Should You Work With Family?

Etienne Martel, Eric Martel, Antoine Martel and Lynn Martel with Angelica Garcia in attendance at a recent MartelTurnkey business meeting.

SHOULD YOU WORK WITH FAMILY?

Once you realize how much money it’s possible to make in real estate, it’s natural to want to tell the world about it. It’s also natural to want to talk about it with family members, or even bring them in on your deals. Both the temptation and the perceived benefits of working with family can make you do something that it’s hard to come back from if it fails. But is it worth it? Should you work with family, or is it best to find business partners elsewhere?

Financial Benefits of Employing Family Members

There are certain financial benefits of employing family members like your spouse or child. They’re especially useful if you’re self-employed or running a very small business operation with yourself as the sole employee. When you put your spouse or child on the payroll, you could double your shared retirement benefit contribution limits. You may reap lower health insurance premiums by listing a spouse as an employee on a company policy rather than as a dependent. If your spouse is currently unemployed outside the home, your spouse would accrue social security benefits through employment by you. But aside from tax and financial benefits, is it a good idea to work with family?

The Downsides of Working With Family

Working with close family members like your spouse or child has several downsides. The most obvious one is time. You’re probably going to be spending a lot more time with that person when you work with them. Unless you send them on the road somewhere to work, that means your workday is going to be spent with that person. After work, you’re also going to be with that person. For many couples, being able to separate during the workday is a plus. It can feel oppressive to be with your spouse all day and all night. Now, that’s not true for everyone, but it’s something to consider.

Another downside of working with family is that you don’t have as much freedom as you would with a “regular” partner or employee. You might not feel that you can act aggressively (in a business sense) with your brother-in-law who’s a joint owner of your investment property. You may not feel you can fire your young nephew as readily as you would someone else who performed badly for the business. All this leads to the biggest downside of working with family; strained relationships.

Many are the relatives who eagerly go into business together, only to wind up not speaking or dissolving the company—and losing money—because of personal differences. For all their promises not to let emotions come into play, in the end they weren’t able to separate business from family life.

The Tremendous Upsides to Working With Family

For every downside of working with family, there are multiple upsides. The biggest one is the reason people are tempted to bring in family members to begin with; sharing the potential for wealth. Every loving family person has a desire to see their family members succeed. If you’ve found a way—through real estate investing—to make great money, it’s an awesome feeling to be able to give a family member the chance to share in that success. As long as the other person understands that the results aren’t guaranteed, there’s no reason not to find a way to work with a family member if you want to.

Another huge upside is also one of the downsides mentioned above – time. If you’ve been a person who has had to spend more time than you wanted away from home, working with family is a great way to rectify that situation. I can personally attest to this. As a youngster, my father had to travel a lot for work. He wasn’t home nearly as much as he wanted to be. He was constantly looking for ways to earn money without having to sacrifice family time. Eventually, we started our family company, MartelTurnkey, and now my dad gets to spend quality time at home, working side by side with all of us. So being able to spend more time with your family can be a huge benefit, so long as that’s the way you want it to be. I know that I truly appreciate being able to spend more time with my family, and I also feel that working together has brought us even closer over the years.

Yet another upside to working with family is trust. Close family members can usually be trusted more than any other employee you may find. You can trust your family member to be loyal to the business, to be committed to the company goals and to work as hard as they can to improve the business prospects. Naturally there are exceptions, but in general, in my opinion, inherent family trust is a huge upside to working with family.

Working with family certainly carries a unique dynamic along with it. But if you have the right combination of business-minded individuals and loving family members, it can work really well and increase everyone’s chances of being individually successful. I can say firsthand that when it works, it’s one of the best aspects of being in real estate or any business. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.