If you run a family business, you’ve undoubtedly experienced the contradictions that come with maintaining professional relationships with your loved ones. Running a business with your children can be even more difficult due to the deep emotions and biases involved.

Nonetheless, many families have successfully maintained this delicate balance. If you’re interested in building a business that transcends generations, the tips below should help you do just that without needlessly sacrificing precious family bonds:

1) Automate Your Payment Processes

In smaller family businesses, arguments often center around how payments are managed at the till. Simple counting errors can often be misconstrued as malice, poisoning relationships forever. Adopting trusted online payment platforms can help reduce counting errors, helping family-run businesses reduce misunderstandings and arguments while also facilitating better cash flow.

Fortunately, for online payment, small businesses have several options designed for their specific needs. Solutions like Maya Invoice Payments and Payment Links, for instance, are gaining popularity among family businesses that are just expanding into domestic e-commerce. 

There are also a few great solutions for businesses with a more established online presence. The Maya Checkout payment gateway is especially popular with these small- and medium-sized enterprises, thanks to its easy integration with WooCommerce and Shopify websites through Maya Plugins.

These solutions all offer exceptional transparency, simplifying audits and preventing conflicts over payments. Whichever combination of internet payment solutions you pick, make sure to choose one that can have any online payment processed seamlessly.

2) Establish (and Respect) Boundaries

One of the primary challenges in a family business is differentiating between family and business roles. To maintain a harmonious working environment, establish explicit boundaries and responsibilities for everyone involved in the business—yourself included.

Clearly delineate decision-making authority for different areas of the business, and resist the temptation to pull rank based on just family seniority in business disputes. If your child has a defined responsibility over a key area, never undermine their authority, especially not within view of other employees.

3) Practice Open Communication

Open and honest communication is the cornerstone of a successful family business. Encourage regular meetings where everyone in the business—non-family members included—can openly discuss business matters, share ideas, and set collective goals. Effective communication fosters trust and prevents misunderstandings that may negatively affect your personal relationships.

4) Treat Family Like Employees—Vice Versa

In a family business, it’s vital to hold family members to the same standards as non-family employees. Merit-based promotions and rewards ensure fairness and maintain morale among all team members. Importantly, developing a reputation for fairly treating outsiders can help attract top talent to your organization, potentially opening up new possibilities for it.

5) Recruit Outsiders for Key Positions

As your business grows, it will become increasingly unrealistic to expect all your organization’s key positions to be filled by your children and other relatives. Even if you could, it’s probably not going to be the best idea if you want your business to be as competitive as possible.

To maintain your business’s competitive edge, consider hiring individuals from outside the family for key positions. Outsiders can bring fresh perspectives, objectivity, and specialized skills that may be currently lacking within the family, possibly contributing to the growth of your business. Most importantly, they can serve as valuable neutral mediators in case of interfamilial conflicts within the business.

6) Think in Generations, Not Fiscal Years

If you see your business as a path to a positive legacy and generational wealth, seeking profit at all costs may be the wrong way to approach things. Taking the time to properly mentor your children may take time away from growing the business today, but it can be the right thing to do to keep it relevant in the coming decades.

7) Practice Self-Criticism      

It can be very difficult for business founders to acknowledge mistakes or admit that their children are right about something. After all, outside of a few exceptions, they would have been running the business far longer than their children, which would imply that they would know better.

Of course, this isn’t necessarily true. Your children may have insights into the day-to-day operations or the future of your business that simply wouldn’t occur to you because of your own lived experiences. Learning how to be humble and open despite your prior achievements may, indeed, be the best and most difficult trick for achieving both lasting familial relationships and intergenerational business growth.

Though you’ll find plenty of people who will tell you that family businesses are a bad idea, growing a thriving organization alongside your children can be a uniquely fulfilling journey. So long as you implement the right strategies, you should be able to reach a healthy balance between family and business matters. Once you’ve achieved that balance, your business will be that much closer to achieving success that transcends generations.