We love family-owned businesses here at Proposito (we are one ourselves!), and we think that there are innate advantages to being a family business that can help you to succeed. But do you always recognise them yourself and are you communicating those strong points to your clients and prospects? What do you think about these six strengths of family-owned businesses? Do you see them in your own business?

Attractive to investors

Investors are quite often drawn to family businesses, because of the values they feel will be inherent within them; hard work and a strong, consistent philosophy. There’s also normally a level of succession planning, which helps to guarantee the business’ future. Investor’s also quite often recognise the business’ strong internal drive, which leads us on to the next point.

Drive to succeed

Family-owned businesses, unlike those with a large, diasporic collection of shareholders, have a very important reason to survive and thrive: the business is likely to be the family’s main investment, source of income and retirement plan. That powerful driver, embedded from the top down, can really help the business’ purpose and ability to succeed.

‘Round the dinner table’

If you are a family business then you probably already know that work never stops! If you have an idea at 10pm at night in a non-family business, you might feel awkward ringing your Finance Director about it. If your Finance Director is your son or daughter, you probably feel less awkward about disturbing their evening!

Attractive culture

Whilst it’s not to everyone’s tastes, family-owned businesses often have a less formal culture than corporate enterprises. This can be very helpful on a staffing front; both from the point of view of attracting new hires and retaining existing highly valued team members.

Grow and retain a network

When a senior member of business leaves for pastures new, their network will often follow them. In the case of a family business, there is more chance that the network passes to another member of the family, who has likely shared in the creation of key contacts throughout the years.

Work doesn’t have to mean ‘work’!

This is again a bit of a cultural aspect that can help with staffing and ongoing development. If you really love what you do – and many family businesses do; including ourselves! – then work doesn’t need to feel like ‘work’. Making the day in the office enjoyable can really work wonders for performance and ongoing success.