BC Business
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David Nichols, VP and co-founder of marketing company Inventa, has a secret weapon for helping seal a potential business deal. He shows up with his business partner Brent – who just happens to be his identical twin.
“I think it’s a really good ice breaker to have both of us sit down,” confesses David, flanked by Brent, at the Inventa head office on West Seventh Avenue near Oak Street in Vancouver. Dressed in similar casual white shirts and jeans, the 36-year-old Nichols brothers cut an arresting figure. If it weren’t for David’s facial hair, it would be virtually impossible to tell them apart. It’s easy to imagine how the visual impact of having both of these young, energetic entrepreneurs pitching together would be compelling. It’s an effect the Nichols brothers, who founded Inventa in 1996 with a third partner, Geoff Cribbs, 51, are well aware of. There is a slight downside. When meeting clients for the first time on his own, Brent has learned to warn them about his doppelganger. “I say, ‘Just so you know, I have an identical twin brother. If you see a guy that looks like me and he’s not saying hi, it’s not me being rude, it’s my twin brother.’” The Nichols brothers, both VPs (Cribbs is the company president), say their company roles are virtually as identical as they are. They simply divide clients up between their respective pools of employees, and lead the organization as a team. It’s a tactic that has obviously worked well for them; Inventa, which describes its service as “experiential marketing” because it relies on guerrilla tactics and staged events, counts among its clients such mega corporations as Nike, Nintendo and Coca-Cola. Last year, the company took in revenues of $8.5 million and next year’s projections point to $10 million. But, as anyone who has sat – or, perhaps, suffered – through tense family holidays and be-on-your-best-behaviour dinners knows, sibling relationships, no matter how close, can be fraught with competition, rivalries and unresolved issues that may well date back to the early years of arguments over who got the bigger scoop of ice cream and who mom really loves best. Learning to make the transition from the kitchen table to the boardroom table can take some finessing, and few siblings in business together get it right without a few bumps along the way. Gervase Bushe, a psychologist and associate professor of management and organization studies in SFU’s Faculty of Business Administration, is currently researching families in business. There are benefits but also challenges, he says, to going into business with kin. “Family always involves intimacy, whether you want it to or not… If you’re in business with people that you have these intimate relationships with, you can trust them,” he points out. “There’s this deep trust, there’s loyalty, there’s all these things. That can be very functional and useful. On the other hand, if there’s a whole bunch of family baggage, and the family of origin was never very able to work through stuff, [that’s] going to come into the business as well, and it’s going to be very difficult, almost impossible, for those people to be any different.” The most common pitfall? “The biggest issue is around self-differentiation: your ability to know what your own experience is, what you think, what you feel, what you want, independently of someone else.” Bushe says that the less self-differentiated a person is, the more their internal experience is a function of other people’s. In business, if one partner’s mood and emotional stability is implicitly tied to the actions of the other, that point where one person ends and the other begins can become blurry. When it comes to the Nichols brothers, their identities do seem a little fuzzy. The twins live in the same neighbourhood and drive identical Volvos. They admit that they have done virtually everything in their lives together, including playing sports, sharing a paper route, going to university and even occupying a bedroom at the family house until the age of 23, when Brent moved out. (David followed suit a few months later.) David is seven minutes older and, as the eldest, has a history of looking after his younger brother’s back. Growing up, he would go for job interviews and then casually suggest that Brent work alongside. (In fact, Brent admits he’s never actually had a job interview in his life.) Cribbs, who had worked in advertising before approaching Brent with the idea of launching Inventa, was told right from the beginning that he was going to have two partners. The Nichols brothers are the first to admit that while being siblings has plenty of business advantages, it also has its business challenges. One of the biggest, they say, has been learning to temper their communication style when in company meetings. “Because David and I are very free in the way that we express our discontent with each other, or issues or challenges, often that can make people around us very uncomfortable,” admits Brent. “We’re not trying to mask our emotions or be politically correct. It’s just raw and it’s like, ‘Listen, this is the way I feel,’ with often not the most polite language.” Meanwhile, Cribbs is left to sit back and wait for the sparks to finish flying before delving into the discussion. When the twins disagree, he says, “there are no political niceties on how they deal with it. Their energy level and their voices will get up and it would appear that they’re about to go to blows. Then, two seconds later, all is okay.” But, says Cribbs (who coincidentally has a fraternal twin sister), he’s learned to let them go at it. “You kind of have to let it play out before you move forward because it’s just counter-productive otherwise.” If David and Brent haven’t resolved the issue at hand, then they won’t be able to move forward, he explains. But for the rest of the team, and particularly for a new employee, Cribbs concedes it can be “a bit disconcerting.” Rob and John Madigan know something about trying to keep a lid on the fiery sibling banter when co-workers are around. Sitting in the swanky headquarters of their downtown Teligence Communications offices, the co-CEOs of the telephone dateline and chatline provider may not be twins, but they’re pretty close: Rob is 42, John is 41, and both sport a broad-shouldered, rugby-player’s physique. They’ve been working together since 1997, seven years after Rob first launched Teligence. , “Because we have such rapport, we kind of go through an issue so quickly. There’s not enough foreplay, if you’ll forgive the metaphor,” confesses Rob. “As brothers, we go at it. We’re not fighting, but we’ll be going through the items, and people would be watching us and they’re all like, ‘You guys just had a brawl.’” Their passionate discussions got to the point that staff eventually confronted them about it. “We got feedback that if you’re going to do that, go do it in your own offices, because we just can’t handle it,” John recalls. On the other hand, say the Nichols brothers, their intimate connection gives them an edge when it comes to problem solving. “There’s a purity of communication with David that I don’t have with other people,” explains Brent. But unless you’re identical twins with matching CVs, the prevailing advice from family-business consultants is to have clearly defined and distinct roles, lest rivalries and competition with deep-seated roots rear up. David Bentall, who founded Next Step Advisors after 20 years at his father and uncle’s family business, Dominion Construction, where he eventually became president and CEO, explains. “It’s best when each member of the sibling partnership has a clearly defined role that suits their passions and skills and abilities.” It’s a point he makes when leading courses at the Business Families Centre in UBC’s Sauder School of Business. “It doesn’t make sense,” he says, “for siblings to work together in a great melting pot of mush where nobody has clear authority.” Bentall’s advice certainly matches with the Madigans’ experiences, who say that a major reason for their success is that they recognize each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and have taken on responsibilities that suit their individual skill sets. “I’m more of a bigger-picture person,” says Rob. “I’m a great risk-taker. One could argue reckless, at times… John’s more of a fact-and-details guy.” Bentall also stresses that family partnerships work best when there is no obligation to be part of the business; partners should feel that they are there by choice rather than out of a sense of filial duty. Spend an hour with the Joe family of Sunrise Soya Foods, and you get the feeling that they’ve probably broken a number of so-called “family business rules.” Sitting with Peter, 47, Sally, 46, Winnie, 43, and Jenny, 36, at the Vancouver company’s headquarters at 729 Powell Street, the mood is one of a boisterous family brunch. The intersection of family and business is much less clearly defined here than at the Nicholses’ or Madigans’ companies – in fact, the more you listen to the Joes speak, the more you feel that their business is defined by family, and vice versa. The women laugh readily with self-deprecating humour while Peter, the CEO who clearly holds the role of head of the family, maintains a quiet, solemn composure. “We just grew up knowing that that’s what we’re going to do in our career, because that’s what we knew best,” explains Jenny, the baby of the family. “I would be in a car seat crying at the store while everybody was working. My mom would bring me to the store and as we had kids, we did the same thing. Two weeks after I had my baby I would bring the baby to the store and go do my orders.” Sunrise Soya Foods, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, began life as a humble grocery store at 300 Powell Street in Vancouver’s East Side, run by Leslie and Susan Joe, the family patriarch and matriarch, both immigrants from China. As the Chinese population in Vancouver increased, the Joes began manufacturing tofu in the kitchen behind their market, delivering it to various restaurants and shops in Chinatown. The four children grew up making, packaging and delivering tofu, and helping to run the shop. Today, the siblings are all equal partners in the business with their father (their mother has passed away). In classic Chinese tradition, Peter, the eldest and the only son, took on the role of company president and CEO in 1984, after earning a degree in commerce from UBC, and turned Sunrise into the largest producer of tofu and soya foods in Canada, with 250 employees. Peter concentrates on the tofu side of the business, while his three sisters manage the now-expanded market on the corner of Powell Street and Gore Avenue, just four blocks west of the tofu-making headquarters on Powell. While Peter’s position is quite clearly defined, the sisters’ roles are much more fluid. They are all involved in the day-to-day running of the store, taking on shifts that suit their various schedules and family obligations. But nothing is written in stone; it all seems to have arisen almost organically out of the family unit and structure. Pressed to explain their roles, Winnie allows that there is a slight division of labour. “I’m more in charge of the personnel and the Asian groceries,” she says. “Jenny does more of the Western foods and organics and, in general, oversees things. Sally does more of the meat and produce department.” As for how the women feel about their brother assuming the role of CEO and company head while they remain in the background, they say they’re happy to defer to his judgment when it comes to the money side of things. “We trust our brother. He’s very kind,” says Sally. “We have total confidence in him.” That said, since the shareholders in this private company are all family, the Joes admit that they don’t temper their interactions at all. “Of course, there’s arguments like normal families,” starts Sally. Jenny continues, giggling: “Because we’re siblings we talk to each other bluntly. There are no formalities like please or thank you.” Asked if they ever get sick of the business, which has been a constant in their lives since the day they were born, the answer is a candid one, relayed with peals of laughter. “We’re always tired of it,” says Jenny. “It’s always on your shoulders. You go home and think about work.” Adds Winnie, “We’re all tired. But we can’t let go, I guess.” The Joe family’s experience may be an extreme example of an intertwined family and business, but keeping the two separate is a challenge for all sibling partnerships. While most of us find that elusive work-life balance difficult to obtain, it’s doubly tough for those who work with the very people who have shared their entire lives. The Madigan brothers, who get together for family dinners once or twice a week, freely admit that their constant talking shop can rile their long-suffering wives. “We kind of know when our wives don’t want us to talk business,” says John. “They’ll put the money jar onto the table and say ‘Okay, it’s five bucks if you keep talking.’” The Nichols twins, who unbeknownst to each other ended up buying homes within half a block of one another, have similarly weary spouses. When they bought their houses, “that was the moment when they threw up their hands and said ‘Okay, you can’t fight this twin thing,’” says Brent. “It does drive our families crazy sometimes. When does it stop? It doesn’t… We’re so heavily invested in the business, emotionally and financially, that it’s the fabric of who we are.” And, according to Bentall, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. “A lot of people think there needs to be a clear break between family and business, but that’s actually not realistic.” For years, he says, universities drove home the message that family and business should be kept separate. But, he claims, over 85 per cent of all companies in North America are family companies – and they have been shown to outperform non-family companies. “You want to learn not to keep business and family completely separate,” says Bentall, “but to wisely manage the interface between the two arenas. Don’t make business decisions at the kitchen table, and don’t make family decisions at the boardroom table. Many families do, and that’s not appropriate.” When managed correctly, as evidenced by the Madigans, the Nicholses and the Joes, family businesses hold numerous advantages. Says Bentall, family companies have four main principles that give them an edge over non-family companies. They tend to have longer-term commitment from their employees because they’re treated as an extension of the family. They tend to have better relationships with their customers and suppliers, because there’s more of a personal approach from the family. The quality of what they do tends to be better, because their name is on the door. And finally, they tend to make better investment decisions because they’re investing for the long run rather than just for quarterly returns. “Why,” asks Bentall, “would we want to take the family out of the company if it brings all of those benefits?”