Family business ideas

Nepotism in business is a traditional phenomenon: the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, or, for example, the modern L'Oreal brand are all examples of family businesses.

Here are some simple ideas for family businesses.

Creation of an employment agency. This does not require large start-up capital. The most important thing is to organize an office, to develop initially a base of employers who are ready to provide real jobs, as well as job seekers. The agency must meet the requirements of both parties, while earning interest. Often, the percentage is taken from the first salary and rarely exceeds 20%.

Provision of services, for example, cosmetic repairs of apartments and offices. At the same time, the husband can perform the main part of the work - work with drywall, an electrician, laying laminate or linoleum, leveling the floors, and the wife will do easier work - plastering, wallpapering the walls, and will also act as an auxiliary worker.

Working on the Internet, this will require basic skills in the basic programs. At the same time, the wife can open an online store, and the husband or son can organize maintenance of the site, while doing development to order.

All ideas are quite real and not difficult to implement, and in times of crisis can help many families cope with financial difficulties.

Family orientation is a significant business advantage. For example, one of the largest business empires was created - Auchan.

family business ideas

Submitted by readers of our mailing list.

• Trade. The most popular and simplest idea for a family business. It is important to share the responsibilities of everyone. One is engaged in purchases, the second can sell goods at a retail outlet or look for customers and take orders at home.
• Internet business. Create a website, an online store, an online service, and then jointly maintain, fill and maintain it.
• Growing vegetables, fruits, herbs. One can be directly engaged in planting, leaving crops. And the other is their implementation, finding clients. If greenhouses are installed, the work will become year-round.
• Raising farm animals. The list of implementation products is quite large here. Meat, eggs, milk, fat, wool, leather, down, feathers.
• Opening a fast food establishment. A serious business plan is needed here. It is advisable that one of the family members understands accounting. Additional option: delivery of meals to offices.
• Opening of a private kindergarten. Or just institutions for creativity, games.
• Organization of special events. Decoration of premises, writing scripts, acting as presenters, animators, organizing competitions. The more grandiose the event, the more additional assistants are required.
• Provide a variety of services. Repair of various levels, cleaning of premises, courier delivery.
• Hand-maid creation. High quality, hand-made original crafts can be very profitable. Advertising plays an important role here.
• Food production. Rather, we are talking about home-made cakes, pastries, pies, sausages to order or portable trade.

Family Business Stories

Pros and cons of family business

In Russia, as elsewhere in the world, most small businesses are family businesses. Not all of them manage to become not only successful, but to preserve and increase their capital. Many of these companies do not live longer than three generations. What prevents family businesses from thriving?

The main wealth in the world is family wealth, accumulated for centuries. These are the states that are not accepted to shine in the lists of Forbes and Bloomberg, they are many times greater than the millions of Gates and Buffett, historian Andrei Fursov believes.

The most visible example of the financial success of family businesses is the Rothschild and Rockefeller business empires. Thus, the aggregate fortune of the Rothschild bankers, according to the most conservative estimates of experts, goes off scale at $ 3.2 trillion, although no one can name an exact figure - the roots are too deeply buried. The fortune of the other world-famous Rockefeller dynasty is about a trillion less, historians say. Moreover, representatives of both families by no means top the popular lists of the richest people in the world - money loves silence, they are convinced.

However, in a small business we are talking, as a rule, about the amounts of millions of times less, nevertheless, the principles of doing joint business do not change from this. The main idea, regardless of the scale of the enterprise, is one - relying on one's own family, because only close people can provide something that cannot be bought for any money - loyalty. But the problem is that a family-run company may not always be efficient and viable.

Subordination and order

Business is a psychology, and often its stability depends on the level of trust in the team. However, it is very important to draw a clear line between personal and business relationships.

It’s a good place to start with the internal rules of an organization — even if it has two people.

In contrast to the organization's charter, such an agreement should contain the staffing table of employees, a code of their communication and establish a "vertical of power", that is, the structure of official subordination of employees. In addition, despite the seeming formalism, good service in building a family company can be played by the job description, where the rights and obligations of each employee, their areas of responsibility, as well as penalties in case of non-compliance with the rules are clearly spelled out. This document will help to avoid conflicts and manipulations on the part of loved ones when problems arise in personal life or at work. Moreover, it will be useful to prescribe KPIs (key performance indicators) for each position and the incentive system: under what conditions a particular employee can count on a bonus. Fair remuneration is the key to the long-term development of the family business and comfortable relationships in the team.

Despite the widespread belief that the main thing in a family business is family ties, each employee must still have a certain set of competencies. For an objective assessment of the professional level of a relative-colleague, you should offer him a professionalism test before hiring, which will allow you to assess his real market value.

Psychology and talent discovery

Even if a relative does not yet reach a high-class specialist, the aptitude test will motivate him to develop, and the manager will help him in his professional growth. As a rule, each family member knows perfectly well the character of the other and understands the motivation of a loved one, moreover, he is sincerely interested in his development as a person. Such a business makes it possible to find application for the talents of almost every family member. At the same time, it is important what climate was established in the family before that. If respect for each other reigns in a family, then, most likely, these same values ​​will prevail in the conduct of business. The main thing that needs to be understood when starting a business is that a person's personal life is sacred, therefore work tasks and problems unresolved in the office should not be reflected in personal relationships, business conflicts should in no case be transferred to the family and vice versa. This will lead to a clear distinction between business and family relations, which will only benefit the business. If each family member is sincerely interested in business and is maximally focused on what he does himself, and is not inclined to shift blame and responsibility onto others, then such an enterprise has every chance of success.

Synergy effect

It is believed that business can destroy relationships. However, sometimes it only benefits them: it turns out that you always have a reliable support and a person who will definitely not let you down. We decided to talk to five married couples who live and work together 24/7.

Photo courtesy of the Mary Truffle wedding salon press service

Wedding Salon "Mary Truffle"

Founders: Alexandra Meteleva, Anton Pankov, Natasha Platonova and Sergey Filatov

Alexandra Meteleva: A business idea emerged from a personal need, as is often the case when you need something, but you don’t find it and understand that this thing or service does not exist in principle, and it was would be great to do it. The problem with bridal salons is that the girls there start to feel shy, afraid to look stupid and feel uncomfortable. When you are getting ready for a wedding, you want to come to a very cozy place, where there will be a lot of good dresses and not at cosmic prices. At one time, such a store was not enough for me.

We did not have any specific business plan, but it is also impossible to say that we acted completely blindly. I have friends who started with a business plan spelled out by a business model, and they did not succeed as originally conceived and planned. There were acquaintances who opened completely without any strategies, but were no less successful. A business plan is the kind of thing you need when it comes to very large business or complacency.

We generally acted blindly, because we opened a store in Moscow. Natasha Platonova had experience of working in another city in a small salon with a low turnover of funds. Before that, I practically did not touch business at all. None of us knew - will go, will not go, did not know what advertising methods to use, how to promote. We had very rough ideas about all this.

Our start-up capital in 2021 was four million rubles, of which there were about 700 thousand personal accumulated, and the rest was loans. Initially, Natasha and I assumed that we would launch the project, and Natasha would go back to Volgograd, periodically come, order goods remotely and sometimes help in the salon. At that time, I had a four-month-old daughter in my arms, and it was assumed that I would also somehow follow the store, and periodically come, but mainly promote it remotely. Six months after the opening, it became obvious that the business should be developed, constantly kept abreast of everything, be directly in the store and gain momentum. Therefore, Natasha and Sergey had to leave an expensive apartment, a business, a well-organized and well-equipped life with fitness clubs, hairdressers, beauticians in Volgograd and move to Moscow to a rented apartment.

Another difficulty for us was the recruitment of staff: we needed an adequate dressmaker who could customize the dresses, because without this service we were completely uncompetitive; we needed consultants — people you could trust.

Now, from my own experience, I can say that only those who live by their own projects achieve success, invest a lot personally, spend their strength, energy, time.

Coffee shop /

Today we propose to discuss the following topic: "Business ideas for a family." We have collected and prepared a complete description of the business model and invite yours to express your opinion in the comments.

Family Business

Good day! Today we will talk with you about family business and options for business ideas for the whole family.

Before writing an article, I went to look at the TOP articles on this request, my surprise simply knew no bounds. On the topic of family business, the search returned excellent articles with normal sites, or simply worthless sites did not touch on the topic of family business, or search engines began to correct themselves.

In general, everything is fine and if my article does not get into the TOP of the search results, I am completely calm, because you can read about the family business on other equally interesting sites.

First, it's worth defining what a family business is:

What is a family business

Here I didn't even bother to look at the official wording about the family business, so that it doesn't affect my opinion and so that I can describe it in my own words.

A family business is a type of business that involves the family itself, or people related by family ties. This is perhaps the simplest formulation of this type of business.

There are several options for a family business, let's look at them:

Family Business Options

I would divide family business into three categories:

• Hereditary business. This type of business is inherited from father to son. This category very rarely applies to small businesses. Over the generations, the development of such a family business usually reaches a large, very rarely, a medium-sized business, and a family business is a hereditary small business, this is generally nonsense and it is so rare that it is not even worth talking about it. As is clear - my site for beginners will not consider this type of family business for objective reasons;
• Joint family business. This type of business includes all family members in the process of running their own business with a division of responsibilities for each family member. For example: a pizzeria, one prepares pizza, the second bakes it, the third delivers pizza on request, the fourth accepts requests as a dispatcher, the fifth is engaged in the promotion and promotion of this business, the sixth maintains accounting and submits all reporting and documentation;
• Business for the whole family. This type of business does not include any distinctions, all family members do the same work, for example, make homemade dumplings, etc.

The peculiarity of a family business is the close relationship of work with the family. The capital remains in the family and is inherited. A family business is the preferred option when organizing a small and medium-sized enterprise. At the stage of formation, you can save money through free work. However, statistics show that in Russia only 5% of family businesses remain. The rest are eliminated due to difficulties in the relationship between relatives.

Business by inheritance

In our country, an approach to the first threshold of heredity is now beginning, since private enterprises in our country are no more than 20 years old. The spheres of activity of the family firms are services and trade. There are practically no manufacturing enterprises. There is also no experience in the preparation of heirs, so often successful enterprises go bankrupt after the transition to the management of the younger generation. Business also collapses when divorces - former spouses do not know how to separate personal relationships from business.

The benefits of a family business:

But it is necessary to take into account the disadvantages:

• Failure to objectively assess the character traits of relatives
• Potential disputes over career and income distribution issues
• Difficulties in work can negatively affect personal relationships
• If borrowed funds are attracted, the whole family is in debt

Before starting a family business, you should carefully weigh the pros and cons. The team accepts those relatives with whom we have good relations. It is also important to understand the basics of doing business and the desire to develop it.

It is worth making a decision about organizing such an enterprise if you are sure that you have enough determination:

• distinguish between personal and business relationships
• clearly assign responsibilities and punish for failure to fulfill them
• appoint a person as a leader who can take responsibility for development

The second step is choosing a profitable and win-win idea for a family business. The number of employees is up to 10. It is necessary to be ready to invite a lawyer for the distribution of shares, registration of constituent documents in accordance with the requirements of the legislation. The contract should provide for the possibility of buying / selling shares, division, separation of spouses, the amount of wages, the level of responsibility. Personal bank accounts need to be separated from business accounts.