What does a family business coach do?
A family business coach works with the owner on the questions that sit between the family and the business. In a family firm, roles were often never defined, pay follows history more than the job, and the conversation about who runs the place next has been postponed for years.
Coaching gives those conversations a structure and a neutral person to plan them with. The first piece of work is often naming who owns which decision. The coaching is one-to-one with the owner, and it runs on the same method as all business coaching at Buzz.
Who decides what?
The first sessions fill in a map like this one for your business. Every decision gets one owner, and the gaps become the agenda.
What are the options for the next stage?
There are four routes for the next stage. The coaching works out which one you are on, and what has to be true for it to work.
Succession inside the family
A son, daughter or other relative takes over running the business. The work is the role they hold now, the decisions they take on first and the date you stop taking them.
Bringing the next generation in
A family member joins with a job of their own before any talk of running the place. Pay, title and who they report to are set by the job, and written down.
Selling to the team
Managers or staff buy the business over time. The work is whether they can run it without you first, and whether the business can fund the purchase.
Retirement or sale
The business is sold outside the family, or wound down. The work is reducing how much of it sits in your head, because a buyer pays for what runs without you.
Shareholder agreements, wills and the tax on passing shares on are legal and tax questions. When one comes up, the session says so and we refer you to qualified help, including Buzz Legal and Buzz Accounting if you want them.
Related reading
When you and your business partner want different things
What to do when the people who own the business want different futures from it.
Read the article
Pay and promotion
Setting pay by the job, including for people who have been with you for years.
Read the guide
Partner alignment
Seven questions owners score separately, and how to read the gaps between the answers.
Read the mindsetFrequently asked questions
Can the whole family come to the sessions?
The programmes are one-to-one with the owner, and Buzz Coaching does not run group coaching. The work with the rest of the family happens through you: planning the conversation, setting out the decision map, and agreeing what you will say about roles, pay and the next stage. If two owners both want coaching, each has their own one-to-one engagement with its own fee. The discovery call, which is free and lasts thirty minutes, is the place to say who else is involved and what you need from them.
How do you set pay for family members?
By the job. The coaching starts by writing down what each family member does, who they report to and what they are held to, then compares the pay with what the business would pay somebody else to do that job. Ownership is rewarded separately, through dividends or drawings, which is a question for your accountant. Separating the two makes the conversation easier, because pay stops being a measure of how much each person is valued. It also shows whether the business can afford the roles it has.
We have never talked about succession. Where does it start?
With the decision map. Write down every regular decision in the business and who makes it today. If the founder holds nearly all of them, the first step is handing over a small number of decisions with a clear rule, then reviewing how they went. That gives everybody evidence about the handover before anybody has to talk about dates. Succession, bringing the next generation in, a sale to the team and retirement are then worked through with that evidence in hand.
Do you coach family businesses in Northern Ireland?
Yes. Our Northern Ireland base is Unit 13, 62 Fenaghy Road, Ballymena, Co. Antrim, BT42 1FL, and in-person sessions run there by appointment. Sessions also run by video anywhere in the UK, and the fee is the same either way. A lot of Northern Ireland businesses are family businesses, and the coaching pages for Northern Ireland and Belfast cover how the work runs there. Coaching is one-to-one, across four areas: personal, leadership, business and financial, and you work with one coach throughout.