Judy Barber

Family enterprise is a crucial element of our domestic economy (representing 95% of all businesses, half of our Gross Domestic Product and over half of all new jobs). Yet the survival rate is alarmingly low, only 30% successfully transition from the first to the second generation.

The overlap of family relationships onto otherwise normal business issues distinguishes family businesses from all others. The 'family factor" is part of the unavoidable reality.

For that reason, the best way for a family in business to increase its survival rate is by making conscious choices designed to balance the family/business interplay. Our goal is to support clients to explore doing the following:

Develop understanding of the dilemmas parents and adult successors face as they work together in operating a closely held business, family limited partnership, family foundation and family office.
Identify the overlapping family and business issues and their impact on the objectives, planning and organizational structure.
Plan for succession by determining interests and needs of the generations in the context of what is in the best interest of the business.
Articulate the enterprise objectives from the perspective of all those involved, identify and work through obstacles, create and implement an action plan.

Consultant Collaboration

Family business consulting is, by its nature, an interdisciplinary process. Judy Barber and Steve Swartz have worked together in serving family owned businesses for nearly 15 years.

Not every consulting engagement requires both of us to work directly with the client at all times. Over the years of working together we have developed a flexible model of teamwork that allows us to serve our clients in a very cost-efficient manner. Most often one consultant works directly, face to face with the client while the other collaborates remotely. Given the additional cost involved, we include the client in our deliberations before any decision is made to have both of us participate directly.

We believe our team approach to family business consulting has proven very effective for a number of reasons:

We bring considerable experience to the process. Both of us were active in the field of family business consulting well before we began collaborating. Steve was one of the founders of the field, and is a past president of the Family Firm Institute, our national professional association.
We bring an interdisciplinary approach to the work. Prior to focusing her practice on family business consulting, Judy was for many years a licensed marriage and family therapist and a consultant to families experiencing issues related to wealth. Steve comes to family business consulting from a legal background. While neither of us continues to practice our profession of origin, the entire range of our experience (both professional and personal) adds considerable strength to our consulting collaboration.
In addition, we believe that the gender composition of the team is an important factor. We believe strongly that a male/female consulting team best serves the client.

Our flexible consulting collaboration is unique in the field, and has delivered high-impact results in the most cost-efficient manner.

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G. Barber is strictly prohibited. © 2008 by Judy G. Barber