Mother Daughter Business

From the Desk of Jeanette Cates

I have the privilege of working with my daughter and I love it! In fact, when I originally started TechTamers in 1997, I worked with my other two daughters as well - Stephanie was my travel agent (she was great and I truly miss her skills!) and Vicki was my desktop publisher (great design skills and incredibly fast and efficient to work with.) But they both gave up their businesses when they became stay-at-home moms. Now they are kept busy full-time caring for my 5 grandchildren - and I can certainly appreciate what a full-time job that is!

In 2000 Jennifer came to work for me - first just doing a few clerical tasks, then taking over the full office duties. She’s now my bookkeeper and office manager. She literally runs the business!

So how do we manage the mother/daughter relationship and still work together? Most days it’s easier than you think. We’re both professionals and even though we both work out of my home, she has her office and I have mine. We often work for hours without a need to talk to one another.

At least once a week we have a financial lunch together where we go over the budget, P&L and Success Factors worksheet. It’s all business. Then if there are other days that we’re both in the office, we’ll often enjoy a lunch with mostly business and a little personal.

When we’re away from the office, we try to restrict the amount we discuss the business. We found the other family members got tired of hearing about business all the time, even if we could talk about it for hours at a time!

And we both agree - working together has been great for both our business and personal relationship. Neither of us would trade it for anything!

If you’d like to see more example of mother/daughter businesses, view the slides at

http://entrepreneur.com/slideshow/178090.html 

And if you work with your mother or daughter, we’d love to hear from you! Just add your comment to this post.