I am/was a small business owner in business with my dad. We recently had a huge blowup so I wanted to see if OOT had any similar experiences being in business with family members and/or advice for my situation (cliffs at bottom):

I'm 29, live in Toledo, OH (all my family is still here, and my wife's is about 1.5 hours away), and I started a small pawn/re-sale shop with my dad. A quick background on that: After I graduated from HS, I moved to Seattle for college (my wife, then GF followed me out there), and ended up living there for 8 years, working in real estate and starting a family.

After our first child turned 4 we realized we wanted to move back to Toledo to be closer to our families as our kids were getting older. So we moved back in the summer of '09, and after several months of job hunting with no good results (economy was terribad at this point, esp. in Toledo), my dad and I decided to try and start a business together.

None of us really had that much start-up capital on hand, so we wanted to find something that we could get into for cheap, and start to get out of the red relatively quickly. We thought about doing something with recycling, but that quickly fizzled. Also note that during this time My dad was still working full time (a mailman), and I was just grinding SnGs to make ends meet (beat, I know). Then one day while doing some field research on the recycling situation in Toledo, we realized that we had been picking up a lot of good stuff that people had been just putting out next to the trash, and selling it on Craigslist. We decided to take a shot with running this type of operation at a B&M storefront and see if we could make it work at a business. This was Dec. of '09

Long story short, sometime in mid 2010 we found out that buying and re-selling gold/tools/antiques/etc. from people coming into our store was much more profitable than our previous "permanent garage sale" business model", and we decided to pursue a Pawn shop type business model (it takes a very long time to get a Pawnbroker license in Ohio).

By the the January of this year, the business doing relatively well, and was self-sustaining, so my dad decided to retire from the USPS to help me run the store. Also note that for the duration of 2010 I was working at the store pretty much full time by myself and basically building the business from the ground up.

Things were going great for the first 2 months, our Pawnbroker license with pending approval, and our firearms dealer's license was approved.

Then just a couple of weeks ago I got into a very heated argument/fight (completely non-business related) with one of our associates who works in the shop with us (technically a 1099'd independent contractor), and my dad jumps in the middle of the fight and basically says that's enough. I plead my case and ask to finish with what I was saying, and he says "NO!!!". I then ask if I can ask for a 3rd party opinion from another associate of ours who was there the entire time and saw the entire thing, and my dad says "he's not allowed to talk!". That clicked my brain to some other operating mode and I basically stormed out and said I am done with this business. Everyone at the store agrees I am the leader of the business, and I felt seriously talked down to and emasculated in front of our associates (there were no customers in the store at the time). He basically treated me like a child when he had nothing to do with the situation that he stepped into.

Also worth noting my dad has personally put in about $15k into the business and I have put in about $3-5k, although those were basically in the form of personal loans to the business and we intended on paying ourselves back once the business is really booming. We still considered ourselves equal partners, although in my dad's eyes it was basically my business. Right now the store has liquid assets of around $20-25k, and probably is conservatively worth around 30-35k as a whole.

Now for the past 2 weeks, he as been begging me to come back as he can't run the store by himself effectively, and his primary motivation for even starting it was to provide something for me and my family for years to come. My wife is also pleading with me to go back, as the economy around here still really sucks and I am giving up the most stable thing in our life, and we will most likely either have to move somewhere better for us economically, or we will have to adopt a very low standard of living here in Toledo. I am fine with either of those FWIW.

I really don't want to go back there and work with my dad after what happened, even though he apologized for the incident. However, I made the following offer to my wife and dad: If either one of them does something they really don't want to, I will be at peace with going back to the store right where I left off. In my mind this would be "fair" and I wouldn't feel like I am just giving in to their demands and they don't suffer any repercussions.

For my wife it was quitting the PTA board position she has at my daughter's school (she is really involved with the school and the PTA and loves being a part of it all).

For my dad it was join and attend exclusively the Christian church of my choosing for the remainder of the calendar year (he really loves the mega-church he is at and just officially became a member).

At this point, anytime I bring up that offer they both just get gross/sad looks on their faces, and can't come up with an answer. I think it really puts them between a rock and a hard place.

So I ask OOT, am I being way to hard headed here, or did the offense warrant my resulting reaction and consequences? The bottom line for me is that if I just went back where I left off, I don't think I could let go of the fact that I got emasculated by my dad in front of our associates, and now I am just back to work like nothing ever happened. I feel like I would hold a lot of animosity and anger towards him/my wife unless they had to do something they really didn't want to do.

Does anybody else have experience in running a business with family members? All of the other business I deal with (that are family run), tell me they have these things come up all the time, and they just have to eventually kiss and make up or else the business starts to seriously fail.

Cliffs: I co-own a shop with my dad (but I mostly started/ran it), he very seriously offended me, I walked away from the business, now he and my wife are flipping out on me about it. What experiences do you have in being in business with family members?

"I really don't want to go back there and work with my dad after what happened, even though he apologized for the incident. However, I made the following offer to my wife and dad: If either one of them does something they really don't want to, I will be at peace with going back to the store right where I left off. In my mind this would be "fair" and I wouldn't feel like I am just giving in to their demands and they don't suffer any repercussions."




You are a bitch, and have no place running a business.

might as well just shut it down now

op,

grow the **** up

I was in business with my Dad for about 3 years and we never had any problems. He's passed away now and I'm definitely glad I had the chance to work with him.

Your dad apologized. That's more than most fathers would probably do. You should accept the apology and move forward with the business. If you think issues like this will occur in the future, then you should withdraw from the business as gracefully as possible. You should not do anything to build resentment in yourself, your wife, or your father.

This is my advice to you as someone trying to be understanding and sympathetic to someone in your position. No judgment whatsoever.

The judgmental advice is that you sound way too emotional, sensitive, and overreactive. Normal healthy people don't yell at their father for trying to break up a verbal altercation. Why are you even getting into fights with associates in your shop? Be a ****ing man and control yourself. Your dad was trying to help you not be a douche.

What the **** does it matter if your wife or your father have to do something they don't want to do? Do you know how ****ed up of an idea this is? You're only willing to do something if these people -- people who love you and support you unconditionally -- join you in your misery? You are bringing down your family.

sounds like your dad knows that you are kind of an argumentative hothead (and probably he is too) and that there are much deeper issues here

This is the gayest thing i've ever heard made up in a story.

Wow, I guess maybe I do need a reality check or something. I don't think this type of thing will happen again (it was an isolated incident, nothing close to it has happened before). Do I really just have to swallow my pride on this one and take the hit to my leadership role at the business?

You won't be able to recover the hit to your "leadership role" and the hit didnt come from your father.

how did your wife ever marry you?
you seem crazy imo

Uh, he apologized. He's the one who swallowed his pride and took the hit, until you turned it into a big bitchfest. Your demand is ridiculous.

I bet you were the type of kid that took your ball and went home.

It's time to grow up and stop being that little kid.

Making your wife and dad do something they really didn't want to do just to make yourself seem like you "won" is pathetic. It shows you have the maturity level of a 3yr old window licker.

Sounds like your dad did the right thing by stepping in and stopping the fight. First off, imo, you don't argue with your employees - contractors or not. They are there to make you money, you are there to support them. As a business owner you have to think of it not as "I'm the leader of the company," but as, "what can I do to make sure I have employees who want to work as hard as they can?" At the end of the day, your checks get bigger because they work harder. If all of your employees think you're a dickbag and quit because nobody wants to work for someone with an ego the size of Mt. Rushmore, then you are left with no employees and a failing business - while you have to work harder on your own.

What was the argument with the associate about?

Yes.

I started a business with my mother in 93, sold my share to my brother in 2000. During our partnership, I had many arguments with my mother. It never occurred to me to rush out for anything more than a cigarette. Learn how to control your temper.

The entire part about making them do something they don't want to do sounds incredibly childish, and I can almost guarantee that your wife's view of you has taken a drastic hit because of this reaction.

lol op is a clown.

I think you may have some issue with leadership and perception of you by others. Leadership isn't established or lost from one incident; it's the cumulative effect of a stream of incidents.

Let me turn this on you: do you think you handled the situation in an ideal way? I get the feeling that you may not think it was ideal, but that given the situation, it was okay.

I can tell you that most people would perceive you losing your cool and storming out of the store as the sort of rash decision that leaders never do. I don't think that means you'll never be a strong leader, but you won't be one right now. Strong leaders don't need to reinforce that they're leaders, or even concern themselves with "looking like a leader". There's something else driving this, some fear of something.

Man, thank you very much for this post. I agree 100%. I guess I never really had any outside perspectives on my behaviour.

Also, 27, the fight was about our wives. Dude accused my wife of being a warden (she's not, but his wife it, pot calling kettle black, etc.), so I called him out on it and blowup ensued.

Leadership isn't established or lost from one incident;


I'm not sure I agree with this, I think you can lose leadership status from one incident, but I agree that its rare to establish leadership from one incident.

Wait, what is a warden?

I can't understand why you want your wife to quit the PTA which she loves, and your dad to leave his church. Because you have to do something that may be a little bit difficult, you want your family to suffer too? WTF kind of sick **** is this.

Basically meaning that I am whipped. i.e. "have to check with the warden first, etc."

guids - I know I was fudging it a bit; it sounds so much better that way. But yeah, you can lose it in one incident. It might be something you can recover from, but if it's bad enough, it can wreck it completely.

TBH, if I was fighting with a guy who works for me about our wives and my father who's my partner butted in I'd tell him to STFU and keep doing so until he did.