Welcome to Elevate with Elsner. Join us for inspiring conversations with individuals who have transformed their lives and are making a difference through the work that they do. And now, here's your host, Blake Elsner.

And there we go. It's been a minute since I have gone live, but let me tell you, I have had some tremendous conversations with people over the course of the past couple, past couple of weeks. And I've had a lot of sicknesses. I mean, people are getting sick left and right. It's like between the cold and being inside and then, you know, the warm weather for one day and, You know, it just seems like everybody, somebody's either sniffling, coughing, you know, but we don't shut down the country right now, but it seems like we should, right? No, we're never gonna shut down the country again. The worst thing we ever did, unfortunately. Okay, we're not gonna get into that. But anyway, what I wanna go talk about is this family business consulting. So I've had a few family businesses reach out to me about this. And basically, what I'm trying to do is take a problem inside the business Create a bridge to the solution. And a lot of times that bridge is tough to complete without some type of third party, some type of secondary help, right? So that's what I'm doing. And with that, I'm gonna give you a perfect case study of a company that I'm dealing with right now. So if you know anybody that has a family business that wants me to dive into the culture, We take an assessment, then we go on to another assessment. I'm not gonna tell those details yet because they're important details. A part of my way of getting to know people and getting inside the culture and figuring out the ins and outs, the challenges, the headaches of the family business, because I've seen the ins and outs of everything that has to go with it. Like I said, only 12% of family businesses make it to the third generation. So you're looking at somebody that was part of the 12%. I made it here and I'd love to continue some of these family businesses. As I watch numerous businesses just shudder over the course of 2024. So pretty much, you know, you have I have the podcast, I have numerous other platforms that I use to also insult and help improve the culture. So if you look at cultures inside, the morale of a business, a family business especially, is going to increase 30 to 50% with a proper culture. That is just an incredible statistic if you really think about it, 50%. All right, so when your engagement skyrockets, what? Retention improves, productivity surges, profitability increases. So let me give you a little example. Culture just isn't a nice to have, it's a business strategy, all right? Because that business strategy leads to scalability. and long-term success, which creates a very easy legacy transition, okay? So there's a company called, it's not in St. Louis, it's not even gonna name where it's at, but it's Smith & Sons, it's a manufacturing company. They have 35 employees, all right? Manufacturing company with 35 employees, 22 years in business. The biggest challenge for them was lack of structure, internal conflicts, and stagnant growth. The thing about that company is there's a lot of family employees. So you have a dynamic of non-family employees and family employees. And that sometimes can clash, even if it's married in-laws, Brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, there's all cousins. You always have to realize that the non-family employees are just as important, if not more important, than the family that runs it, right? Because these are the people that are really showing up, giving it to your family to help this business. They're a second generation family business in a wall. Company was profitable, but the growth had stalled. Employees felt disconnected. This is what I researched. They felt disconnected, family members struggled with unclear roles, and the sales process was so inconsistent. So decision-making often got tangled in family dynamics, some type of operational inefficiencies. And it led to a lot of missed deadlines in the manufacturer. And you know what happens on missed deadlines, things add up, you lose money. And frustrated employees is a part of that. So what did we do? We had that 30-day transformation program and we're in the middle of it and We're almost halfway in and it's almost, I gotta say the morale has probably improved at least 15% and I guarantee you we get up to that 30 to 50% by the end of this. And what we've done is basically had leadership alignment and accountability. We've held family strategy sessions to define clear roles that separate business decisions and business decisions from emotions, basically. You cannot have family emotions and business emotions together. It is, that's it, that's it. You don't want that. So we implemented a weekly leadership check-in, right? So to keep everybody on the same page, we wanted a weekly leadership check-in. Then we had a cultural role, right? We rebuilt employee engagement strategies, including feedback loops, performance incentives, things that boosted the recognition of good work, taking them out to lunch, doing things that make the non-family member feel just as connected and just as powerful. So we created an employee recognition program by doing that, and it makes them feel worthy. It's a big, big thing. A small lunch does not cost a lot, and it improves the morale of that employee tremendously. And then we went to the sales and marketing revamp side. So we developed a sales process, eliminate the reliance on word of mouth referrals, because that was one thing that I know we got too comfortable in our family businesses, too much reliant on word of mouth referrals. Yes, it can continue to grow your business. It's a great way to do it, but sometimes If it dries up, you have to be able to pivot to paid leads. You have to play to pay. And that, I'm sorry, pay to play. And you have to do it that way or else you're just going, you're going to sink. So we implemented automated follow-up systems for leads, resulting in a 35% increase in closed sales. Okay. We documented all key processes to improve the efficiency and reduce reliance on what's in someone's head, right? We don't want people thinking inside the culture, inside the family business, that there's issues that, you know, somebody thinks something about somebody else. So this is big, big, big part of it. You got to follow a workflow. Improving production time, right? And then you go into the revenue, the profit. So the result after 30 days, what we're hoping to improve is that morale is increased by at least 40%. Like I said, I think we're about at 15%. Revenue increased 22% in the first 15 days of this morale. You know why? Because people started producing, they started wanting to work. This is big inside of a culture. So family conflicts finally decreased too because guess what? Now that the non-employees aren't barking at them and then the employees barking or the family employees barking at the cousin who's barking at the dad, you don't want any of that. This is why it is very crucial to improve the culture. So the final takeaway from that This is gonna be the perfect case study. And if you know anybody out there that needs this, please just slide on in to my DMs, book a call on my Facebook. There's 15 minutes where we'll eventually figure this all out. We'll have a discovery call. There's another thing I just put on my Facebook about exactly what the 30-day program holds. And so, Basically, a family business stuck in a cycle of inefficiency and internal conflict is not gonna be successful. It's not gonna be profitable. I'm just gonna tell you that. After this program, we're gonna be a scalable, structured company with clear leadership, strong culture, and predictable growth. Those are three things that will take your family business and see the transformation happen. We're not gonna change the product. We're not gonna do anything to how special of a business you have. We're just going to transform it into a greater culture. So that's what I got for you today. If you're ready to step up, take the next step with your family business, this is just one of the things Elevate with Ellsner is offering now. Truly, I've had this in the works and my passion has finally come up and I've realized this is it. And I've had a lot of people come to me and say, this is perfect for you. Please dive into my business and my family culture. I've seen it all. I've seen a lot. Seen a lot in life and when it comes to business and family, there's no one better. So book a call with me and even if you're unsure about it, still book a call with me, all right? One love.

Blake Elsner

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