. Put them up on the wall. Okay. That's our core values. I had a client out in Lubbock that I was working with. And, when we went my first meeting with him, I asked him, I said, do you have core values as an organization? He goes, Oh, yeah. And he pulled out this piece of paper that had 10 core values on it and I folded it in half and I said, Okay, tell me what's on here. Tell me what they are. He couldn't tell me. I said, you don't have them. You've got a piece of paper that's got some great consultant speak on there, but it really is not the values of the organization. And we went up, we went through an exercise to define those for the company. And then we communicated it out to the team. And then we made it a part of our process to address it regularly. And by doing that's how you drive this down into the inside of the organization. You've got kids, right?

Jeremy: 30:34

yep. I absolutely do.

Michael Mirau: 30:35

Do you have rules for your kids?

Jeremy: 30:37

Oh, unequivocally and

Michael Mirau: 30:38

Do you tell them the rules one time?

Jeremy: 30:41

know to the point that some of our friends make fun of us about the rules that we have for our kids. We asked them, was that loving and kind? And we've got a really good set of friends that we, and they're like, I love you. That when I'll get upset with the kids, they'll come back to me, on the side and go, was that loving and kind? And I'm like, stop it. Leave me alone. I had a momentary blip, but that is part of what our family core values are. and I agree with you. It has to be constantly reiterated, celebrated as well as, reprimanded if there's problems.

Michael Mirau: 31:09

You have to address, you have to celebrate when they do it right. You have to, fix it when they do it wrong. Okay? And that's the thing, too. Without that standard of behavior that you're trying to establish, then you're, it's open to interpretation. It's what people think. Think they should do, and sometimes they get it right, and most times they don't. And, the, there's, one of the key words we heard a lot in our research was assumption. So many assumptions are made in business. We assume people know what to do. We assume people believe what we believe. Not true. You, assumptions get you in trouble. And we assume that the family member cares as much about the business as you do. Not true.

Jeremy: 31:52

Yeah, no. And you had some examples in the book that, that, we're quite shocking to me, now working in a family business for the last 25 plus years, it's been, it was hard to read some of those examples. I'm like, how, why would anybody do that? But to your point, there are people that don't get it. They don't believe it. They don't, they're entitled, they're whatever. They've got some other belief system that caused them to get to that place.

Michael Mirau: 32:14

Exactly. What, the way we behave is based on our mindsets and attitudes and that all comes from conditioning and that conditioning started from the day we were born to today. We're always in this mode of conditioning and it's not saying you can't change those thoughts or those beliefs, but our subconscious, 90 percent of what we do it without thinking about it. And that's in our subconscious. we don't even consciously think about it. And because of that, only 10 percent of the things that we do, we consciously think, Hey, I need to go do this. I need to go do this. and, but we are creatures of habit and creatures of comfort. So we gravitate to the easiest possible path. People do this all the time. So what's going to make this easy as opposed to what's going to make it right. And the factors that come in is what's in it for me. What's the consequence if I don't do this, it's a whole lot easier to say nothing than to say something, because if I say something, then there's a chance I'll get reprimanded or criticized or whatever. And people don't like that. and that, that fear factor comes into play there. And the ammunition to that is assumption. We assume that people know this stuff. And so what the core values do is it allows you to define that level of behavior and say, this is the way we're going to play. And everybody lines up to that. It sets a standard, which. you can see organizations where this stuff is very prevalent. It's very, it's clear, it's articulated and it's adhered to, and organizations that have no core values. It's one person is great. This other person's a jerk and it's the same company. It can happen on the same night. you go to a restaurant and this one server who the first one that seats you Is friendly and courteous and kind and then the wait person comes up and they're just obnoxious and

Jeremy: 34:14

you can just tell that they're not adhering to what it is

Michael Mirau: 34:17

yeah,

Jeremy: 34:17

what's that? What's that 5th point that Mike, you had, past the core values because I

Michael Mirau: 34:21

The fifth point is to establish clear communication. And this is also, again, it needs to be intentional, not accidental. And so you need to define how are we going to communicate? What are we going to communicate? How are we going to communicate it? And when are we going to communicate it? Okay. And so we believe in daily check ins or daily huddles. Okay. Because that's a chance to find issues fast. The faster we find an issue, the faster we can address it. And so one of the agenda items in the daily check in is where am I stuck? What are my stucks today? I'm stuck because I don't have this over here to be able to do my job, or I'm stuck because I'm waiting on so and so over here to get something done. And so the faster we identify that, the faster we can eliminate the stuck and. if it's holding them up, then we need to address it quickly or we're wasting time. And so clear communication is important. But the other thing it's important to the team members also, because they want to know where the organization is going over a period of time. And we talk about setting priorities and goals. What are our priorities for this year? And for this quarter, what's our purpose? Where are we going long term? What's our 10 year vision? Some people call that a BHAG. where do we see the organization 10 years from now, three years from now, and getting clarity around that so everybody can line up to that, they understand that this is going to be a good horse to ride for a long time, because it's going someplace good. I like where it's going. I like who we're helping. I like who we're serving and establishing that communication because it's the biggest. Problem you, what drives conflict in every organization is unmet expectations. So if we're not communicating the expectations, we're not communicating the direction that people are making assumptions

Jeremy: 36:19

I was gonna say it goes back to that assumptions

Michael Mirau: 36:21

and assumptions get us in trouble. Exactly.

Jeremy: 36:24

so Mike, how do people learn more? How do people get the book? Talk, talk us through again, I can pull up, hold up a copy of it. Mike was, gracious enough to hand me a copy last time I saw him, but where can they go? How do they, how did they learn more? How did they learn more even about the consulting that you guys do? Because I think. so many of our listeners out there have these problems, such a large percentage of the businesses are family businesses. Many of them have these challenges. And I know not just the tools that are in the book, but other things that you guys have, are on a path to help them out. So how do they learn more? How do they get connected?

Michael Mirau: 36:53

So if somebody is looking for a book, it's available on Amazon, it's, available, you can order it directly from Amazon. The that's the best way to get it. We just finished the audio book. So we should have an audio book out there within a few weeks, that, cause some people are better listening to it as opposed to reading it. And, so that we just finished that and, it should be out there shortly. if people want to learn more about how we work with family businesses, we have a website called familyceos. com and they can go there and see what we're all about and how we work. And we have different levels of coaching programs, depending upon what the needs are. But one of the things we do for organizations, whether we work with them or not, is we have an assessment that compares the organization to industry best practices. And we offer that for free. at no cost. And we will actually debrief it with the people that take it. So if somebody is interested in that, all they've got to do is go to our website, say, Hey, I'd like to get the assessment and that'll send us an email. We'll send them a link and they can take it. And then we'll schedule a time to debrief it with them.

Jeremy: 38:01

All right. One last question for you, Mike, before we sign off, all of the family businesses in the U S we're able to implement the things that are in your book, what would the world look like in a different way?

Michael Mirau: 38:13

First of all, you would have fewer divorce, fewer divorces. You'd have fewer estranged. Children, people that leave and never come back and the businesses would be, I believe two to three X more prosperous than what they are today. Because these challenges are in these businesses actually hold the business back. The business is not able to perform at the level it's capable of because of some of these issues. And it's that fear that keeps them from moving forward. So it would dramatically improve the performance of the business. It would create a whole lot more peace in the family. we go to a family gathering for Thanksgiving and we love doing that because we don't work with any of them there. We just get to see them about once a year and it's great. And it's good to catch up with people. And we love going and love hanging with those folks. And One of the things that one of our, one of our, clients told us, she goes, I just want us to be able to come to Thanksgiving and not have everybody mad at each other.

Jeremy: 39:17

Yeah. and you've heard me say this.

Michael Mirau: 39:19

heard you say it too. Yeah.

Jeremy: 39:20

I make decisions based on how Thanksgiving dinner is going to taste more so than I even do about, the business here and there. And I love that. Mike, I personally, I'm deep into the book. I'm enjoying the heck out of it. I set it at the onset. Respect the work that you're doing. I learned something every time we get connected and I know that our audience has as well. So thank you for not only writing the book for all of the things that you do ultimately to help businesses to be in a better spot to our listeners, guys. I know that you guys got lots of choices, like I said, to be in a better spot. Already subscribed. Podcast player. Great day.