Doing business with family is kind of like doing it with friends, but more intense. I've seen the most successful family business partnerships and the worst of the worst. I believe it all comes down to greed and how much each person involved in the business is willing to "give up." On the positive side, I don't think there can be any stronger bond than within ones family. Like with any business partnership, I think each person needs to understand and cover the basics of the business, before the work begins.
First, lets look at the positives of a family partnership. A lot of partnerships that go bad, have one thing in common. It all has to do with a personality clash between the business partners. This is usually because the business partners don't know how to deal with each other and each time they have a different opinion on things, they end up disputing the decision instead of coming to a mutual agreement. I think when you are doing business with family, you at least know the personality of the family member, so you know how to deal with them and they know how to deal with you. Even though you probably don't agree on everything, you could probably come to a more mutual agreement, quicker, than if you didn't know the other person very well.
Another positive of a family partnership, is raising the family name. Many entrepreneurs want to make their family well known for their business, which comes in conflict when you have various names trying to reach the top. But with immediate family members doing business together, you are all working to raise the same name, to the top and leave a legacy for something great.
There is also more emotion involved when doing business with your family members. If you had to put in a few extra hours for your sibling or cousin, you probably won't be upset about it. But if you had to put in extra hours for a business partner that wasn't your family member, you might be a little upset because "they aren't pulling their workload." The relationship factor between family members definitely softens the business relationship and it is harder to refuse to do something.
Obviously there are a ton of other positives when discussing family business partnerships, but there are numerous negatives to them also. The main problem that I always see when family business partnerships go down, is the greed-factor & jealousy. Lets face it, everyone has been jealous sometime in their life that their older brother got that toy, that you never did. Or the younger sister was always getting what she wanted, but you had to sacrifice. Or it might even be taking orders from your oldest sister and doing her chores for her. Often times, kids hate sharing their belongings with their siblings. Whatever it is, in business, people get jealous & greedy when they are doing business with their family members and the other person gets more money or benefits than themselves. Small things turn into big things and eventually the partnership can end and sometimes even the personal relationship ends, leaving the family members not speaking to each other any longer.
With the positive of understanding and knowing the family members personality, comes the negative of not cooperating. Sometimes even knowing a person, isn't enough to persuade them to go your way. With a family business partnership, sometimes people get extremely upset when their decisions aren't the ones that the company moves forward with and that sometimes leads to a failed partnership.
The last major point involved with negatives to a family business, I want to state is, all the dirty tricks and games that go on. When everything turns into a competition, sometimes it brings out the worst in people and verbal communication sometimes gets super defensive. It's important to keep your cool, but some don't do it which ends the partnership in an extremely disruptive nature.
In the end, doing business with a family member is like walking a delicate line. You have to be careful so you don't snap the line and fall off on either side, but at the same time it can be really beneficial if everyone works together and understands that "person A" might walk away with a little more than "person B" at the end of the day and you should all remain fair to "person C" and not split the goods between "persons A & B." And you also cannot hide the strength or weakness of your family business, people will be able to see right through to the truth and sometimes even take advantage if they see that your partnership is weak.
I think Donald Trump has shown the best example. If you look back to the first season of "The Apprentice" TV show, you will notice that the two people the sit on each side of Donald, in the board room, are his staff members (non-family). Now if you take a look, on one side is his daughter, and the other his son. This shows that his family business link is unbreakable, for now at least... And the Trump name is huge.
