Those of you who run a family business...

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What tips & tricks do you have for coping?

We have 2 preschool DS's. Dh is a livestock farmer. I help out on his farm a bit. I'm an arable farmer - dh helps out on my farm a lot in the summer. I'm in partnership negotiations with my parents at the moment which is stressful - although they're quite happy with a daughter running the farm when it comes to inheritance their previous feminist stance is not quite so clear cut. They've also been running their business their way for 40 odd years. Change & letting go of control is an anathema to them. Dh is also older than me & has been running his business himself for a number of years as the majority partner & he too likes to be in control. I feel stuck between my parents & my husband sometimes! There's no escape as its a 24 hour 7 day a week job.

Any tips on keeping my independence? Keeping the peace in a family business? Any others in a similar situation? Dh and I seem to sit discussing staffing issues (I have to say, the farming is the easy bit, it's the managing staff we really struggle with) at 7pm on a Sunday night as it's the only time we've got. Any tips on getting better at employing people?

Employed friends don't really get the stresses of running your own business. Would love to hear from others who do!

Hard as it may be to achieve, you need to compartmentalise your home and business lives to keep them separate. You'd have to do it if you weren't running your own businesses and instead working for others. I appreciate farming is a 24/7 business so you can't ring-fence a normal 9-5 working day, but you can split out the "management" of your businesses as opposed to the "hands on working of them".

There are two main areas to start on first:-

1. Division of responsibilities. Define clear boundaries about who's responsible for which aspects of the businesses. I.e. one person to be responsible for the staff hiring, firing and supervision. One person responsible for the purchases of supplies, livestock, etc. One person responsible for the sales of produce and livestock. One of you responsible for the book-keeping, and so on. Yes, the same person may have 2 or more responsibilities as is common with small businesses. This stops the "overlap" of the main tasks and saves a lot of wasted, duplicated time and effort.

1. Allocation of time for professional/proper meetings to discuss the management of the business. I appreciate that on a day to day basic, you will be discussing the running of businesses, but try your utmost to set aside regular formal meetings to discuss the big issues, i.e. things that are longer term and don't need an immediate action. Nothing worse than trying to discuss a problem with staff over the evening meal or watching TV - you're not in the mood! - just get into the habit of noting them down for the next "formal" meeting when it can be discussed and actioned properly.

As I said, easy to say, hard to do, but you've got to try to create quality family time. When you have a family meal, you don't want to discuss business and you don't want any business related disagreements getting in the way. You need to get to the stage when you can have business arguments that are brushed aside and ignore at the children's birthday party!

Sorry it took me so long to reply to this.

Thanks for that advice -it's been really thought provoking. We could definitely do more with the division of responsibility. As both parents and dh are used to being little emperors they're really not good T sharing responsibility and I'm not greAt at making confident decisions. I think that some clarity would really help.