Is Your Family a Business System?
The Simple Truth
In this article, you will begin to explore your family as a business system and come to see the significant link between your family management, and your current financial freedom.
Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success.
Henry Ford
As one of the more successful industrialist in the 1800s, I believe Henry Ford was not just talking about the very successful company that he had built “The Ford Motor Company”, but he was actually talking about family. Contrary to the emotionalizing of marriage, older cultures have always thought of family as a business system, one that is primarily used for wealth development, and not merely for procreation. They understood the relationship between real wealth and financial wealth, one that seems to have escaped many modern cultures. With this in mind, it should be no surprise why it is that the gap between the rich and the poor continues to grow, along side the number of unplanned pregnancies, rising cases of divorces, and broken homes. So, what is this hidden myth about family? It is that family is your number one business, and is critical to anyone who is seeking to secure their financial freedom. Are you mining your business?
Your Family Members are Your Customers
Every business exists to serve its customers, and for that business to survive its customers will also have to pay that business back for the services they receive. Just the same, families exist to serve its members, and for the family to survive its members will also have to pay that family back for the services they receive. The thing is, even though families exist to take care of its family members, they also need to make a profit in order to do so. With this in mind, could it be then that families who continue to struggle financially don’t know who their customers are? I believe so and here is why.
Customers
They are the people whom a business serves and are the main reason they exist. However, there are two types of customers, primary and secondary customers. The primary customers are the ones that the product or service is made for, while the secondary customers are those individuals who purchase the product or service for someone else other than themselves.
Family Members
They are individuals who are usually related by blood, but not necessarily, living together in a household, and supporting each other lives while sharing in their daily experiences as a unit. They are often confused with relatives but acting as a unit and living together are distinct differences that perpetrates the two.
Family Members are Customers
When a family recognizes that the reason it exists is to serve the needs of its members, and its members recognizes that they need to pay the family back for the services they receive, something incredible starts to happen. As time passes, the family begins to improve financially, and the family members begin to experience more financial freedom. Consistently, the family members, who are its customer, begin to market the family as a business bringing in more wealth development opportunities.
Your Family Name is Your Product
When we think about businesses like Nike, Walmart or Amazon, we instantly recognize their names, what they do and how they can help us. We know this because we are familiar with their brand, their products, and their history. Similarly, family names are like brands, they carry the same kind of expectation. The difference is, because family names may not be directly associated with a product, they are often neglected, and recognized as the product itself. Considering this, could it be that families who are struggling financially tend not to value their name as a product? I believe so and where is why.
Product
A business product is the solution that it manufactures or produces, and makes it available to its customers, usually for a profit. A product can be tangible, intangible or a mixture of both. Intangible products are referred to as services which is considered as doing something for or helping someone with something. A business may have one or several products related to a particular industry or market.
Family name
A family name is the name by which all members of that family are known, it sets them apart from other families, and it is a way of addressing them in recognition of where they are from, their history. Most family names consist of one generation before them, while others include references to their family tree. Along with this, there is usually a family history that goes along with that name, that can be good or bad.
Family Name is Your Product
By understanding and accepting that your family name is indeed your product (brand), you begin to develop and protect it, looking at every engagement as an opportunity to promote your brand. This is especially needed if your family history up to this point has been less than positive, leaving you and your family members deprived of better financial opportunities. By improving your family name, everything your family does will be a service, and your lifestyle will become your process for improved wealth development.
Your Family Lifestyle is Your Process
Every business has a set of core activities that it does in order to provide its products to its customers. We are aware of some of these activities but in many instances we are not. We are also somewhat familiar with the term business-process and may commonly refer to it as the way things are done. Just the same, a family has a set of core activities that it does to fulfill its purpose. The thing is, we often fail to realize that the way things are done, or what we refer to as our lifestyle, is indeed a process too. With that said, is it possible that families who continue to struggle financially have misaligned processes? I believe so and here is why.
Business Process
A business process is an organized set of steps created to produce its product or service to its customers. There are sometimes internal and external processes involved, those activities that take place only within the business, and those that involve activities outside the business itself. It is widely understood that the more effective and efficient a process is, the more profitability a business will be.
Family Lifestyle
A family lifestyle is the way that family habitually operates as its members go about living their lives. It’s those habits that are widely used by most family members, that are the norms of the family, sometimes referred to as tradition. Lifestyle is widely known to change depending on the amount of income that family earns, more often voluntarily trending upward as income increases, but rarely downward.
Family Lifestyle is Your Process
When a family understands that its lifestyle is the driving force behind its income and expenses, it will clearly come to see the need for closer attention to its lifestyle as its business process. Over time, if we look closely at a family’s lifestyle, we can see the relationship between it and its financial concerns. Remember, for a family to successfully serve its members it has be profitable, and only then can its members experience financial freedom.
When it comes down to mining our business, we seldom think about our number one business, our family. We instead tend to think about the traditional business models: for profits and nonprofit, often unaware that there is third business model which is a combination of those two. It is called a social enterprise, and a family is good example of one. We mistakenly believe that our family is not a business system, and in so doing, prioritize our jobs, workplaces, and businesses, without investing enough time into the business system that is most fundamental to our financial freedom. As a wealth developer, you must recognize that our family is your number one business, your family name is a product, your family members are your customers, and your family lifestyle is a process. So, how is your number one business performing, and are you mining it?
