Rebecca Zael from Trusted Family discusses the benefits of peer learning in family businesses with Dan Beekan on the Never Go Against the Family Podcast. Trusted Family offers a secure platform for family businesses to communicate and store documents, specifically targeting families with established or soon-to-be-established boards and external stakeholders. The discussion also mentions their new product, GOV.

Transcription

Dan: All right. Du du du, hey, everybody. This is Dan Beekan with the Never Go Against the Family Podcast. And we are so excited to have Rebecca Zael with us today. She is with a trusted family. I'll let her introduce her title because I don't want to get it wrong. But so excited to have her with us today. talking a little bit about, I think maybe the power of peer learning. I know that's a subject you've had a lot of experience with both with, with running a center and, and now with, with what you're doing with trusted family and seeing how communication is so critical, right? And so maybe we could just start a little bit by, maybe you could just give us a brief background on, on your, on your experience in the family space here, this crazy family business space. And, where are you now?

Rebecca: Yeah, so I you know, kind of got into the family business realm, very similar to the work that you're doing at you. And I, and you know, my passions have always been to help people learn and grow and develop more. And so that was a good fit. And I think anything that facilitates family businesses to understand more about family business and what all different pieces can go into a family business or different structures that you could have. And the many options because every family business is unique in what they need and in what works well for them. And I think facilitating those kinds of discussions and helping with setting those things up is always what I enjoy. And so I recently have joined trusted family now and trusted family is a tech platform that we offer for family businesses to utilize as a singular secure place for all their family, businesses or family business members and constituents, external board members, anybody to log in and they can communicate through their plan events through their get, you know, all their secure documents, signed documents, all kinds of things through this one secure platform. So you don't have to try to manage a variety of tools and everything's in one place.

Dan: So very cool. I could see that being pretty helpful, especially when you get you know, third party non family involved. And you know, maybe I'm sure your software offers this but some sort of level of, you know, different levels of access, I guess so to speak, right?

Rebecca: You got the gold ticket and you've got the bronze ticket or whatever it is, it's all very much based on access and what you need. And so, you know, a family member that's just graduated from high school and is working in the business, maybe they're gonna have very different access levels than somebody who's on the board and maybe on the family council and you know, needing different, different information about the business as well as the family as well as the details of, of what's going on in the family office. So they all have different, different different views of the, of the, of the platform once they get in.

Dan: Yeah, different access points. Sure. You can still keep something secret from the outside world then a little bit. Right? Ok. That's cool. Ok. Well, let's, let's talk a little bit about your experience working with families and, you know, kind of, one of the big things I see is, is the, I guess I'd say the power of peer learning, the ability for, for families to hear how others did it before they crossed that bridge or watch that bridge burn up or whatever it might be for them and their family. And, you know, I'm just wondering if you have any experience with, you know, the types of things where you've seen that really work well for, for a family and maybe your, your advice or suggestions on that type of learning option too, any peer group, I mean, is valuable, I think and, and there's a lot of peer groups out there that are focused on things that aren't necessarily family specific.

Rebecca: So, you know, the mastermind groups or the vintage groups, the CEO groups, all of those have such value for those people that want to focus on those topics. And so why wouldn't family peer groups be just as valuable for family business owners? I think a lot of times, family businesses don't necessarily recognize how unique their situation is until they start attending things like this and, and things that talk about family businesses and they just think, oh, well, we're just any other family business. We just happen to be on it ourselves. Right. And so to join a peer group specifically, that is family business owners and those conversations can center around all of the intricacies and the dynamics that go into family businesses specifically then like this whole world opens up of what's possible and why some challenges seem so challenging for family businesses versus, you know, the business down the street that doesn't have that same challenge because it's not a dad being the boss of a son or, you know, something of that nature and it just takes that piece out of it. And so having those conversations with family businesses, other family business owners, just helps you kind of solidify and recognize and not alone that there's other people having gone through these things and, and that we can figure it out as well.

Dan: I think that's a big part of it is that I'm not alone this, this issue of having to figure out how to work with my cousins and how to make decisions as a business and, and, you know, you know, I think your groups can, it's kind of like a, it's not a counseling session because nobody's a licensed counselor typically there.

Rebecca: But it kind of is because you can kind of share about, you know, gosh, my cousin used to beat me up when we were little kids and now I have to work with him. Like, how do you figure out that dynamic and move past that and not let you know, 20 years ago, influence your opinions of the work that they're doing now. And so I think having those conversations with just other people that are experiencing those same things helps you to, to find a new level of understanding and strategies to, to move forward for sure some strategies on how to deal with it and just the, just the therapeutic kind of awareness that it's not just me having doing this, dealing with this, that there are some other Porsche ups out there that have the same problems.

Dan: I feel like it's, it's comforting. Right. Right. We like to know that we're not alone or whatever or that and also that the struggle is real. Right. So when you're talking to these other folks and they have the same problems it just is kind of cathartic to know. Ok. Yeah. Yeah. They, they get me, this is my tribe here. Right. That kind of a thing. Yeah. I, I, I totally, I, I see that with, with families that we work with and, and how they come from this place of siloed and, you know, silence and just passive aggressive types of dealings with things too. Ok. Yeah. No, if we wanna move past this, if we don't want to be like this other family, we've got a, we, we've got to do things differently. We've got to reach out and learn and, and network with others. Right.

Rebecca: Yeah. And I think part of, part of the peer learning as well is finding, finding some of your peers that are maybe like a step up from you. And so you can learn from those that are doing what you hope your family will do eventually. So finding businesses that are a little larger, finding families that are a little older, maybe they've gone through a few more generations. and you can learn from their experiences from their, things that didn't go well for them. I think things that they're like, well, you really need to have a board or you really need to get a constitution in place now versus later. and finding some of those things that worked well and helped them get to the fifth or sixth or whatever generation they are. that as a second or third generation you might think. Oh, well, we're not quite ready for that yet, or we're not big enough for that yet. But lots of times those things need to be in place before you actually need them. And so having those people kind of giving you that advice and insight as to why, is very helpful.

Dan: Yeah, I think sometimes if you wait until you need it, it's kind of too late. Right. You know, exactly. The Jerry Springer cheer throwing has already started or whatever it might be and, and, you know, can't put that back in the box or whatever the saying is. And right. Yeah. Now we, now we hate each other and we're just gonna have to hope the private equity firm offers us a big number of things. I don't know.

Rebecca: It ends up there.

Dan: Yes. Unfortunately can, which, sometimes is the advice maybe that other families are giving you too. Right? Is, you know, don't do it this way, don't do it like we did it or whatever it might be like I see folks that interact with our families who are from that type of a situation and they're, and they're now part of their passion and mission is to try to make a difference for other families to, hey, don't do it this way, don't do it like we did it because you're gonna have so many regrets. Right? And that kind of a thing. And so, our guest today is Rebecca Z. She's been talking with us a little bit about the power of peer learning. And you also are part of a software technology platform that you know, probably quite a few of our listeners are not familiar with. Can you describe a little bit about maybe your, you know, who, who is a good fit for the type of solution that you guys have with a trusted family?

Rebecca: Yeah, for sure. So a trusted family is a tech platform that, you know, centralized place for people to log in and get all that information as a communication tool. It's a storage tool so you can organize documents. Our ideal client, I think, is families who have established boards or are looking to establish those boards. Sometimes it would be ideal to bring us on just as you're starting to build out your governance structure and starting to incorporate some outside people. Lots of times, I think a tipping point is when when external stakeholders start being involved and needing to share that same information meetings, you know, have board meetings planned because one if you're, if you're all working in the business and you don't need to necessarily communicate with people externally, your own servers are a great place to store things. probably pretty, pretty secure, you know, you can only log in from your, from your computer. But once you start having advisors or external stakeholders, board members that aren't part of the family or part of the business. And you need to start by including them in your plans for a board meeting, sharing board documents, business documents that they need to prepare for the board meeting in advance. That's really when a tool like this, like trusted family, comes into play. to have that secure option for everybody to log into one place, you don't have to think about it. Gosh, did I email that pack out or did I put it in a dropbox for somebody to download? Does everybody have the right access to get the things? It's all just convenient for everybody, right in the one place to log into one space?

Dan: I like that. That makes sense. Especially as you're getting, you know, multiple generations, passive and active ownership.

Rebecca: Exactly. And we're coming out with a new product. So we have our classic trusted family and we have our new product called GOV. And it will be offered, it will offer many of the same, same things and eventually all of the same things. some of the new features or key features for GOV is that you can manage your meetings right, within the platform. And so you can go through an agenda right in the platform, add in to do and assign them to different people. So you can use this tool and say, what was I supposed to get done from our last quarterly board meeting? Have I gotten that done and checked it off? And so you can see, have they read documents, have they signed off on documents and kind of use it more as a project management tool as well as a document storage and sharing. And so if you know, and beyond that, if if you know, you have an admin that needs to share K ones with everybody or you know, tax documents with each individual, they can use the, the our vault manager tool to kind of do that easily and simply and quickly rather than sending one out to each person and having to go through a different process for every single file, it's more upload and share with all of the right people in one simple step, it sounds a lot more streamlined obviously to have things in one place and then click ability to move them around quickly, right?

Dan: So, ok, cool. Hey, thanks for kind of talking us through that a little bit. I feel like sometimes families aren't always aware of some of the tailored solution sets that are out there for them for, you know, what is in an incredibly niche software product is yours. So, thanks for kindly talking about that. Rebecca, thanks for being here with us, talking a little bit about the power of peer learning as well. Great to have you on. Great to see you again and wish you a rest, a great rest of the day here and, and take care. Thank you.

Rebecca: It was great being with you. Thank you.

Katie: Thanks for listening to this episode of Never Go Against The Family, a podcast produced by the University of Northern Iowa Family Business Center. You can find more information about the center membership and upcoming events at https://unifamilybusinesscenter.com. As Vito Corleone advises, never go against the family.