MBA970 Q&A Wednesday: Should I hire a family member?

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Heyoo. Welcome to the Hunter dollar NBA show, the business podcast that knows your business deserves better. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net and today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episodes, I answer a question from one of our listeners. If you have a question that you want to ask, just email me over@omar00mba.net Today's question comes from Anthony and Anthony asks, should I hire a family member? Many small businesses have the same question in their head right now, and it's natural. You're building a small business and you want to hire people that you can trust. And often these businesses are family businesses. But Anthony's on the fence here. When you hire a family member, there's obviously some emotional baggage that comes along. Your relationship is dynamic. There's other aspects to your relationship other than work. So does hiring a family member work or is it just too much drama? We get into all of that in today's episode, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So Anthony asks the question, should I hire a family member? First of all, full disclosure, my business partner, my co founder, is my wife. So I work with my family all the time, every day. And also for a period of time, my sister worked for our business as well. So a little bit experience about working and hiring family members and you have to approach it. You can't just approach hiring a family member the same as a stranger because these are different types of people. You have a different relationship with this person that you know from your family. You have to remember when you're hiring family, that family member has an idea of you, has an expectation based on some context, based on an existing relationship they already have that's outside of work. But they may not know you as a business owner. That's a side of you they may have not have been exposed to before. So when it comes to this topic, communication is really key. So when it comes to hiring a family member, you really need to communicate over. Communicate and make sure the whole procedure is professional. Even more professional than with somebody who's not a family member or a stranger, because a stranger doesn't have any pretense. And hiring a family member can work. And if I'm going to be completely honest, when it does work, it works really well because family know you well. They have a sense of pride in a lot of cases, a sense of loyalty, as well as the feeling of I don't want to disappoint. But I have to say this is not always the case. It's almost on a case by case basis. So my best advice is to treat this whole procedure as professionally as possible. Go through the whole interview process as you normally would. If you have a probation process or a training process before you make a final decision on hiring, put them through that and make it super clear that at work, at the business, we have certain priorities and that we both have to treat each other in the context of work. I know often Nicole and I have to put on our founder's cap and really see things in the perspective of business owners and not let our personal life or personal feelings get in the way. This is not super simple because, you know, our business is so intertwined with our life. But when you're making decisions, when you're actually taking action in your business, you gotta make the right business decisions. And then when you're having a personal actual conversation about how the business affects your personal life, that's a different conversation you're going to have in my case, with my wife, not with my business partner. So the same goes with anybody that you're hiring, whether it's an employee or a manager or whatever, you got to communicate clearly that, hey, this is a place of business, we got to keep it professional. And even though we have a history and we know each other very well, I got to keep it extra professional. So I'm fair to everybody else in the business as well the other employees, Everybody's going to be on their guard. Everybody's going to kind of have their radar on for nepotism. Does the boss actually favor this person because they're family? So keep that in mind as a hiring manager, as a founder of the company, this is something you're going to have to work hard on. You want to call it an extra stress or an extra thing to think about, but it's definitely. You have to make sure that you're going to make that clear to everybody, that even though this person's family, they are treated just like anybody else in the business. Now, to answer the question directly, should you hire a family member? Well, my answer is you should hire the best person for the job. And if that person happens to be a family member, that's totally fine. But you really should try to find the best person for the job. Now, I know that sounds maybe a little bit controversial because, like, hey, this is family. You know, I should be helping out my family. But when you're creating a business and running a business, you have to see your business as a separate entity. And you owe it to your customers and to the patronage that they give you, that you give them the very best that you can. And that means hiring the best talent and the best people that can do the job. So if that person is not a family member, that's the right decision, the right decision for the business. Maybe it's not the best decision for your family. Maybe you're going to get flack for that. But if you're asking me from a business point of view, you got to hire the best person for the job. You owe it to your customers. You owe it to the other people that run the business with you. All the decisions that you make in your business directly affect the success of the business, which also means it affects people's livelihood. If the business doesn't do well and goes out of business, then a whole bunch of people will lose their job, including yourself. So as simple as this answer is, it's the truth. You got to hire the best person for the job. And if that person is family, all good, no problem, hire them. They're the best. But if the best person's not family, but you're like, but they're not that bad, and I can hire them and people are relying on me or people are expecting me to say yes to my family member, you got to do the hard thing. You got to say, hey, the best person for this job is so and so. And I need to take that best person. Now, a couple of things to look out for when you hire a family Member. There might be some surprises if you haven't worked together before. There's things that are going to come up that you're not going to expect. And sometimes your family member might just leave, might just say, hey, I don't think this is good for us. I'd rather have a strong relationship as family members, as cousins, as brothers and sisters or whatever it is than to work together. I'll just get a job somewhere else. Sometimes the professional relationship taints the personal relationship somehow. Or maybe they're just not comfortable with having a working relationship with you. Sometimes we don't know how things are going to be like until we actually live them. So in theory, you might thought, oh, this is gonna be great, gonna work with family. But once you start doing it, that person might feel like, hey, you know what? I feel differently towards this person and I don't like it. And it's not anybody's fault. And it's not that you're being nasty as a boss something. It's just that some people like a relationship to be a certain way and to have one dynamic. So that might happen. You gotta be careful of that and be willing to say, I respect that and let that person go. Everybody's relationship with their family is different. Some people, when they work together as family members, it's super easy and there's a lot of respect. And for some, it's just the opposite. You know your family best, so my advice is, if they're the best person for the job, hire them. Understand, you're gonna have to make some effort to defining your new relationship at work.

Thy ticket lady, Jennifer of Coolidge. Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my Discover card. They accept Discover at Renaissance fairs? Yeah, they do here. Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop. Getith with the times. With the times. You're playing the lute.

Yeah.

And it sounds pretty good, right?

Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. To wrap up today's Q and A Wednesday episode, Anthony asks, should I hire a family member? And to sum up, you got to hire the best person for the job. That's your family member, great. If not, you got to make the right choice and do what's best for the business. If it is a family member, the person that's the best for the job, then just be cautious of the fact that you're treading on new territory. If you have never worked together before, you got to define that relationship at work. And to be Willing to accept it may not work out. All right, that wraps up today's episode. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me@omar mba net. I'd love to answer your question here on Q and A Wednesdays. You know, a lot of people when it comes to online marketing, emphasize the importance of growing your email list. And it's true, email is very powerful when it comes to marketing. But the size of your list is not as important as the quality of your list. I rather have a list of a thousand people that open and gobble up every email that I send than have a list of 10,000 people where only 5% of them actually read what I send them. I'm spending a whole lot more keeping these people on my list that are not reading my emails. So how do you make sure that the people on your email list are high quality, the best people to be on your list? There's a whole bunch of things you're going to have to do from how you collect the emails to how you attract these people to how to prune your email list and clean up your existing list. We talk about all that in tomorrow's episode. So make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss that. Alright, that's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. I love my family and I think the best thing you can do when you love somebody is just to be honest with them. If things are not working out in a working relationship, just let them know. Have an open and honest conversation about it. If you have to, tell them, hey, I can't hire you because you're not the best person for the job and they might be expecting they'll get the job because, hey, they're family, then you just got to have an open and honest conversation that you have to do what's best for the company, not only for yourself, but for everybody else in the business as well as the customers. Let them know you always got their back. But when it comes to this situation, you have to make this tough decision. How they react is not in your control. How you react is. So just be honest and lay the cards on the table. All right, I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.