Put the same sale proposal in front of four family members, and you can get four different reactions. One family sees careful stewardship. Another views it as a divergence from everything the founder built. A third feels mercifully released from a job they never wanted in the first place. And the fourth begins to wonder whether the family is selling because the business calls for it or because they can no longer decide anything as a unit.
Because these reactions rarely get voiced aloud, a family can move through an entire sale process with what looks like broad support. But their conversations focus on price, taxes, structure—and rarely on the familial or emotional pieces. Once the sale goes through, the family spends the next several years second-guessing what they gave up and why.
Why does the second-guessing happen? Because there are two aspects of selling the business that families tend to confuse: approval of the sale, and owning the decision to sell.
Discover what that difference looks like, and how it affects the sale of the business in this article.
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