If your kids don’t want the business, could another family carry it forward? Richard Boyce and I talk about selling to a family office.

Richard comes from generations of business owners. His own family’s investment portfolio is being shaped around his children’s interests and values, which brings a different perspective to the search for a buyer.

We talk about why regional jobs can matter to a buying family, what remains when a family sells the business but keeps the land and how patient capital shapes an investment. The family on the other side of the table has its own reasons for buying, and those can change with each generation.

What does carrying on your legacy mean when the buyer has a next generation of their own?

Today's shout was a coffee from Ageyo Coffee in Melbourne.

Ageyo Coffee: https://www.ageyocoffee.com.au/

About Richard Boyce

Richard is a family enterprise specialist with a unique blend of experience gained over 30 years, being a practising chartered accountant, tax agent, company director and 5th generation member of a family that owns businesses across Australia and the UK. Richard has worked as a specialist family business and family office advisor with many leading global business families to develop their generational family enterprise model and is a former Partner of EY Global Business Centre of Excellence. Richard is also a fellow and academic faculty member of the Global Family Firm Institute (FFI) based in Boston, a strategic consultant to Family Business Association in Australia & NZ (FBA), Chair of the University of Adelaide Family Enterprise Group (FBERG) and an independent board member to a number of generational family businesses.

Richard’s passion is family enterprises and providing the support structures and mentoring to see generational families succeed for future generations.

Website: https://www.boycefamilyoffice.com/executive

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/richardboycefb

When Tom Skotidas clashed with the brother he ran a business with, they could go weeks without speaking. Now a family business psychotherapist, he can see where that anger came from.

Tom brought his brother into his LinkedIn training agency when it took off. They were brothers, colleagues and co-owners at once, or as Tom puts it, three nervous systems in one. Years later, Tom chased his long-held passion for psychotherapy. His brother still runs the business, and their relationship is strong.

Tom talks Shane through why anger is rarely the first emotion, how patterns learned growing up get replayed in the boardroom and what an adviser should do when the next generation asks them to tell Dad. Shane also ends up answering a few of Tom's questions himself.

Next time an old argument flares up in your family business, it might be worth asking whose pattern is running the conversation.

Today's shout was Vittoria Coffee, a family-owned roaster in Sydney.

Vittoria Coffee: https://www.vittoriacoffee.com/

About Tom Skotidas

Tom Skotidas is a family business psychotherapist and the director of everpath. Working with individuals, key pairs and groups, Tom helps business families resolve entrenched conflict patterns, repair relationships and thrive as a system. He is also the author of the newsletter Family Business Therapy.

Website: https://www.everpath.com.au/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomskotidas/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tomskotidas

General information only, not therapy or professional advice. If anything in this conversation brings up something difficult for you, you can reach Lifeline on 13 11 14 or at https://www.lifeline.org.au/

Kate's dad was close to the end of his life when a physio asked him when he'd retired. His answer? "Farmers don't retire".

Kate grew up the youngest of six on the family farm at Elmore, which has been on her father's side since 1870. Her two eldest brothers became the farmers. Kate was steered towards an academic career, spent 20 years advising farming families and then bought some land of her own.

Over an Irish nitro stout, Kate talks about coming home for the Sunday roast and struggling to stay in her lane, the powerful advice from her mum that she brushed off at the time and the chat with her dad, in the barn while the two of them were shovelling sheep manure, that finally got him unstuck.

Kate reckons only about one in ten farming families has a legally binding succession plan that everyone knows about, and it's rarely the wills and trust structures keeping the rest of them stuck.

When the farm is the family home, the office and who you are, what's left when it's time to hand it over?

Today's shout was an Irish nitro stout from Devilbend Farm Beer Co. on the Mornington Peninsula.

Devilbend Farm Beer Co.: https://devilbend.beer/

About Kate Burke

Dr Kate Burke is an agri-strategist and communicator helping people of agriculture think better, stress less and prosper more.

Kate has recently authored Succession: Future Proofing your Family Farm and conducts speaking, training and strategy sessions for family businesses navigating the challenges of transferring assets and responsibility from one generation to another.

Kate has 35 years' experience helping farming families.

Website: https://thinkagri.com.au/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drkateburkethinkagri

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1J9UGnqLJd/?mibextid=wwXIfr