Mother knows best

While family businesses tend to have more than their share of conflicts, one of their biggest advantages is an inherent sense of trust, according to Ira Bryck, director of the Family Business Center at the University of Massachusetts. "There's trust that nobody's going to stab you in the back," Bryck says. "In a family business, you can think in terms of how are we going to use our talents and express our values in the long run, rather than worrying about how we are going to get 20 percent in the next 10 years."

Bryck says that having all the money stay in the same piggy bank, so to speak, adds a level of comfort to the business that can be beneficial. Jonelle Raffino, founder of South West Trading Co., a wholesale yarn company that specializes in manufacturing yarn from sustainable fibers, says she cannot imagine anyone she would rather have handling the books than her mother, Jonette Beck. "The first person I went to was my mom to help me, because there's nobody I trust more," Raffino says.

Watching her mom start a successful corporate event-planning business while growing up, inspired Jodi Wolf to join her mother, Paulette Wolf, professionally. Jodi entered college with plans to become a child psychiatrist, but after Paulette solicited Jodi's help planning an opening-night party for Cirque du Soleil, Jodi decided that she had found her calling. "It was really in my blood, and it felt like the right thing to be doing," Jodi says. She has been in business with her mom since 1993.

Paulette, who started her business, Paulette Wolf Events & Entertainment, almost 30 years ago, says that she always dreamed of working with her next of kin. She started taking Jodi to events when she was 10 years old, but says she never pushed the idea of going into business together. So, when Jodi came to it on her own accord, Paulette was thrilled. "Jodi has totally changed the business," Paulette says. "It has grown three times more than when I was doing it alone."

Over the years, mother and daughter have planned several high-profile events, such as coordinating the entertainment at the athlete's village during the 2006 Olympics in Atlanta, and helping to put on the annual Air and Sea Show in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Even though Paulette and Jodi spend long hours on the job, they still take family vacations together. Their drive to work is strictly social. "We have a rule in the car — listen to music and talk socially," Jodi says. "We are not allowed to talk business."

Jodi says she believes the open and honest nature of the relationship with her mom makes for their tight bond. "I have always looked at [Paulette] as not only my mom, but as a best friend," Jodi says. Getting to know one another on a business level has also helped Jodi to understand her mom in a different way, outside of family interactions.

Working together in a business environment can help to mitigate the inherent threat of conflict that often exists in a mother-daughter relationship, according to Glassman. "The business environment can help mothers and daughters see themselves more objectively," he says. "It helps daughters to understand their mothers more as a whole person, and it helps mothers to understand the unique needs and desires of her daughter."

For Jonelle Raffino of South West Trading Company, one of the challenges she encountered when she started working with her mother was learning how to manage her emotions. "When you're having a tough day, the first people you're going to cut loose on is your family," Raffino says. "And it's hard to bluff emotion with family." Every now and then, if things turn ugly, Raffino calls in her dad to act as a mediator. Running a business together, she says, "has been a constant process of learning to respect each other on such a new level."

Raffino says that aside from having a unique product, South West Trading's image as a family business has been a huge draw to customers as well. "Our customers relate to us on a much more human level because they have gotten to know us as people," she says. "If there's accountability with the business, we stand to that as a family."

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