Internet is flooded with business articles. Business is more about doing the stuff and making profits than ruining your years into bagging multiple degrees and majors. You can read my education related articles for more depth.
I found a gap on the internet when it came to discussing about business families and family businesses. In this article, I aim to address this gap.
This article is not meant for those people who are incompetent, good for nothing, or have a taken for granted attitude about their lives. Joining a family business is the only way of livelihood and survival for them. They are not a fit for the tertiary sector in either way.
Here is my personal experience. Most of my acquaintances, who have joined their family businesses, are those who did not possess any individual competencies. They took everything for granted and were sooner or later earmarked into joining the family businesses. Thus, I refrain from making friends with such gentry. There is a lack of relatability between me and such gentry.
This article is not for those either who have some emergency of family problems, for which joining the family business is the only solution.
However, those friends of mine, who have full time jobs, do not share my ambitions either.
This article is for those who have spine and are thoughtful and righteous.
And most of the times, such people are stuck in a dilemma. Being ambitious and bright, life offers them a plethora of opportunities in every direction they step to. It is also true that a right decision at the right time can save you years of struggles and sorrows.
No matter how hard you try catching the fish, you will fail if that pond has no fish. However water you pour in the pot, a dead plant will yield you nothing.
There are many promising young men who find themselves in this dilemma. So that they make the best use of their calibre, I have written this article.
I can give you a premonition about how being in a family business is like. I have faced this dilemma myself. I freelanced extensively in my college days. I still do. However, now I have limited my preferences to high ticket clients only. Also, I had 2 job offers without sitting in the college placements. However, having already joined the family business, I declined both of those offers.
Kindly note that I’m writing this from the perspective of a West UP’s Bisa Agrawal family. Based on your family traditions and culture, differences may exist.
Some points might sound selfish to you. For that, keep in mind that by thinking for yourself, you think for your future spouse and the generations to come.
1. What are the advantages of joining the family business?
If the family business is right for you, you’ll make the best use of the prime time of your life. It will give you a head start and early settlement in life. You’ll get married earlier and have a family earlier. This can give you a feat in 20s which many people achieve by the time they reach 40s. You get to cut down all the struggle. Your life will be more sorted out by the time you are in 40s so that you can take bigger decisions without being bound by petty stuff.
2. What are the disadvantages of joining the family business?
I cannot distinguish between advantages and disadvantages of joining the family business. I can just break the term ‘family business’ into ‘family’ and ‘business’. If the business is favourable and family is supportive, you’ll get all the associated benefits. Contrary to that, if family is not supportive and the business is not favourable, joining a family business can ruin you off your career prospects, and waste the prime time of your life. Without proper evaluation, joining a family business can be as risky as shooting arrows in the dark.
3. What is your family background?
You’re also supposed to embrace the values that drive your family and the family business. Be prepared. This section is very long.
Family business is also about family
Or I must highlight that sometimes, family business is more about family than business. You are supposed to know ins and outs of your family before you enter into your family business. It is afterall, going to decide your future.
If there’s any trouble going on in your family, that is also going to affect you. Just like you get all the pros associated with your family business, you are also liable for cons.
And once you are in, there’s no exit. You cannot just pack your bags anytime and go. It just isn’t easy. If the exit is easy for you, consider that you’ve never had your roots here.
Family Assets
Consider family assets. What is the family property? Ask your parents and elders. It becomes increasingly important, especially if you heir some of it. Is there any long pending property dispute?
How much capital can be reinvested? How much money does your family have to give you a head start? Having some family assets is the cover of being in a family business. It would also give you a reasonable cover while meeting losses or paying off liabilities.
If you have this question sorted out, you’ll have the wisdom of raising debt accordingly. You can also plan your budget allocation and cost-cutting strategies wisely.
What is the property sharing pattern in your family?
Once you know this, you’ll save yourself and your future generations from unnecessary legal battles and family disputes. Afterall, everyone deserves peace. Suppose you have a life of hundred years, it ain’t wise to waste some decades of it in a needless dispute.
If you know the property sharing pattern in your family, you’ll know your fair share accurately. You can make peace with your co-sharers right from the beginning.
Family Relations also have an effect.
We all have some cousins or uncles and aunts we dislike. No denial to that. For some, we hold some grudges. There are many whom we consider degenerate or good for nothing. It’s simply okay. It goes in every family. The point is that you address such differences.
Many people you dislike might be on the likings of your family members. Your parents may also have some specific attachment towards certain relatives or friends. There might be some cunning relatives or family friends who habitually envy and brainwash your parents from time to time. Some of them may also be in your business contacts. It is important that you plan in advance how to handle them.
Family relations with other families in case of partnership.
I’m putting it down very frankly. If you partner with your relatives in business, either you’ll be a very good relative to them, or you can be a very good businessman. You cannot be both. If you’re a very good businessman, your relation would not be as sweet as before. If you’re a very good relative to them, that business would never survive.
If you could start anew, I’d recommend, don’t go for a partnership business. If you are supposed to partner with them, rather incorporate a company and decide on share capital.
What are your parents’ plans for retirement?
While you are in your early 20s, there are fair chances that your parents may be in their 40s or 50s. If they’re in 40s, you still have time to figure things out on your own and get settled yourself. However, if they are in 50s, clock might seem to be ticking fast. They must be planning for their retirement.
Most of the parents want to have their children with them during retirement. Hence, if your parents are inching close to retirement, it is better to plan to join the family business.
What is your reputation in family?
It is important to have some regard to your reputation in the family. How much does your family value your opinions? If they do, good for you. If they don’t, even your best ideas won’t be considered. They won’t have the budget for the best of your ideas, but will waste a fortune on their own stupid ideas.
Think about what level of the business are you being employed. If they don’t value your time, they won’t value your sacrifices in joining the family business.
They will rather waste your time in handling mindless chores. Make sure you analyse this situation in advance.
You have not rejected your job offers to be a free office boy or receptionist in your family business.
If what you’ll be doing in the business is not determined, step out and don’t wait. There’s no point of sitting idle when there’s so much that you can do instead. You should make it clear to everyone right on the first day.
You should have it cleared for you about what exact segment of the family business you’ll be responsible for.
You should pay attention to who takes the decisions in your family. Also have a realization of how much do such decisions bind you. You are joining the family business to enjoy the freedom of not being a corporate slave. If, in your family business, you enjoy less freedom than a corporate job, count it as a red flag.
What is your position in the family hierarchy?
Your position in the family business is also determined by your position in the family hierarchy. If you are the eldest, everything is served in the plate for you. If you are the middle child, you already are the problem and you know that. And if you’re the youngest, there are so many people other than parents who consider it as their right to interfere in your personal matters.
Parents put their focus in a descending order. If your elder siblings are late and unserious, no matter how much considerate you yourself are, they will also slow you down. When you are in the family business, your settlement ultimately depends on the family. The truth is always bitter.
Things get even more complex when yours is a joint family. You might have many cousins and sometimes uncles and aunts of your age group.
Acknowledging the reality will make your path easier.
4. What are your qualifications?
Having answered this question, you will find your planning made easier. Since the introduction of NEP 2020, the potentials of three year degrees like B.B.A, B.A, B.Com, B.C.A, B.Sc. etc. are all dead. Now, you may make wojak faces, but this is the reality. All such graduates usually line up for unemployment. Not everyone is that much serious about life.
Any entry level job opening just states, “graduate in any stream” as a qualification.
Next to this reality, you have to list out your skills and aptitudes on a piece of paper.
Think how you can make money off it. Legitimately, of course. Think how you can financially sustain yourself with these skills.
Think, how you can meaningfully contribute to the family business with these skills.
5. What are your personal sources of income?
Let me be honest about myself first. I have been freelancing since my school days. I have no material interests. So, no expenditure on that. My freelance earnings just accumulate and compound. I’ve no wants so far, only needs. My basic needs; food, clothing, and shelter; are covered by living with the family itself.
I recommend you to have some personal sources of income. It is even better if such sources are developed without having any financial cover from the family. In this way, you can call yourself self-made, even when you are in the family business.
Remember, who can control your money can control you.
6. How will you financially sustain yourself?
Enough of lecture above. Many of you have no solid source of income when you have joined the family business. Now, what?
I still recommend you to develop skills and have a personal source of income.
Even if that is not working out for you, I understand. We may have the top-sought skills but might have a hard time finding clients. It is also about the fate.
You can discuss with your parents about how you are going to maintain yourself. They might start issuing a salary from the enterprise to your account. This would give you a financial cover until you are fully settled.
But be careful. Defy any greed or temptations. Never ever think of squeezing your family resources. Treat money with utmost caution. I would recommend that you evaluate all your needs plus contingencies. This should be your salary from family business. If it exceeds this, there are chances that you might develop a taken from granted tendency. Such a tendency kills one’s ambitions.
7. How will you settle in a small town and have a social life?
Family businesses are a paradise for introverts. This is because the social life really declines. I have observed this personally. In India, the reality is that the actual standard and quality of living is still in the small towns and cities. The real wealth is also here itself. Majority of population here is self-employed.
On the other hand, the metro cities majorly comprise of the working classes. The standard of living is limited to small flats and spaces. Having your own land and sky is a luxury. Public amenities are pathetic. And everything in the market comes packed.
The only advantage that big cities have above small cities is connectivity and sources of entertainment and recreation.
Now that, you’re planning to settle in a small town or city, you’re also supposed to plan your source of recreation and social life.
8. What is the time worth of joining the family business?
It is a very important question which you must not skip from answering. Especially when you have a job offer or two in hand, you’re risking out a source of recurring income. This is also an opportunity cost of joining the family business. You are suffering that loss to join your family business. Make sure it is worth it.
Let’s understand time-worth.
Anyone who joins a job as a fresher starts from 0. If you join a job at some company as a fresher, you also start from 0.
Your parents or even your ancestors also started the business from 0. Let’s name their present position as x. Now, you’re declining a job offer, that you already have, to join the family business.
If you had joined that job, you’d have taken an average period of 5 years to call yourself settled.
Now, that you’re joining the family business, you’re supposed to ensure that you get a head start and early settlement in the family business. You should be starting from x, not 0. Only then would this decision be time-worth. If you are taking the same 5 years to be settled in the family business, where’s the head start? You’re in the same league of an average corporate employee. Joining a family business has no time worth if you are starting from 0. It is a reasonable expectation to be in a more advantageous position than of a corporate. Otherwise, joining the family business is all waste.
If you’re starting from point 0, then what is the value of being in a family business? You can do that anywhere else. The prospects of joining a family business are all waste if you have to start from 0. You have a right to get a head start and early settlement in life.
Let’s suppose you graduate at between the age of 20 to 22 years, in a family business don’t shy away from expecting to be settled before turning 25.
The reason we strive for financial independence is to have the real enjoyment.
There’re plenty of enjoyments you can have with your money, only when you are in your early 20s. And we all know, that vanity in late 20s and 30s is just a coping mechanism.
You won’t be as happy about being financial settled in late 20s as you can be about it in your late teenage and early 20s. There’s something called utility approach in economics. And I have just analysed it with respect to time worth.
When your parents insist you to join the family business, you must ask them about what is their plan about settling you up.
Also ask them clearly about the head start and early settlement you expect.
If they’re also not clear about it, I would suggest you to target financial stability first.
Here are two plans, you should make.
5 year plan
To achieve results without delay, we’re supposed to shorten our definition of long term. We should see 5 years as a long term. Make this plan accordingly.
I suggest you write down your target income and form a pattern about how you can reach there.
Along with this, there are certain material goals that you can fulfil. Like, it is reasonable to be financially settled, get married and have kids in this period.
10 year plan
Define this period as a very long term. You can plan your investments. You can plan your future with your entire family. Your planning for retirement. Your latent interests that you wish to pursue.
The only difference- time
The only difference between being in a corporate job and family businessman is time.
Even corporate employees also make money, if you must talk about money. But they get it after putting all those years.
Even corporate employees also develop assets. Many of them invest their money in many properties and financial markets. But they get the return after putting all those years.
So, it is not that you’re in the family business only for money and assets. That you can find being employed under someone also.
You’re in the business for the freedom that comes along. And in the family business, you’re in for early settlement and a head start.
9. What are your marital prospects?
Unlike what wokes and feminists suggest, marriage is not a choice. It is an obligation. It is not just a religious or social obligation either. It is the scientific mechanism of continuation of one’s race and species. Even animals know it, but the most degenerate lot of humans doesn’t.
Timely marriage has countless advantages. Many corporate employees miss out on such advantages. The reason is that they settle in late twenties and marry even later. They have children even later.
I’m not an authority on marital matters. It is a separate issue at large. And above all, I’m not married yet. But, being a part-time final year LL.B. student, I’ve done an extensive study of family and personal laws.
Modern age marriages breed all possible grounds of divorce and separation. Women living away from husband and in-laws, living with their parents even after marriage, continuing a long-distance marriage, presence of a third person, spouses befriending the opposite genders, not conceiving a child even after many years of marriage, deprivation of conjugal rights, etc. The list is long.
And it is very obvious. Wives of businessmen may have social lives. But they don’t have careers. So, marriages in business families thrive better.
Correlating marriage and family business, it is reasonable to expect that you should marry early after joining the family business.
Taking such responsibilities early can free you up in 40s. This is because your children would grow up to be teenagers and adults by the time you will be in your 40s. They won’t ask for much of your attention then. Thereon, you can free your time up for bigger tasks.
If you do not marry early after joining the family business, what difference did the family business make in your life anyway?
BONUS- Do you understand the concept of Swadharma and Purusharthas?
Kindly note that I’m not a religious scholar. I’m just sharing my own understanding with you. To know more on this topic, you may refer to shastras or contact any priest around you.
Reincarnation
In Sanatana Dharma, throughout our life, we aim to attain enough punyas so that we can reach the final abode (Vaikuntha/Kailasha etc.) and are never reborn. Such an event is known as Moksha. Moksha is only possible with good deeds and no sins.
All of us are mortal beings, but our soul (atma) is immortal. Our atma manifests itself in various bodies and lives. We are born in this life to compensate for all the paapkarmas we did in our previous lives so that we can go to the final abode. If we compensate with punyas, we are able to go to the final abode post mortem. However, if we re-indulge in paapkarmas, the cycle of reincarnation repeats.
This human body and being in a good family of repute is of utmost blessing to us. Only a human being is able to do karma. So, we should always strive to do good karma and achieve punyas. Just like we save money for our dream car, we are supposed to save punyas for the final abode. Punyas and Paapas are the currencies of afterlives.
Everything of the material world is left behind. Even our friends and family members are like the passers-by we come across in this long walk spanning different lives. We can only carry Punyas and Paapas.
Swadharma
In a Sanatani Hindu’s life, duties are defined right from birth. There are four Varnas in Hindus; Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Kshudra. Their duties have been hereditarily determined.
If I should go in detail, such detail would never end. In fact, I’m incapable of going in such detail. In short, Brahmins protect the dharma and form the intellectual class of priests, scholars, nobility etc. Kshatriyas are the ruling class who protect the lands and people. Likewise, Vaishyas are the business class who play their part in strengthening the economy. Kshudras are the service class and may include petty traders and businessmen into industries like pottery, weaving, tannery etc. Such duties are known as Swadharma.
Purusharthas
In the English literary sense, purushartha means ‘ambition’. But the real meaning is beyond explanation.
There are four Purusharthas; Dharma, Artha, Kama, and Moksha.
Dharma means fulfilling in social, religious and devotional obligations.
Artha means earning money by legitimate means as per the swadharma.
Kama means marrying and conjugating legitimately.
And these three purusharthas lead to the ultimate purushartha of Moksha.
I am an Agrawal Vaishya. So, I’m writing this from my perspective.
Agrawals can not sell alcohol, intoxicants, meat or leather. There’s a major prohibition on us for that.
So, by doing business in legitimate industries, marrying a valid partner and having children, looking after his parents, being kind and moral, and fulfilling his religious and social duties as prescribed by shastras and customs, an Agrawal can attain Moksha.
Walking in his own league, he does not have to lose time in exploring the right path. He already is on the right path, that his ancestors have also walked on.
So, if you embody the concept of swadharma in both of your family and business life, you’ll be able to go through all the ups and downs of your life without any major trouble.
TL;DR
- What are the advantages of joining the family business?
- What are the disadvantages of joining the family business?
- What is your family background?
- What are your qualifications?
- What are your personal sources of income?
- How will you financially sustain yourself?
- How will you settle in a small town and have a social life?
- What is the time worth of joining the family business? (Settlement)
- What are your marital prospects?