Your Dream
You started this business to make money, have your freedom and improve your community, right? You were excited by the possibilities and worked hard to set up your company. You included your family in the business, hoping that they would care as deeply as you do and dreaming of sharing your financial success.
Your Current Reality
...is a nightmare.
The pressure you're feeling from all sides is driving you crazy, you don't have the family support you thought you would and the demands of your business are exhausting.
The lines are blurred between personal time, family time and work time. There are no boundaries or rules set up.
You're having disagreements with your family on business strategy, how much time should be spent working, how much money should be paid out or reinvested in the business
There are no breaks from seeing family--they're at work and at home! ACK!
There's now another generation of family--how does your business evolve when babies happen? Later, how do you involve your kids? How do you compensate them? How do you hold them accountable?
Priorities change. Someone gets sick, has a baby, wants a new job...
You're noticing lackluster performance from a family member. Now what?
Others are asking about a Succession Plan. What happens when the owners are all done?
JUGGLING ALL THE ROLES YOU HAVE IN YOUR SMALL BUSINESS AND YOUR FAMILY FEELS IMPOSSIBLE.
Your responsibilities are overwhelming and never ending. You are up to your eyeballs in family drama and, some days, you'd like to just "get a real job" and bury your dream of a well-run, profitable family business. You've lost the passion in your mission. Why did you even start? Can you turn this thing around?
It's easy to feel paralyzed by these questions and it's easy to pretend (for awhile) that these big, important questions will resolve themselves. But they won't. If you continue what you're doing, your business will suffer. Your relationships will suffer. You'll continue to have no personal life.
Getting out of this pattern feels hard.
When we're stressed out, we can't access the thinking part of our brain. We go right to the primitive part of the brain, called the amygdala (or "reptile brain") that's all about survival. The only choices we can access are Fight or Flight or Freeze. Just like a frightened animal. No insight. No common sense. Just the ole reptile brain with no evolved thinking.
How helpful is that?
I can help.
Private business coaching sessions bring clarity and common sense back into your life. You know the solutions to your problems; you're just having a hard time accessing them through all the noise. Coaching is a way to pause the noise and tune into your purpose deeply, then create inspired action steps to achieve your dreams.
I'm Lisa Honold and I'm a small business expert.
Background
I started my career as a CPA with Arthur Andersen, specializing in high-tech start-up companies in San Jose, Phoenix and Seattle. I witnessed the excitement, drama and heartache of start-ups, including many family ventures. I helped dozens of companies with their business strategy and long-term planning.
I left the CPA/public accounting world after 5 years to become a business consultant in the high-tech industry. I helped entrepreneurs with big dreams to create foundations to support their businesses--accounting systems, financial reporting, workflow. I noticed that family businesses were either the strongest or weakest companies, depending on the relationships and trust level within the family.
In 2002, I became a small business owner with my husband. We started a retail garden store in Seattle called Home & Garden Art, hugely successful for 14 years. In 2004 we created a thriving custom metalwork business called MOD Studio and design/fabricate/install functional art in the shape of railings, gates and sculptures for customers around the country. More recently, I've consulted for other family businesses, using my skills as a business owner, former CPA and certified Martha Beck Life Coach.
Together we've built businesses that have endured 15 years of the economy's ups and downs and have earned a place in the community. We've juggled the demands of working together, living together, seeing each other ALL the time, not always agreeing on our roles or strategy for the business and the daily stresses of managing a family life and a business side-by-side. I also know the many benefits of being self-employed and working with my husband and best friend--the flexibility, the joys of success as partners and spouses, celebrating the skills we each bring to the partnership, the security of knowing we have each other's backs, the ability to involve our kids in amazing conversations about real business problems and solutions....
I wouldn't trade it for the world.
What about you?