At age 12, Nikki Walsh picked a name for her mother’s business, P.K. Walsh in Wellesley Hills, Mass. By her teenage years, she was certain that she wanted to join her mother’s enterprise.
But her mother, Kathy, wanted her to gain other work experience first. Nikki did, working in the hospitality industry for a time.
Then, five years ago, at age 24, Nikki was finally brought on to the business – a hair enhancement firm for women. Kathy, who suffered from genetic hair loss, had formed the business several years ago because she wanted to create a private, pretty place where women could be comfortable receiving treatment for hair loss.
Nikki, a licensed cosmetologist, is now the company’s general manager. And she loves it.
“I look forward to work every day,” she said.
The Walshes are an example of a slowly emerging trend in business: the mother-daughter entrepreneurs. With societal mores changing, and with family businesses in general flourishing, mother-daughter partnerships are starting to become more common.
“Increasingly, women are achieving higher levels of involvement in business, and particularly in family business,” said Paul I. Karofsky, executive director of the Center for Family Business at Northeastern University in Dedham, Mass.
“As this happens, we’re going to see more and more mother-daughter teams in family business,” he said.
Family businesses comprise between 80 and 90 percent of all U.S. businesses, according to the Northeastern family business center. And for a variety of reasons – ranging from family tradition to the high levels of commitment members have to their business – many family businesses are outpacing large corporations in the New York Stock Exchange, Karofsky said.
But mother-daughter businesses – and all family enterprises, for that matter – face a number of hurdles to success. That’s why Karofsky urges mothers and daughters to answer a variety of ‘what if’ questions before they decide to go into business together.
Those questions include: how will we work together; who has responsibility for various jobs; what are the goals; what are each other’s vision for the company; and who will assume leadership.
The mother and daughter should also develop an evaluation system – in which each evaluates herself and the other – and agree on a prenuptial agreement that will answer a key question: If the business fails, how will we go on being mother and daughter?
Karofsky added that family relationships must be solid at home if the business is to succeed. Otherwise, the family dysfunction will manifest itself when things get tough.
Decide how you’re going to deal with these problems in advance, he advises.
“All too many family members go into business believing their mission in life is to avoid conflict,” he said. “That’s a big mistake. Their mission in life must be to learn how to manage conflict, not avoid it.”
The Walshes have managed to do that. Before Nikki joined her mother, the two set up the ground rules. They agreed, for example, to meet every Friday night to discuss business, and then to go out and have fun as mother and daughter, not business partners.
“We set guidelines before I came onboard; everything was done very carefully,” she said. “The relationship (of mother-daughter) came first, always.”
While many mother-daughter businesses are springing up in the services sector, they are also appearing in businesses that were traditionally male, such as manufacturing, Karofsky said.
And the trend of male domination in business is subsiding, albeit slowly, noted William O’Hara, executive director of the Institute on Family Business at Bryant College. Few articles about mother-daughter businesses appear in the literature the center tracks, O’Hara said. But he added that is changing.
“Essentially, the whole trend in business up until recent times is that men were the breadwinners,” O’Hara said. “It’s beginning to change, but it’s a long (way to go).”
Added Patricia O’Rourke, manager of the business information center at the Providence office of the Small Business Administration: “There’s certainly more opportunity for that (mother-daughter businesses),” she said. “There are a lot of women successful in business – it’s something great to teach a daughter and let them take over the business.”
Some businesses, Karofsky noted, are started by the father and then taken over by the mother and daughter when the father wants to retire. But other businesses are being started by daughters, with their mothers joining in, he said.
Asked what advice she would have for mothers and daughters who are considering a joint business enterprise, Walsh advised people to lay the rules down early, and consult people who have had success doing the same thing.
“They need to have guidelines,” she said. “They need outside resources. Don’t be afraid to ask questions – someone else has been through it.”
