My name is Elvis Karimov, I am the co-founder of the network of speech therapy centers “Rose-colored chickens”. In 2017, I agreed to my sister Elena’s proposal to jointly develop her speech therapy office, which eventually grew into a franchise network of 80+ centers across the country.
Sounds cool, right? But at the beginning of our collaboration with
Lena, to put it mildly, not everything was perfect. Let’s talk about that.
There is a saying: “Friendship is friendship, but money is separate.” Doing business with a family is even more difficult, and this is definitely not something that can be advised to others. But I can tell you what pitfalls there are here, and what whatsapp number list exactly makes the idea of building a family business quite good. But let’s start from the very beginning.
The main problem for us was separating business and family relationships: it is impossible to demand results from each other during working hours, and then suddenly turn into brother and sister at 7:00 pm. It is important to be able to bring an argument or conversation to an end and not get upset with each other because of work issues.
But if you don’t learn to talk and differentiate between these two spheres, you’ll end up in a dilemma. either endure problems at work, or quarrel in the family.
We faced this too. I was younger and took the reins into my own hands because I had more experience in this. But explaining this to someone who online store or physical store: which is best for my business is older? It is not as easy as it seems. We clashed until we made an agreement between ourselves: to clearly delineate responsibilities and not interfere with each other’s work.And life got better.
But at first we fought, and how. Family ties only get in the way at work. For a long time you perceive a person, first of all, as a sister or brother, and only then as a leading specialist or director.
This affects the dialogue. The partner did not complete the task? If this partner is your sister, then you can raise your voice, control yourself a little worse, give the wrong feedback that you would give to a stranger, inadvertently be too harsh and offend with your words. And vice versa – your comments can be treated condescendingly, with disregard: he is a brother, what will he do?
Two of a kind,and both are left. This is definitely about us.
The same character unexpectedly turned out to be a serious problem at work. The ideal partnership story is when you complement each other, like yin and yang. And we are both very fast and active, and this affected controversial situations – we both flared up like matches when we bumped heads. And each time it was necessary to seek compromises, to talk again.
Discussing everything directly is the best and most correct way out of the situation. Often conflicts occur precisely because we do not know how to negotiate.
How to Resolve Conflicts Using Goldratt’s Thundercloud
But it didn’t always work out to talk. We tried many times, many times we got upset with each other, sometimes one of us slammed the door and left. Our relationship as brother and sister simply evaporated when we started buildaing a business. There were too many of us at work, we were tired, and there was no desire to spend time together outside of work for quite a long time.
The main mistake that led to quarrels again betting data and again was that we allowed ourselves to speak to each other in raised tones. Emotions do not bring results, especially negative ones. As soon as we paid attention to this and began to focus on constructive dialogue, began to use rational arguments, we stopped arguing so often. Cool your head and discuss everything calmly – this will help save nerves and time.