Business owners find wisdom, lifelong friendships in personal advisory groups

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The death of Maria Galipo’s father in 2009 meant the loss of a close relative and of a leading force in a business that, at the time, had been in the family for 50 years.

Ms. Galipo, who that same year became CEO of Toronto-based Sicilian Ice Cream Company Ltd. – which her father Aurelio and his three brothers built from a neighbourhood gelateria to a maker and supplier of frozen Italian desserts to retailers and restaurants – turned to her personal advisory group for support and advice.

“I faced one of the biggest challenges of my life when my Dad passed away. Because not only was my father gone, but the company, being a family business, was really impacted by the change,” recalls Galipo, who spent much of her childhood helping out in the gelateria that her immigrant father and uncles opened shortly after they moved to Toronto from Sicily. “My group was instrumental in helping me get through that crossroad in my life.”

Galipo’s 10-member personal advisory group, which she joined more than 30 years ago, is one of dozens created by Family Enterprise Canada, a national association that supports and connects business families.

While the association didn’t invent personal advisory groups – similar groups exist, often called peer groups or personal advisory boards – it has formalized the concept in Canada and built it around the needs of founding and next-generation members of family businesses.

“Our formula for personal advisory groups is fairly simple and effective: You come together with other people who also come from business families with an agenda of sharing experiences and bringing up challenges,” says Bill Brushett, president and CEO of Family Enterprise Canada, based in Oakville, Ont.

These group meetings, typically hosted monthly or every two months, also frequently include guest speakers who discuss topics ranging from conflict resolution to succession planning.

The goal, says Brushett, is to focus on the human side of family enterprises. While other business-oriented peer groups tend to frown upon going into deeper relationship issues, the personal advisory groups at Family Enterprise Canada get into the “emotional intelligence around being in a business family, and that almost always involves relationship matters,” says Brushett.

The discussions can get deeply personal. A member might, for example, bring up a parent’s illness. Brushett says he knows of some groups that have supported members through divorce.

Work can be lonely experience

The groups tend to stay together for many years, with some members dropping off as people relocate or no longer feel the group makes sense for them. Some groups, like the one Ms. Galipo belongs to, go back more than three decades.

“These groups, once they’ve built up the team dynamic, are very strong and very tight,” he says. “Working in a family business can often feel very lonely, and that feeling of isolation comes at you from different angles. Often you can’t talk to family members in the business or to non-family members in the business, and you may have lots of friends but unless they work in a family business they really wouldn’t understand what it’s like.”

Galipo agrees.

“A family business is, first and foremost, a business but it’s not like a normal business,” she says. “With a normal business you expect it to become more complex as it gets bigger, but with a family business there are additional complexities as it gets bigger and as more family members get involved.”

Galipo says being in a personal advisory group allows her to share and consult with like-minded people who, in many cases, have faced the same challenges in their family business. But this doesn’t necessarily translate into homogenous perspectives.

Members are not allowed to share anything outside their group, and there’s even a rule in our manual about no pillow talk – you can’t share with a spouse.

Bill Brushett, Family Enterprise Canada

“In my group of 10, we have the opportunity to hear 10 diverse opinions but still know that these diverse opinions are all coming from people who have the shared experience of being in a family business,” she says.

This diversity of viewpoints is by design. Family Enterprise Canada works to create groups with a mix of people from different generations, in various stages of their career, with different wealth levels and from companies of varying scales, Brushett says.

That’s in contrast to CEO peer groups, for instance, which typically try to match company leaders with counterparts in companies of similar size and complexity.

“That’s not as important in our personal advisory groups as the ability to relate to other people in family-owned businesses,” says Brushett.

Strict confidentiality

This ability to relate includes understanding the responsibilities – and the privileges – that come with wealth created from a family business, says Ben Cullen, CEO of Gormley, Ont.-based Cullen’s Foods Ltd., and a relatively new member to a personal advisory group, which he joined just over a year ago.

“We all have a very open mind about the fact that everyone in the group has a level of wealth – including some who come from exceptionally wealthy families – and very little is made of this fact,” says Cullen, whose grandfather Len founded a number of horticulture businesses, including Weall & Cullen Garden Centre, while his father Mark built a media and marketing business focused on gardening as well as a private-label garden brand called Mark’s Choice. “That makes it easier for us to have frank and candid discussions about issues related to family wealth.”

These open discussions take place under strict confidentiality agreements. Brushett says all personal advisory group members sign a contract that binds them to secrecy for life, even after they leave the group.

“Members are not allowed to share anything outside their group, and there’s even a rule in our manual about no pillow talk – you can’t share with a spouse,” he says.

There are a couple of other hard-and-fast rules: Business competitors and people from the same family can’t be in the same group, and members must commit to attending all meetings.

Joining a Family Enterprise Canada personal advisory group requires an association membership, which comes with one group seat and an option to purchase additional seats for $795 plus taxes per seat per year. Every member who wants to join a personal advisory group must apply to the association, which works to find a suitable group.

Even when a suitable group is identified, it’s not necessarily a done deal. Existing members have to vet the applicant and, if all goes well, they extend an invitation to join their group.

Second-generation members

Today, says Brushett, 60 per cent to 70 per cent of Family Enterprise Canada members belong to a personal advisory group. There’s even one family that has four members who have each joined a group.

“That was a challenge for us because people from the same family can’t be in the same group,” he says. “It’s especially hard if the family is in a smaller location.”

A growing number of personal advisory group members at Family Enterprise Canada are second-generation members. Cullen is one example; his father was also in a group, where he was a member for 28 years.

“And those people in his group have become close family friends,” says Cullen. “One retired at the same time as Dad, and they each created a foundation after retirement to give back.”

Galipo shares a similar story of forming close friendships with people in her personal advisory group. Over the past 30-plus years, she and her fellow members have been part of each other’s personal and business lives, and they’re still going strong.

“A lot of us have been together right from the very beginning – I was still in university when I joined my group,” says Galipo. “I became hooked right from the start because I saw the value of the group.”